Eyes Front

I find technology to be a frustrating in the extreme. So convenient and yet so mundane and also quite destructive in many many ways. What are we doing here? Is the best we can manage really a pretty fast explosion based propulsion system? Is getting news and entertainment in an instant really an advantage? Is anybody in control or our development as a species or are we all just enjoying a headlong rush into oblivion and hoping that we will get off the ride before it crashes?

What is one to do but sigh and hope for a benign alien empire to enfold our planet and correct our wayward nonsense.

Go Leafs Go

Unabashed I pronounce Go Leafs Go! Given my love of said hockey team I am pleased to say that when the NHL failed to broadcast the fairly purchased Leafs game the GameCenter chat board was flushed with commiseration.

Did the influx of woe catch someones attention? Did dear Brian Burke plan a delay in the connection to prove a point? Go Leafs Go either way.

Money for nothing

I find myself weighed down by the evil nature of money today. Why must our hard work and energy be transferred and returned to us as a numerical value? Why are some given energy for little or no effort while others need to break themselves for just enough energy to power their survival? Why are their institutions that are designed to syphon our energy? and why are they sanctioned by the powers that we give trade our energy to for protection? Please answer me this question anonymous god of internet intelligence. As an aside, does naming a god create them or must they exist to plant the seed in our imagination?

Survival of the witless

I was treated to a very racially charged political debate today and as I was listening I couldn't help but think of the aggression being spewed about and how little it had to do with practical survival. This got me thinking of how survival in this era has very little to do with survival in a classic natural sense, and yet for all the differences the rules are brutally simple and concise.

If you can accept the notion of growth and change separate from the theory of evolution I think you have to question the values we have collectively chosen to exalt as a species. Viscous cold hearted cutthroat convoluted trickery should not be a solid tactical approach to ones dealings with others, but it is.

Green light for Red

I have often wonder, without any sense of controversy, who exactly benefits from the outlawing of prostitution?

Certainly not the one who lacks the social or physical graces to inspire consensual sex without overt payment. And also not the one who wishes to afford a certain lifestyle yet lacks the necessary intellect or drive to earn a living in some other manner. In fact it just struck me that some terrible harm is being done to the psyche of these individuals through the criminalization of their instinctual imperative in a world that embraces monetary trade.

Imagine how you may feel it was illegal to hire someone to clean your house, but you did it anyway. For years hiding from your friends and family that you don't ever clean the bathtub or vacuum the rug. I am sure that sort of pressure would eat at a person of conscience. And how about having to hide from your children the fact that the food they are eating was earned through folding and dusting for a stranger.

Wouldn't a safe work environment benefit prostitutes and their clients? And what about a fair wage for the prostitute themselves instead of the current pimpery which our government practically sanctions through their morality based legal system.

I ask again who is being protected by these morals?

Manifest your own destiny.

Wouldn't it be neat if vast pissed off middle class in the United States all got together online and formed a new party to compete with the the elephant and the donkey? They wouldn't even need any sort of campaign funds or anything. Just hold an online poll of who people would like to see as president and then at election day everyone can write that name in and boom Jon Stewart is the president.

Do you think there might be a concerted effort to reform the stagnant political process that is U.S. democracy then?

Simple Really.

It is interesting how the world works in regards to lifestyle. I believe that today our lives are generally easy and at times maddeningly complex. Madness being an entirely personally subjective term. I would submit however that our lives are meant to be quite simple and relatively challenging. Relative to your individual ability to survive said challenges and so appreciate the hardship.

My evidence for this placidly bold statement is the impact of the aforementioned ease on our ability to use this planet to live on.

When we cherished our tribes fire as a living thing the planet could absorb the carbon emissions. By taking the easy way we have, one and all, and our fathers before us, doomed ourselves to a repetition of our species sad sad history.

I often wonder if it will be a sort of dark ages after the fall of the Roman empire kind of fall or will it be the kind of fall that preceded the birth of Sumer. Only time will tell I guess.

I see red roses too.

What a world we live in. How is it that we manage to focus so much negative attention on the things that make us different. Why isn't any emphasis placed on all the things that every being in our species has in common. Off the top of my head there are too many to count.

We all breath , and our bodies all carry oxygenated blood cells to and fro. We all expel waste in a like fashion. We are all born, and we live until we die. During that time we all seek out those things which bring us pleasure and avoid those things which bring us pain. We can all laugh and we can all cry. Even those who hold back from doing either still carry the innate knowledge of the process behind the action.

We all have eyes to see and ears to hear, and even as I wrote that I knew it wasn't entirely true, but we do all have minds that think and process information and so a deaf child still has ears and may discover completely unaided what their intended purpose was.

The point is that we have evolved a society where we recognize our communal responsibility towards every person in regards to sanitation and safety yet we have failed to grasp the notion that every uniqueness is another facet of our true universal strength. Instead we hate that which differs from our own way and regard those things as a challenge to the goodness of our lives. Madness, systemic insanity, I say.

Evil Root?

An odd thought just struck me. You may or may not know the biblical story of Cain and Able, either way, at the end Cain is marked somehow and exiled from the first enclave of people on earth for fratricide, the first murder. I wonder if the mark of Cain was that his skin lost all its pigment. White people do kinda stand out in the multicultural rainbow. And odd thought like I say, but a thought I had none the less.

Envy

Please don't misunderstand, Stephen Hawking is a magnificent intelligence, but I bet if I had a robot voice people would pay attention to what I had to say too.

Does that sound insensitive.

Speaking of Stephen Hawking, he says we should leave the planet. I say maybe the universe is better off if this is as far as we can get.

R E S P E C T

Respect is such an interesting and ephemeral notion. We all want it, and we all should give it, but we all seem to have different notions of what it means in a practical sense. I am currently ensconced in some exceedingly frustrating and immature drama with a person who demands they be given all proper respect while they are seemingly incapable of showing even the slightest hint of respect to anyone else.

Ultimately I am forcing my brain to thank the universe for yet another chance to practice my patience (I need a lot of practice). However I am continually struck by the oddness of this persons apparent belief that there is no problem with taking and never giving. This is, I think, a common failing that reaches into the very heart of the human psyche. We would all love free energy wouldn't we?

I would like to be evolved enough to give this person the respect they so desperately crave without expecting any reciprocal courtesy, alas I am stuck in my self and so find that I will not allow any abuse of my kindness. Antagonistic? Perhaps.

3D

I think this weekend I will spend some time shaking people who are going to watch the movie 'Step Up 3D'. Once I have given them a good shake I will tell them that if they want to watch some people dancing in three dimensions they need only find actual people dancing.

Afterthought- I believe I am being somewhat prejudicial in my thoughts towards this film. Perhaps it has a merit I am oblivious to. Perhaps I should see it before I decide it it simply numbing entertainment. All apologies to all those fans of this film.

Love

Hardline

I was sitting for dinner at a restaurant in that strange limbo between fast food and fine dining when I noticed something I found quite strange. At the table across from us sat a perfectly average family completely unremarkable except that they all had their heads down and their thumbs racing. That's right, they were, one and all, texting at the dinner table.

Mesmerized I watched as the minutes flew by. Drinks arrived, food was ordered, and not a single word was spoken aloud between them. Dinner arrived at their table and was hardly noticed as the interest and import of the daily minutia from who knows where was sucked through those tiny little screens. I was stunned by the absurdly bleak picture of the future I was seeing.

And then I saw it, the coup de grace, for this portrait of the neo-nuclear family. Papa had his bluetooth headset in his ear. You know that little blue light that shines when you turn your bluetooth headset on? His was off. and when the phone he was texting on rang, he put the phone to his free ear to speak.

Consider this

If you are one inclined to worship an ALL-POWERFUL god-type thing please help me answer this question:

If a god is responsible for creating absolutely everything, doesn't that make every and all deviant affront to that gods plan another glorious facet of its design? Shouldn't a major selling point for a religion be just how many different choices their all powerful deity thing had brought into being (and mutant witch lizard babies and homosexual weddings and stuff)?

If anyone can help me wrap my head around this one, I've been waiting.

Dog Walk

I was walking my dogs this evening when the thought came to me for this blog. It was a beautiful summer night in any/nowhere north america. I was blissfully enjoying the sun and the song stuck in my head when all of it was shattered by the noxious stank of the roads being re-tarred ahead. It took me a moment, I must admit, before I was able to regain my somewhat oblivious and peaceful stroll. But then I heard a sound.

Not a sound in the world, a sound in my brain. And no I don't hear voices (often enough to worry) and it wasn't a ghost. Nope, the sound I was hearing was my own deeply and effectively suppressed sense of righteous indignation.I was not upset that hard working folk got to earn their living, I wasn't even upset that my stupid dog tried to lick the tar and probably inhaled some sort of expensive drawn out family tragedy. Nope my spirit was moved by something different all together.

I am going to go off on a little tangent now, but I will get back to the point. Promise.

Please keep in mind that I am in now way an accredited scholar. I am merely a human, being.

Imagine if you will the life of our planet. For my arguments sake lets say it is one hundred million, billion, abakajillion years, and barring some sort of catastrophe our planet will live for that inconceivably vast expanse of time. Now imagine that some one or thing or one thing or even two wanted to kill this planet. Their are various ways to go about it I suppose (Our existence as a species is too fragile by far), but what if the goal was to be as evil and devious as possible? Keep that in mind.

As you keep that thought in your mind lets go back to my walk, and the tar. I don't know how much it costs to make tar, I don't even know how its made. I would wager though that the process involves the burning of some fossil fuels. I know for a near certain fact that transporting said tar from its place of birth to it's place of smear burns fossils fuels in an escalating rate directly proportional to the distance traveled. I also know for a fact that fossil fuels are burned in the application of the tar (don't forget the fossil fuel we burn to gather and refine fossil fuel).

I personally believe that the burning of fossil fuels has a negative impact on the air we breath and the water we drink and the food we eat. As reluctant as I am to take the side of popular science, there you have it.

And as I walked my dogs these gears kept on turning.

I began to equate the impact of what I was seeing to the life of the planet. That finitely vast length of time is still only a compounding of days, weeks, months, and eons. what difference could a little tar make? Well let's say one ounce of tar smeared on the road equates to the loss of one hour in the tangible life of our planet. For all you drinkers out there I am sure you can easily imagine what 26 ounces look like, and I would say about that much tar covers a little more than a square foot, 30,000 square millimeters to be annoyingly precise. Any way you slice it that is not a lot of road to tar in return for an entire tangible day in the life of our planet.

Everywhere I looked I saw months and months and months of life just slapped on the ground to congeal in a dead mess. Smooth driving though. And the gears kept turning. How many days did the planet lose when my car was made? How much life was squandered so I could have a portable computational device with which to blog.

My heart bled, my soul was crushed, as the weight of my own personal responsibility was driven home and by my averageness multiplied many many times.

What a bitter thought to share for my first foray into blogging. This beautiful planet we are all privileged to share is literally dying for our convenience.

Love