Ship Shape Travel

Everyone is excited when the Dorito season approaches. Children just want to be out there as the ocean bountifully provides, running through the sand, picking up Doritos just in time for the holidays, to export round the country for everyone’s pleasure.

Funny but not. I’m glad they covered this story because it makes me think of one of the extravagances I will never experience: a luxury cruise.

I love the idea of eating seventeen meals a day, having endless activities and visits to exotic (and even more importantly, tropical) ports of call, having a chance to legally dabble in all sorts of things that are legal elsewhere but frowned upon here, like sex on beaches and pool tables . . . but I digress.

The problem with cruises is that, in international waters, they cheerfully dump their waste (your waste) overboard. There are no laws saying that they can’t and no cruise lines that I’m familiar with that say they won’t. It’s one of the cases where laissez-faire really sucks. We need to have the ethics to do what is inconvenient and expensive in the short term to preserve this world in some form of wholeness in the long term. As a Pagan I could not knowingly participate in this kind of activity.

Now I know full well that every day and in every way I make some negative impact on the world. But that is an excellent subject for another time.

NYC is Good for Something!

However, as of December 1st, new legislation will require New Yorkers to recycle rechargeable batteries.

Mayor Bloomberg has, in the past, lifted recycling requirements for all manner of items including DVDs, and proposed a disposable EZ Pass so people who think that their government actually gives a damn where they go will be willing to use it. Finally a law looms that might put the interests of the Earth above those of businesses and paranoiacs.

Bloomberg is a classic businessman: he’s capable of doing some long-range planning, but narrow enough not to recognize the value of minimizing the human impact on the world. The effects of an increasing population will catch up with our economy in brutal fashion if we’re not willing to inconvenience ourselves now to avert it. Making recycling of batteries a requirement (and, thankfully, one that’s not too difficult to fulfill) is a good step, but there are a few others that he could consider.

Recycling could be expanded to include many more forms of materials. Anything that can be incinerated can be recycled. The problem is economic: for many items it’s just cheaper to make it new. If the City itself were to use recycled materials it would tip the economic scales in the right direction.

Composting would be another wonderful focus for new NYC legislation. If residents had the opportunity to have compostables picked up they would be able to reduce solid waste by an astounding percentage. The volume of compost would not be the issue that other solid waste is, since you can find ways to use it.

Pagan Views of AIDS

“In the ghoulish second story, Denys (Shawn Ashmore), a Canadian pornography actor, conceals his H.I.V.-positive status from his producers by substituting blood drawn from his dying father for his own in required tests. When his mother, Olive (Stockard Channing), a hard-bitten waitress from whom Denys has concealed his occupation, discovers what he does, she concocts an insurance fraud scheme involving tainted blood taken from her son while he’s asleep.”

I noted in my own comment to this post that this writer, Thom Fitzgerald, probably had an idea about the different perspectives he wanted to suggest, but ran out of religions that matched them. Or didn’t look that hard. I mean, he could have used Satanism and even if the Satanists complained I doubt that anyone would have paid much attention. But this isn’t about the crappy movie or its alleged use of religion. The article got me thinking about what the Pagan views of AIDS actually are.

Paganism itself is probably more diverse than any other religious category, so the views expressed are likewise varied. Since we can’t even agree on the number of gods, we tend to be a scattered bunch; there’s also a strong aversion to dogma that discourages any kind of cooperative development of beliefs. But I gave it some thought and have come up with a few likely Pagan views of AIDS:

1. AIDS affects people as a repercussion of the Threefold Law.
2. It is a deliberate attack developed by men, in their desire for power and lack of foresight.
3. It is Gaia’s wrath descending upon all of humanity.
4. It is a cosmic opinion about the appropriateness of homosexuality.
5. It is an opportunity for enlightened behavior, for we have a real chance to act in a painfully selfless manner to help our fellow human beings.
6. It is the fusion of silly putty and the pineal gland.
7. AIDS exists only as long as we believe it is relevant.

I don’t agree with all the views I’ve laid out here, and I’m sure there are quite a few others that I haven’t even considered. Essentially I see Pagans as approaching such a disease as karmic, scientific, natural, dharmic, and/or inevitable. The balance of power between the sacred and the profane (i.e., mundane) worlds can vary, and that will affect the individual’s perspective.

I’m not being fair, though. This isn’t supposed to be about Paganism as a whole, since that really doesn’t exist; it’s supposed to be about me, and my own views, which I haven’t offered.

Well, I think it’s a damned shame that AIDS hit gays early and hard, because it would have done a much better job of whittling down the population had it arrived initially through the heterosexual population. I do believe it was created by humans, albeit accidentally, and Nature to it as her own and evolved it into a killer for her own purposes. I think it doesn’t work that well, because it sustains its victims for a long time and causes physical and financial hardship rather than ending life. But I’m confident that sooner or later we will unwittingly give the forces of nature a better tool with which to strike at our teeming masses. As long as we’re monkeying around in the genetic code without having a clue what we’re doing, we have no choice but to serve the true master of this planet.

Gushing Pretension

Is ‘The Fountain’ a beautiful story of love and life conquering death? Of a way to find life through death? Or just a terribly weird and hokey new age film that is, at times, unbelievably difficult to follow? I still can’t decide.

Donna might not be able to decide for her review, but I have no such difficulties. This movie was an astounding combination of misleading marketing, Oscar-nominee positioning, and irrelevant claptrap. The director moved the viewer through three related storylines in a jerky, disconnected manner, woven together with clunky metaphors that served only to remind us that throwing money at a bad story idea will never salvage it.

I was able to follow this movie, I just thought it sucked. The three stories converge in irrelevant and asinine ways, clumsily strung together in an attempt to convince the viewers to wrap themselves in a garment of caring. If you have the good sense to stay away, or you had the misfortune of believing the hype that it had anything to do with an exciting medieval Meso-American adventure, let me lay it out for you, in spoilerific detail:

Tom is a bald guy in a bubble in space with a dying tree. The web site for the movie tells you his name and reveals he’s an astronaut in the twenty-sixth century. He is headed for a nebula the Mayans considered sacred. He is haunted by the visions of Isabel, our dying, brave heroine.

Isabel lives in the modern world, dying of cancer in that delicious way that involves no suffering or symptoms. Her husband Tommy is trying to discover a procedure to save her. He hits upon a process that reverses aging, but it doesn’t seem to cure cancer so he moves on in his work. All Isabel wants is for Tommy to read her unfinished novel about the fountain of youth.

As he reads we get glimpses of the book, and about conquistador Tomas who must save Spain by finding the Fountain of Youth, which is actually the Tree of Life.

Tom, in his bubble, promises the dying tree that it won’t die, even as he eats of it. He languishes over finishing Isabel’s novel for her, a promise made by Tommy.

Tommy discovers too late that his new treatment cures cancer, and Isabel dies.

Tom’s tree dies before he reaches the nebula that is Mayan heaven. Tom finishes the novel by using himself as a Deus et Machina – he appears before the Mayan priest and uses his glowing lotus self to convince the priest that Tomas is a god. Tomas gets to the tree, drinks the sap, and plants grow out of him, perpetuating his existence while killing him.

The tree is reborn as Isabel. The End.

Yes, I get that it’s about the nature of eternal life. The cycles are really quite Pagan. But fastening these three mediocre tales together with Spell-o-tape does nothing more for them than make them an Important Film or, as I like to call it, a monumental pile of crap.

Tracking the Economics of GMO

Diapason Commodities Management has just announced its agricultural commodity-based index which incorporates only non-genetically modified organisms.

This is a really excellent, and somewhat chilling, idea. It’s a great idea because economics have been shown to be an excellent predictor of the relevance of trends and ideas. Chilling for the same reason – what if this bombs?

Index funds tap into the collective unconscious in ways that Jung could only have wet dreams about. Whether it’s the Christmas Index or terrorism futures, election results or Oscar predictions, indices and futures markets are surprisingly accurate because they even out the shortsighted guesswork of individuals and really allow us to work together by motivating us in the one way just about every human can be inspired by: greed. If this non-GMO index shows that these companies are doing well, it’s pretty likely that foods that more resemble nature are on the rise overall. However, if the value of the index falls, we might be looking at a world of trees with Prozac in their sap and corn that grows human ears for replacement operations.

So this index could show how much foresight and wisdom is really embedded in our collective unconscious, and how much convenience overshadows it. Face it, it’s a pain in the ass to spray pesticides on crops, and it’s annoying to find bruised tomatoes in the bin at the store. GMO holds the promise of finding ways to unlock the secrets of DNA and answer all of life’s problems with another strand. Of course, genetic manipulation is likely to have effects that will not be clear, for good or ill, for generations to come. Could be the generations of the plants and animals manipulated, or the generations of the humans interacting with and consuming them. Our ability to foresee long-term consequences of our actions are usually impeded by politics, sex, and our own lifespans. I don’t know if a futures market is capable of transcending these limitations we have, or if it will just compound the issue.

I also don’t know if, in a century, we find that all the GMO products produced now were actually the salvation of the planet. What I do know is that I’m too shortsighted to be willing to risk the world’s future on a guess.