How to Make Things Worse and Profit by Doing so
Update: 01/27/08: I knew that it couldn't be this easy. I was all ready to start feeling good about the City of Santa Ana, for finally taking action to protect people's rights to quiet enjoyment of their properties. Then the following occurred:
Working inside one of my units this morning, in the process of collecting a bunch of stuff to relocate, I heard a vehicle pull up outside and then stop. After a couple minutes, I made my way to the front, moving all the boxes in the way and opened the door, accross which I had positioned my motorcycle, padlocked. It's that kind of neighborhood. On the other side of my bike was another bike, of the Santa Ana PD, and an officer who proceeded to hand my a ticket for "parking in the alley."
He then left without further comment, at which point the jerk with the car with a BOOM, who had been apparently parked watching all this come down, pulled accross the alley into his building's parking lot, cranking up his stereo for a minute just to make the point that he had managed to hurt me.
Note that there are a couple of dozen vehicles, up to and including full-sized semis, that normally park in this alley within a hundred feet of where my bike was snugged up against the door of one of my units, not posing any hazard to the local traffic, unlike the daily traffic tangles during the work week, when large trucks are often parked bumper to bumper, either delivering or picking up manufactured goods from the shops and small factories. None of them has ever gotten a ticket for "parking in the alley."
If the City were to treat them like me, it would cost the businesses involved millions of dollars to comply. Everyone puts up with the congestion as everyone knows that the businesses depend upon being able to fill their parking lots with pallets of goods lined up for the trucks.
When I checked the ticket for my options, as in contesting the ticket, I find that I have to request a review form. A phone number is provided for further information. We'll see on Monday just how useful that number actually is. The web site says, "If you wish to contest a parking citation, a review must be made within 21 calendar days of receiving the citation."
It does not say who that applies to, naturally. Am I supposed to be doing the review? If not, then does the citation become moot if "they" (whoever "they" are) fail to make the review? I.e., it does not appear that the constitutionaly guaranteed rights of due process are held in especially high regard, which is par for the course for Santa Ana. The back of the ticket also says that a review form may be picked up at the Santa Ana PC office. I'm guessing that means working hours only, which makes it prohibitively expensive for most people.
Meanwhile, I have the feeling that having succeeded in inflicting damage today by gaming the system, the punks who feel no qualms about violationg my rights to begin with will not stop until they have succeeded in driving me out or ending up in jail.
01/20/08:
I have several office/workshop/industrial units crammed with all my junk, tools, and a couple mini-offices that I'm slowly converting into multi-media workshops, mostly as a hobby. When I need peace, especially on the weekends, I crash out on the floor in one or another of the units, and get up and work when I'm rested. I also am dealing with a herniated cervical spine disk, which makes it imperative that when my left arm starts going into muscle spasms, that I lie down and support my neck until it stops.
At almost 60 years old, I am losing my high-frequency hearing little by little as well. I can understand spoken speech in the normal vocal range with no problem, unless there are a lot of competiing noises, such as a lot of people talking all at once, and I don't notice any loss in connection with music, with one key exception.
Because the loss is on the high-end, I am particularly sensitive to very low frequency sounds, as they come in loud and clear. ( I well recall how, as a teenager, I was introduced to the wonders of low frequency when I got a Grundig table radio with a moderately nice bass response - nothing by today's standards, of course - and I would lie directly in front of the speaker with the bass turned up to the max. I suspect that the design of the cochlea, etc., in the inner ear is probably optimized to start out with very good relative treble response in youth, which leads to a craving for more bass. )
However, I am also a light sleeper, and noise from any source - especially meaningful or rythmic noise - can keep me awake indefinitely. Recently many studies have shown a direct and causal link between such sleep deprivation and various diseases.
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7163217.stm
I live in and my industrial units are located in the city of Santa Ana, CA, which is about 90% Hispanic. Within that community there are a LOT of people with cars equiped with the enormous sub-woofers that are now dirt-cheap. At my home, a dozen times a night someone will drive through - BOOM!!!! pause BOOM!!!! pause BOOM!!!! pause BOOM!!!! pause - setting off the car alarms, depriving everyone of a good night's sleep, alerting customers that the "CandyMan" is coming, with his load of goodies (crack, mariunna, or mostly meth), and making it possible for car thieves - who abound in Santa Ana - to more easilly take vehicles, as no-one pays any attention to the endless alarms set off by the Cars with a Boom, and most people end up turning them off, due to the frequent false alarms.
I have known libertarians - such as the science fiction author J. Neil Shulmann - who take the position that everyone has a perfect right to play his or her music as loudly as they want, regardless of the impact on their neighbors. The only option for the neighbors is to move or build sound barriers. I presume that this is somehow related to a position for free speech.
However, it ignores the fact that sound is a physical medium. If someone were to walk up to you and grab you and shake you, then that would clearly be a violation of your basic rights to the exclusive control of your own body. Yet if they do exactly the same thing using an electromechanical device throught the intervening medium of gases we term "air" and also - with the subwoofers - solid ground, somehow it becomes ok.
Recently some new neighbors moved in accross the alley from my industrial units, and peacefully listening to NPR on my little clock radio, I was suddenly jolted out of my state of calm when the walls and floor started vibrating to the BOOM of one of my neighbor's cars. This is not the first time that this has happened, and I have in the past threatened them with legal action. I guess that they have decided to ignore the threat.
Lucky me, however. As it turns out the City of Santa Ana has a new ordinance that imposes up to a thousand dollar fine and/or 6 months in jail for ANY unwarranted noise that disturbs the peace. After getting a host of death looks from the locals accross the alley, when I started yelling things like "PUTO!..., BENDEJO!...,PUTO!..., BENDEJO!...,PUTO!... BENDEJO!..., in time with their beat (after all, I have just as much a right to respond in kind, don't I?), I put in a call to the cops, asking them to come talk to the idiots, and then left to do other things, as it was impossible to get any work done with that kind of noise.
When I returned, it was utterly silent, which was not my intention. I really don't mind people listening to their own music, and I have never even complained about the large shop a hundred yards away, which plays fairly loud music pretty much 24/7, as they have really noisy machinery, and they have to play music loud to even hear it. I just want to be able to hear my own music - and hear myself think.
I am reminded of an excursion that my grad school experimental psych class took in 1970, to the Yerkes Primate Center, outside of Atlanta, Georgia. This is the premier site for the study of monkeys and apes, and we watched as the male chimps played their dominance games, which mainly centered around making very loud noises. Note that if your idea of chimps comes from a Tarzan movie, then you are in a state of delusion.
Adult male chimps are BIG! They stand about 5 foot tall, and appear to be about the same in width, and it's all muscle. Chimps are about eight times as strong as a man. At Yerkes, the male chimps were throwing around 50 gallon oil drums like they were toys. In fact, they were their toys. Then one of them would find a stick and start beating a drum with it... BOOM!... BOOM!... BOOM!... BOOM!... , asserting what a MACHO chimp he was! Does this sound familiar?
In the barrio communities of Santa Ana, there are a wide variety of personality types, like any community. However, the barrio Hispanic culture that produces the gangs and the violence against women and the cars with a BOOM encourages certain personality types, especially primitive aggressive. In their native Mexico, which is where most of the barrio residents come from, power is everything, which explains why their economy is so thoroughly screwed, among other things.
So, here in the U.S., they find themselves at a loss to fit themselves in, as the U.S., like most of the northern European cultures, has succeeded largely through subjugating power to reason. It is far from perfect, as the many devastating wars among the Northern European powers demonstrates, but vastly superior to what is typical in 2nd world Romance countries. Naturally, the first response of anyone who is confused and out of place due to a major culture shift, especially given a language barrier to boot, is to try to recreate the conditions back home.
So, not understanding the actual power structure in the U.S., and unable to speak the language, the local would-be Jefes stage outrageously loud parties that make it impossible for anyone within a block or more to listen to their own radio or TV, and they buy a huge SUV and put in 2,000 Watt subwoofers, all to show that they can FORCE everyone else to put up with them, whatever they do. The message is that you had BETTER be their friend and do them favors OR ELSE.
Note that before the powerful sub-woofers came along, there were the Low Riders, who created some really nice works of art with their cars, BTW, but who also took pride in being able to completely block traffic for miles, driving at a walking speed, to demonstrate that they didn't HAVE TO adopt the despised Yanqui's rush to get things done. They could be El Pachuco!
The Low Riders are still around, but clearly have taken a back stage to the new breed that has in fact adopted the rush, rush, lifestyle of the Yanquis, and proves it by their fast and aggressive driving in their huge SUVs. However, the need to demonstrate power - MACHISMO! - is still prevalent. Which is why you NEVER, EVER! see women in the groups of mostly undocumented Hispanics who gather on the street corners or in front of the Home Depot Stores soliciting day labor. Why? Because the women would be raped for having the temerity to compete with men directly. Or this is what my Hispanic friends tell me.
Of course, everyone - at least many of the young males - wants to be a part of the action and a Jefe in their own right, and not everyone can be, clearly, so this leads to a state of constant warfare, mostly sneaky stuff, such as slashing tires, but occasionally real violence and murder as well.
The gangs are merely a systematic organization of this underlying cultural problem, in which it is necessary to be BAD in order to not be a victim. So, it is essential to make a display, like the Chimps, that shows what a big MAN, one is.
The idea that a real man might be someone who writes a new computer game, or develops a new business model, or a new cure for a disease, or a better search algorythm, is entirely alien to this mindset. As in the movie "Idiocracy," displaying intelligence is to invite innuendo and attack, mostly insults implying that one is not a REAL MAN, as in being gay, which is about as low as one can get in the MACHO culture. Given that mentality, it is hardly surprising that less than 50% of the Hispanic students in Santa Ana even graduate from high school, much less college.
And it is hardly just macho young Hispanic guys acting like chimpanzees who are the problem. In the black areas of East L.A., you will hear the same BOOM! And there is the similar subculture of macho, neo-nazi, poor, uneducated, white skinheads, with the same acting out of a need to feel power by identifying with some meathead simian tradition of dominance, daring anyone to do anything to stop them.
To be continued..."