Food for Thought from "Plan B" by Lester Brown

Enjoy your iPhone. Here are the pink elves who assembled it...


If China follows the U.S. trend of having 3 cars for every 4 people then by 2030 China alone will have 1.1 billion cars. That would require 98 million barrels of oil per day so the Chinese can commute to work making Hannah Montana reunion tour memorabilia. That would exceed world oil production. Of course, that's a big "if". The Chinese are the plantation slaves of the west right now and interestingly enough they've been sold into slavery by their own government (there has to be a devious plan behind it all). Offered a chance to make money it turns out if they work a 60 hour week they will save money on only the last few hours. If they ever get sick or hurt the entire plan crumbles and they will be working out of debt for years. If they get sick twice then they're probably reduced to ash. And if everything works out perfectly they basically live on an assembly line like the one above for a few years before they can buy their freedom back. That doesn't really work for me at all. No part of that is acceptable. I'm repulsed by every facet of that production paradigm. Never mind the forced prison labor I just read about. It's absolutely no different than a cotton plantation in 1830.

If this isn't nihilism at work, man as robot, then what is it? And if our purpose on earth is to assemble electronics, reproduce so our children can assemble electronics, die, then please show me the nearest exit. I see all the technology around me and agree that renewing my library books online is an enormous time-saver, a god send, but holy shit! Is it worth shoveling souls into a coal chamber? Or do we have souls? Am I deluded? Are we all Apple employees yet?

Here's a self portrait of my Ego right now:


I've said this before that the most civilized era was 400 B.C. Athens, Greece. Yes, there was war and slavery but holy god they at least made an effort to be individually magnificent.

I'm not even through the preface of Plan B and I'm going mad. I can understand ignorance. I'm dumb most of the time. But when I see a problem I address it. The prevailing political approach to problems has been the opposite of addressing them. At a time when gasoline prices in the States should be around $15 a gallon and rising, the prices go down below $3. How is this possible? Ignorance? No, no, it's willful manipulation of the market using debt as collateral, banking on a collapse of the world economy before we have to pay the money back. The idea is to enable Americans to race NASCAR and drive cars with 6 mpg, cheaply, because once it's gone then it's gone and we might as well be the ones to use it. And once currency has no value then the I.O.Us we gave China can be burned to keep them warm. Lester calls these "Market Distortions"

I've read counterarguments to this and it still all comes down to spirituality. If you are a nihilist/existentialist then yes, a person may spend their lives assembling Xbox joysticks and that's good enough. It doesn't matter because once we die we're dead and the important thing is to live as well as possible today. We may eradicate Arctic wolves and it just proves they weren't fit enough to live. They didn't adapt! It's their fault! They were living on top of oil and we have to have NASCAR! But if you are a hopeless romantic like me then Hell hath been realized.

The silver lining:
The wind farms, electric cars, agricultural innovations and communication methods are almost enough to enable Americans to live as selfishly wasteful as we're accustomed. (I'd really like to see the Latino field workers refuse to work in Arizona just to see what happens but the money there compared to Mexico is irresistible.) Even Plan B is optimistic about the potential based on previous innovations. We're a crafty animal and the tide is turning toward sustainability. It will be too late for some animals and the Arctic wolf might be out of luck but other animals will be spared. It only took 100 years to generate this crisis... I...
I'm losing interest in this essay.

When I was in La Paz playing jazz with a group of retired architects one of the guys had his special song called "Frim Fram Sauce" he was the sax player and he only sang this song. It was his signature tune. Well, I'd never heard this song until I played with that group and I listened to it and thought, "That's a great song."

But what is Frim Fram Sauce or Chafafa, or Auchantay? I figured I was just hopelessly modern and everyone born before 1950 would know what these dishes were. Or maybe they're regional to New Orleans. Well, it turns out they don't exist. The story goes a man brought his date to a nice restaurant and he couldn't afford anything on the menu so he said, "I don't want french fried potatoes, red ripe tomatoes, I'm never satisfied. I want the frim fram sauce..." See?
And the waiter obviously said, "I'm sorry, sir. We don't have that."
And the guy said, "What? You don't have chafafa? No frim fram sauce? What kind of a restaurant is this? Honey, let's go to a more hip locale. Excuse us."
So he could leave with dignity. The singer in La Paz never said the last line of the song which would've explained this. The last line is, "If you don't have it then bring me the check."

That's the story at least and it demonstrates that everything associated with Jazz is classy and rich with humanity and drama. I apologize for the earlier rant. My neck hurts. This is my balm. Tonight I ate a Frim Fram burger with Quinoa.

Fort Stark

Wednesday is Fort Stark volunteer day and unless some miracle happens and I get a job I'll be there in the morning. All are welcome! It's a little strange since I was trying to break into the coast guard station a few days ago and the project they want to work on is trying to blockade the coast guard station from trespassers. So, it's a conflict of interests but maybe I can work on landscaping instead of the fence.

Here's a clever sculpture at Ordione's Point.


I have a few dozen pictures that I want to post as an album. Or should I doll them out one at a time? I have a love affair with this Fort so we'll see. The picture below is something I remember vividly. That gun was still there in 1980.

This picture is for Hobo Joe in S.F. because he loves vintage fonts so much. This is as vintage as it gets, a hand painted label on a storage room door frame calling it a Paint Locker. I'd never seen it before because it is almost pitch black in that hallway and unless you have a flashlight and look at the ceiling then you'll never see this sign.

I'd say the font is from the '50s or '60s but it could be older. The fort didn't really operate after WWII so it could be as early as 1940. Next time I talk to Becky I'll ask her when this place closed down. She's been here since 1960 so she must know all the trivia.

Here's a picture of something you don't see much, a cemetery with only a few residents. It's brand new and located on New Castle at Ordione Point. Kind of a strange location but if you've lived in New Castle then that's where you want to be buried and there's only one other cemetery by the back bay that's got no vacancy. So they landscaped an area near the entrance and are laying to rest the dearly departed.

Oatmeal at the Shelter

The River Street Shelter serves oatmeal in the morning if Steve can reign in his crank addiction long enough to put the water on to boil. The junkies and hippie deserters begin to line up around 7am for the 8am feeding. What else are they going to do?
“Anyone holding?”
“You crazy?”
“Go to the show last night?”
“I’m so hungry. They got milk today?”
“Milk? Doubt it.”
“Milk’s been pasteurized. You’d be better off eating rat shit.”
“You a doctor? Who tells you all that?”
“They was playing blues. Rock. Weed was smoking.”
“Yawn.”
“I got bit by a rat last night. Fucker was a foot long. Looked at me after he bit me like, ‘What you gonna do about it?’ I hit him with boot.”
“Milk is good. You didn’t suck on your mama’s tit when you was a baby?”
“That’s breast milk. Milk in a box is like paint. No nutritional value.”
“Bullshit. Milk is what keeps your bones from breaking.”
“Anyone got a cigarette?”
“What you wanna trade?”
“I’ll hit you back later.”
“Here. Roll your own.”
“Milk don’t serve no purpose after you’re three years old. It’s a myth.”
“This breakfast is a myth. Steve was up all night chasing rats.”
“Rats? He was chasing ghosts. That dude hasn’t slept in two weeks. You see his eyes?”
“I got bit by a rat. He bit me on the hand.”
“He’s tweaking hard. I hung with him in Soledad. He’s a bad ass.”
“What cell block?”
“B”
“I was in A.”
“You know Fenster?”
“I know Fenster. I was dating his sister in San Jose.”
“No shit?”
“Them rats kept coming and coming. I build walls with the picnic table but they found a way under them. Hope I don’t get the rabies.”
“Milk is just white water.”
“Up all night fighting rats. Ain’t that the shit?”
“Me and Steve and Fenster kicked this one dude’s ass for stealing cigarettes.”
“Gotta watch who you fuck with.”
“Fucked his shit up.”
“There was this one great big rat who walked with a limp…”
“Milk is the second worst thing you can put in your body.”
“What’s the first?”
“Meat.”
“You hear about Isabelle’s mom?”
“Mary The Whore?”
“Yeah. She stabbed this one dude with a switchblade.”
“He got what he deserved. That tramp is T.R.U.B.L.”
“I heard it was her boyfriend.”
“That rat limped over to me and I beat him back with broom handle.”
“Where is Isabelle?”
“They staying over in the crack hotel.”
“Her and Isabelle?”
“And that hippy dude who used to live in the forest. That long haired freak with the torn overalls and the bicycle…”
“…and the juggling pins.”
“Oggy?”
“Yeah, him. Oggy. I was out there smoking weed and saw that dude like planting corn or something. By the golf course.”
“That ain’t nothing. There’s this one cat who lives way out near boulder creek, lives in a cave. Does yoga.”
“Oggy’s always talking about him. Abe is his name.”
“Right. Abe. Craziest motherfucker in the world.”
“But them rats, there were hundreds of ‘em and they come out at night. It was like Vietnam with them yellow fucking eyes coming at me in the dark.”
“Oggy walks out to that cave and does Yoga every few weeks. Before he hooked up with Isabelle.”
“He’s schizoid.”
“Naw. He’s bipolar.”
“Paranoid delusional. I saw his chart in the office.”
“Probably all three. Ha!”
“I killed the little rats, the weak ones, but the big ones fought back.”
“So they all living over in the crack hotel smoking crank?”
“Oggy don’t even drink.”
“What? He doesn’t drink? What the fuck?”
“Nope. He said it was a stimulant.”
“No shit. That's the whole point.”
"Milk turns sour in your belly."
“It didn’t bite me too deep. Do you think it’ll give me rabies if the teeth didn’t go in deep?”
“So why the fuck is he with two crack whores?”
“Beats me.”
“Because he’s schizoid. He thinks they're gypsies. He was planting corn out by the railroad track. Singing Sound of Music. He don't know what century it is.”
“Gypsies? Yeah, gypsies who fuck for a living. Har har.”
“I gotta build a barricade out of sheet metal to keep ‘em off my chest. Didn't sleep at all. Real tired of fightin' rats all night.”
“Here comes the oatmeal. I hope they got milk.”

Earth Policy Institute

I was doing some research on Arctic wolves today while my porn was downloading and I see that I'm deluded if I think there will be an Arctic wolf in Labrador. Not a chance. They probably never existed in Labrador. I figured I would see a wolf and maybe it would be an Arctic wolf but unless the wolf hired a single prop plane to visit The Hudson Bay then there is no chance in the world I'll see an Arctic Wolf in Canada outside of a zoo. It would be like looking for a bald eagle in the Hampton Beach Club Casino.

The Arctic Wolf exist so far north it takes three days of flying to reach their habitat. Really, they live near the North Pole. On a map of their habitat you can't even see the United States. I want to point out that Labrador, the almost inaccessible part of Labrador is in the far lower right hand corner next to the Hudson Bay tag. I am about 1500 miles from that point and it would take a jet engine on my 1969 Econoline to get to the little dot marked 2006 trip way up at the top where there are known Arctic Wolves. This is from one of the few devoted Wolf researchers named L. David Mech

The latitude circles are getting awfully small at that point. It's like 5000 miles from New Hampshire over totally uninhabited tundra.

So, that's just a trip few people in the world get to take and they all have $20,000 disposable dollars.

Anyway, looking at Mr. Mech's site I saw a link for the Earth Policy Institute and decided to see what kind of hippie agenda they were promoting. This is what I found..

"The United States completely restructured its economy within months once it decided to enter World War II, changing the course of the war. We, too, can change the world, but we need to start now. The choice is ours—yours and mine—to either adopt Plan B and move the world onto a path of sustainability or go along with business as usual and allow further destruction of our natural support systems. The choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.

The overriding Plan B goals are to:

- stabilize climate

- stabilize population

- eradicate poverty

- restore the earth’s damaged ecosystems"

I found it very interesting that Lester Brown, the Institute's president chose to compare the mobilization of America in 1941 to what we are capable of in the sustainability field. Brown probably witnessed that mobilization first hand and while I've witnessed mainly sloth and drunkenness I did watch the WWII Ken Burns series and agree that it was an incredible effort. When I first watched it I felt that yes, Mankind is capable of the kind of mobilization needed, but lately I think it was precisely this kind of mobilization that has run amok into a compulsive production and consumption and reproduction. So, it's a double edged sword like a power so great that it can kill or heal, but it can't do both.

As if I needed something else to read I've checked out Brown's book, "Plan B" The words "Saving Civilization" appears about five times on the back cover. The opening paragraph details how the arctic saw an area twice the size of Great Britain melt in one week.

A "catastrophic" water main failure in Boston just happened. 2 million people boiling water like they did in 1740. Malaria is looming. It'll be fixed but when it rains it pours.

These events relate to the central mission of my life to experiment in low impact modes of living. Maybe I'm a little radical and that would explain the unanimous disapproval of my living in my van. I can see the point the Police are trying to make but it does sting a little when you've got research supporting the theory that an apocalyptic event is on the horizon and only a radical (See WWII) kind of change in lifestyle will prevent it, and if I try to take the advice of Lester Brown and Al Gore then I've got the the police banging on my van door. Ok, more than half of the RV gypsies were drunks and stoners and junkies, but we were all essentially low impact people, playing guitar and crying ourselves to sleep.

I'm about to get kicked out of the library now so I'll take this up again later. Please check out the EPI feed I've put on. I think I've got too many blog feeds as it is. I know people have to work. I'm trying to make this easy on y'all.

I'm Awesome by S'Pose

Driving around the upper valley I heard this tune and was amused for five minutes. There's a line in it that says they are from Maine and if a Downeaster can match the Beastie Boys then I'll promote that. Consider the Beastie Boys had Rick Rubin as producer and I'll bet this was produced by the singers on their mother's computer with garage band by Apple. Honesty is always the key to rap because it's in the reggae tradition of social commentary and not necessarily for entertainment purposes. This song is a self-critique of the prevalent attitude of ego-centrism and also the awareness of said ego-centrism.