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Stuck In Traffic
"Independent Comment on Current Events and Cultural Phenomena"
Issue #15 - June 1996
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Current Events
Timothy Leary: RIP
Timothy Leary is dead at the age of 75. Or, as some would say, he's
now "on the outside looking in."
Notorious as one of the leading "vagabond icons" of the counterculture
generation, Leary spent his flower children years advocating LSD and
other drugs, attending love-ins, participating in marijuana smoke-ins,
and generally tweaking the nose of authorities everywhere. But
throughout those turbulent times filled with riots and protests, Leary
never advocated violence. Reuters reports that G. Gordon Liddy,
Leary's arch-conservative nemesis said of Leary, "I never approved of
what he did, but I never thought he meant to hurt anyone." In fact
Leary, whom Richard Nixon dubbed "the most dangerous man in America,"
earned his nefarious title not because he was an anarchist or violent
man, but because he was an intelligent, witty, unabashed hedonist.
"Turn on, tune in, and drop out" were the words he lived by. The
flowers, the beads, the love-ins, the communes, and the drugs were just
a means to Leary's hedonistic goals.
But the heavy hand of the state shows no mercy when its authority and
social structure are challenged. Leary's counterculture days ended
with a conviction for marijuana possession and he spent many years in
jail.
Leary's counterculture days are well documented in biographies, in
song, and urban legend. But what of his later years?
According to wire reports published just after his death, his years
after his release from prison in 1976 were "mostly unsuccessful,"
dabbling in acting, stand-up comedy, and politics. But he later
"regained some of his former glory" by going on the lecture circuit
with conservative G. Gordon Liddy in which they debated liberal vs.
conservative views of society before packed college crowds.
And then Leary discovered the Internet and in it found a new space for
his head. He was one of the earliest thinkers to anticipate the
potential that the net held social change, for challenging authority,
and for expanding the mind. Leary often referred to the net as "the
LSD of the next century."
He wasn't the only person that anticipated the coming revolution of
geekdom. Nor was he even one of the more articulate or outspoken net
advocates. But he was one of the few hedonists doing so. He was
perhaps the only net advocate who could openly call for the development
of "tele-dildonics" with the same fervor that he called for running
fiber-optics to everyone's house. After all, what's the point of fiber
optics if you can't "reach out and touch someone?" Perhaps better than
anyone else, Timothy Leary forged an alliance between hip and square,
between flower children wannabes and computer nerds, between agitators
for social justice and anarchist cyberpunks.
Leary spent his last years, as John Perry Barlow put it, "uploading
himself to the net." And where he led, others followed. He treated
techno-nerds with the same honor and respect that he afforded the
flower children and respected their technical ability to master the net
despite the fact that he was never a technologist himself. With the
help of his followers, Leary ran an internet website from his house
where he continued to advocate psychodelics as well as virtual reality,
the web, and other aspects of internet culture. For Leary, "the trip"
and "virtual reality" found common ground.
He fomented challenge to existing social structures in favor of the
spontaneously evolving communities on the net. He used his reputation
and his net presence to bring challenge social taboos, especially those
about death. In the final months, he shared with the world his
experienceses with dying. He told the world all bout the drugs, legal
and otherwise that he was taking to relieve his pain. He kept diaries
on the net about his evolving mental state. And always the connesieur
of outlandish geurilla theater, he claimed that he was planning to
commit suicide and broadcast the event on the net.
But perhaps most importantly of all he encouraged young people to seek
their thrills on the net, if that's where they found them. For Leary,
the thrill was always the thing.
Timothy Leary's legacy, the now immortal words, "Turn on, tune in, drop
out," speak as forcefully and as subversively to today's net generation
as they ever did to the flower children of yesteryear.
====================================
True Story
Clocks
by David Price
We have 3 digital clocks in the living room/dining room; one on the
VCR, one on the microwave, and one on the coffeemaker. They do a
pretty good job of keeping up with one another, and with the TV
networks. That's not surprising, is it?
I have another digital clock in the bedroom, on my radio. It does a
pretty good job keeping up with my local radio station. Not
surprising, either.
On my wrist I have a Seiko self-winding watch I bought in Nassau in
1969. On the wall in the living room I have an antique wall clock that
my father rescued from the junkheap and reworked in the early 80's. It
has to be wound every 8 days. They both keep excellent time - right
along with the digitals.
Then there's my computer clock. Every month, on the 15th, I fire up a
program called Timeset that dials up the Naval Observatory in
Washington and resets the clock. Tonight the computer was 3 minutes
slow. My watch, the wall clock, and all the digitals are right on the
money. Go figure.
About the Author:
David Price, _the_ David Price, not that former politician by the same
name, is a native North Carolinian who worked for Eastern Airlines for
25 years in Atlanta and Miami and is now establishing a career as a
radio broadcaster. He currently lives just outside Commerce, GA with
"1 wife, 3 dogs, and 19 cats." He can be contacted by sending e-mail
to kpmm68a@prodigy.com.
====================================
Cultural Phenomena
No Greasy Kid Stuff
When a company gets so huge that it permeates the globe, it
automatically attracts attention from everyone. When that company is a
chain of restaurants, it taps into the universality of eating and
becomes accessible to all. When that company is a chain of _fast_food_
restaurants, it helps define our modern lifestyle. And when that chain
of fast food restaurants is McDonald's, it can't help but influence the
culture of the Global Village. So when the marketeers at McDonald's
introduce a major new product like the Arch Deluxe burger, it deserves
a little investigation. They aren't stupid. They do their homework.
What they put into their new burger and what they say about it says
something about us and our culture. Studying the Arch Deluxe, "the
burger with the grown-up taste," is, in the end, an act of studying
ourselves a little bit.
Or at least it's something new to try for lunch.
The first thing you notice about the burger itself is the new bun. It
looks more like a "gourmet" burger bun. It's reminiscent of home baked
bread, though the taste is unremarkable. It's heavier, more
substantial. There are a few sprinklings of sesame seeds on the top,
but it's not like the usual McDonald's bun. The meat itself appears
slightly thicker than the usual McDonald's burger, but seems to have
about the same amount of meat, since the over all dimensions of the
burger are smaller. The fixens consist of cheese, lettuce, tomato,
onions, ketchup and a dressing that reminds one of ranch dressing with
fresh ground peppers in it. The Arch Deluxe comes either with or
without bacon.
One's first impression after biting into an Arch Deluxe is, "this is
just a burger." But after a couple of bites, you realize, "Hey, this
really tastes like a hamburger." There are urban legends floating
around that the reason McDonald's wouldn't serve lettuce and tomato on
a burger for so long was that they couldn't figure out how to keep them
fresh. I don't know if there is any truth to it, but one thing's for
sure, they have managed to do it. McDonald's seems to have gone to
great lengths to make sure that the lettuce, tomatoes, and onions stay
crisp. And the sauces are put on separately, with the ketchup
underneath the meat and the dressing on top with the lettuce and
tomato. The pepper dressing and the bacon mixed together give you a
flavor that's almost reminiscent of being grilled, even though it's
not. The net result is that when you bite into an Arch Deluxe you can
clearly taste all its different ingredients. You can tell when you get
through the bread and start making your way through the lettuce, and
then the tomato and then the meat. It's not one big mushy glob, like
so many hamburgers are. The only disappointment is the tomato.
Although it is a reasonably thick slice of tomato with good
consistency, there is little taste. But the tasteless tomato seems to
be a fact of life at fast food restaurants.
But the big difference between the Arch Deluxe and other burgers is its
_construction_.
This has partly to do with the size. The Arch Deluxe doesn't appear to
be quite as big around as other burgers, either at McDonald's or at the
competition. But it stacks up slightly higher so the burger per buck
you get is probably about the same. This makes it easier to hold in
your hands and after the first couple of bites, you can hold it in just
one hand, which makes it easy to read your paper or book while you are
eating.
But the real advantage of the Arch Deluxe's design is that all the
"stuff" on the burger stays on the burger. In all the television
commercials for fast food burgers, you see hamburgers stuffed to the
gills with fix'ens. There is the ubiquitous finger poking down on the
top of the bun to make the stuff ooze out the sides so you can see it
all. But in the real world you don't want all that stuff oozing out
the sides, running down your arm or spilling into your lap. You don't
have this problem with the Arch Deluxe. The folks at McDonald's have
put just enough of everything to fill the burger without spilling over
the edge. There is exactly one slice of tomato in the exact center of
the meat. There is just enough lettuce and onion to cover the tomato
and it is held down by the dressing and the cheese. The ketchup is
underneath the meat and thoroughly absorbed by the bun so that it sort
of sticks the meat and the bottom layer of bread together. There's no
way it can come oozing out the sides. And the meat is much less drippy
than your usual fast food burger. Even the bacon is round, like the
Canadian bacon on their Egg McMuffins, so that it fits neatly on the
bun rather than hanging off the sides. All in all, the Arch Deluxe is
a neat, tidy package of hamburger. With the Arch Deluxe, it is
definitely much easier to get through lunch without ruining your
clothes. In short, the Arch Deluxe is a burger with a more
distinctive, traditional taste in a neater, easier to manage package.
But what, if anything, is "grown up" about it? Arguably, being tidier
is more grown up. But what else? For one thing, the ubiquitous pickle
isn't any more. Pickles have long been a mainstay on fast food,
especially burgers. The worst kept secret in the world is that the
pickles are there to help keep the burger juicy. Since the overall
goal of the Arch Deluxe seems to be to make it a little _less_ juicy,
the burger designers at McDonald's probably didn't think they were
needed any more. It's also possible that the marketeers at McDonald's
detected a perception among adults that pickles were for kids, not
adults.
But the main ingredient in the Arch Deluxe's "grown up" image is in the
name and the packaging. First of all, note that there is no "Mc"
prefix on the name. Putting "Mc" on the front of all the product names
got way out of hand over the past few years and has given McDonald's a
cartoonish image that seems not only childish, but easy for competitors
and detractors to make fun of. So leaving off the Mc seems to be a
step toward a more sedate image, leaving the silly gimmicks behind.
The two words, "Arch" and "Deluxe", hearken back to the earlier days of
McDonald's which might subconsciously appeal to adults. "Arches," of
course, refers to "the golden arches." While the golden arches logo is
always present visually, McDonald's has long ago stopped referring to
itself as the "restaurant under the golden arches." So evoking the
imagery of the arch reminds people of the early days of Mc Donald's
decades ago. Well, at least for those old enough to remember actually
eating at one of those McDonald's restaurants that really had the
golden arches. And the word "deluxe" is out of the "Happy Days" era.
Likewise, the packaging has just barely a hint of bygone eras. The
burger comes in a stiff cardboard box with yellow and red graphics that
give you just a hint of that 50's modernistic look. You know, what
everyone in the 50's thought the future would look like.
The Arch Deluxe is not a radical advancement in hamburger technology.
It's not any more healthy than all the other fast food out there.
There isn't any radical new taste with "secret sauces" or trendy taste
juxtapositions. It's just a burger, with more or less traditional
ingredients and a simple, traditional taste. But it's a good burger.
It tastes like what a burger ought to taste like. Better than the Big
Mac. As good or better than any other fast food burger on the market.
But the forte of fast food has never been nutrition and even taste is
only a moderately important trait. The hallmark of fast food is
convenience and the folks at McD's have kept this in mind. The real
improvement of the Arch Deluxe is that it's more convenient because
it's a tidier burger.
And that's perhaps the key difference between eating as an adult and
eating as a kid. Adults can get through lunch without making a mess.
====================================
"Man tries to make for himself in the fasion that suits him best a
simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some
extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience,
and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the
speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own
fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his
emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which
he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience."
--Einstein
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True Story
Race Relations and Relatives
We have, I think, an unfortunate tendency to think that it takes huge
institutions to change the world. We think that society can't be
changed for the better without a National Organizations for This or an
American Society for That. We tend to think that social justice can't
be served without a million man march on Washington and a bevy of
lobbyist of Capitol Hill. Nowhere is this more true than in the Civil
Rights movement.
Ever since it's beginning, the Civil Rights movement has focused as
much on institutionalizing itself as it has on improving race
relations. As a result, the Civil Rights movement has become almost
exclusively a political movement and not a social movement. We have
the institution of Affirmative Action, the institution of the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission. We have school segregation
movements, we have Black History month. We pressure politicians to
create Holidays in the name of Civil Rights leaders. We spend far too
much time debating over the politically correct term for referring to
members of minority races. These goals are eminently respectable. And
the thousands of people involved in these institutions, for the most
part, have the best intentions at heart and deserve praise for showing
some initiative to pursue these noble goals. And I suppose you can't
blame them for focusing their work on political institutions. After
all, racism wasn't just a social attitude. Racism itself was
institutionalized.
But somewhere along the way, somehow during all the speechifying, at
some point while lobbying Congress, many activists have lost sight of
the fact that the Civil Rights movement started in the streets, with
direct one on one confrontations. The civil rights movement started
with good, average folks, folks with day jobs and families, making
simple stands over simple issues. The Civil Rights movement started on
city buses and lunch counters. At first, the only leaders of the Civil
Rights movement were local church leaders who weren't paid for their
efforts, but saw it as their duty to help support their congregation.
In their rush to institutionalize the movement, Civil Rights activists
have forgotten that societal attitudes can only be changed one person
at a time. A fully integrated society can't be created by passing a
law, running a publicity campaign, or creating national organizations.
A fully integrated society has to be created one person at a time. The
real battles for a fully integrated society, for smooth peaceful
relations among the races, never show up on the six o'clock news. They
just happen in low-intensity events, in the most common ordinary ways,
by the most ordinary folks.
I realized this a few weeks ago when I as in the check out line at my
local Wal-Mart.
It's difficult to think of lofty, idealistic principles when you're
shopping at Wal-Mart. There's no sense holding any pretensions of
splashiness when shopping at Wal-Mart. Occasionally you will see
someone walking down the aisles at Wal-Mart trying to convey an
attitude of "I'm really above all this mundane stuff. I don't usually
shop here." But these folks don't fool anybody.
Wal-Mart is where average folks shop for the mundane necessities of
life., where they clip coupons for toothpaste and shop for socks. It's
where they try to make ends meet. It's where they try to get through
the day.
While the cashier was ringing up my total and bagging my stuff, someone
came up behind me in line and plopped down one of those carry-around
baby carseats on the conveyor belt. In it was a black baby boy. I'm
no good a judging ages of kids that small, but he was just old enough
to have spark of interest in his eyes at what was going on around him.
I looked at him and he looked at me. I wanted to make a silly face at
him to see what he would do. But I was too timid. So we just watched
each other.
Well, about that time, the cashier was done ringing up my stuff and I
turned to pay her. But just as I was turning around, I noticed out of
the corner of my eye, the little boy's mother reaching over to adjust
the strap on his car-seat. I hadn't even noticed here up to this
point, I was too entertained by the baby. But now I couldn't help but
notice that the hand adjusting the baby's strap was white.
Being a good suburban boy, I was taught never to stare at people,
especially at handicapped, the disadvantaged, or anyone else whom you
might make uncomfortable. But I wanted to see the mother. So I picked
up my bags of stuff and headed away from the check out line. I made
some pretense of needing to rearrange the load in my arms, so I sat
down on a bench that was against the wall and watched the mother and
her baby boy, while I pretended to rearrange things in my bags.
She was white all right. And young. I would guess about 21 or 22.
She was dressed very plainly, in simple, inexpensive clothes. At first
I told myself not to jump to any conclusions about the relationship
between here and the baby. There could be all kinds of explanations
for this scene. Maybe she was taking care of the child for a neighbor
or a friend. But about that time someone was making their way from the
back of the line to the cashier to join the woman. Obviously they were
together and he had been sent to go get something they had almost
forgot. He was appeared to be about her age, dressed in jeans and a
plaid workman's shirt. I wasn't close enough to see wedding rings on
their hands. But they were obviously a couple, if not married. She
was white. He was black. An interracial couple. "Cool," I thought to
myself, "this is something you don't see every day."
At this point my middle class suburban upbringing began to get the best
of me and I was feeling very guilty about watching them. But I just
had to see this couple in action. I wanted to see how they acted.
Heck, I wanted to spy on them. And I did. Curiosity got the best of
me.
I got to watch them together for several minutes. As happens so often
at the check out line, the cashier had to call someone in the store to
find out the price of something the couple was buying. So the line was
held up for a few minutes. The husband moved past the mother and baby,
and began to help bag the stuff that had all ready been rung up. His
movements were deliberate and careful. I could see him studying the
items and planning which things were going into which bag. He
obviously had some experience as a bagger. The wife was thumbing
through her wallet looking for cash to pay the bill. None of this was
the least bit out of the ordinary.
But eventually there was nothing left to do except wait for the cashier
who was waiting on the price check. It was about this time that I
noticed the next couple in line. The man had sort of leaned forward
over the conveyor belt and was looking to see what the hold up was. He
was a middle aged white man, scruffy, dressed in overalls and a some
sort of cap. His demeanor and dress gave one the impression of someone
who lived way, way out in the rural country. His wife was a small
frail white haired woman about the same age. She was dressed in a
simple pants and blouse. She wore a pink knit sweater around her
shoulders. She held her hands very close to her body. "This is a very
conservative couple," I thought to myself, "I wonder what they think of
this interracial couple."
The problem with all the institutions associated with the Civil Rights
movement is that they _teach_ us to expect the worst. Interracial
harmony is something that exists only in some idealized utopian future.
They teach us that the real world is filled with ugly stereotyping and
bigotry. I don't think they do this intentionally, but it happens.
All we see on the news are the bad stories. We hear of race riots and
persecution. We see news stories about good folk being denied jobs and
loans and voting rights because of their race. The civil rights
institutions focus on the negative stories, probably because that's
what gets air time the most. But the unintended side effect is that it
teaches us to always expect the worst, since that's all that we see.
I confess, I was expecting the worst. I expected the older couple to
start showing signs of impatience. I expected to see them cast
disapproving glances at the interracial couple and the baby. I'm
ashamed to admit it, but I _expected_ the older couple to transfer
their impatience at waiting in line into some sort of unspoken
condemnation of the interracial couple. After all, they were obviously
a conservative rural couple. And we all know that racism is still
rampant among these types of folks. Right? Isn't that what we're told
day in and day out? Ask yourself what you would expect to see in that
situation.
But nothing like that happened. Not even close. When the cashier
finally finished ringing up the total, the young woman paid the bill
and the interracial couple moved to the end of the check out line to
gather up their stuff. The older couple behind them didn't stop at the
cashier. They moved on through the line. They didn't have anything to
buy. Instead, they joined the interracial couple at the end of the
check out line. And they all huddled together in a flurry of activity.
Coats were being pulled. The baby's coat was being adjusted. The two
men were dividing up the bags between them. The older woman picked up
the baby carrier, while the younger woman stuffed change back into her
wallet. And then the four of them walked out of the Wal-Mart together,
the men following the women, as a family.
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About Stuck In Traffic
Stuck In Traffic is a monthly magazine dedicated to independently
evaluating current events and cultural phenomena.
Why "Stuck In Traffic"?
Because getting stuck in traffic is good for you. It's an opportunity
to think, ponder, and reflect on all things, from the personal to the
global. As Robert Pirsig wrote in _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance_, "Let's consider a reevaluation of the situation in which
we assume that the stuckness now ocurring, the zero of consciousness,
isn't the worst of all possible situations, but the best possible
situation you could be in. After all, it's exactly this stuckness that
Zen Buddhists go to so much trouble to induce...."
Contact Information:
All queries, submissions, subscription requests, comments, and
hate-mail about Stuck In Traffic should be sent to Calvin Stacy Powers
preferably via E-mail (powers@interpath.com) or by mail (2012 Talloway
Drive, Cary, NC USA 27511).
Copyright Notice:
Stuck In Traffic is published and copyrighted by Calvin Stacy Powers
who reserves all rights. Individual articles are copyrighted by their
respective authors. Unsigned articles are authored by Calvin Stacy
Powers.
Permission is granted to redistribute and republish Stuck In Traffic
for non-commercial purposes as long as it is redistributed as a whole,
in its entirety, including this copyright notice. For permission to
republish an individual article, contact the author.
E-mail Subscriptions:
E-mail subscriptions to the ASCII text edition of Stuck In Traffic are
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Print Subscriptions:
Subscriptions to the printed edition of Stuck In Traffic are available
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the address listed above. Individual issues are available for $2.
Archives:
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gopher://gopher.etext.org/11/Zines/StuckInTraffic
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your zine or ad to either address above.
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