===================================================================== Stuck In Traffic "Independent Comment on Current Events and Cultural Phenomena" Issue #15 - June 1996 =================================== 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 ==================================== 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. ==================================== 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 free. Send your subscription request to either address listed above. Print Subscriptions: Subscriptions to the printed edition of Stuck In Traffic are available for $10/year. Make checks payable to Calvin Stacy Powers and send to the address listed above. Individual issues are available for $2. 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