Roll up my sleeves

“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”

—Eleanor Roosevelt

“But I'm from the future...”

—Oggy Bleacher to Canadian Border Police

I gotta say that the comment sections of sites like Adbusters, Ted, the oil drum, etc. are SO MUCH MORE CIVIL than the ones found on cnn and youtube. It's like junk food; everyone knows it's bad for you but we can't get enough. CNN is atrocious. Fox is abominable. Not just politically, but in terms of content. I don't know anyone who actually wants to know that much information about sex crime victims and murderous celebrities and basically food gossip and videos of cats in trees. It's so glossy, like people magazine. The Japan nuclear meltdown quickly found itself on page 2 because two elite Brits are getting married. If I had a button to wipe CNN from the earth I would have to push it. Hell, I'd CTL-ALT-DEL the fuck out of CNN. I should just go to the BBC from now on. Does anyone know an American news outlet that doesn't focus with serial killers and royal weddings? (I just looked at BBC and they were saying that the London 2012 Olympic games might be "the first truly sustainable games ever". Yeah, we're still feeling the effects of those games held in 600 B.C.)


I believe in freedom of speech but CNN is absolute profiteering on tawdry, sensational, localized, useless stories. Repulsive. I'd rather read a full on conspiracy blog about how WWII never happened or how Stephen King murdered John Lennon. At least those people are totally obsessed with their subject to the point they are willing to go broke to get "the truth" out there. God, it's refreshing to find someone who has some idea what freedom of speech means. Ted Turner really deserves his riches because no normal person would think to capitalize on news like a rose grower during wedding season. He's Citizen Kane. CNN actually lures you in a circle of violence and the comments are rabidly evil and inflammatory. I won't even give an example because they are so deadly. I actually shiver when I read some of them because it's so obvious the reader has been caught in a circle of hateful stories and has to vent. We are rats in a cage, that's really the only conclusion I can reach. Rats running after cheese and even the people who think they aren't rats are also rats.

I think my point was that adbusters is sponsoring "digital detox week" and of course I read about it online. I guess the only argument for posting that online is you could say, "we'd put up 2 fliers at the local library but only people who visit that particular library would see it."

Or there's the joke: ever heard about the guy who went on a hunger strike to protest press releases?

Anyway, my feeling is that I don't have anywhere else to get my "Anal teen queen" fix. What's a guy to do?

Seriously, I'm going to take a break for earth day. I want to turn off all electricity, not drive my moped, etc. Yes, it is totally useless in light of 7 billion people all trying to upload their half-assed singing or type their sports team opinions, but what the hell. I'll do it anyway.
Do anything you want on Earth Day, but don't visit CNN. Please please please.

Germi-Nation

I didn't kill the seeds by leaving them out in the rain and cold. The sunflowers are going to be dandies and the memorial Thoreau bean field will feed all the rabbits and woodchucks this side of the Mississippi.

T.E.D

Ok, my neck is still killing me but I'm not going to take it out on you. What I am going to do is much more labor intensive because it involves homework. NPR turned me onto a site called Ted.com

It occurred to me that the majority of adults who speak to large groups of adults have almost no qualifications. They are pundits...paid opinionators...I'd like to set myself apart from this group because if I move crates of hockey jock straps then that's what I write about. I'm not a politician or a teacher. I'm a man trying to account for his life in the most complicated economic web imaginable and this is the record of that journey. But I can also apply some common sense that when we get a Chernobyl, an Exxon Valdez and the most extreme weather conditions ever all in one year...then it's time for extreme action.

Don't listen to me. Oggy is a mess. But the speakers I heard on TED might be pundits and they might be entertainers or teachers or a mix of all three. Hmmmm. That might be why TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design.

Anyway, the lesson, your homework, is as follows:
1) Watch a video, any video lecture, on TED. They are all under 18 minutes long. (Yeah, learning things takes less time than a Simpsons Episode)
2)Identify the problem being addressed and a solution included in the video.
3) Find a separate source that support and one that contradicts the premise of the original video.
4) Compare and contrast the sources.
5) Respond with your findings. Is the speaker a pundit? Is it garbage? Is this any different than Thoreau taking a stage coach from Concord to Cambridge to talk about ending slavery? Is it just better produced blogging.
6) Go ahead and read the comments. The reader remarks range from supportive to totally racist and probably reflect parts of every one of us. Are these comments thoughtful or rote reactions based on years of conditioning?
7) Answer this question: Can old dogs learn new tricks?


My Santa Cruz story started out years ago as a warning to people to not get involved. I saw it as evidence that if you extend yourself to change the world then you will not die the honorable death of a martyr (my secret wish) but would drown in the petty squabbles of the power mongers and the cynics and diseased and disabled of the world who will probably be worse off due to your efforts than before. You would not improve the world at all but would only sacrifice your time and energy to bring pain and misery on those you thought you were serving. I don't think the story itself will change but I'm thinking lately that what really happened was I went to put out a tiny camp fire and coincidentally that was the day a radioactive meteor piloted by crack addicted aliens decided to plummet from the sky onto the camp. In other words, it wasn't the effort or the cause that was the problem but the chain of events that took place to the cast of unforgettable characters was so historically improbable that it could never happen like that again. But because it was the first real experience I had in activism I had nothing to compare it to. No one will encounter the series of mental and physical collapses I witnessed in those Santa Cruz years so go ahead, change the world, it's probably a cinch.
The story is still worth telling but more like a worse case scenario than a guaranteed result.
So, hopefully, these TED talks will inspire you in ways that I can't. You might be out of school but your learning never ends. These speakers are the philosophers of today with digital visual aids and fancy suits. This is your symposium. The Academy of ancient Athens was limited to the people directly in front of Plato or Aristotle or Socrates. We're trading ideas in seconds over oceans. If this doesn't make a difference then nothing will.


Get to work. Start here:

Earth Day

Let's observe a moment of silence for the young dolphins who will not see Earth Day 2011 because of what happened on Earth Day 2010.

(pause)

They were victims of a mass addiction to fossil fuels and a reckless use of those fuels. Collateral Damage is the best term for those killed by the oil spill. They were the necessary casualties for doing business in such extreme conditions for so long at such a large scale. I think we're reaching the point where it's clear anything is possible but we're starting to see the true costs in the corpses on battlefields and on beaches. We feel the consequences as families are torn apart and habitats are destroyed and if you take your eyes off the gas pump gauge it goes from $4.00 to $17.30 in like ten seconds. So, the cars that save no one any time and end up costing us money to keep us on the treadmill are also the cause of death and destruction to other animals. I forget the movie where someone said about war, "It doesn't save lives. People die, just different people."

I sort of think it's only tolerable because of our short attention spans. Only immediate trauma to us actually penetrates the armor of indifference we wear. Maybe that's how it has always been but somehow I never got issued that armor. Was I playing whiffle ball when it was handed out? Because in 1991 when I saw the pictures of the oil spill in the Persian Gulf (remember how those pictures were widely circulated to demonstrate how monstrous Saddam Hussein was? BP suppressed all pictures of dead wildlife for the same reason.)
It broke my heart to see this, like watching a pet be killed by some demented baby. I once had some affinity for some people but serious thoughts of genocide crossed my mind when I saw this. My reasoning was that the animal that could carelessly and thoughtlessly destroy these dolphins wasn't just worthless, but was actually a negative influence on life. It had surrendered its right to live. If there is a God then let God have a talk with them. If there isn't a God then better to end the madness now.
All men are created equal but sometimes a generation's equality plummets to the point where it is irretrievably lost. And rather than discriminate between who was right or wrong in the specific incident I lumped all of mankind into one foul basket to be tossed out the window...for the good of the dolphins. The things we call "saving the earth" are often just a ceasefire in the active destruction of it. That's not the same thing though a kind of strained, untrusting relationship is probably the best we can hope for. But if a person was beaten as bad by her spouse as we beat the planet I'd say it's time for the relationship to end. So, I basically lost any identification I had with humanity and moved into the Santa Cruz forest where a completely different set of horrors occurred. I have been trying for twenty years to get my humanity back but it continues to slip further away. Yes, the powers of manipulation have been working overtime to produce conformed consumers (Homo walmarticus) for the mines of commerce but this is one of those black or white issues with me. Either you are an independent thinker (Homo sapien) or you aren't. I've met a handful of independent thinkers...not enough to bother saving the species. Americans are enemies of the earth in practical terms. All our comforts are at the cost of some grazing or swimming animal or poor person. Only by mass propaganda and force and cultural terrorism would Vietnamese people willingly sew Nike basketball sneakers. If you think you are doing them any favors by allowing them to have a job sewing sneakers then you must have some microchip implanted in your brain that downloads Fox News opinions directly to your reasoning center.

Ok, that's enough abuse. I wanted to take a moment of silence and I went on a tirade. This is only because I feel I'm too intertwined with this ghastly system of cultural assimilation. And my neck is killing me. My clothes may be from 1974 but everything I touch is tainted by 2011 dolphin souls. Pray that God is not a dolphin lover. Pray that He loathes nature. Otherwise, we are fucked.

Sobriety

I'm finding things to do so I don't have to kneel on the floor and install a million more cracked tiles. That job is getting tedious. And for those of you who care, you are supposed to sand down the seams of the backerboard. I neglected to do this (thinking the mortar would bring everything up to level) and now the tile feels like there are tree roots growing underneath it. Not to mention the cracked tiles are not all level with each other so the razor sharp edges are exposed. Someone please take my DIY license away.









(I'm a little distracted because I just got a phone call that went like this...a private number called....
"Hello?"
"HHHHIIII. Tee Hee." (The voice is girlish kind of forced teenage sexpot. Like an underage phone sex line.)
"Can I help you?"
"You can help me by jacking off into the phone."
"I'm sorry?"
"Jack off, Oggy. Oggy, the jack off."
"Do we know each other?"
"You met me today."
"I don't leave the house. Ever."
"Why not?"
"Who are you?"
"You want a ride? Tee Hee."
"Yes. Are you going to Boston? Look..."
"I can see you. Are you playing your guitar or jacking off?"
"You're funny. If you can see me, what am I doing now?" (I give the finger to the phone.)
"Jerking off?"
"Bzzzzzz! Wrong."
"So what are you doing?"
"ANSWERING DRUNK DIALING LOSER'S PHONE CALLS AT TWO IN THE MORNING!"
"Hahhahaha. teee heeee. Do you murder people in the basement?"
"What concern is that of yours? What is your problem?"
"How old are you?"
"Old enough to know a drunk high school kid when I hear her. You know you have class tomorrow."
"OK, DADDY."
"Man, I weep for the future. I fucking weep like Thomas Paine on crack."
"hahahah. Thomas Who?"
"Nevermind. Just some asshole."
"I like you. You wanna fuck tomorrow?"
"I see. Now I see. You know what?"
"What?"
"I can predict your past. I can tell your future too, something to do with community college and an abusive husband, but let me see if I get your past right. You saw my number in the St. Louis rideshare ads. Yes? You saw my name. You saw the gear I'm bringing to Boston. Am I right so far?"
"I like your voice. Do you have a big cock?"
"...and then you decide to call the number and have a laugh at my expense. Right? Well, I'm paying money for this prank call. A dime a minute. We're already at two quarters of my change. And I've got things to write at this very moment. I WAS TRYING TO TRUST PEOPLE ON CRAIGSLIST AND YOU BETRAYED ME!"
"Do you jack off all night? huhuhuhuhahahahah" (she starts panting but it's fake, like she thinks people fuck like they do in porn.) "I'm eating poop."
"This is too much. You get drunk and crank call my cell phone? Are you insane? Me? Oggy Bleacher? You cunt! You fucking freak. Your daddy doesn't give you enough attention?"
"Hahahahahaha."
"Is this what you do for fun? Snort crystal meth and call random people?"
"Bwahahahahahah! My Name is Oggy and I want a blow job. Tee hehheheee!"
"Keep laughing. I AM FROM THE FUTURE AND I WILL BRING THE WRATH OF THE WHITE WOLF UPON YOUR HEAD!"
"hahahahahaha. tee hee. I eat poop."
"YOU MOTHERFUCKER! IF I CATCH YOU I'LL TEAR YOUR HEART OUT!"
"hahahahahahahah!"
I hang up and immediately sit down to write.)



I tried to avoid getting involved with the fence project because I am hearing impaired and power saws cut through my head like nails through butter. In fact, this injury developed building crappy fences for a horse ranch in CA. It's only gotten worse. The Nurse wanted some privacy for her new hot tub and I'm the freeloader in the basement so there was no way out. I did manage to get away long enough to miss digging five 3' holes in the dense Mississippi mud using a manual post hole digger. Fuck that! Tee heee!

I didn't get out of staining the shit. The Nurse saw bamboo back in our Venice days and had some shipped from California. Like $300 in bamboo but the cedar cost $400 to frame it, thus negating any sustainability credit from the bamboo. This girl throws money around. I wanted to get reclaimed scrap lumber and nail something together. Lash it together with coat hangers...like my van.

This is the final product. A kind of Tiki cafe/Spa.






Fence: $700 materials. $600 labor. $100 beer. sub total $1400






Spa: $5000 subtotal $5000






Electrical work: materials $300. Labor $150 sub total $450






Grand total: $6850.


I gotta admit that it was nice to lay in with the waterfall feature and the back jets hitting my inflamed sciatica.
Always the fashion slave...my watch says 1974 and my belt buckle says 1969.

And this is for the chicken farmer if I am ever able to get back there. With drunk teenage girls calling me every night the chances are slim. That is supposed to say SOBER but I was drunk and stoned when I tooled it so now it says SOBEA, which is how they pronounce it in Nottingham.