There’s no such thing as a free lunch
By Kate | September 28, 2008
“Oh, and by the way. You are in charge of getting Mr. Nader lunch. He likes Lebanese food and fruit juice.” This is what we were told two hours before the Nader rally at UCSD that we were in charge of getting peeps in San Diego out to. When we got the call, we were in the middle of silkscreening our custom, “SD heart Nader” shirts. Neil went on an emergency mission for some Tabbouleh and Pita & Hummus, which was successful & well received by the Nader crew.
As you can see below by the standing ovation for Nader, there was a most excellent, to quote Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, turnout at the rally. More than 1/2 of the crowd were hearing Nader speak for the first time.
Nader was well recieved, Matt Gonzalez also spoke and people had fabulous questions. But, let’s face it… the shirts were the real highlight of the day. I gave a shirt to Mr. Nader while he was doing a book signing. Unfortunate timing because, he thought I wanted him to sign it & signed the ill fated gift. Luckily Nader’s “handler” caught it & said he’d give it to him later. Now Nader has the ultimate self-aggrandizing shirt. An “I heart myself” shirt with his own signature. Again, most excellent.
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Knocking doors with the president of the gay bowling league & An excellent article
By Kate | September 20, 2008
Yesterday Neil & I went knocking to get people out to see Ralph Nader at his upcoming rally in San Diego next Saturday. We went with (the) two other Nader supporters in San Diego. One was our new friend Dennis. He is the head of the gay bowling league in San Diego, among other things. He is really fearless. He showed us the ropes & hit the streets.
While the experience was intimidating, it made me take a deep breath & remember that most people are just really nice people. They just want to have nice lives, nice kids, nice neighbors. They don’t hate. They are just nice. Even the Obama peeps were really nice & took our fliers etc. We also had some people that were really enthusiastic about Nader & it was great to get out the information to them.
I found an article that explains all the frustration I feel about the two party system. Please read it:
“…Yet most folks, it seems, have confused the occasional weekend parade, I mean, protest with a full-blown movement.
Here’s a news flash: Anti-Bush bumper stickers and a heartfelt commitment to recycled toilet paper don’t constitute a movement. Neither do candlelight vigils, vegan diets, petitions, voting drives, letters to Congress, monthly donations to Greenpeace, yellow ribbons, red ribbons, pink ribbons, or becoming the change you wish to see in the world.
All you need is love? Yeah…that and a million dollars a minute.
This is not meant to denigrate or mock but rather to point out that there is a huge difference between having a sincere minority of Americans partaking in such gestures and having a tangible, functional, effective movement capable of inciting, inspiring, demanding social change. The rest of the world knows this…why don’t we?”
Please find the rest of this article at Dissident Voice. It’s everything I want to say to everyone about the election and the state of our nation. Lucky for me, someone else wrote it all out.
This is what winning an argument with a Korean lady in Fantastic Sams looks like:
By Kate | September 19, 2008
Yep. That’s right. I walked to the closest hair salon to campus (which happens to be Fantastic Sams) and got my hair cut. When I explained that I wanted it short one one side, long on the other there was great confusion on the face of the stylist (only partially due to the language barrier). She said that uneven haircuts don’t look good. Finally after about 10 minutes I won her over with my newly developed logical argument skills.
In retrospect, she may have been right. But, good looks never were my style.
San Diego’s Premier Political Parties You Won’t Want to Miss
By Neil Ransom | September 17, 2008
So Kate and I met a Nader friend today who is campaigning with us. After we had a nice lunch he took me to the District Voter Registration Office to get voter registration forms and other information about San Diego’s voter precincts. One of the sheets we got listed all the political parties recognized in the county. A few of my favorites are listed below:
- U.S. Taxpayers Party
- Pragmatic Party
- Prohibition Party
- Neuroscience Party (Blog)
- Natural Law Party
- Puritan Party
- Rock and Roll Party
- Pot Party
- Scientific Evolving Party
- God, Truth & Love Party
These are in additional to old favorites like the Anarchist Party, Communist Party, Middle Class Party, Poor Peoples Party, La Raza Unida Party and so forth. To date San Diego County has 76 registered political parties. Nearly 30% of voters in San Diego are unaffiliated or registered as a 3rd party member. I just want to close with a quote from the Neuroscience Party’s constitution, “We want every woman to live like a princess with robotic servants and we want everyone to live like wealthy billionaires, wealthy members of royalty, and wealthy slavemasters with robotic servants and robotic slaves that will do all of the work for them.”
You can’t wish for a better world then that…vote 3rd Party!
Tagged with: 3rd Parties • Nader • Nader 2008 • San Diego
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The Wrong Side of the Chain Link
By Neil Ransom | September 15, 2008
Last night Kate and I went downtown to the Gas Lap District for some gelato, from possible the best gelato shop in the USA, Chocolate, and so Kate could look for a new hat, i.e. a corn hat by Kangol. We arrived in the district around 8:30, parked and hit the streets. At this point downtown was more than pleasant. People were enjoying tasty restaurants, all the small boutiques were open and everyone seemed to be having a good time. We looked trough a couple of hat shops and sadly none had the hat Kate was looking for. Around 10 we decided to walk to Seaport Village, a small ocean side shopping district to look at a small hat shop we had seen a few weeks ago.
Anyway by the time we got there (a bad distance calculation error on our part) everything was closed and we were pooped. We decided on the romantic way back to the car via a board walk. Unfortunately said board walk ended up taking us through an abandoned dark alley industrial park…i.e. a vampire trap. I think to date every romantic thing I’ve done with Kate had ended up in a vampire trap. Luckily we made it out alive, but were far away from where we wanted to be. As we walked back to the Gas Lap District we used a sidewalk that apparently is also used by many homeless people as a bed. Walking past what must have been 40 homeless men and women sleeping on cardboard was about the saddest thing I’ve ever endured. Unfortunately for us, it was just the beginning.
Back at the Gas Lap, what had just an hour before been such a pleasant happy place, had deteriorated to a nightmarish, throbbing, club scene where most women, no joke, were wearing an outfit identical to the one pictured here. Just a normal outfit for a teen out on the town, apparently. I guess the depressing part was that most of the club hoppers looked as sad and lonely as the homeless people we had just passed asleep on the sidewalk. It turns out the only thing separating the misery of the Haves and the wretchedness of the Have-Not’s is a five foot chain link fence.
Tagged with: affluence • chain link • poverty • San Diego
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