Rats In The Maze

A buttload of Verizon cell towers are down today in my county. The universe is telling me to stop collaborating with the devil. It has made avoiding Facebook and texting or talking to people easy, since it doesn’t fucking work. Thank you universe. When I say I need a break I mean, cut me off from civilization for a day. Huzzah!

Back to school night on the full moon. This ought to be more fun than food shopping was. I’ve discovered that I saved some very irreplaceable albums when I stole my dad’s records at 18. I don’t feel bad; the ones stored on the second floor upstairs may be ruined by flood mold. That shit is pervasive. Vinyl is fragile. Not too hot, not too cold.

Saved Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper, Frank Zappa, among others. I only have one box now. I had two boxes. The other box is either in my mother’s attic hopefully not ruined, or a former drug addict in my life stole them. That’s a potential bummer either way. Lost records are at risk because they need to not be too hot or too cold. There is no consideration for lost things. I hope some more boxes of my old shit turn up. Hopefully when I’ve gotten rid of some more of this other shit we have acquired that we don’t need.

Sometimes I just want to feel the keys but not because I have anything particular to say. I really like the sound it makes. It’s pretty quiet but also pretty rhythmic.

Most adults don’t understand kids. They have been forced to forget what it was like to be a kid. Most of us are forced to face adulthood and reality at an early age.

Imagine being so influential that strangers might recognize you in person.  Even when I meet famous people I never believe it’s them because it is real life. I assume that’s too crazy. Luckily I had my husband and my best friend strong arm me into talking to Zack De LaRocca. I would have regretted not having that conversation for my entire life. I would always have sworn it wasn’t really him. It wasn’t even looking him right in the face that did it for me.

Everyone looks older and more I don’t even know how to describe it, tangible in real life. More like real people not made of plastic. Not an iconic image but another soggy bag of bones. He said the next generation needs to say their piece. That he had his time. Old rockers are not cool and all that. They still play music because that’s what they do; he was discussing music with his friend as he walked. It was the walk. From across the street I saw his body language. Watched in a 1000 YouTube videos.

I always had a knack as a teenager of knowing exactly who someone was from a distance or behind by how they walked. For me there is a memorable way that people choose to carry themselves through this world. Some people glide, some march, some swagger, there are so many other descriptions you could use. Everyone has a way, an innate sense about us.

I’m pretty clumsy on my two feet. I try not to be on wheels too often because I just don’t have great balance. When I worked on it almost every day of the week and it was a priority, even then I was not the most graceful ballerina. It’s ok though because I didn’t want to be judged. I just wanted to dance for the skill of dancing and not for any other reason. I hate competition as is so of course it was my least favorite part of sports and games.

I’d have been a more enthusiastic athlete if I wasn’t forced to compete against other kids and mainly focused on being better than myself. I loved swimming for that reason. Once the race starts you can’t entirely see or hear your competition, sometimes you can’t beat them but seeing them in the corner of your eye makes you swim faster.

Primarily the only thing that makes people swim faster is people cheering like crazy who are entirely focus on that person. It’s a hard thing to describe if you’ve never done it. I don’t know about relating to people who can’t swim or fear swimming. I felt my first twinge of swimming fear being in the water for the first time after not having been in the water in over a year, alone, in a room full of people. That was weird for me, the longest I had been without being in a pool. I doubt it will happen again.

Zack made me do the water slide at the public pool this summer. I wouldn’t have otherwise. No one was there and there was no line. You could just keep sliding and sliding if you wanted. He did for a long while. He said on a really hot summer day there is always a line of at least 5 people.

I got to do the water slide 3 times. I stopped after that. I felt the teenage lifeguards thinking I was crazy. I am crazy. It was really fun. We were laughing. Zack usually gives me very good advice for 7 years old. I am always in awe of his tiny wisdom. I try and listen to him.

That was the worst part about being a kid. Nobody listens to you seriously. Everyone is waiting for you to stop talking so they can tell you what to do. I am guilty of it myself. I try and let him do his thing and enjoy himself. He reads, writes, paints, draws, plays video games, watches YouTube videos (with supervision) and Netflix. That’s a lot of activities for a little kid. He has homework. I hated driving around in after school time traffic. Everyone is trying to get dinner or make it to the baseball game, dance class, or karate lesson on time.

I feel like kids need to enjoy their time. That may not be an option in adulthood. They will either get opportunities or they won’t. As long as they are happy they might as well enjoy the days before money and the schedule run their lives. It has already started for them. The school time line, that works out well for pretty much no one.

Kids need time together to learn and to socialize. But they need more adults and mentors in their lives. One teacher can change a kid’s life forever out of the hundreds of teachers they will have. Imagine if they had tons of passionate teachers who really just like spending time with children instead of one or two in a lifetime. They are handled in a very mature way for elementary school; by middle school they think they are adults. By the teenage years they think they know everything there is to know.

We need to teach them that they have only just begun. They need to learn how to control their perspective on life. We need to teach how to deal with the bad stuff because it is out there everywhere, but also how to appreciate small moments of joy because those are the important parts. The pain may free us from being stuck in our ways. Someone has to teach us how to process all this information.

We live in a world that is overflowing with media and a 24 hour news cycle. We need to stop treating children as if they can somehow magically avoid it and not be influenced by it when it is everywhere. We need to teach them how to do things they really like. They need to do things that make them happy whenever possible because a lot of life will be taken up by responsibility. Meaningless time wasted in the pursuit of money so you can do things with the time you do get to use how you want.

Life is not very long, it should be important that you like all the things you do. If you don’t you should refuse to do them until they meet the standards you require to spend your life wasting your time that way. How much are actual days of your life worth to you in dollars? I will tell you right now, they are priceless. You would give anything to live another day if you knew you were going to die. What would you do with that day, with those moments?

I find time spent alone thinking very valuable. People seem to really hate that about me. I used to think I wanted to go out a lot because the grass is always greener. When I go out I realize how nice it is to be home with the few people you really love in this world more than anything. Sometimes you can’t enjoy your own happiness because there are tangible things standing in the way. This world is designed to maximize stress. Fear and stress make us buy. We are the rat in the maze. We need the cheese.

Hunter S. Thompson must have had white man privilege. I feel like no woman or minority could behave that way and still elicit so much respect. We are all judged very harshly for our personal choices on a daily basis. We are bread to judge one another, your smell and color and teeth color and size offend people, buy this product to fix it. You are too tall, too short, too thin, too fat, too young, and too old. Who cares?

Everyone has a rhythm in how they move. Sometimes you can tell they are sick, their vibration is weak. They are just clinging to being, barely. They let obligation and expectation decide every decision. I always want to throw a wrench in the gears. I’d rather life be interesting as long as everyone was happy and having a reasonably good time. Bad shit is never entirely unavoidable.

That is most of time spent in life. Surviving. Am I alive? Am I safe? Can I pay all these bills on this schedule and always be in school or a job that takes up your mental and physical capacity? Usually slightly more than 40 hours a week, short lunch breaks. No break at home from the stress of thinking about what you will have to do tomorrow. This world doesn’t make it easy at all to minimize worry.

The past is so shitty of course we are depressed. We need to be present and think about 

right now. Right now is what you’re doing with your priceless days. We only get so many. On average only 25,550 days a lifetime only 613,200 hours. How do you spend your hours and moments? Enjoying the people you love? Enjoying time alone with something you love? Stressing about the things you can’t change about the future? Or obsessing over what fucked you up in the past?

The A&P

At my first job they took me in the locked room behind the customer service counter. The place of wonder you were never allowed to see before, as a kid. It had that dingy color of things forgotten. All the color schemes are those you wouldn’t have chosen in the last 10 years. Upstairs in the “office” you watched a bizarre VHS safety video and another on how to perform the job. 5 hours, a total shift of videos instead of learning from real people. This was a sign of good things to come.

The doors to the back store room were large and looming. They swung only with a mighty push, the rubber worn in lines from hundreds of trolleys full of product pushing through. “Follow the painted line on the floor to the break room.” Where the boxes of food aren’t so deep the line is covered up. A minefield of things not to knock over, or things someone is looking for.

The break room used to be white. Now it has the din of yellow. Years ago you could probably smoke in this room. I’m sure it was done for years after it was officially allowed too. Smoking is an anxiety habit. Anxiety ran high at a job like this. You’d think since it doesn’t pay more than a minimum wage people would become more relaxed about it.

Don’t want to clock in after the hour and be docked until the 15 minute mark because late it late, even though they have had a digital system for years. It was a computer I’m sure it had the potential to calculate how much you worked to the second. Arguing over pennies? At $6.25 an hour you’re damn skippy you argue over pennies. I’m just kidding, there was no arguing, it was clear in a place like this there was no one to argue with. Managers and Assistant Managers only made a couple more dollars an hour than you, you who started at the minimum, getting them to give a shit is quite the feet.

I remember one time that we got them to give a shit. Everyone working in cash handling should have their own cash drawer. I have had many cash handling jobs in my life at this point. Someone is a lot more likely to admit they made a mistake when it is literally impossible that anyone else did it to them and they have to find that mistake and fix it. They are a lot more likely to suddenly remember and own up to the mistake.

When fixing mistakes at work, time is of the essence. You are an at will hire, thusly making sure if you do fuck up they will just fire you and have someone else watch the VHS tapes and take your place. Not all the new summer hires had made it this far. Some can’t show up on time, or call when something happens in their life that they can’t show up. They see this as not their responsibility because they do not get paid enough to care.

Teenagers only care about themselves by nature, the selfish proud phase. But it quickly becomes the responsibility of all the people who do show up that day and have to work harder because you are short 1 or 2 of the necessary cashiers for the height of summer rushes, thus making everyone at work’s life harder. And making all the entitled shoppers annoyed they may have to wait 15 minutes.

You are RUINING their vacation! Can’t you see?

You stand in a 1.5ft x 1.5ft square box all day and have to treat each new person as if you are still in a good mood. There is nowhere to go and scream or talk about it in between like there is at the hair salon. But obviously you should care about how upset they are they waited 15 minutes. Despite the fact that you will remain in the square for a solid 8 hours if they let you out on time.

I’ve always taken counting money very seriously. It is very easy math for me. Adding and subtracting in patterns. That I got, there is no cosine? Ok, we’re good to go. I count fast. I always wound up in the fast lanes of my cash handling jobs. The drive-thru, the fast last “10 items or less” checkout. I can handle more transactions at a faster rate.

I prefer the benefit of not talking to people for as long but only for a few moments. The moments remain new and even a shitty person will be gone in a moment dependent on how fast you work and if you get it right. I was so good at that. Don’t want to make anyone mad or have to get an override. Jesus, having to tell someone that and helplessly put on your blinking light while you wait for the magic number could be quite similar to hell. Hell is a euphemism for spending your life waiting.

Luckily at this job if they knew you weren’t trying to steal or void shit on purpose for some stupid crazy reason, that will also get you fired. You could memorize the number. Thinking back, maybe that was a secret test. If you remembered every single produce number (there was a 2 sided chart of them) and the override number, you were definitely smart enough to know when you use it.

In a week or so, as soon as school is out you are working 8 hour shifts. That is supposed to be your limit because you are legally still a child but they put you on for 8 hours, or 5 and ask you to stay while you’re there. You always say yes, you have nothing else to do that early in the day, and the people who drive you around don’t mind you still being at work. But you never get out on time, 6:30 at the super market is a zoo in the summer time on “the island” it’s the only way to eat if you are staying for a week or two. It may be an overpriced supermarket but it is better than take out or restaurants every night. Even though it is less money and still full of convenience food and a full of everything you need a modern super market to have. They will bitch about the .15 cent mark up. Oh will they bitch.

One day shit was so busy and crazy that four cashiers worked on one drawer before it was counted. I don’t know who thought up this plan, but after that it became standard practice for the time being. That meant any time a mistake was made, not one but four cashiers had to go on “cash management” a nice euphemism for you fucked up and now we are going to have a bunch of people over your shoulder watching everything you do to make sure you weren’t stealing or learn not to fuck up again.

A few people couldn’t handle all the counting and pressure. They pushed carts in the 100 degree weather on the asphalt. Some kids would prefer that. At least they were outside, they saw the daylight hours even if it was at a parking lot instead of at the beach. It was a parking lot near the beach at least. We had the blinds; working without the blinds was hell! It literally felt like the sun would burn you alive as you bagged shit in disposable plastic bags in your tiny little box, full of money, a water bottle, but don’t drink too much, no extra “non break related” bathroom trips.

Four cashiers including an assistant manager were on cash management. This was very inconvenient for everyone. Until the day that I came in and was told that the drawer I had worked on the previous day was $286 short in cash. Now I was really upset. That was way more money back then even. I was only making $5-something an hour after taxes. I knew I didn’t lose money or miscount $286! But that doesn’t matter, they don’t know which one of us fucked up but one was me, one was a manager, and one was a kid who wound up after we all counted all the time doing carts for the summer. I think we all knew who probably fucked up but as far as “corporate” was concerned, I love the euphemisms of capitalist America, anyway corporate doesn’t care who we think did it, we all had no proof and we all were guilty.

This was the first time I cried at work in my life. All the experienced women of the super market tried to make me feel better in the break room. Luckily my Aunt and older cousin had transferred in for some summer hours in the Health and Beauty Aids department or I may have actually thought it was my fault entirely like my manager intended. I didn’t know crying at work was a usual thing for women.

People are fucking mean for no reason sometimes. All the responsibility is on you even though you don’t have sick days or health insurance. You are the front lines. People complain to you because you are there, you are trapped in a box, you cannot leave, you are a teenager and therefore not that scary, their word against yours and the customer is Always right. That is mostly true even at small businesses but especially true when “corporate” doesn’t give a shit about you as a person. Like I said, they will just make someone else watch the videos for $25 bucks, what do they care? To them that cost is nothing compared to making sure people know they are expendable. 

I didn't lose my job but I learned a valuable lesson. The lowest on the totem pole takes the blame at every job.  Don't expect compassion because you are 15, that just makes you easier to blame. You must be young stupid and irresponsible. Aren't all teenagers?

Happy 2 Year Anniversary Occupy Wall Street: The Seeds Have Been Sown

I get caught up in thinking what I do has no value. Except that I know how many other people are afraid to do it. I also know how many sit around seething about what I do and say. If how I live my life was so meaningless it shouldn’t ruffle as many feathers. When many people take the time to tell you that what you do doesn’t matter, it would seem to me that is actually does. Based on how upset it makes some people. Dropping out of life to become a writer doesn’t make anyone happy except for the person doing it, and her loyal readers. <3 All Day All Week Occupy Wall Street. 

I have a bunch of pens like the ones I like to write with in beautiful colors. I don’t use them because I kill pens. Ballpoint pens in my hand are doomed to a short life. So using the same color all the time feels better than wasting beautiful pinks and blues on words. I should draw with them. I don’t draw much ever. I used to a lot in school, just to pass the time. 30 hours a week is a lot of time to waste when much of it is poorly planned out and meaningless. 

If you want to, you can all Occupy Wall Street in your daily lives. Move your money from a big bank to a local bank in your town, while they still exist. Support teachers and their unions. For that matter support all unions. Don’t accept emotional and verbal abuse anywhere in your life, especially not your job since you will spend a majority of your life there. 

Even careers you love that you choose will involve work. By nature that is what a job is, to work. To contribute. We all want to. It is important that we do what makes us happy because even when we believe in what we do, there will be a lot of hard days. Those hard days are easier to muster through when you know what you’re doing is a meaningful contribution to society and perhaps the future. Those of us who love many children in our daily lives cannot help but to care about the future. 

I’m often fascinated with how some people chose to use social media. The greatest ability to connect that has existed in all of human civilization. Over 1 billion people tuned in, over 1/7^th of the global population in participation. Why not all of it? A lot of opinions and points of view are still left out of the equation. I find it more interesting how many people have this power to connect and do nothing with it. They don’t share happy moments, they don’t talk about sports, or complain about what troubles them. Some people just sit back and stalk. They read everything in their feed, they obsessively watch YouTube or whatever their favorite media, Hulu, Netflix, cable T.V. but they never contribute anything themselves. 

There is a lot of fear surrounding the internet. What I say can never be taken back?? Good thing everyone is a new person from one moment to the next. People say stupid things out loud all day every day. No reason to be ashamed of those stupid things said and done on the internet. What we need is a new set of etiquette. A new way to treat our friends and family based on what we do and don’t think and do and don’t approve of with how they use the internet. Millions use it to have a few drinks, pop a few pills, and fill their lonely void with sexual images. Porn is everywhere. Sexualization of women and children is everywhere. I’d prefer an internet with less secrecy for the likes of bankers and sex slave traders and more secrecy for disenfranchised peoples of the world to speak out. 

The media on today’s anniversary: all the “blog” posts I read from major news networks had all the Shit to Talk about Occupy Wall Street. Well here is my Love Letter to the movement that changed my world into something I can see better. The other “blogs”, I use the quotes because anything published in the New York Times is no blog, spent today talking about squalor and inconvenience demonstrating again their privilege and inability to understand how the other half of the world lives. The police showed up in force with large numbers for the rally today of less than a couple hundred people. Still demonstrating why those of us fear getting in the streets because of the abuse and trauma caused by the NYPD.

There was a mass media campaign to belittle and diminish the numbers and size of the movement, not from day one, at first they just ignored it and hoped it would go away. When encampments started to spring up in other cities around the country and around the globe the news had to cover it… finally. And cover it they did. The controlled media that has been in charge of the national, and often global because we’re America "the wealthy nation", dialog since the days of President Nixon turned that thing right on its head. 

We don’t even know the message. “We are the 99%!” What’s not to get? “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!” What’s not to get. “World Peace” is this complicated? “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” This has been a staple of peaceful non-violent, resistance to power, movements since we figured out there was another way to fight. We don’t have to fight other civilians in war; we can fight the powers that be with words and unity. What a beautiful thing to be reminded of. 

Since those early days of OWS I have revived my love of history, the true history, not the history of our rulers but the ones who fought for what rights we think we have left. Rights are never given by the elite; they are demanded by the masses. I even saw the word “radical” used again today. I love that word. I want to be radical, it reminds me of cheesy ‘80s movies and hang ten also known as “hang loose” fingers. 

I felt like a stunted “holy mother” SAHM version of myself before Occupy Wall Street changed my life. It reminded me that one voice can be the voice of many. I wasn’t even a SAHM, I worked all the time. I was constantly stressed out. I didn’t know how to enjoy the little moments with my son anymore because everything was about how we were always late for something. Always striving for perfection in the schedule. Now he does amazing in school. I went from not always knowing what to tell him, to always telling him the truth. 

I spent last winter reconnecting with my childhood self. I recently found out that people who can’t remember their childhood well are prone to depression. I find those of us who have childhood’s not always worth remembering, wind up as depressed adults. Some people use drugs to forget, but that is dangerous and illegal, some of us use wine, some use food, some use sex, there is a whole manner of things you can drown yourself in instead of getting to the root of who you are at the core. 

Now that I know I feel so much better, my entire goal in writing is to share that feeling with others. Even on the darkest days now, I can see the beauty, I can see the light. I am not by any means who people would call a happy person. I am often considered depressed and lacking a sense of humor. I noticed today I had all the habits of happy people. I exercise when I feel bleak, I smile a lot, and I laugh at horrible things. I have a very complex sense of humor. I don’t laugh at easy jokes anymore, “Family Guy” humor I sometimes call it. I don’t want something iconic to me, just referenced, without a real joke to accompany it, to make me laugh. I don’t want to see the exploitation of women or their bodies to make me laugh. And therefore much or mainstream media is lacking in artistic output for me. I’d like to argue that it is lacking in artistic representations of most of us and what beauty we like and what humor we love. 

I know Occupy Wall Street had an impact because I remember what people talked about before it. I’ve worked in a hair salon my entire life, I have seen a shift or two in popular culture and social norms in my day. I was there from 4 years old to 27 years old and I am still there sometimes. I still hear the stories from my mom. She has always been my greatest resource of wisdom because I don’t know anyone who has more real meaningful connections, hands on, with people. The only things that may come close are my teaching, nursing, or social worker friends and family, taking physical care of those in need and suffering. 

We all have the opportunity in our lives. We can choose to really connect with everyone we come in contact with. It is hard to field sadness and complaints in a world full of frustrated people in pain. It’s not how hard we work that causes the pain; it is the disconnection to people we love or see every day. 

We are human beings, we love to work hard. We love to push the boundaries on our physical bodies to see what can be accomplished in this realm. The problem is we don’t have time for that. From the cubicle. From the desk. From the classroom full of too many kids who need too much help for one person alone. Those of us with jobs are stretched too thin and those of us without have no resources at all, and are shamed for those we may have left. 

With the ridicule it faces now in the popular culture I know many people out there who are afraid to tell their family, coworkers, or bosses that in their day to day grind Occupy Wall Street meant hope for them. They didn’t discuss it but they silently hoped this vagabond mix of lovers and fighters camped out in cities around the world, challenging the powers that be, would succeed. They may have faded away to irrelevancy in daily dialog because of the shame that has been attached to being “one of them” but the changes are magnanimous. They get none of the credit but they are the reason that things like, income inequality, are phrases in your vernacular. 

Before Occupy Wall Street no one was talking about problems. We were all caught up in "positive thinking" culture , blaming ourselves for not being happy enough with what we have. We blamed depressed and frustrated people, people in foreclosure, people suffering health problems for their own problems. “Personal responsibility” and all, some of us still do. But a lot of us have come to realize that the deck is stacked against us. 

I am one of the world 1% wealthiest people in the world. (In the world, not the country.) Keep that in mind, me unemployed writer, living in poverty, paycheck to paycheck, whatever words you chose to describe it. I have running water, I have a fridge, and I have T.V.’s, no cable, but lots of movies from when we had more money. Most importantly I have the internet. I have an xbox360 that can connect me with people around the globe, to play games, recreation with friends where ever they are, and people I’ve never met IRL if I want. With all these magical things I have very little power to change things. 

The world’s inequality is out of control. I get to feel grateful that I am not squatting over  a shit stream behind my house, wondering how the coca-cola got to the local cigarette stand/market. But I am powerless to tell the trillionaire bankers and crooks who run the media and run this shit that I want those people housed and fed sanitarily, with dignity, because We Need Them, they contains ideas and perspectives We Don’t Have. 

How could Occupy have succeeded more when the billionaire owned media is one of our primary problems? I’ve seen the words Occupy Wall Street come out of President Obama’s mouth on the 49^th Anniversary of MLK’s March on Washington at his monument’s dedication. The reason we don’t see protests in the streets now is because of the arrests and abuse of militarized police forces around the country. 

I know I myself stayed away thinking of my son. I have been envious of people who went anyway, journalists and activists who risk their time and money and reputations in the name of social justice. Someday my son will be old enough to take care of himself. There is a certain group of people who know even today with all the changes I’ve made and as confident as I’ve become with really putting it out there in my writing and telling you how it is, know I am still holding back. There is still a lot more to come. 

If it wasn’t for Occupy Wall Street there would be a lot less hope for many of us. We may not be able to go to militarized big cities and risk arrest and our children’s future. But we were always watching. Many of us still are, many of us silently. We know something is wrong, we work in our daily lives from the position of changing fundamentally the way things are so we all have a brighter future. 

The media may write today like Occupy withered and died instead of was beaten to death by the NYPD and Oakland in an organized wave of violence that swept the nation and sent us back into our homes. But we all do little things now, in little groups, in our home towns, in our smaller communities. We have all done something better because Occupy Wall Street was the first movement to show how useful social media can be. It doesn’t have to be just one more avenue of pain and one more way for our families and friends to judge our lives. It can be a means for greater understanding, an easier and faster way to share with large amounts of people than there ever was before. 

Love isn’t linear. Love is a network. Love is a web. We have globalized world news and a globalized economy. When really our immediate communities is where we have the most effect. I know I’ve had an effect. Those who support me don’t give me that, my supporters give me love and understanding, which is what everyone needs and I am incomprehensibly lucky in that aspect of life. The people whose skin I get under, who have to question things they otherwise wouldn’t question because I exist. I am a normal woman, I was raised very Catholic, I am a typical mom who likes to make her kid a sandwich but prefers their not be chemicals in it. Being poorer than being able to afford chemical free food is a worry. But the future is for worries. 

At least I know about these things and I know I am an active catalyst just by being and seeing these things change. You just have to know. You have to wonder about life, everything about it. Connect with the younger, less bitter version of ourselves. Connect with what you wanted before the world told us we couldn’t have it. 

Occupy reminded us that there are those of us out there who want love to be more important than fear. Occupy set the wheels in motion for so many subtle changes in the media and American minds. It was always and still is an advertising campaign the likes of other media only instead of advertising dollars the goal is for social change. It was the first attempt at a brand in the hands of the working class. It was almost a success. Now we know who is out there. A lot of people have stood up. How much of the internet should be controlled by the people? All of it. The information we produce should belong to us. Not Facebook and Google for marketing purposes. This world is bullshit. You know it. Occupy Wall Street. 

We have begun to Occupy our lives and we have Occupied minds and that will make these changes start to happen. Immediacy isn’t how things work. History knows this. The modern generation doesn’t. We are used to instant gratification. We don’t know about the seeds of change and all of that. But they have been sown.