Race to the Bottom

Capitalism merely forces wage slaves to compete for who can accept the least amount of money for the most work. Basically, who can survive on the least amount of food? That's the natural progression of capitalism and we made it. Congratulations! 6 Billion people underbidding each other for a can of dented Alpo. Awesome! Enjoy your iPod!


The Chinese, as God intended them to be.



Bag Lady Hat

This hat had big dreams at the start like children born of average parents and ended up being reconstructed until I ran out of yarn and feeling resentment at the lack of love and respect.
"Fine. BE defiant. See where that gets you," I lectured.


Then I patched it together with whatever yarn was laying around and added some vintage buttons that I once traded some plaid pants for and some hat bangles from a 1965 pill box hat design.* It's $3 worth of Goodwill baby blanket wool yarn and $6 worth of some kind of acrylic/wool/nylon that I found and thought would look nice but really was hard to work with and when I crocheted it wrong was a nightmare to untangle.

Evolving Worldview

It isn't that I can't be convinced, but no one knows how to frame an argument so that I change my mind. It's a matter of strategy with me and most generic arguments don't work because they sound like tired bible thumpers trying to draft another one onto the team. You'll have to do better than that if you want me to alter my worldview. PBS has the right approach, which is to introduce a subject in a practical light and spend years developing their thesis and then finding experts who can corroborate the evidence. I need audio-visual props and at least one reference to Hermann Hesse. In fact, if you haven't read every book by Hermann Hesse then we don't even speak the same language. Don't expect to get through my defenses without major effort. So, don't blame me for being stubborn when you're basically being lazy. If you think you'll change my mind with something you read in the Boston Globe this morning then save yourself the effort and go back to bed.

Faces From The Past

Oggy as a young pup

 My attempts to get a national park guide job failed because my claims of 4 years experience as a naturalist and field guide were not accepted (right, I'm hardly qualified to lead tour groups through a cave!) and I never included my college transcripts of my geology classes. So, I had to hunt down my transcripts and in the process came upon these two artifacts from an era that is gone. Here is an infant - and the handwriting of my grandfather indicates it is baby Oggy, but wait...

Pessimism

"I do believe the tree of liberty was planted quite crooked and watered too often with the blood of innocents to ever thrive on morality alone. The day I’m wrong is the day everyone stops buying lottery tickets and donates the $1 to their schools."

--Pessimist named Oggy who once quoted John Lennon but bought 5 lottery tickets today.