SOPA (and PIPA)

The White Paint Chronicles (#0004)

Full-Moon-Midnight

Midnight is the moment of both merger and separation, where two planes of existence come together, then depart, with all the passion and abandonment of two strangers in the bathroom of a 737 during a one-hour flight from L.A. to Vegas... when transparency and desperation reveal themselves to the few who stop to see it in the dark.

Midnight.  The time when only bad shit happens to good people, and the motives of a man’s heart are most clearly revealed.  The mystical time between times that most honest, hard-working, daytime folk never see... and most shady, lowlife, night-dwellers are too involved in their shufflings to notice.  The time when the distance between worlds is at its least, and the visible and invisible almost touch. 

And quiet voices from one side to the other are heard the clearest.

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My last drop of the night.  A drop just like any other, with just one little variation... time.

The time of night, and the time I would have to spend waiting in scratchy plastic chairs, worn smooth through the years by the fat bodies of truckers, squirming, for uncountable hours on end, waiting for their names to be called, and their cargo tendered.  My job is ninety-nine percent High Priority parcels... fast in – faster out.  But tonight, a cargo drop bound for Rio de Janeiro would force me to sit with the Low Priority crowd, in chairs... possibly all night.  One drop, and the only thing separating me from a row of cold ones was the interest level of the lone clerk behind the counter.  Now, after three hours and eleven minutes and thirty-seven games of Brick-Breaker on my Blackberry, I was second in line behind a cowboy trucker who had given in to the lulling hum of the forklifts in the warehouse, and closed his eyes for good beneath a yellowed, straw hat about an hour ago.

So close to the end of shift.  The end of...

A sound... jagged nails across a half-acre of angry blackboard.  The bitchy squeal of worn rubber, dug in hard on a smooth, paved floor, as if in protest against, against...

The cowboy jumped and landed on two feet, like a live man from his own grave.  Slowly, I turned toward the sound. 

Crumpled at one edge, tilted at an awkward, upward angle against a frame of supporting pine, lay a body clothed in cardboard, like ten cold reams of Banker’s Boxes, all in a row.




To be continued...

Copyright © 2011 Bill Friday

The White Paint Chronicles (#0003)

The Body

You ever see a dead body?  No, I don’t mean a corpse… I mean something that, as soon as you see it, the words, “dead body” pop into your head like the words, “flat tire” when you see a car on the side of the road or, “fucking tourist” when you see someone jay-walking at LAX. 

Dead body.

Say it just right, and you feel like you swallowed an ice cube whole.  Say it again, and the words burn cold and razor sharp, cutting your insides at that special place between the dry lump in your throat, and your fear-shrunken ball sack… because you’ve seen your future’s end, and read the last page of the unwritten story of your misspent life.

Is there really such a thing as “Indian Summer”?  In L.A. the closest thing to it is something called the “Santa Ana’s”.  Every fall, for a few days… okay, sometimes weeks… the cool breezes of the gray Pacific are swallowed up by a pissed-off furnace, blowing hot from the far north.  It’s a time when Chamber of Commerce weather is kidnapped and forcibly replaced by highs in the upper-90’s and gusts above 50 miles an hour.  During the days, dirt and smog blows against the grain from the mountains to the sea.  Palm trees are bent backwards, and the sky for a hundred miles is turned to 1960’s postcard brown… like it was when Dodger Stadium was new, and Marilyn Monroe was still breathing.  And the nights, tinted blue-black under a ghost-white moon streaked by blowing debris, glows with no life above the screaming of the wind.

And at full-moon-midnight, near the end of another shift, a dead body spoke.






To be continued...

Copyright © 2011 Bill Friday

The White Paint Chronicles (#0001)

“I’m a stop singing this song because I’m high (raise the ceiling baby)...

I’m singing this whole thing wrong, because I’m high (bring it back)...

And if I don’t sell one copy, I’ll know why (Why man? Yeah)...

Cause I’m high, cause I’m high, cause I’m high.”


"Because I Got High"
Music and Lyrics by Joseph A. Foreman
(aka "Afroman")

“Because a writer writes.”

I wrote that in the liner of a leather-bound journal, that I gave as a gift once. A birthday gift, to a guy I worked with, who called himself a writer. He used to make me read his stuff. Written long-hand, in a two inch, three-ring notebook on wide-ruled, 8 ½ by 11 paper. It sucked. At the time, I didn’t know if what I wrote in that journal was for his encouragement, or just a thinly veiled attempt at harsh sarcasm. It’s been years now, and I still don’t know which it was, and that isn’t even the point. The point I’m making is that this fuzzy, gray-white cloud of a memory most likely only popped into my head right now because of what I, a writer, just did for a fucking paycheck.

Yeah, it’s funny what a few well-mixed, federally regulated, industrial chemicals can do to rip a dead memory from the hard ground of a guy’s head like a cosmic backhoe, under the paint-stained bandanna, just the other side of the blood-brain barrier.

I started working semi-permanent, part-time jobs so I could spend the bulk of my thoughts (at least that’s what I told myself at the time) on what I told anyone who would listen was my next career… “Writer”. Now, when I’m honest (or drunk), I tell the world (or those in it who would listen) that I’m “a guy who works two part-time jobs… and blogs”.

Sort of.

And like the song clue at the top tells you (if this was a movie, it would have been playing in the background on a car radio), last week’s Libertarian drug flashback went and turned itself into its own bullshit crisis of conscience, artistic epiphany… all in the hour it took to paint a mildew stained, six-by-thirty, cinder block and drywall storage unit, deep inside an unventilated apartment garage.

God, how toxic primer can make you think, while it kills the handful of brain cells you have left.

In the week since what I now refer to as the Afroman Epiphany forced me to re-evaluate the choices I’ve made for becoming a handsomely-paid writer, it wasn’t till Day 6 that it came to me. Nobody who wants to get paid for thinking up cool new ways to use the same old words already used (but better) by other (dead) writers, should ever have to work in a Huffer’s Paradise of well-mixed, federally regulated, industrial chemicals… no matter how pretty they make a cinder block and drywall storage unit… not even if your name is Charles Fucking Bukowski.

And no amount of white paint on a dirty old bandanna can cover up whatever other repressed memories of why I really write.


Also available for reading on Expats Post (where writers Write to Live)
http://expatspost.com/columns/the-white-paint-chronicles-0001-2/

Copyright © 2011 Bill Friday

ROXANA SABERI: The Face Of Citizen Journalism

Author's Note: The following article originally appeared on the website BrooWaha.com. Several references herein refer to work by writers on that site, and the idea that the content and mission of BrooWaha and its contributors is, or is closely linked to, the concept of what has been referred to as "Citizen Journalism".

All editorial license taken in this article with regard to the mission and content of BrooWaha is mine.

Roxana Saberi is a Citizen Journalist.

THE FACE OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM: What it is.

On April 18th it was announced that a court of law found Roxana Saberi guilty of spying on the Iranian government. Tried, convicted, and sentenced in a matter of minutes, Saberi has already begun serving an eight-year sentence in the famed Evin House of Detention, a squalid, overcrowded containment and execution facility on the northern outskirts of the capital city of Tehran. Originally detained January 31st on a preliminary charge involving the "illegal purchase" of a bottle of wine, Saberi was subsequently charged with, "spying for foreigners... for America."

Beginning in 2003, after several years of work in small-market, radio and television news, Saberi began reporting from Iran as a credentialed journalist, freelancing for news agencies as diverse as the BBC, National Public Radio, and Fox News. During this time Saberi, born in the U.S. and raised in North Dakota, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an Iranian father, became a well known presence on the streets of her father's home country. Recognized as both a reporter and videographer, Saberi was often seen filming and interviewing, all while wearing a traditional head covering so as not to be in violations of local customs, or interpretations of Islamic law. Maintaining dual U.S and Iranian citizenship, Saberi wanted to show the world the real face of the Iranian people, not only through her journalistic efforts, but also through a book she intended to write from her experiences there.

Then in 2006, shortly after the election of the new President Mahmood Ahmadinejad, Roxana Saberi's Iranian press credential was revoked. Lacking a recognized credential (one of the hallmarks of Citizen Journalism), yet choosing to remain in Iran without the official permission of the government, for the next two years Saberi continued to file stories periodically, interviewing and filming, becoming the very expression of a Citizen Journalist: See the news... report the news. Then, in January of this year, the original "wine bottle" detainment, and later the official "charges". In the words of the Iranian deputy public prosecutor Hassan Haddad,

"Without press credentials and under the name of being
a reporter, [Saberi] was carrying out espionage activities,"

Haddad informed the Iranian Students News Agency. The same Hassan Haddad who, according to the organization Reporters Without Borders, was a known torturer in Evin Prison as far back as the 1980's.

In a country where Journalism is at best tolerated, and Citizen Journalism is prosecuted as "espionage", Roxana Saberi has become a pawn in a hostile game over the international rights of free speech. As appeals are made to the government of Iran through official and unofficial means, including those of her parents, and even President Barack Obama, who on Sunday said, "I am gravely concerned with her safety and well-being." Despite all that, the fact remains that an American journalist sits in a third-world prison, widely known as a place where many of its inmates do not live long enough to see freedom at the end of their sentence.

At the time of this writing, whether intended or not, Roxana Saberi has become the face of Citizen Journalism in America, as well as the world.

THE FACE OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM: What it must not become.

I have a blog. That's no secret. I've had this blog for almost two years, and have published items on everything from news, sports and entertainment, to commentaries and humor pieces. Pretty much anything that crosses my mind.

My blog is not Citizen Journalism. Not even close.

Most of you reading this also have blogs, many of which I have read. And most of those, despite your protests to the contrary, are not Citizen Journalism. And, regardless of what you believe about the site on which you are first reading this article, much of what is seen here, including this article, is not Citizen Journalism.

Sorry.

And while the work of many who have written on this site should be proudly counted as Citizen Journalism and is often superior to what can be found on other similar sites (no author's names here - everyone already knows who you are), much of what wishes to be defined as such is neither journalism, or even blogging. It more closely resembles a written transcript of the talk radio caller, shouting a badly constructed, spontaneous opinion into a cell phone, only to be drowned out by the host, then forgotten just as quickly as the next badly constructed caller opinion.

A few tips.

1. Citizen Journalism is not "news" you gleaned (uploaded, downloaded, copied, cut, or pasted) from another news source. At best, that would make it commentary. At worst, plagiarism. Ranting another person's rant, with or without proper credit, is not journalism at all. In the old days, that form of distribution of information was reserved for telephone conversations between disaffected housewives after a few too many nips of the cooking sherry. It may have been news, but it wasn't journalism.

2. Citizen Journalism is not propaganda. Rephrasing what you heard shouted by O'Reilly, or sneered by Olbermann, or even lovingly smirked by Chelsea Handler last night sometime between dinner and dental floss, is not journalism either. It wasn't journalism when they said it and it isn't journalism when you repeat their opinions as your own. Parroting the talking of partisan heads, no matter how much "you couldn't agree more", is not Citizen Journalism. It's Citizen Sloppy Seconds. Or Thirds.

3. Finally, Citizen Journalism is not a popularity contest (remember Roxana Saberi). True journalism is not about having your "friends" vote for your stories to "make a name for yourself". In its purest form, Citizen Journalism is finding the story right in front of you, and telling it. Popularity and self-promotion are more closely related to Tila Tequila than to Roxana Saberi.

Roxana Saberi is a Citizen Journalist. Are you? Do you want to be?

Start now.
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Additional sources for this article include:

Roxana Saberi.com

VOA NEWS.com

Copyright © 2009 Bill Friday