So who wants to help me fight AT&T? Cuz I signed up for this special international cell phone deal before I went to Canada. The guy at the AT&T store told me that outgoing calls would be 59 cents a minute but that incoming calls would not be charged. This was wrong and I got a phone bill for over $400!
I've never been that great at arguing with bureaucratic people at big companies. So I figure I probably can't win this one even though I was genuinely horribly misinformed. I imagine they'll shift the blame to me for being dumb enough to believe one of their employees.
I guess I could start a "Pay Brad's Enormous Phone Bill Fund" and ask each reader to send a dollar via PayPal to doubtboy@mac.com. HA! I wonder if that would work...
Anyway this is what I get for trusting people in authority.
Speaking of people in authority who ought to be fought, tonight I participated in a march to protest the State of California upholding Proposition 8, which was a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Personally I believe in the rights of gay people to be just as miserable as anyone else. Though I do think it's one of those issues that gets a lot more attention on both sides than it really deserves. God knows there are far more important things going on.
Still, the march started at the Methodist church next door and they were giving away free veggie burritos from Holy Guacamole (Santa Monica's best Mexican restaurant), so why not join the party?
It's one of these bizarrely religious issues I'll never fully understand. Someone stated that they hadn't heard a single argument against gay marriage that did not quote the Bible as its source. The Bible says it's a sin for a man to lay with another man. Yet it also says it's a sin to eat shellfish. But I don't see anyone standing outside the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company with protest signs. Where's the constitutional amendment banning clam bakes on the beach?
I never understood the concept of sin very well. I didn't grow up with it and by the time I tried to figure it out I really didn't have the indoctrination in it that's necessary for you to really grok the meaning of the word. Buddhism doesn't have the notion of sin, nor does it have the idea that marriage is a religious matter. So the idea of gay marriage being problematic to Buddhism never came up.
The Japanese are funny about this subject. It's sort of "don't ask, don't tell" over there. Gay marriage is not recognized in Japan. Yet I've never heard of gay bashing over there. It seems, in my limited understanding of the matter, that if you're gay and Japanese the goal is to be discreet about it when discretion is called for and be as open about it as you like when it's appropriate. For example, you don't bring it up in the work place, but you don't hide it when you're hanging out in Shinjuku Ni-Chome, the gay district of Tokyo. It's OK to be a "new half," which is roughly analogous to what they call "transgender" here. There are dozens of openly gay men on TV all the time.
I couldn't possibly give you the whole spectrum. But the upshot is that once you remove the concept of sin from the picture, everything changes radically.
Whatever. I marched. I chanted. I ate burritos. I came home.
I also put up some new videos. So enjoy them!
ARE BUDDHISTS ALLOWED TO JACK OFF
An astute question from the audience in Montreal.
GOD PART III
This is also from Montreal. One of my favorite Dimentia 13 songs. Here's an MP3 of the studio version of God Part III from the FLAT EARTH SOCIETY CD (1990, Midnight International Records).
BUDDHA WAS A GOOD OL' BOY
This is my country and Buddhism song, written for Tim McCarthy circa 1986. And here's an MP3 of the studio version of Buddha Was a Good Ol' Boy from the FLAT EARTH SOCIETY CD (1990, Midnight International Records).
