Maybe the Democrat bashers have already forgotten that the last Republican presidency, over 8 years, drove our nation into the largest debt it has ever known. Bush II alone increased spending by over 50%.

FIFTY PER CENT.

That’s the highest increase since LBJ.

It’s clear that partisan lines make no sense to argue anymore because fiscal conservatism isn’t a term found in the playbook for Democrats or Republicans of late.

If only some of us would stop pointing fingers at waft generalizations (what’s the point in that?).

I don’t know, how many reeds does a flute have? It’s still a woodwind, or is it?

How dare they make a daily ritual of ruthlessly misleading the public into a warped state of civic complacency. Ruthless and complacent!? Can you even DO that? FOX News can, and they can do it better than you.

I feel a slight pain in my side every time I see a FOX News report. I don’t know if it’s me feeling slightly bad for them as humans, or if it’s simply a small, precursive physical manifestation of the pain they will eventually cause in this world.

FOX News, your reporting tactics do this world far more evil than good.

Well good riddance.

The majority of Americans have been living like kings at the cost of other fellow Americans, and the rest of the world in general, for far too long. Step out of your Hummer that you park in your 4 car garage and go live in a box for a while you fucking arrogant pricks.

For the record, I, along with many other responsible Americans, live a fine life WITHIN our means. Generally, that makes us better prepared for tough economic times, when insanely inflated senses of worth get hammered out.

Maybe some of us will finally learn the lesson that life isn’t all about “me”.

It’s about “us”. The world is not a bunch of individuals, it is a community, and hopefully this meltdown will help us start acting like one.

OBAMA! You can’t fucking tell the heads of  public companies how much they should get paid! What are you thinking!?!?! This is socialism for pete’s sake! That’s going to trickle down to me and as the manager of the local McDonalds, I’ll soon have a salary cap too.

Bullshit.

If the government hands money to a company that would otherwise be forced to close its doors, it has every right to tell them how to spend that money.

It’s saving you from bankruptcy because you were too stupid, self-absorbed,  and wasteful in the first place and by God if it’s going to help you with a cash handout, it has the right to stop you from following the same path again.

You don’t like it? Don’t take the handout.

This is not socialism morons, it’s common sense.

It also means, just as it does every four years, that election season is upon us in the U.S. Now, the only thing I am reminded of during election season is how horribly self-serving and corrupt our society is. How big money, and not elected officials, controls the government. Sad really. The monetary unit is king here, as of course, it is in most any capitalist society, democracy or not.

Enough of that though. I’d rather think of how you and I can work within the confines of that system to create positive change. Is it possible? Sure. But you have to be willing to have a set of goals and values, cherish them, hold them ever so close, and not loose sight of them. The only thing that makes those goals and values valid, worthwhile, and effective in creating change, is if you stick to them in the face of their worst enemies. Much positive change has been swayed, disheartened, and ultimately abandoned because people have been made to feel their values are not worth pursuing, because someone either talks you into a more lucrative proposition, or because they pose a undying threat to those values.

We seem to forget that the only people who can crush those values we hold dear are ourselves.

As much as I hate technology, I can’t really bag on it all too much.

That’s mostly because I’m a tehcnical writer by trade, I grew up with this stuff. Secondly because I see a glint of hope, however small it may be, in the tech industry. I see areas where technology, faster networks, better communication, can actually help save some of our natural resources.

How many people do you know who telecommute? I don’t do it as consistently as I would like, but if I can get away with writing a tech book in my living room, or a few blocks walk away in the park, a coffee shop, etc… I will. It’s not that those are necessarily better places to do this kind of work (they’re often distracting) but it saves me from letting fumes into the air, burning more gas, and burning a hole in my pocketbook while i’m at it. I get some purposeful exercise (rather than running a treadmill at the gym). My mind is opened up to new experiences and not locked down into that day-to-day routine that often takes place in an office setting.

Currently, speed is the only deterring factor. Even on business-class DSL line, a VPN tunnel connection isn’t nearly fast enough to work on files over a network that is 50 or 1,000 miles away. Its time will come, however and many tech companies see this. The’re gearing up for a virtualized world. The faster, more secure, and more efficient our networks get, the more we can do remotely.

Think of a world where every programmer, writer, accountant, service-based purveyor works from their home office, from the park, from the barber shop while getting a trim. How much less pollution will there be in our cities, and how much will we save on transportation costs. How many cars will be off the road on a daily basis.

Then again, flip that coin and ask how many of these positions are tech-based to start with. Look at it from this point of view and it’s almost like the tech industry finding ways to support itself in a more sustainable way. If these jobs didn’t exist to create technology in the first place, we wouldn’t be worried about smog created by programmers driving solo to work at expansive tilt-up corporate campuses built over former farmland. I suppose it depends on where you live as to how you look at this one. If one had to criticize technology this way, Silicon Valley denizens would probably get the worst of it.

Regardless, I’m about ready to see technology help the planet a bit more, and help us a bit less with our incessantly habitual obsession with tech gadgetry.

Play the above audio file while reading to get the full experience. It is a stream of consciousness “instant” composition that goes along with this post.

Ever had a really busy day, yet at the end of it you still feel like you haven’t accomplished a fraction of what you need to? I’ve been running on all cylinders today, helping with audition recording edits for a professional clarinet player friend of mine (astounding musician), buying paint, writing thank you cards, transferring all the numbers from my old phone to my new one, editing photographs, helping teach illustrator.

I suppose it does not feel as productive when it’s mostly errands, chores, and such…

I did notice a really great artwork at one of the local galleries last night amongst a bunch of not-so-inspiring pieces. It had to do with Victory Gardens. I’d forgotten those ever existed. Mostly because they have not existed since at time when I was too young to remember anything.

Well, despite the fact that I feel like I have more to do, I’m likely going to go out. Said friend is only in town for another week or so till I don’t see him for another year. You have to take advantage of the time when friends are in town, right?

Play the above audio file while reading to get the full experience. It is a stream of consciousness “instant” composition that goes along with this post.

Beef. BBQ, seared, tataki style, fillet mignon. Because I do eat it regularly, it’s occurred to me, or rather I’ve noticed that, the quality of meat has been declining. Not at the top dollar steak houses, but at the mid and lower tier establishments. Then I wonder if it’s just me, and of course, it probably is. But the point is that I still wonder up some unconventional ideas.

What if the government, realizing just how terrible beef is in terms of net energy output (more on the in the next paragraph), began a program to deter citizens from eating so much of it? Making everyday meat products less desirable would cause people to start evaluating other options for a lunchtime sandwich. It would also probably end up being a program that is pretty successful in reducing greenhouse emissions and enhancing sustainability of food sources.

If you aren’t hip to the “meat has a crappy net energy output” deal, lets think of food as fuel for a minute, because, well, that’s exactly what it is. Although most meats are great sources of protein and energy (calories) for humans, they offer very poor efficiency in terms of production. Let’s say that one cow can provide 10,000 units of “fuel” to humans. This is an arbitrary number for example’s sake. Now, during the cows lifetime (up until it is slaughtered and made into various meat products) this sucker might eat 100,000 units of fuel… you know, corn, slop, or whatever the particular farm feeds it.

Meat math time: 10,000-100,000 = (-)90,000. So a net loss of 90,000 energy units. In addition, it ruins potential farmland, farts methane gas, and poops everywhere (well, the poop bit is actually good fertilizer, right?).

Now let’s take an apple. This fruit takes mostly nutrients that are renewable to grow. An apple tree can provide 10,000 units of fuel to humans and it can do so on a consistent basis, every year with little in terms of resources. The apple tree just sits there, drinks the water that falls upon it and gives us nutritional energy for “free”.

Fruit math time: 10,000-0 = 10,000. A net gain of 10,000.

Those examples are very general and don’t take into account lots of other factors, but for the sake of brevity, let’s keep it simple. Most people should already know the junk in the last two paragraphs, but if ya don’t, well, now you do! The thing is, I know it. My friends know it. But we ignore the ramifications of it out of convenience. That is, it’s convenient for us to forget that this excellent tasting steak (and other meats too) are something we probably shouldn’t indulge in every day (regardless of what the bogus food pyramid tells us). If we were to cut down our beef consumption worldwide, and say, just eat it as a treat and not a staple, it could go a long way to ensuring a sustainable ecosystem in the future.

You don’t have to go vegetarian to save the planet. Just eating meat in moderation can help.

Enjoy it, savor it.

Play the above audio file while reading to get the full experience. It is a stream of consciousness “instant” composition that goes along with this post.

The suburbs are ancient.

Not ancient in terms of the world, or of the human occupation of said world, but perhaps more in terms of the modern world, what it is and what it will become. The concept that brought about expansive front yards, back yards, acres of space dedicated to that little slice of the American dream. I single America out only because they (or we, rather) are the the worst I have seen at this. The dream and proposition of having an endless supply of space is one that was once believable. When we knew nothing of how big this place really was. Now we do have an idea of what kind of resource limitations we are dealing with and yet we still continue to push up to (actually, past in most cases) the limits of what our ecosystem can take. All for what? To live our lives as we wish, in unlimited comfort, with unlimited flashy bling, status symbols (both macho and girly), food enough not to fill our stomachs, but to stretch them endlessly, along with our waistlines. We think only about ourselves and perhaps those that surround us on this day, during this year, during a lifetime. Should we think at all about what happens after that? Or what happens to those we don’t know? Should we care? Excess has become the calling card of our generation. It is great to have a big house on a big lot, trees, green fields, nature at your fingertips… but suburbs just don’t make a whole lot of sense for this world right now. It’s unreasonable to say that no one should have that luxury, we all need nature and space to live our lives properly. We’d go insane without it. So what happens when our obsessions destroy it?

Nature does a whole hell of a lot for us (like keeping us alive, breathing, sane, etc…). What have you done for it lately?