Thursday, April 29, 2010

Any Port in a Storm



I was wandering around today and stopped at the Ice House in New Castle and pondered getting something called a "Double Jeopardy" which is a ice cream frappe covered in chocolate syrup and fudge and whipped cream. It's basically an ice cream sundae on top of a frappe. It cost $6 so I I decided I should just get an ice cream cone, maybe moosetracks ice cream...but I wasn't really hungry for ice cream so I thought that I should get a hot dog but I didn't want to bother asking for it. So I backed out and went to Fort Stark. I was only looking for some comfort through sugar and lately sugar has been wreaking havoc with my metabolism, leaving me drowsy and slurring my speech. I've been tested for Diabetes and that's not the problem. My tolerance has shifted.
I went back to Fort Stark to search for clues. I'm not the first person to walk these sandy shores. What motivated those before me? I think I will do an entire photo series at Fort Stark. The air quality was absolutely perfect today even though it was cold and windy. Yes, I will return to Fort Stark and take a whole bunch of pictures. There are so many things about that place that hold memories of mine. And maybe in the process I will find some kind of peace.




One good thing about Fort Stark is that the place is deserted. It's public land but the nearby property owners must have some arrangement so the gates are locked and no one can park there...and there are no signs saying "Fort Stark 1 mile". I can see their point since Ordione Point is like one minute away and has many more nice features like swings and a playing field and it doesn't require me driving past their tennis courts to get to. But Fort Stark is a beautiful, haunting place and for 25 years I've played there and had pictures taken of me there and taken pictures of other people there and it's time I devote a whole day. I've got to borrow a real camera though because this Kodak thing has limits. Then I can put them all online and look at them in the winter when I'm in Mexico.
I'll have to take the moped out there but that'll be a good test of the new engine.

Is it me?

I woke up today to the liberal morning talk show rantings of NHPR. It sounded completely insane. Has the country fallen apart overnight? They were talking about things like late term abortions, torture, genocide, assisted suicide, concentration camps in Arizona, health care, etc.
It was laughable. No way to wake up. I've been slowly reading about Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations...which is boring me to death, but apparently since 1750 at least there has been almost no progress on the affairs of men. The exact same issues between government and people were a major concern in Smith's time. It's safe to say where there is a government there will be a pundit. And where there is a pundit there will be people talking about that pundit as though they aren't pundits but really they are. We all are. The size of the government, the influence of the American government, the over all power of the government is really Unamerican. If I weren't American I'd say this can't be a democracy. It's a democracy on paper, but it's like calling Wal-Mart a neighborhood bakery because there is a bakery and it is in the same state as a neighborhood. We've got a government that basically rules every fragment of our lives and no one is happy about it. If we weren't all living so well I'd call it a disaster. It's really only a disaster if a) you care about individual responsibility. b) you live in a country other than America.

I'm turning over a new leaf today. I'm going to really work at living like the poor uneducated person that I am. No more delusion. I'm not going to be prejudiced against the rich anymore. I have an idea of where that trait came from but I've had enough time to purge it and have failed so far. Let's just say that in the debate of nurture and nature I'm seeing a lot of evidence for nurture being the major factor. All you parents out there keep that in mind.

Today's sermon-
I planted trees for a winter and these tree saplings were 7 inches tall and I'd plant one every three seconds. I think I planted half a million. Anyway, you plant a sapling perfectly straight because if it is slightly angled it will take years to right itself. Just a bit extra attention to planting it straight will make the tree's life SO MUCH EASIER. But if you intentionally and willingly plant a tree on a completely skewed angle and also hide it in the shade or piss on it and leave a shovel lying on it for years then it's a miracle if the thing grows at all. The tree itself has a very good chance of surviving, unless you totally ignore your responsibilities and abuse and neglect it. IF you abuse it then you shouldn't be planting trees. That's pretty obvious. But, guess what? This isn't about trees.

The headlines are alarmist and the talk shows are even worse. It's hard to pretend we aren't on the eve of destruction. Americans are living what is called a "Five Planet Lifestyle" that is, it would take 5 earths to support us. The way we manage to survive is by taking the difference from other countries. We justify this by demonstrating how technologically advanced we are. Look how small our phones are! Yes, the cataclysms we are causing are mostly hidden from us by the media and it probably wouldn't matter if we did know about them. Go to a KFC buffet sometime and watch people pig out. If the extra crispy vat is empty they just wait for it to get filled up again. They don't think "Hey, did I eat too much?" ha.
We can ignore the problems because they will likely not cause much of a problem in our lifetimes but the problems we're passing on are going to take absolute genius to fix. Hell, we can't even define the problems yet and someone is going to have to solve them eventually.

I'm taking advice from Michael Jackson and starting with the man in the mirror. With that in mind here's the video:

Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.