the viral paste:
SUPPOSEDLY if you've seen over 85 films, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. There are 239 films on this list. If you so desire, copy this list, go to your own blog or social networking account, and paste this in a post. Then, put x's next to the films you've seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun.
My total score: 58
( ) Rocky Horror Picture Show
( ) Grease
( ) Pirates of the Caribbean
(X) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
( ) Boondock Saints
(X) Fight Club
( ) Starsky and Hutch
(X) Neverending Story
(X) Blazing Saddles
(X) Airplane
Total: 5
(X) The Princess Bride
( ) Anchorman
( ) Napoleon Dynamite
(X) Labyrinth
( ) Saw
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
( ) White Oleander
( ) Anger Management
( ) 50 First Dates
( ) The Princess Diaries
( ) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Total so far: 7
(X) Scream
( ) Scream 2
( ) Scream 3
( ) Scary Movie
( ) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
( ) American Pie
( ) American Pie 2
( ) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp
Total so far: 8
(X) Harry Potter 1
( ) Harry Potter 2
( ) Harry Potter 3
( ) Harry Potter 4
( ) Resident Evil 1
( ) Resident Evil 2
( ) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
( ) The Village
( ) Lilo & Stitch
Total so far: 9
( ) Finding Nemo
( ) Finding Neverland
( ) Signs
( ) The Grinch
(X) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
( ) White Chicks
( ) Butterfly Effect
( ) 13 Going on 30
( ) I, Robot
( ) Robots
Total so far: 10
( ) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
( ) Universal Soldier
( ) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
( ) Along Came Polly
( ) Deep Impact
( ) KingPin
( ) Never Been Kissed
( ) Meet The Parents
( ) Meet the Fockers
( )Eight Crazy Nights
( ) Joe Dirt
(X) KING KONG
Total so far: 11
( ) A Cinderella Story
( ) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
( ) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Dumber & Dumberer
( ) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
(X) Halloween
( ) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving ‑MAS
( ) Flubber [the original]
Total so far: 12
( ) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
( ) Practical Magic
( ) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
( ) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
( ) The Whole Nine Yards
( ) The Whole Ten Yards
Total so far: 12
( ) The Day After Tomorrow
( ) Child's Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky
( ) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
( ) Gothika
(X) Nightmare on Elm Street
(X) Sixteen Candles
( ) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
( ) The Grudge 2
(X) The Mask
( ) Son Of The Mask
total so far: 15
( ) Bad Boys
( ) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
( ) Lucky Number Slevin
(X) Ocean's Eleven
( ) Ocean's Twelve
( ) Bourne Identity
( ) Bourne Supremecy
( ) Lone Star
( ) Bedazzled
(X) Predator
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog
( ) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
Total so far: 17
(X) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(X) ET
(X) Children of the Corn
( ) My Bosses Daughter
( ) Maid in Manhattan
(X) War of the Worlds
( ) Rush Hour
( ) Rush Hour 2
Total so far: 21
( ) Best Bet
( ) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
( ) She's All That
( ) Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
(X) Mars Attacks
( ) Event Horizon
( ) Ever After
(X) Wizard of Oz
(X) Forrest Gump
(X) Big Trouble in Little China
(X) The Terminator
(X) The Terminator 2
( ) The Terminator 3
Total so far: 27
(X) X‑Men
( ) X‑2
( ) X‑3
( ) Spider‑Man
( ) Spider‑Man 2
( ) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
( ) Catch Me If You Can
(X) The Little Mermaid
( ) Freaky Friday (the original)
( ) Reign of Fire
( ) The Skulls
( ) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
( ) Shrek
( ) Shrek 2
Total so far: 29
( ) Swimfan
( ) Miracle on 34th street
( ) Old School
( ) The Notebook
( ) K‑Pa
( ) Krippendorf's Tribe
( ) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
( ) The 40‑year‑old Virgin
Total so far: 29
(X) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
(X) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
(X) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King
(X) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(X) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(X) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Total so far: 35 ha ha I mark all of these--I’m a geek!
( ) Baseketball
( ) Hostel
(X) Waiting for Guffman
( ) House of 1000 Corpses
( ) Devils Rejcts
( ) Elf
(X) Highlander
( ) Mothman Prophecies
(X) American History X
( ) Three
Total so Far: 38
( ) The Jacket
( ) Kung Fu Hustle
( ) Shaolin Soccer
( ) Night Watch
( ) Monsters Inc.
(X) Titanic
(X) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
( ) Shaun Of the Dead
( ) Willa74
Total so far: 40
( ) High Tension (Haute Tension)
( ) Club Dread
( ) Hulk
(X) Dawn Of the Dead
(X) Hook
( ) Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
( ) 28 days later
( ) Orgazmo
( ) Phantasm
(X) Waterworld
Total so far: 43
( ) Kill Bill vol 1
( ) Kill Bill vol 2
(X) Mortal Kombat
( ) Wolf Creek
( ) Kingdom of Heaven
( ) The Hills Have Eyes
( ) I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
(X) The Last House on the Left
( ) Re‑Animator
(X) Army of Darkness
Total so far: 46
(X) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(X) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(X) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(X) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(X) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(X) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
( ) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
( ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 52
(X) The Matrix
(X) The Matrix Reloaded
(X) The Matrix Revolutions
( ) Animatrix
( ) Evil Dead
( ) Evil Dead 2
(X) Team America: World Police
(X) Red Dragon
(X) Silence of the Lambs
( ) Hannibal
Total: 58
END VIRAL PASTE
My total is less than the stated “have no life” limit, but I’ve seen Brazil and Buckaroo Banzai enough times to possibly push me over that. Oh yeah–and Donnie Darko! Strange how these three, my favorites, are not on the list. And suddenly I see that the 1980s have their grip on me in a way I never realized before.
In other news ...
The Little House in the Ghetto is supposed to be in Dave Bakke's column in the Springfield State Journal-Register tomorrow (Sunday, February 1, 2009). Well, he came to talk to us about frugality, and Carey was here while I was taking Kaleigh and a friend sledding, and I don't know what all will be in the column. But Carey wrote the blog post linked to as sort of an introduction for folks who read the paper and find us through there. It's a good summary of what we've been up to for the past few years. Alhamdolilah.
- Location:zomba, Springfield
- Music:sacred dub: transmission 049
Cities today are well known for popping up in the middle of nowhere, history-less and incomprehensible. There are slums, refugee camps, army bases—and Dubai. That’s what cities now do. If these cities are here today, they weren’t five years ago; if they’re not here now, they will be soon. Today’s cities are made up, viral, fungal, unexpected. Like well-lit film sets in the distance, staged amidst mudflats, reflecting themselves in the still waters of inland reservoirs, today’s cities simply arrive, without reservations; they are not so much invited as they are impossible to turn away. Cities now erupt and linger; they are both too early and far too late. Cities move in, take root and expand, whole neighborhoods throwing themselves together in convulsions of glass and steel.
Except, as Mike Davis memorably points out in his recent book Planet of Slums, the "cities of the future, rather than being made out of glass and steel as envisioned by earlier generations of urbanists, are instead largely constructed out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks, and scrap wood. Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the twenty-first-century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay." This is "pirate urbanization," he writes, and it consists of "anarchic" anti-cities on the fringes of "cyber-modernity." We might be making up new cities everywhere around the world today, but very few of them look like Norman Foster’s eco-metropolis of Masdar, that well-rendered city constructed from nothing but petrodollars atop the sands of Abu Dhabi. Davis writes, or example, that, in "an archipelago of 10 slums" outside Bangalore, India, "researchers found only 19 latrines for 102,000 residents." There is thus what Davis calls an ‘excremental surplus’ to these rapidly expanding environments—yet these are the landscapes to which we refer when we say that humans have become an urban species.
These are not cities in any recognised infrastructural or legislative sense; they are, rather, dense collections of buildings. In contrast to Dubai’s Atari–like desert failure, with its arid combination of over-thought business plans and an absolute lack of content, these super-slums compress far too much content into a radically unplanned space.
On the other hand, sometimes a made-up city does not even require acts of construction. That is, what might appear simply to be a field of cloned single-family houses, buffered by vast tracts of manicured green space, can be transformed into a city with the stroke of a pen. Cities are thus created everyday, in other words, within the administrative guidelines for managing inhabited landscapes—and no new ground need ever be broken. These made-up cities are, in fact, boomburbs, according to Robert Lang and Jennifer LeFurgy, two sociologists with the Washington D.C.-based Brookings Institution.
In their 2007 book, Boomburbs: The Rise of America’s Accidental Cities, Lang and LeFurgy explain that many of the largest cities in the United States today are simply hypertrophied suburbs—they are boomburbs. The mayors of established cities have had a hard time adjusting to this fact. Mesa, Arizona, for instance, an otherwise anonymous tumescence on the air-conditioned desert edge of Phoenix, is a "stealth city": Its population, incredibly, is larger than both Minneapolis–St. Paul and Miami. The authors also describe how the mayor of Salt Lake City once "dismissed the idea" that his city might have anything in common with suburban North Las Vegas, "despite the fact that North Las Vegas is both bigger and more ethnically diverse than Salt Lake City." What these boomburbs have, in lieu of historic centrality and international name-recognition, is a flexible legal and financial infrastructure. They have water rights boards and waste disposal networks, even local schools and sales tax—and though they don’t necessarily have mayors (though some do), they have "landscape management" committees and homeowners associations. These are cities made up less by buildings than by tax codes and the law.
The mayor of Salt Lake City’s widely shared cognitive dissonance, being somehow unable to see that Mesa, Arizona, is bigger than a city like St. Louis—with its Eero Saarinen-designed Gateway Arch along the banks of the Mississippi—is part of what the authors call "a national ambivalence about what we have built in the past half century." This featureless landscape of low-rise retail parks and residential cul-de-sacs—of video shops, hockey moms, and 24-hour supermarkets—has become the dominant architecture of American urbanism, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that it remains critically invisible.... From boomburbs to Urville, via super-slums and Dubai, these instant cities take shape in less than a single generation and cross a fantastic landscape of competing urban forms.
- Location:zomba, Springfield
- Music:Groundation "Me Na In De", from Upon the Bridge
Think of high fructose corn syrup. From Richard Heinberg, Memories and Visions of Paradise p. 91 (1989):
What was this fruit, the eating of which brought Paradise to an end? Clearly, we are not speaking here of ordinary apples or pears. The image is undoubtedly intended as a metaphor--and a profound one at that, considering its centrality to the story. While for the most part we are postponing a consideration of the meaning of the Paradise myth until later in the book, in this case the mythic imagery fairly cries out for some preliminary deciphering.
In nearly all languages, the word fruit is used metaphorically to refer to the result of any creative process. Fruit is the ultimate product of the vegetative cycle of reproduction and growth upon which we depend for our survival, and so it is natural for people in every culture to speak of the end result of human labor, or of any constructive activity, as its fruit. Since all creative processes--from the growth of a tree or an embryo to the invention of a new technology--begin invisibly and end with a completed physical form, the image of fruit is metaphorically applicable to any finished product.
To eat is to take something into oneself and allow it to become a part of one's body. But there are analogous emotional, mental, and spiritual processes: we speak of devouring literature and of feasting on the sight of our beloved. Whatever fascinates us we incorporate mentally and emotionally into ourselves. The eating of the mythic fruit, then, was a fascination or union with the result, or end product, of creation, which is the manifest form of things.
Adam and Eve were stewards of the creative process, enjoined to tend and keep the Garden. The story implies that human beings were originally concerned with the entire process of creation rather than merely with its end products. The wise gardener--metaphoric or literal--cares for all phases of the creative cycles at hand. But when he becomes fascinated merely with the fruit, neglecting or distorting other parts of the process, the whole continuum is thrown out of balance. As we are discovering throughout the world today, the farmer who is interested only in increasing crop yield and who ignores the health of the soil will eventually drain the land of its ability to provide nourishing food.
In nearly all languages, the word fruit is used metaphorically to refer to the result of any creative process. Fruit is the ultimate product of the vegetative cycle of reproduction and growth upon which we depend for our survival, and so it is natural for people in every culture to speak of the end result of human labor, or of any constructive activity, as its fruit. Since all creative processes--from the growth of a tree or an embryo to the invention of a new technology--begin invisibly and end with a completed physical form, the image of fruit is metaphorically applicable to any finished product.
To eat is to take something into oneself and allow it to become a part of one's body. But there are analogous emotional, mental, and spiritual processes: we speak of devouring literature and of feasting on the sight of our beloved. Whatever fascinates us we incorporate mentally and emotionally into ourselves. The eating of the mythic fruit, then, was a fascination or union with the result, or end product, of creation, which is the manifest form of things.
Adam and Eve were stewards of the creative process, enjoined to tend and keep the Garden. The story implies that human beings were originally concerned with the entire process of creation rather than merely with its end products. The wise gardener--metaphoric or literal--cares for all phases of the creative cycles at hand. But when he becomes fascinated merely with the fruit, neglecting or distorting other parts of the process, the whole continuum is thrown out of balance. As we are discovering throughout the world today, the farmer who is interested only in increasing crop yield and who ignores the health of the soil will eventually drain the land of its ability to provide nourishing food.
- Location:zomba, Springfield
- Music:the Orb, Earth (Gaia)
The Top Ten Lies of Television
(10) TV is real life. (9) The news tells the truth. (8) TV characters make good role models. (7) Children's TV is harmless. (6) TV advertising benefits you. (5) Everybody watches it, so I have to. (4) My life will be better if I buy advertised products. (3) What I and my kids watch doesn't really affect us. (2) I can learn all I need to know by watching TV. (1) Television is necessary.
To avoid fools, take steps!
- Location:zomba, Springfield
- Music:sacred dub: transmission 043
save energy--wear a dirty shirt
quality child care keeps Illinois working
school makes me throw up a little
conserve fuel--stop driving past my house
vote to empower
I think the ones that are supposed to be silly, I actually agree with; the ones that are meant to be serious, I find ironically hilarious, and sad. We are so alienated from being able to even imagine, let alone remember, real human community (tribe, village, neighborhood, extended family) that we think it desirable that "quality child care keeps Illinois working." WTF is wrong with a people who must separate their children from themselves in order to toil for food and shelter!?! If the food is locked up, the people are not free.
And let me know when something truly empowering comes up for a vote. May we make our own bike lanes for safety? May we nurture food and beauty in abandoned lots that "don't belong to" us the folks who live next door? MAY WE REFRAIN FROM fueling the dragon that's devouring the earth, as much petroleum as we can spare the blood and toil to extract, incinerating plastic trash (unnecessary packaging) to make super-toxins to give our babies cancer? May a citizen arrest a criminal police officer? May we drain our dishwater into the garden? May we reverse the ten-thousand-year trend of one insane culture multiplying and turning the world into a desert? May we raise our own small quiet friendly livestock for milk and eggs, and share with friends and neighbors, without bureaucratic hoop-jumping? To me, empowerment might come down to, how much bureaucratic hoop-jumping is required? We have to get a permit to gather peacefully to petition for redress of grievances. Is that right?
"The underlying problem that... the 'developed' world faces is how to fashion an economy that is not an enterprise of destruction. That is, how to create sustainable economies & sustsainable human habitats--cities and towns--for those economies to dwell in." --James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere
"I would go so far as to say that there is no solution for environmental destruction that isn't first a healing of the damage that has been done to the human community." --Curtis White, The Ecology of Work
"The risk I propose is simply a return to our nobility." --Curtis White, The Idols of Environmentalism
SUSTAINABLE OR BUST
<3
Don
- Location:zomba, Springfield
- Music:"Desert" from Night Silence Desert by Shajarian & Kalhor (Persian sublime)
Do you bring or buy your lunch during the work week? How much money do you spend on food consumed during working hours? Sponsored by Microsoft Small Business |
I haven't popped in here much lately, but happened to tonight. I almost didn't answer this question because I didn't feel like explaining it all. I wanted to be inspired, not get an essay question, so I looked back at the past few weeks' archives of Writer's Block questions, and they're even less interesting!!!! I never gave a crap about NFL stuff (except when the Bears were in the Superbowl and I was in Jr. High), and I don't care to learn enough about Palin to give an adequately informed opinion about all that.
So, how much money do I spend on food consumed during work hours? Very little.
I'm occasionally active on another blog, or two.
Oh, speaking of unjobbing, check out this graphic of vicious vs. virtuous cycles.
- Location:zomba, Springfield
- Music:Ras Batch, "Healing of de Nation" yeeaaahhhh......
"It has a physiological function, and unless there's a reason to remove it, you should just leave it alone. It's OK." --Roland
"It is not intrinsically evil stuff"!!!!!!!!
- Location:zomba, Springfield
- Music:"Chant Down Babylon" --Xterminator Crew (phat dub!!!!!)
This tortoise is going to blahg about the economy now. Sorry.
I saw this headline, More Than $1 Trillion Needed to Solve Housing Crisis, and I thought "it can't cost that much to house all the homeless people..." I mean, consider all the empty houses and empty lots ...
But the "housing crisis" isn't people who need housing, it's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac! The latest bankrupt institutions!
And this one guy from some corporation named after himself somehow gets to make grand pronouncements about the game we call the economy (which is, by the way, hardly economical). The article linked above says:
$25 billion--or even the GAO's worst-case $100 billion estimate--pales in comparison to the cost of doing nothing, says Nouriel Roubini, NYU professor and chairman of RGE Monitor.
"We have to find a solution where government intervention prevents a disorderly outcome" in the housing market that leads to a "systemic banking crisis," Roubini says.
The housing bill, which earmarks $300 billion to backstop mortgages after lenders agree to lower mortgage payments, is "a step in the right direction" but "doesn't do enough," he says, predicting the government will ultimately need to spend more than $1 trillion."
But the last two times I turned on the radio and it happened to be NPR, I heard people reassuring me that the banks are fine, and deposits are insured by the FDIC. (Is the FDIC federal, or a corporation?) Well, if "the banks are fine" is the official story, then I know what to think."We have to find a solution where government intervention prevents a disorderly outcome" in the housing market that leads to a "systemic banking crisis," Roubini says.
The housing bill, which earmarks $300 billion to backstop mortgages after lenders agree to lower mortgage payments, is "a step in the right direction" but "doesn't do enough," he says, predicting the government will ultimately need to spend more than $1 trillion."
While I was typing this up, Vachel Lindsay's "On the Road to Nowhere" came on (read by Bob Large). A couple favorite blebs:
Did you dare to make the songs
Vanquished workmen need?
Did you waste much money
To deck a leper's feast?
Love the truth, defy the crowd
Scandalize the priest?
....
Lust for velvet in their hearts,
Pierced with Mammon's spears,
All but a few fanatics
Give up their darling goal,
Seek to be as others are,
Stultify the soul.
Vanquished workmen need?
Did you waste much money
To deck a leper's feast?
Love the truth, defy the crowd
Scandalize the priest?
....
Lust for velvet in their hearts,
Pierced with Mammon's spears,
All but a few fanatics
Give up their darling goal,
Seek to be as others are,
Stultify the soul.
Vachel, guide us out of the land of Babbitry to the Tree of Laughing Bells!!!
- Location:zomba, Springfield
- Music:"Through the Ankh" by Hossam Ramzy
Sunday before last I woke up from a dream where I was yelling and throwing a chair. When the phone rang at 8:30 I about threw it on the floor. I answered it instead, and there was no one on the other end.
More friends visiting, farmer's market starting up, giving a seminar on vermicomposting. Sharqi spends a day out with a friend from out of town. Our number was in the paper for Food Not Lawns so we get lots of calls from random people about how deep to plant potatoes, how much of a yard to till to grow "enough" food (start by reading up on permaculture garden design), do we have seeds (yes!), and so on.
Last Sunday (two days ago) I did better, I didn't feel like my head was gonna explode until 10:00 or so.
As far as activities and people go, it really has been 95% delightful. And then even when I'm at home by myself with "free" time I have a swarm of dozens of projects, big and small, to start, work on, or finish. "One task at a time" has been my mantra for a couple weeks now. When it's time to think about nothing but worms, think about nothing but worms. I can't get ahead on various things because there's always something more urgent to do. Like hide under the table in the basement from tornadoes. When I feel like I should do something, sometimes I can't think clearly enough from all the static in my head, to decide what to do. If I start on something I'll just get interrupted anyway. When it's nice out and I have outside work to do, if there are kids in the yard, I just want to hide indoors. I dread having to moderate their fights and try to be fair when each one's version of events is probably highly spun, somewhat selective, and often outright intentionally misleading. Last year I found myself yelling at them and sending them all home a lot. I hate that. I hate having a mental list of things to add to my two or three physical lists, and then having new things popping up all the time anyway and wondering how many things I've already forgotten from my mental list. Someday I'll get to make those killer mix cds, and put together a couple zines, and sift through music at high volume, and look for Vachel Lindsay's grave, and like just sit and write some of the things that have occurred to me lately that I'm trying to remember.
But right now I gotta get in the shower before more people come over in 40 minutes. Oh yeah, and sweep the bathroom floor, and take out the trash, and root canal the mildew, and and
peace y'all!
edit: and now, the very next day, I had to send K's friends home and bring her in on charges of being incorrigibly rude to her friends. Ugh.
and then the cat puked in the closet and the light wouldn't turn on and I had to get a flashlight to clean it up and then I went out to scrape more paint of the porch.
- Location:zomba, Springfield
- Music:Burial, Untrue
Donald
- Location:zomba, springfield
- Mood:highly intoxicated
- Music:Sinead O'Connor, "Throw Down Your Arms" on next: Psalters!
I don't necessarily recycle "every day" because we just don't create that much trash. Family of three, maybe two bags a week. Unless we pick up the trash that blows into the yard. Maybe I do actually literally throw something or other into the recycling every single day. Now that I think about it.
I could do more energy conservation. Use electricity less, insulate the house better.
The new wood burning stove is great and plenty warm in Spring, but we'll see next winter if we wish we got ourselves a bigger one. So anyway, not every single day, but when it's not too warm outside, we use carbon-neutral locally-harvested home heating and cooking fuel. My only regret is that the chainsaw burns gas. But we don't have a car so at least there's that. Only it does make getting gas for the chainsaw harder. D'ohh!
But not having a car also makes it harder to rush out and spend lots of money, so in that respect our consumption level is reduced, and that's every day. Even just not eating out (especially fast food) probably does a lot to reduce our consumption. "Consumption" meaning largely "waste" in our modern industrial lifestyle.
See the Noble Savagery blog where we talk about crazy eco-stuff. We're also starting a Food Not Lawns Springfield (Illinois) network. Exciting.
For environmentalism, nothing beats No Impact Man. Truly an inspiration. And there's perennial favorite Ran Prieur.
- Location:zomba, springfield
- Music:Sinead O'Connor Throw Down Your Arms
- Location:zomba, springfield
- Music:WQNA, The Eastern Hemisphere (myspace.com/anne_sofya)
I <3 unjobbing, unschooling, and unchurching.
Relatedly, we're starting a Food Not Lawns Springfield group on Yahoo. (I have no idea why it's a Yahoo! Tech group.)
Did I mention the new Little House in the Ghetto, on an easier-to-use popular blogging site.
- Location:zomba, springfield
- Music:sacred dub podcast transmission 036
Also, last night I put my first post on our new Little House in the Ghetto. (Sharqi moved to Blogspot because it's easier to use than LiveJournal.)
- Location:zomba, springfield
- Music:WQNA, The Eastern Hemisphere (recorded last night)
Mead may be etymologically related to Mab, queen of the faeries.
- Location:zomba, springfield
- Music:Sugar Rhyme, by Bonobo
<rant>
It's hard to care about politics when politics doesn't care about community. E.g. they're always scheming to tear down places where poor people live, to build places for rich people to live, thereby PLANNING for homelessness. The many times I've voted, I've never seen anything like this come up for referendum, or a candidate considered "electable" try to suggest we should reverse these trends. When our local mayor's campaign called once to encourage me to vote, and I said I wasn't planning to, they asked if there was some issue ... I told them I was concerned about food security and how we'll be able to feed ourselves as petroleum runs low, and maybe community gardens would be good. They then suggested I contact the mayor's office--I guess they really didn't want to know when they asked. Phooey. That was the only time someone working for a politician almost wanted to know what I care about. And believe me, I've written letters, I've signed petitions, I've stood around holding signs, I've voted again and again. The Land of Lincoln has one of America's MOST racist state criminal justice systems. Carcinogens are floating in the air EVERYWHERE on Earth. Whose platform includes NOT PRODUCING ANY MORE TOXINS?!? It didn't matter which party was in charge, we still committed genocide against the people of Iraq in the long years between Gulf Wars I and II. Didn't everyone who voted for the party that was in charge (including myself) get some blood on their hands doing that?
Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy.</rant>
So, what do we do? We communicate, locally and online; we share with people we see face to face (our immediate community), we work on our own food security while simultaneously fostering a healthier local habitat for people and all the other animals, plants, fungi, etc. Slowly switching more and more from vicious to virtuous cycles.
Sharqi recently posted this about climate change, bureaucracy, and why it's NOT depressing.
In other news, we had lovely weather the past few days, and got lots of yard work done. Rented a hydraulic log splitter and are building some massive piles of firewood. Someday soon we won't be so beholden to the natural gas corporations, and we might be able to stay warm or even cook when gas supplies evaporate.
- Location:zomba, springfield
- Music:Bonobo, "Silver" ... now it's Alias & Tarsier "Picking the Same Lock"
usually, Leatherman pocket tool, given to me by Dad upon High School graduation.
wallet, full of archaic ephemera from long ago, and a handul of cash, mash'Allah
book to read. ... currently either Permaculture Designer's Manual, or The Years of Rice and Salt.
water bottle (Springfield tap water)
- Location:zomba, springfield
- Music:WQNA, The Eastern Hemisphere (myspace.com/anne_sofya)
Sledders are here!
- Location:zomba, springfield
- Music:waiting
SO WHY don't I get a regular damn job instead of bleeding for bucks?
A job requires a certain way of appearing, a certain rigidity of days & ways, a certain muffling of the marvelous when it wants to utter a truth hilariously damning. Where is there room for compassion & creativity-our innate human strengths-in the square holes of cash register or cubicle?
What is a dollar worth? Less than a Canadian dollar, now. When will the silver in a dollar be worth more than the dollar?When you have a regular job, you have to spend money to support it. Stress relief, commute expenses, dress code requirements, convenience foods. You also spend time devoted to the job that's not counted as time"on the clock" or "at work." Deducting from pay the extra expenses attached to the job, and adding to hours the real amount of time devoted to job or recovering from job, you may find your job's real dollars per hour is half what you're told it is. Is it really worth it? For all the meaningless shlock products and compounding interest on old debt that suck up the money?
Our solution, with much thanks to Un-Jobbing: the adult liberation handbook by Michael Fogler, has been to pay off debts, spend radically less, work less, and have so much free time that I get so busy with home & permaculture & unschooling that I don't want to take the time to surf the buses & sidewalks around town to even collect job applications.
Also, I'm one of the introvert minority, & I can't stand to call people I don't know, or ask anyone for anything, or pretend to be pleasant & outgoing when I just want to think. It's like fingernails on a blackboard to me. I would SERIOUSLY rather sit & wait a couple hours (reading) & then sit an hour with a needle in my arm. I sit, with the Matrix plugged directly into me, and either watch TV or try to read while the TVs are on. I try to relish the bizarreness. If I get my arm really comfortable beforehand and don't move it, I barely notice it after a while. The workers have all been really good and nice. I'm honestly impressed. Amusingly, since I started doing this, we've found out a few other people we know are doing it too.
time at the job site: 6 hours/week
pay per week: about $55
pay per hour on site: $9.16
Commute expense: $1.50 bus fare
dress code: comfort
boss: none
schedule: loose
I must point out, and THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, that if either of us got a real job, we would not be able to do what we do, or make much progress on our plans.
- Location:zomba, springfield
- Music:Bonobo, "Hatoa", from Days to Come disc 2
Considering, when I was young, I once passed out after having blood drawn, and considering that on other occasions I've gotten rather lightheaded from minor accidents, plasma donation wouldn't seem to be a good fit with me. But I figured it would still be better than looking for a job. And it is. I went back the third time today!
It's been pretty busy there, so if I count the time I spend waiting as well as the time (about an hour) with the needle in my arm, it works out to about $35 for about four hours or a half a workday's being "occupied" there. Considering the costs of formal employment (e.g. clothing, laundering, commute and vehicle expenses, stress relief), it actually seems like a decent deal to me. It only costs me $1.50 in bus fare to get there and back. I usually read as much as I can, and doing so I may have begun catching up on all the books people have given me to read.
For me, I think the biggest negative is the TVs that are always on everywhere. Just think of people having conversations instead of watching inanity punctuated with advertising. I don't think I saw a single ad for anything I actually need except healthful delicious food, and the actual food the ads refer to is never going to be all that healthful!
I'm pleasantly surprised to find the staff at the plasma place to be quite pleasant to work with, if a bit harried. The three different phlebotomists who have "stuck" me now have all been very professional about it; I guess they get plenty of practice. Believe me, I don't like pain, but the discomfort of the plasma needle is minor, especially compared with the many discomforts of seeking, finding, and enduring employment!
- Location:zomba, springfield
- Music:Ravi Shankar, "Mangalam"
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