Anti-Consumers and More

There's an interesting story in today's SF Chronicle (click title for link) about a group of people who have formed a "Compact" group with the vow that they will "go an entire year without buying anything new besides food, health and safety items and underwear." My roommate bascially lives like that already. He buys his clothes from the neighborhood thrift store, and buys no major consumer items like CDs or gadgets. He buys used books. I think this sounds like a good way to be, although it is nice to be able to buy some things new still. For example, yesterday I finally bought one of those commuter coffee mugs so I would stop wasting paper cups. I should have bought that new item a long time ago. They mention underwear in their pact, but what about socks? I would add socks. And it's no fair if you go on some big spending spree right before your year of not buying anything new! OK, good luck to them. Apparently the backlash has already begun from the pro-consumers of the world who feel somehow oddly threatened by this endeavor.

Meanwhile, right now on the NY Times website the top story on the page has this headline: "Bush Says He Is Satisfied With Cheney's Account of Shooting." That is my official entry for the most unnecessary headline of the year. As if Bush was going to question his boss's actions. I'll leave it at that.

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USA vs. Japan Soccer Action and Cheney "Peppers" Hunting Buddy

On Friday night I went to see the USA men's soccer team play Japan at SBC Park (click title for article) in an exhibition match. The match was in preparation for the World Cup this summer in Germany. The US won 3-2, but it was a much more commanding win than the score indicates because Japan scored their second goal very late in the 2nd half when it was all over, pretty much.

Landon Donovan, Eddie Pope, and Taylor Twellman all had great games. Clint Dempsey scored the second goal on an assist by Twellman, but then he proceeded to dance in place like an arrogant wanker (in my humble opinion), thus causing me to lose respect for him. Whenever the Japanese guys scored a goal, the player who scored ran into the net, grabbed the ball, and ran it back to midfield to reset for the next play. That's a very respectful and cool way to go-the Japanese players have a lot of class. Still, I wonder what they would have done if they'd scored a big winning goal at the end?! There were a lot of Japanese fans in attendance (among over 37,000 in the crowd)-all waving bright blue flags whenever they had anything to cheer about. I can't wait for the World Cup this year!!

Also, that ole gunslinger Dick Cheney shot a man down in Texas with a shotgun over the weekend. He "sprayed him [Harry Whittington, age 78] with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong." The men were hunting quail when the accidental shooting happened.

Here's more of the story:

"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good... It broke the skin," she said. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."

She said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington, holding his face and cleaning up the blood.

"Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."**

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060212/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cheney_hunting_accident

**I find it very telling that the VP always has so many medical people on the ready nearby him.

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Article on Noah Levine

Here's a pretty good article by Peggy Townsend from the Santa Cruz Sentinel about Noah Levine and the whole Dharma Punx thing (click on title for link).

I attended a men's retreat at Spirit Rock last fall with Noah as one of the teachers, and he helped me a lot with my meditation practice. Now I actually work at Spirit Rock in the Communications Department, so this is my world, too. Noah used to work here as the Family Program Coordinator (I think that was his title).


I'll include an excerpt from the news story:

The man (Noah Levine) who once lived his life in the pursuit of dying young began to center his existence on living mindfully.

He began to meditate and look for ways to help others. He practiced kindness, stilled his mind and shifted his anger into compassion.

He became, as he calls it, a dharma punk.

Now he sits on the back porch of a local coffeehouse, his dharma punk crew sprawled in broken-down chairs pocked with little eruptions of foam, chain-smoking Camel cigarettes and sipping coffee.

"I see spiritual practice as a form of rebellion," says Levine. A rebellion that’s not much different than the punk rock movement, because both Buddhism and punk are rooted in the understanding that life is hard and full of pain, he says.

"It’s the same energy, the same willingness to do whatever you need to do to survive, but it’s turning it inward," Levine says.

The young men around him nod their heads and tell their own stories — of broken homes, of addicted parents and punk shows, and of taming anger through meditation.

"It’s turning the anger into an inner rebellion, and freeing oneself from ignorance and a fear-based existence," says Levine, who’s written a book about his spiritual journey called "Dharma Punx."

"It is," he says, "a positive transformation."

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