February of 1999 was my last month at AOL. They basically pushed me into quitting for doing politics instead of what they wanted me to do. I did it because I thought the political system needed to be part of the way we did things in California.Since I had heard that "In California, whisky is for drinking and water is for fighting," I decided to treat the water collection in my office as a cross between a batch of "information bombs" and map of the battlefield. Looking back at what happened more than two years later, I think the story is worth sharing again:
2/3/99 Water Treatment, round 1:
Late Monday afternoon my boss called me into her office. The HR lady came in soon after and we had a meeting. The gist of it was that I had to sign a letter saying that I would spend all of my time on pinbrained programming, because she was very disturbed about the amount of time I was spending on "outside projects" (politics).
I have thought about this a lot, and I have redirected my resources to a large extent. However, I could not let it go without doing something. Accordingly, I have decidedto drink my water collection, one bottle per day, starting yesterday.
I started with the bottle that had been sitting behind my monitor, Aviani brand. It had been strategically standing there for a long time, waiting for someone to jostle my table and make it fall over. That happened once and I explained to the startled visitor "In California, water is for fighting." It was the only bottle I had with glaring typos in the label.
Today I will consume my ICE AGE PREMIUM GLACIAL WATER, the only one that came in a deep blue bottle. Christina watched me put it above the tumbledown bottle in the closet, sort of as a spin enhancer, last summer. I picked this one for that role because I consider the Democrats the Blue Party, and she is my favorite Democrat.
Tian Harter
Irvine, CA
Really working on long term problems
involves doing as little as possible.
2/4/99 Water Treatment, round two:
As I drank my water yesterday I thought about the HR lady saying "You can't do politics because your name isn't Bob Pitman."
It didn't make the water taste any better.
Today I drink my Hawaii water (590 mL).
It is the only one that has a black cap in the whole set.
Tian Harter
Irvine, CA
Really working on long term problems
involves doing as little as possible.
The above prompted this question from the peanut gallery:
JJ wrote:
> Who in the hell is Bob Pitman?
>
The Tommy Pull-My-Finger of the AOL Brass.
Tian Harter
Irvine, CA
Back when I wore large T shirts, I used to wear one that
said HEAR NO EVIL on the back. I got it from Keiko Bonk,
who was the first US Green to win Partisan Office.
2/5/99 Water Treatment, round 3
Yesterday I drank my Hawaii water at Steve Livingstone's retirement party. I took it with me, and made sure that a number of people saw it. There were people drinkingbeer and wine all over the place, but I was the only one drinking Hawaii water. The most memorable comment I heard came from MrTruthInAdvertising, who said "They didn't have clauses in the days when Hawaii had a King."
Today I will drink my New Zealand premium eternal SPRING Still Natural Water (500 mL). Because the work of the NZ Greens has created in my heart a special place for them, I will have a FREAK BROTHERS A HIT OF CHOCOLATE MUNCHIE BAR With Embedded Rice-Objects with the water.
CAUTION: Reading the label on the FREAK BROTHERS MUNCHIE BAR can cause side splitting laughter and may damage your ability to keep a straight face when dealing with officers of the Law. I took it around and showed it to many of my coworkers, explaining that it was "a dangerous weapon in the battle against stupidity in government."
This and many other entertaining products are available from their website at http://www.kitchensink.com. Just browsing the place is a kick.
Tian Harter
Irvine, CA
Really working on long term problems
involves doing as little as possible.
2/8/99 Water Treatment continues...
The New Zealand water was LOTS of fun. Today I plan to drink Canadian MUSIC Premium Glacier Water, "Earth's first beverage from British Columbia's purest coastal glaciers." This stuff comes in a 400 ml triangular bottle. Because of the shape a serving is smaller than all of the other bottles in my collection, even though the bottle has the same profile.
Thinking about how music works, it is impossible for me to think of music as anything less than a powerful political force. Both of the times that I ran for office, Musicians were by far the biggest draw at fundraisers. I will go so far as to say that bands are political leaders in the communities they play for and are followed in.
When I think of where I am in life right now, the song Desperado by the Eagles comes to mind. It fits my situation so perfectly. I the lyric there is a line about the queen of hearts being a better bet than the queen of diamonds. I think of Jee Hi (The woman I went out with at the beginning of '96) as being the queen of diamonds. Christina is more the queen of hearts type. There is a lot of wisdom in that lyric.
There are interesting quirks that were made possible by the conversion from twelve inch records to CD's. For example, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young added some tracks to four way street when they came out with the CD version. It is interesting to me to think about why they picked the stuff they did to add. I find myself wondering if this is grounds for a fun conspiracy.
Tian Harter
Irvine, CA
Back when I wore large T shirts, I used to wear one that
said HEAR NO EVIL on the back. I got it from Keiko Bonk,
who was the first US Green to win Partisan Office.
The above prompted the following discussion:
>
> Thinking about how music works, it is impossible for me to think of music as
> anything less than a powerful political force. Both of the times that I ran for
> office, Musicians were by far the biggest draw at fundraisers. I will go so
> far as to say that bands are political leaders in the communities they play for
> and are followed in.
>
You said "music" was a powerful political force and proceeded to give examples that mentioned bands and musicians. Maybe you should have said "bands and musicians" are a powerful political force or to be more specific "popular bands and musicians" than I would agree. I don't think the music I listen to would have drawn much of a crowd...
--
David Minor
Tel Aviv, Israel
To which I responded:
I must emphatically disagree with you here. For example, one day I was coming home from work in my car (rainy day). The DJ had a couple of songs that he wanted to play to explain that Clinton's problems are chickenshit. First he played Four Dead In Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Then he played The End Of The Innocence by the Eagles. When I got out of my car, all I could think about was "Rock and Roll is coming through."
I remember during the '91 Gulf War talking to my old friend Goldberg. He said if I wanted to make a political statement about the situation, why didn't I call up a radio station and get them to play Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkle. I just didn't get his point. Instead I went out and made a sticker that said MEND YOUR FUELISH WAYS. That was a political statement that I could understand.
Once I figured out that music was political I decided to start using it as a tool.This morning I played Deanna Carter's Everything's Going To Be All right while I ate breakfast, starting with the song that has a line "I've got a brand new pair of roller-skates, you've got a brand new key" in it. Much more fun than asking a DJ to make an obscure reference.
There's nothing wrong with a small crowd. I also prefer the quiet backwaters of our world. The problem is that they are getting steadily eroded by the greed of the MassMarketTycoons. My personal feeling is that they have euphoria caused by excessive financial leverage. You know how that works as well as I do.
Tian Harter
Irvine, CA
Don't let Shell K-ROCK again!
Once again you're speaking of the words of music. What is the political
statement of Bach, or John Coltrane or other music without words?
--
David Minor
Tel Aviv, Israel
I remember once playing some Thelonius Monk for my father when he came to visit. He launched into a big discussion of how he found it quite assonant. When he was a musician (back in the '30's and '40's) they had much more respect for standard timings. He found that stuff to be much too revolutionary for his taste.
For me, the bottom line is that every time you run an electronic device you are using electric power. The politics of that are quite simple. If the power is sustainably produced, no harm is done. If the power was made by burning fossil fuels or using nuclear power, then bad karma is created. When looked at this way, it is hard to do anything without some political impact.
On Sunday evening Christina dropped by to chat for a while. I had some Handel going on my stereo. I'm not going to say we talked about politics, but it definitely helped that she liked the music. My attitude was more of a whatever works type of a thing in a situation like that one.
When I rescued my bike from the tune-up shop last week I forgot to take my pants tie down there with me. The UCI cyclery was happy to sell me a new one. The thing is black and yellow nylon cloth, with reflective patches on it and a velcro closure. I have my old red one on my stereo now, to remind me to stop leaving it on all the time.
Tian Harter
Irvine, CA
Don't let Shell K-ROCK again!
2/9/99 Water Treatment Continued...
Today I will be drinking Hearst Castle bottled water. It is the only bottle in my whole collection that cost me $2. I'm doing this one because I consider it the best place in California to go for basic lessons on issues of scale. It is a humbling thing to hear the tour guide say "this statue is older than Moses" in the garden. It is thought provoking to learn how William Randolph Hearst treated his guests.
I first realized that we really need these lessons in issues of scale when I went to the CCAT meeting in the summer of '94. There were Indians (Native Americans) from reservation after reservation in the desert east of Los Angeles talking about the remarkable battles the had to fight to keep the Angelinos from dumping their trash on their reservations. I vividly remember one guy talking about what happens when a five story high pile of sewer sludge (shit) dries out and starts blowing around. On top of everything else, Tribal Sovereignty rights were being violated.
Corporate Greenwashing works because the scale of the suckers life is so sheltered that they can only see the good deeds advertised, and not the industrial scale story that would be bad for the corporate image. What could I do about this? My answer was BlueWashing. During the fall of Christina's Campaign I used shampoo in a bluish bottle, blue soap, and deodorant in a blue dispenser. I got shaving cream with a blue highlight on the can, but the previous one didn't run out in time for the campaign. I got myself a pair of boxer shorts with red ants on it to remind myself that these things can go too far.
Now that Christina is gone and I have my privacy back, I have put the variety back in my washing. My new shampoo came in a white bottle. My deodorant is in a red dispenser with a thin green line. I am now using the blue shaving cream. My soap is a transparent cube, with an embedded green plastic frog. After the soap is gone, I plan to keep the frog in the bathroom to remind me that it's not easy being green.
When working with issues of scale it is important to remember that "What man does to the circle of life, he also does to himself." For many years it has been my practice to chew off a fingernail and leave it behind when I feel OK with what's going on there. Yesterday, because I think music is the water of our civil society, I cut off nine of my fingernails after sending my post, leaving only my right thumbnail long. After I send this one I will be clipping that last nail.
Tian Harter
Irvine, CA
Back when I wore large T shirts, I used to wear one that
said HEAR NO EVIL on the back. I got it from Keiko Bonk,
who was the first US Green to win Partisan Office.
2/10/99 Water Treatment continues...
The Hearst Castle water was tap water in a bottle with a fancy label. Today I'm going to drink the only bottle in my collection that was given to me free by my employer. It's ARROWHEAD MOUNTAIN SPRING WATER. The picture on the label features an arrowhead shaped lake nestled in an alpine setting. According to the label, the company has been around since 1894.
Free stuff is a potent tool in the American Political system. For example, I was walking across UCI campus on Monday 2/8/99, and I came across a booth where AT&T was giving out T shirts. I picked one up, mainly to use in this paragraph. The slogan on the back reads "(smile when you dial) (rave when you save)." I invite you to have as much fun with that slogan as you want.
My mother sent me five postcards from the PERELANDRA Center for Nature Research. They all have the same picture, a predominantly blue night time country scene, with two moons in the picture. These signify the fact that there will be two blue moons this year, one happened on 1/31, the other is scheduled for 3/31. I will be glad to mail you one, just send me your snail mail address and let me know you want the postcard.
Hokum and SnakeOil are valuable ideas in the political system I understand. Hokum is any sort of small ceremony for those present, generally amounting to pure hot air. For example, 944865 is pure Hokum. SnakeOil, on the other hand, has more of an infrastructure component. Because of this, it is generally not given away free. When Politicians start selling SnakeOil, it is buyer beware!
Tian Harter
Irvine, CA
Don't let Shell K-ROCK again!
2/11/99 Water Treatment continues...
Today the water I will be drinking is going to be Universal Care water. The slogan on the bottle says "CHANGING THE FACE of affordable healthcare." The FACE is in bigger type than the rest by about two to one. The picture is of a mother and daughter with a cat. They look very cute. It's put out by an HMO called Universal Care.
I decided to make this bottle part of the game when I asked Christina what WHO stood for. She had never heard of the World Health Organization, so I decided to make Universal Care something to shoot for. After all, if she never heard of it, and she's the Congressional Candidate for the Democratic Party, I shudder to think what might happen when she got to Washington.
I got it at a benefits fair put on by the teamsters last fall, when I went to drop off some fliers for Marie Fennel, a friend of Christina's who was running for State Assembly. The fliers were for a Candidates forum, which Sara Amir attended as a Green and many of the Democratic also rans from around here attended. The only one there that won a Partisan Office was Joe Dunn, who is now a State Senator.
Drinking the ARROWHEAD MOUNTAIN SPRING WATER was interesting. I opened it while hanging out with the guys with the foggy breaks, who let me know that "cat cards exist." Wandering back to my cube TheArab gave me a hard time, so I gave him the cap. He complained that it was just a plain white cap and then said "life is rough."
His comment reminded me of the information engineering conference that I went to almost a year ago. I had explained the First Amendment by saying "In this country if you call yourself the King, everyone else has a right to laugh." A guy from a University in Texas had said "That's a rough definition of the first amendment."
Tian Harter
Irvine, CA
Don't let Shell K-ROCK again!
JJ wrote:
> Anyway... There's an entire aisle of water. All one brand.
> NIAGRA it says on the label.... the small print in the
> corner of the bottle gives a California address. No where
> near Niagra Falls, unless they have been moving things
> around.
They sell that stuff here to, or at least I've seen it here before. It's easy to get cynical about what they sell in the water department after you talk to some of the guys I work with. For example, I have heard it said that "pure mountain spring" is a completely meaningless phrase. It just looks good on a label.
There are many stories of water companies outgrowing the spring they got their name from, and then just using water from wherever because there was demand they had built up.
After I had seen many bottles, I sort of realized that it was just another thing to sell to keep the wheels of the economy churning and the landfills filling. I collected those things because they were interesting conversation starters. Now that they are gone, I don't feel any need to replace them.
I actually think HMO water as a giveaway makes more sense than a lot of the other stuff I've seen. United Healthcare gave out eyeglasses repair kits, containing small screwdrivers, scews and nosepads. My coworkers who had been screwed by them were saying what an apropriate thing that was for them to hand out.
Tian Harter
Irvine, CA
Don't let Shell K-ROCK again!