Category Archives: The Contrarian

Yes, Virginia, Santa Does Need A Bath and Coffee

Tangping  

I’ve never been big on ceremony, traditions and resolutions that kick off on a calendar date (though I am considering three New Year’s Resolutions: to take up smoking, gain a little weight and exercise absolute authority at the expense of others; it just takes willpower). But I’ve discovered one of my own.

On Christmas Day, I give a $20 bill to the first homeless person I find. Usually it’s in front of the 7-11, though I’m finding the Circle K to be a bigger catch basin of the city’s human jetsam.

It started out of guilt. I was buying a Big Gulp with a $20 several years ago outside the 7-11 in Westwood. It was particularly cold (at least for California — I’ve become so wussified I don’t know cold anymore), and a homeless guy asked if I had change. I had a ton. I told him I had none.

When I got back to the car, I reached in my jacket pocket and fumbled through all the change and bills as I felt for the keys. Heard the wrong song when I turned on the car — April Comes She Will — and decided to give him all the change in my jacket. When I reached him, I decided everything in my jacket. He was so surprised he shook my hand with both hands, a gesture I’ll never forget. The only Christmas embrace that day, and one initialed on the wet cement of of my brain.

So every year, there is that. Never again the reaction I had that day. Once the guy just nodded, no thanks. But it makes me feel the day. And what’s more important than recognizing the day, than feeling it?

It was reinforced a couple years ago, when I had to walk home from getting my motorcycle fixed, a mile away. I didn’t want to haul the helmet and heavy jacket, so I piled them into an abandoned shopping cart left on Sherman Way, and began the trek home.

Despite holding at least $600 worth of motorcycle gear in my cart and an iPhone in my hand, no one on the walk home looked me in the eye. One neighbor stood on his porch til I passed to cross the sidewalk and get his mail. A young couple walked on the lawn instead of passing on the same pavement strip. Not one nod. Not one look in the eye. And I realized: maybe poverty has nothing to do with items. It has to do with acknowledgement. Am I ever so poor, afraid or simply circling our own orbit we are not flush with that, holiday or no?

So yes, I guess I am one for tradition, though I’ve had it recognized by several friends as a likely flush of cash. You know, they say, that money is going straight to the liquor store.

They are all probably right. To which I say, to them and all the Secret Santas I can look in the eye:

Happy Holidays. This drink’s on me.

 

And Now, A Word From The Contrarian…

http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/treatment-team/kathryn-cobb-stoner/ How the Democrats actually won the mid-terms

There has been so much braying among conservatives over the proclaimed takeover of government (led by Walrus-In-Chief Rush; seriously, I wish net wizards would do a side-by-side with him and Mr. Ed. If they did, they’d see that they whinny with the same muscular jerks. Of course, the horse pales to the human’s sarcastic skills, though the human lacks Ed’s logic, humor, or the intuitive sense not to shit himself of camera.) that you’d actually think Republicans won.

But The Republican Party is no longer, unless you consider The Tea Party. Let’s not.

Let’s look instead at the GOP freshman who came to office in record numbers, at least for Republicans: women and minorities. Nowhere in the debates were there discussions of gay rights or gender equality laws. That wasn’t the case just a generation ago.

The Republicans have adopted the big-tent strategy of the Democrats. And while it’s fair to question the GOP’s big-tent approach, the fact is a big-tent is a pretty nice place to be. When are we harmed by being more inclusive? Lincoln saw this.

But in the larger picture, history favors the liberal. We once believed the universe revolved around our pebble, and burned those who thought different. We considered (not that long ago) some men 3/5 of another, and women less than that.

Today, we consider those notions prehistoric. Just as we are beginning to view the right of, say, gay marriage. States will hold out simply to be difficult, but they will eventually cede to the fact that we are all related. That they’re no threat, the differences. As embarrassing our lapses, we have still somehow learned there’s less to fear than we thought. Goddamn, you’ll be able to buy weed in a vending machine soon.

So let Rush poop himself. Someone has to play violin on the Titanic.

 

 

 

 

 

The Theory Of One Thing (Or How God Died In The Big Bang)

 

The brutal irony of science is that, in discovering how to measure matter, it discovered that nothing does.

Where once science argued the Big Bang theory, now we have the Multiple Universe debate, which posits that we are more granular than we ever thought. That our macrocosm, the cosmos we once saw as infinite, is actually just a contact lens in a sea of countless infinities. It’s enough to leave you scrambling for a blankie, pacifier and bottle of Jack to forget our insignificance.

But we can’t help but add humanity to our search for worlds without it. For what is atheism, if not faith? We side with science because it has a better track record; you know what? Turns out the world isn’t flat. The sun doesn’t revolve around our planet. Human sacrifice won’t bring rain. Our bad.

Religion, on the other hand, prefers to retrofit theories to explain an ever-empirical world. Hell yes dinosaurs roamed our neighborhood only a few millennia ago; God just has his own daylight savings plan and time zone; He’ll explain when you get there.

But when we hear Stephen Hawking explain so convincingly  the workings of the cosmos — that time had an official beginning like an Olympic starter pistol, that everything sprang from nothing, that there really are bottomless pits (we just call them black holes)  — we must take it with the same faith as a Pentecostal must accept god. How is the Big Bang on a scale any less miraculous than the loaves and fishes? Science is great at explaining the laws of nature. But whence the lawmaker? Give this to faith: It can be a lot less depressing  than quantum physics.

Perhaps the answer lies not in Hawking’s mind, but his body, which continues to fade like a collapsing star. The macro from the micro, as when a split atom alters so many molecules. Hawking embodies our own conflict with existence. He should have been dead 50 years ago, but still fights the darkness that consumes his life.  He has elevated us without movement, illuminated galaxies from a wheelchair and serenaded our choir with a gospel chanted through a Speak n’ Spell.

Maybe he has inadvertently stumbled on the singularity that unites both sides of the pew.

That life, no matter how you define it, finds a way.