Beowulf

Beowolf died for your sins. He gave himself so that the new world, the Christian world could evolve and, eventually, give us our modern world. His sacrifice was made in vain. You, all of you, have squandered the gift bought with our fore bearers blood. They didn't die so you could have giant SUVs with built in DVD players. They died so you could live. That isn't living, that's giving your soul to another that is happy to tell you how to think. Replace the in-car DVD players with home cable and my point remains. These people died so you could be better than they were. Honor their memory, talk to your children, go for a walk, make a nice meal for your significant other. Do something so that those many generations that died so you could live in peace can rest quietly.

Revelations

I realized something tonight. President Obama's stimulus package is a piece of crap. It lends money to the wealthy to prop up the failing architecture our country has relied on for far too long. Seriously, does he believe this will help the working class.? Right now, the working class need help paying their f-ing mortgages that they couldn't afford in the first place. If you want to stimulate the economy, give them another rebate check. It didn't work the last time because it was too small. spot the lot of us a portion of nearly $800 Billion dollars and we promise to spend it on our mortgages, school loans (because an education ain't free or a right in this country) and the remainder will go to Walmart. Offering us jobs in the construction "shovel ready" sector helps a small number of working class families but leaves off us "freaks" that have never seen a shovel in use in our lives. FDR was 70 years ago. The country has moved on. I love that you're a liberal Democrat, but for the love of the gods, can't you come up with something better than an ancient program from a guy you wish to be identified with? You're heading fast towards "Toolbag" status.

Speaking of toolbags, what's up with Republicans going back to their districts to hype the advantages and job creation of the "Stimulus Package"? The lot of you didn't vote for it!

Soon my blog will be moving, and the tone may change, but the sentiment will remain the same.
So keep checking back, if you're one of the good people. I'll post the new details when I move.

Lets get one thing straight.

I love animals, no matter what I've said about them in the past. I love nice cats, dogs, mice, rats and gerbils, provided they don't bite me, but I'm allergic to all of them, so if you hear me whining about them, that's why.

But even more importantly, I'm much more allergic to Oil of Bergamot, so if you're going to offer me a cuppa, make sure it isn't Earl Grey. Ian, this includes you and your pitcher of iced tea. I'm freakin' sick here, thanks to your concoction of tea and want you to know I'm keeping an eye on you. Thanks for your help tonight, but from now on, I'm drinking all of your Jones Soda when I'm over to play videogames, and you can drink your poisoned tea.

Confessions

I have a confession to make. I really dislike writing about myself. Seriously can't stand it. It's not self-deprecation or any such nonsense, it's merely the fact that I live my life, the good and the bad parts of it, and see no reason to spend time and energy typing it all out. Some people enjoy that sort of thing, but not me. I will never write an autobiography, unless, perhaps, I steal a page from Benjamin Franklin and wait so long that no one can verify anything another than the most arbitary facts.

That said, I started this blog to write about ideas and events I find interesting. At the moment, politics have become boring. We're in the horse race portion of the new administration, and while I find that interesting, it isn't enticing enough to want to write about.

The environment is doing poorly, but I feel I am alone in the wilderness screaming to be heard. The majority of my friends understand how bad it is, but don't really engage in conversations about it. I'll get back there soon, but not tonight.

So, I guess the root confession I have to make right now is that I'm not feeling compelled to write about anything I promised I would, so my blog, at least for tonight, is about my other secret passion. Comic Strips.

Specifically, web comics. Here's a list of the strips I read on a daily/weekly basis.

Get Fuzzy

Looking For Group

DORK TOWER

Dilbert.com

Doonesbury@Slate - Daily Dose

Least I Could Do

UNSPEAKABLE VAULT (Of Doom)

PvPonline

Starslip

Sheldon

Evil Inc.

Dandy & Company

Legend Of Bill

There are a few more, but I have to go hunt through my RSS feeds to find them, and there are a few that people might find the language a little offensive, so I left those off. You know, listed off like that, it doesn't seem like it's all that many, but you try reading all of those, plus at least 4 additional ones, plus (I have to go count) 10 news feeds, some of which recieve hundreds of articles a day, 7 political feeds, 11 tech news feeds and 10 water related feeds. It really is overwhelming if I miss a day.

I could go through and list exactly what I like about each comic strip, or even rank them with various systems, but I don't feel like getting mired in that swap right now. I'll try to pick some to highlight in the coming days. That will be my fall back plan to keep me posting if I'm overwhelmed again.

For today, I must highlight Sheldon, a treat of a strip focusing on a boy, his grandfather, a talking duck, a lizard and a pug. Hit that link and it'll take you to the "New Here?" page and a brief overview of the strip. I recommend this comic first because I'm currently reading all of the strips from the beginning and the lighthearted humor always makes me laugh, even when other comics can't. So, go check it out and tell me what you think.

Tomorrow: a treatise on the long term effects on reading too much Joyce Carol Oats and the increased risk of mental illness from same.

Now I'm off to brew more tea and watch another Rifftrax movie, and I'm kidding about the Joyce Carol Oats thing, but for a car or a train ticket, I really can write the paper. I would even include pretty charts and lots of citations.

But by the grace of Gunhed...

go I. So tonight my car tried to run me over. Repeatedly. It doesn't always start properly, so I have to cross the posts on the solinoid when it's being annoying and tonight, at an intersection, I put it in reverse instead of park. So, when it started, it drove backwards, with me running after it, for 10 meters before slowly swerving to the median. from there, it proceeded to spin in circles, jumping the median and smashing the underside to bits with each turn. Not one to stand idle, I first tried to chase it down, was dragged along for two meters before it threw me to the side, scraping the heck out of my ipod case and smashing my wrist. While it was spinning in circles I attempted to jump on the hood, reach through the window and stear it. I was thrown a few times, but eventually drove it in a straight line for fifteen meters before it knocked me loose, turned back into the road, drove over the median and smashed into a brick wall. The pizza guy found it pretty funny, but the police weren't as amussed.

I love the police officers of the Town of Marana. They were not only fast in responding, but immediatly checked for injuries, had me sit down, called the paramedics back a second time because they wanted to be sure I was okay and gave me a ride home. And told me humorous stories about villains. Good people. They even recommended a shop where they had work done.

So hopefully my wrist will heal, Gunhed (my car) can be fixed and my insurance will pay for the stupid wall. On the other hand, perhaps this equals out any bad karma I have and things will get better in my life...

On a related note, I love the movie Gunhed. It's about a robot that can think and mercenaries and a treasure hunt and the robot makes one last attempt after being demolished to save the "good guys." Let's all hope my Gunhed makes a last ditch effort to help me survive and get back to the warm embrace of a state where I know people who could have given me a ride tonight.

I needed the excersie...

So, my car wouldn't start on my way out of work... I have some ideas as to what the problem is, but I need money and tools to work on it, so right now it's sitting in the parking lot at work being dead. Stupid car.

And Amtrak's website is a joke. Seriously. Terrible. I went on there to find some info on costs of traveling around the country and thought their rates were pretty reasonable, all things considered, but to map routes you have to figure out intervals in between your starting and ending point to get it to map the route. otherwise, you get an error.

So I figured that part of the site out and told it to take me from Tucson to El Paso, then to Albuquerque then on to Colorado Springs. The result: a 2 AM trip to El Paso, an 8 hour layover and then a train to Los Angeles, continueing to Albuquerque. Amazingly stupid. But if I had $1000 or so, I could ride the rails back to Minnesota in style... $400 and I could be uncomfortable and dirty, but still have more fun than driving. As it is, I'll drive and be dirty and grumpy and spend about the same in gas money. I love the American Dream of being forced to drive a dangerous car and polute the environment in the name of "personal freedom."

Stupid Amtrak. Stupid American Dream. Stupid Car.

Quiet Too Long

I apologize for my long silence. I have no real excuse, other than the one I've sent to a friend. He knows who he is. At any rate, so much is going on in the world I find it difficult to pick one topic to discuss. I want to stay clear away from global climate change until the news that we are past the point of no return has worked it's way through my head meat, so more on that some other time. President Obama needs more time to get things running before I can discuss his success/failure, so we will leave that topic on the shelf for now, too.

I watched The Bank Job the other night. It's excellent, and I am sorry I didn't see it in the theater. During the directors commentary, they make the point several times that the 70s would look a lot like the 60s and that things don't change all that quickly. This belief, one I share, allowed the creators to add a level of verisimilitude to the movie that is often lacking in other period pieces. The overall story is strong and Jason Stathom proves, IMHO that he can act in non-butt kicking rolls.

Another good movie I watched a few months back was L4YER Cake. Check it out if you want to see Bond being cool but less slick. A well done movie, though I wasn't a huge fan of the alternate ending.

Ugh, I can't think of anything to say. If you want to read about why 911 wasn't a conspiracy, check out debunking911.com. I won't go over the major points here, all I'll say is that it's a great site that looks at the issue from a logical stand point. I think we can all agree that global climate change is real, though a limited number of scientists continue to argue against it. Likewise, a few people will always believe 911 was a conspiracy, but the consensus view has more going for it by far. And I think Noam Chomsky hits one out of the park in these videos:
Video 1
Video 2

More after my tea (organic green), if anything pops into the cavern between my ears.

The Day After

Well, it's now the 21st of January and we have a new President. My excitement for the coming four years is almost unbearable, though the wait and see aspect of the coming years will hopefully bring much joy and hopefulness. Sigh, I just can't think of anything interesting to say. It's all so overwhelming. Perhaps after my cup of decaf Tazo Chai I'll be more communicative.

The Wheel Keeps Turning

Every six months or so I feel myself inexplicably pulled back to my goth music roots, and I spend a bit of time on the internets searching out info on old bands I remember liking. The desire eventually dies away when I check my bank statement and realize I still can't afford to buy the albums recommended to me by Joachim in college. But that wheel keeps turning and we're back to that place again. Still no money, and I find myself in a place where I no longer want the complete works of Peter Murphy or Love and Rockets. I'm in a different head-space now and am looking for a different sort of music. Enter Dead Can Dance, a band I found too slow for my tastes when J. initially tried to introduce me to them back in '97 but now find intriguing and, dare I say, exciting. Here are a few links to tunes on YouTube I can't get enough of:
Rakim
American Dreaming

So, how excited is everyone about tomorrow? I asked "HOW EXCITED IS EVERYONE ABOUT TOMORROW?!?!" Think about it... It's an historic day, no matter your political affiliation. We have lived to see the first Hawaiian become President of the United States! But seriously, the fullfillement of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. The fullfillment of an experiment that began 233 years ago. The fullfillmentof those ancient cries for true freedom and equality. We can be the greatest nation this planet has ever seen, but tomorrow is not the end, merely the begining. We must now be ever vigilent not to slip back to a dark place, held by elitists and powerful people seeking only their own fortunes at the expense of others. This is a great day, a completion of many dreams, but they dreamed too small. We must now create new dreams to strive for, new dreams to seak, new dreams to find. We must look forward and not rest on this great stepping stone into the future.

America now needs a new dream, one as great and far reaching as the dream of Dr. MLK four decades ago. Help me find that new dream by posting comments below on what you think America should strive for next.

And a small disclaimer. I know we haven't reached equality, that we are engaged in two wars abroad, and that America did not suddenly step up and adress all of our faults. I know this, but that isn't the point. The point is to dream of a better world, not to find constant fault with the one we live in. There are many problems President Obama will face in the coming years, but we must look forward another four decades to gain the direction necessary to carry on achieving.

Three Days Left

With only three (less actually) days left in the current administration, I wanted to take this time to point out the good that can come from the Iraq war. No, it's not that the people are now safer than they were before we invaded, because they aren't. With years, if not decades of sectarian violence ahead of us, no one can say the people are better off without feeling at least a little guilt. It's not that the infrastructure of the country is better than it was before the fall, since the last few vestiges of said infrastructure were destroyed in the first few weeks of the conflict and are only now seeing serious rebuilding. It's not that the Christians of the country are safer. They are being forced to flee the country. No, the good that can come from the conflict is in the form of a lesson to for the United States, a lesson we should have learned after Vietnam. The US can not claim to be able to cure the ills of the earth through violence. It does not work.

The planet is less safe now than before we spent over a trillion dollars fighting a war half the world away. Deaths from terrorism have increased. The number of civilians dead as a direct result of our intervention in Iraq may be higher than those killed in over two decades of rule by Saddam (I say "may" because no one knows the exact figures). Going forward, I hope that my country, and specifically certain elements within her, take head that while we may have the most powerful military in the world, it is a waste of resources to try to bully the rest of the world into behaving the way we want them to behave. An analogy: a teacher wants a bully to stop making the other children in the classroom give him his lunch money by hitting them, so the teacher hits the bully. What is the end result? The teacher has demonstrated to the bully that it is acceptable to use the overwhelming force one has by virtue of size to make other people behave in a certain way. A better approach is by non-threatening behavior and a demonstration by the teacher that that through non-violent means, such as time-outs or removal of recess privileges, one can attain their desired results. I'm stretching the analogy. I got caught up in it, but I think my point is clear. We cannot continue to tell the rest of the world that the US is the greatest country in the world and yet detain in prison a higher percent of our population than any other western country. We cannot neglect the welfare of our children by condemning them to lifelong poverty and then tell other countries they must do more for their young. Likewise, education and health care can no longer be neglected. Iraq can teach us the way to regain our moral authority, if we admit its failure and work to improve the lives of our citizens and our image abroad.

Too much news

I am currently suffering from information overload. I let my news reader go for a few days while I listened to a book and have had to spend the last 4 hours trying to assimilate vast amounts of data.

I really have so much going through my head right now that I can't pick just one topic. Hopefully later I can focus more, but right now I'm going to finish reading the last few news items and listen to my ipod for a little while.

Check out my shared items on the right or head over to Facebook to see some other things I've thrown up recently.

And hopefully I will have some big news in the next few days about what I'll be doing in March.

A Permanent Revolution

Today I drove up to Sentinel Peak Park and looked out at the dry, dusty basin of urban sprawl that is Tucson. From the top you can look out over the paved wasteland that's indicative of humanities desire to spread out, consume, alter and dominate the whatever it sees . 50,000 years ago, early man went to the top of a similar hill, saw what was on the other side and thought "damn, but that would look nice with a copy of the strip mall we have over on our side." And he proceeded to invent the means of building that replica of the great proto-strip mall, complete with a matching pharmacy as the capstone.

Are we now looking over another great hill in history? Can we see the approaching destruction of our natural resources? Can we stop the pushing forth of humanities hand into the last vestiges of the natural wilderness that lies on the other side of the hill? Or have we gone too far? Are we victims of the way we were born? Will I ever stop asking questions in this post?

I have no answers. I don't see the exits anymore, covered as they are by landfills and toxic waste and acidifying oceans. The great wave of hope that rushed across the land in the sixties, crested and pulled back didn't wash the land clean but left the waste, greed and corruption of previous generations behind.

A revolution, by its very nature, turns and turns, always coming back to the beginning. Can we have a permanent revolution or only suffer the failures of previous turns of the cog every chance we have? I have no answer, but I think we should be searching, for is it not humanities great quest "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield?"

Reverse the Twentieth Century

I just finished sending an extended screed email to a friend of mine about new environmental policies, but, having gotten it out of my system, I'm going to do a quick bullet point break down here, just to see if I can generate some noise.

• The current environmental track we're on will fail us before the end of this century.
• The ostrich approach will not work any longer.
• The twentieth century brought us dams to bring water to deserts and power to people who didn't want to insulate their houses (see Cadillac Desert's section on the Washington State region).
• The twentieth century also brought us coal fired plants and atomic energy, neither of which is even remotely clean.
• We need a new energy policy. While every technology has its problems, no one said "let's wait on the internal combustion engine until we can get 99% efficiency." They simply built cars that were terribly wasteful and built an industry. Slowly the technology caught up. Why not apply this technique to wind and solar (and anything else you care to name)?
• We can pay for all of these programs by trashing the Farm Bill and rewriting it. New Zealand proved you don't need subsidies to have sustainable agriculture. In fact, is any other sector of the economy showed such dismal return on investment, do you think they'd get a bailout? ;-) [just my little joke]
  

Is it Kosher to use another blog as your citation?
And even if we don't improve the environment, the Farm Bill is crap. Let's rewrite it. If you disagree or want to complain about the loss of the food subsidy portion of the Farm Bill, let me know and I'll give my views on that failure of American conscience.

Off-topic Rant

Many things go flying through my news feeds everyday, and I try to read as much conservation material as I can, but this has been the week of CES [Consumer Electronics Show], so I've been looking at a lot of tech stuff. I could not possibly care less about the new tvs, which were probably the most hyped devices. I can't afford a really good SLR camera, nor any real camera for that matter, so I tend to not get overly excited about new toys in that department. What I'm most interested in is the category of sub-notebook computers, commonly called netbooks.

The category has only really been around for a little over a year, at least as a commercial product with any buzz, but the idea has been around for a long time. Going back to the days of programmable calculators, people have wanted to carry their computational devices with them. The 80s and 90s saw a host of tiny computers with limited functionality, and even some ultra-portable laptops, which were underpowered and over-priced. The netbook's defining characteristics are 1)enough power to allow the user to get online and perform daily computer tasks with minimal wait-time and 2) cheap enough that most people can afford one. $200 is the optimal price point for an entry level machine, in my and many other's opinion, and they haven't quite gotten there yet, but they will.

The first real player in the game, ASUS, released the Eee PC over a year ago and has continued to release new versions pretty much continuously since.

Okay, enough with the freshman paper. Down to why I'm so excited. These things can get a person online and engaged in the technological now and future for A FEW HUNDRED DOLLARS! Think about what that means. These could become as ubiquitous as cellphones. You could be making Skye calls, sending an email and working on whatever it is you do wherever you happen to be without dragging along a laptop. They slip into a decent sized purse or small bag (for the guys), thus alleviating the need to carry your heavy laptop bag everywhere you go. My mother could check the status of the system at work, send me an email, comment on my blog and drink her coffee at the bakery for 3-8+ hours (depending on the model) without plugging the machine in. And that's really the test for whether something is useful. If your mother could use one, it's a good product.

I've heard that smartphones are going to dominate the cellphone market in the next few years, but I say, let your phone be a phone and use a machine with a real keyboard to send email. That said, I'm pretty upset at my phone today. If I use it to get online, like I am now through the USB port, or even surf using its own browser, or stream audio from MPR so I can get good public radio, all functions I pay a monthly fee to do, the phone doesn't put my calls through. Let me repeat that: "My smartphone doesn't act like a phone if I'm using it!" That's not all that "smart." Now, in its defense, it is running windows mobile, so that's probably the majority of the problem, but still, It's a PHONE! [I have used the word "it" and it's various versions too many times in this paragraph].

So, my prediction: Smartphones will be big for the next 3-5 years, then we'll see a drop off of features as netbooks pick up the slack in the non-phone communication department. Suddenly, everyone will have a small computer with a real keyboard and messages won't be so terse anymore as people stop getting cramped thumbs while communicating, and phones will be for phone calls once again.

Maybe not so much a prediction as a wish, but if you try to call me and I don't call you back for 6 hours and it was an emergency, you now know why.

Night all.

For everyone who's sick of the cold...

This article popped up in the feeds today and I was sad to read about how dire the warming of the Earth will become, but heartened to see that the BBC was writing forward looking articles warning the general public. Often times only minor publications focus on long term effects or, as in years past, trot out a scientist who represents less than one percent of the scientific community and who believes that everything will be just fine. They often do that in the interest of "unbiased" journalism, but that's not unbiased, that's merely ludicrous. At any rate, good job Beeb for a well written article.

On a less happy note, an article about green jobs popped up today and irritated me no end. I could use my line-item veto power to expunge the inaccuracies from the article, but NPR is claiming I'm not allowed. Something about not being employed with them or some nonsense. So instead, I offer a sample quote that I will scoff at:

"The fact that people aren't willing to spend the money to weatherize their own buildings says that it's not worth the money," Kreutzer says. "Now ... the federal government — have they decided that it's now worth it where it wasn't worth it six months ago when they had more money? That seems odd."

Uhm, sir, many people avoid doing things that will have a long-term net gain because they can't afford the short-term costs. Seriously, has this individual even looked at the numbers? From what I can see from the article, he's using fallacious arguments (anyone want to help me out with what the actual fallacy is) to try to prove his idiotic view of how the government should spend our money.

All for now. I'm off to check on CES news and look for which fallacy that person was using.

Update: The logical fallacy above could be "affirming the consequent" or "correlation proves causation." As we all know, correlation does not imply causation, yet this person tried it and NPR let him get away with it. Or it might even be a different one. You pick.

[Thank you Wikipedia for helping my poor memory. When are the brain implants going to be available so I can more quickly know everything?]

The original pyramid scheme

This comic strip is the funniest indictment of America I've ever seen. A must-read.

My country has reached a cliff. Do we continue over it or do we try to turn to the side and find a gentle way down. Those are the only options I see. With a collapsing economy and a looming fiscal shortfal in the trillions of dollars ($1,000,000,000,000+) what avenues are there to a return to the old way of life? None, as far as I'm concerned. Our standards of living will hopefully remain stable, but we need to seriously consider altering our fiscal behavior.

And the best way to do that is, of course, coexisting with our environment more carefully. Reusing and recycling old materials may not produce new manufacturing jobs, but it will save personal income and landfill space, not to mention natural resources. Eating locally reduces carbon fuel consumption, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and is healthy for you, the individual. And the most important, water. Reducing water usage prevents the creation of new jobs in the damn and aquifer sector, but instead allows the planet to sustain human life into the twenty-second century and beyond. Green jobs can be created in each of these sectors, thus ofsetting the losses of "traditional" jobs, but none of this will happen until consumers demand the change.

That is all for now. I return you to your CES coverage, or whatever else you might be doing.

Where's my government bailout?

I'm listening to Marketplace on NPR and drinking the last of my Lapsang Sou Chong tea and wondering when the government is going to give me a cut of the stimulus package so I can prop up the tea economy by purchasing lifetime supplies of all my favorites. Anyone think I have a shot or will Larry Flint get my chunk of change?

Quiet day

Lots of interesting reading today. Check the shared items to the right to see a few highlights. I can't think of anything too exciting to post right now, but maybe later i'll have something.

Played Fallout 3 today at Ian's. Awesome game! Wonderful graphics and a fun game play. I also setup my game game controller to work as my mouse. Not innovative, but handy when you don't have a computer desk. Now if I only had a PS3 keyboard and controller...

Pancakes and "Bacon"

I love Bisquick pancakes. I love fake bacon. And I love Rifftrax. Just ate a plate of pancakes and am sitting down to the Point Break Rifftrax. I love life!

Moving on, I was surfing the internets and ran across this wonderful article about water reduction measures in Australia. I had heard reference to the Australian drought in the past, but had no idea it was as bad as the article describes. On the silvery lining side of this dehydrated cloud, the amount of water saved through easy to implement household methods merely demonstrates the possibilities for the future for water stressed, high population areas. I was encouraged beyond measure by this.

The only other thing I have to say right now is "Hell yeah! Bite me Coleman! Franken forever!" I now return you to your previously scheduled internet wanderings.

Sunday Night Musings

Last night I was reading about legumes. Not an interesting topic to many, but these wonderful plants, of which there are many, could just about be the coolest on the planet. I'm especially interested in their non-food related uses, such as pulpwood production. I would like to see more renewable methods for paper production, as I like paper in many of it's forms. Farm uses, like the ability to be plowed under in otherwise fallow fields to provide natural fertilizer has serious potential, as well.

This article came on my news feed today and I just had to share it. I must confess that I have not yet read The Omnivore's Dilemma, since I hadn't received my reserved library copy before I forgot to take back a stack of books worth $21 in late fees. Do to laziness, I haven't paid the fine yet. Fiscal irresponsibility aside, I loved The Botany of Desire and believe strongly in Pollan's over-arching ideas about our planet and the "progress" we've made, though I doubt I will be purchasing Bittman's book, as it doesn't appear to lend itself to my diet.

While searching Amazon for the previous link, I ran across an interesting looking book on eating locally. My question is, and I may need to find a copy of the book to check on this, how does one eat locally in Tucson, AZ? While there are farms in the area (at least one growing cotton of all things) I doubt very much that I could sustain my not insubstantial tummy on the few beans and chili peppers that grow native in the area. Not even when including my beloved mesquite trees a legume, for those wondering).

I was going to go on to a discussion about water, but I haven't seen any interesting news in the last day on that front, and, since it's been raining all day, my soapbox is all wet and slippery.

I researched geckos last night, watched some interesting and scary YouTube videos, and can't decide what type I want the most. I'm thinking of a good old house gecko, since they seem to be pretty chill, small and not as mean as some of the others.

More tomorrow, and I'll even try to work up a righteous anger about water, if I can find something interesting.

Too much gas (and no soapbox)

After my last post I drove out to Suguaro west through the Painted Rocks area. Lovely area, but too many houses. After that I drove up to Marana, just to see what it looked like, and then skirted the Northern portion of Oro Valley. Oro is even more disgustingly huge than I thought.

Today I went to the zoo and looked at the animals, then headed over to the rose garden. I enjoyed looking at the flowers, even though they aren't really in full bloom yet. I'll post pictures later.

I finished up the day with a wander through Petco. I'm going to buy a gecko. I need to research them a little first, to make the best decision, but I think I'll pick up one that gets to be around 6-9 inches. Any suggestions?

Tired, just finished dinner of a tomato and “bacon” sandwich. I should have cooked the faux bacon a bit more, but was on the phone with my brother and got impatient. The tomatoes were amazing organic romas from Whole Foods. I also bought some Nimbus oatmeal stout. I don't drink much anymore, but thought I'd try this beer, as it's a local brewery and I won't be able to get it when I move. Lots of hops, and thick as a witches brew. Not bad, but I should have gone with something lighter for dinner. And finally, I bought some 365 brand organic green tea. I would have purchased something better, but this was cheap and it allowed me to get the beer.

More when I think of something...

(Mike, my brother, says hi to everyone)

Lazy Friday

Sitting at the library with no stinking Internet connection. God bless the Oro Vally library and their lame inability to get anything right. Or maybe they have precognition and knew I was going to use a bit torrent client.

Woke up pretty early this morning and had a cup of tea. Tazo green, to be exact, and made some General Tzo's broccoli and Morning Star fake meat. Pretty tasty, though I could have done better with rice and a hotter pan.

Drove around Oro Valley, for curiosities sake, and am amazed at the massive expansion of this city. It's freakin' huge! Grocery stores in the middle of nowhere, entire communities in the desert miles from any possible source of income. The US has an amazing capacity for expansion. Is it like this in other parts of the world?

The water concerns me most, as the amount of people living in these communities greatly exceeds the environments ability to provide natural resources for them. Where does it all come from? The Colorado river is really the answer. Oro Valley is nearly flush with the foothills of the small mountain range just north of Tucson, but the rainfall in the area still can't nearly begin to cope with the people living their. The “wash” (read “dry river bed”) that passes through the community only runs with water during the summer when the monsoons pour down, but that water is quickly absorbed into the surrounding arid landscape and is now becoming contaminated with all the detritus of human habitation. Petrochemicals stream through our storm drains and wash into the water table, human waste must be treated, but a leak in the sewage system, or even seepage from the “healthy” system threatens to contaminate the tiny trickle of water the area sees yearly.

Sigh. It is fortunate that my soap box is in no threat of being washed away.

Alright, I'm going to paste this into my blog and go look for other upsetting things in the world. Perhaps I'll go out to the Suguaro National Park and bemoan the litter or something. Sorry, no links as I have limited Internet access (my phone) and am only really sitting at the library because I needed a bathroom and felt stupid coming in here to only use it and leave.

The Tea of Dave

Back from my first pot of tea and boiling water for my second. I started with a Tazo Sweet Cinnamon Spice and moved on to their decaf Chai. My favorite tea at the moment is an organic lapsang sou chong, though it is caffenated, so I can't have any this late at night. The smokey aroma isn't as overpowering as some I've had, noteably a Russian Caravan tea I bought in Bemidji, MN. That stuff made my apartment smell like a campfire was going. This tea is more mellow than that, though with a decent amount of aroma. Since I tend to over-steep my tea, I can't add too much or it gets exceedingly bitter.

On an unhappy note, I'm forced to use Tucson city water (or, more accurately, Pima County water) because I forgot, once again, to fill my water containers. At $.25 a gallon, it's not too expensive for cooking and drinking, but if you started adding in bathing and other sanitary concerns, I really couldn't afford to go all-bottled for my water consumption.

Reverse osmosis filtered water tastes wonderful and makes great tea, and is pretty darn safe. I might be willing to drink sewage treated in this way, and, if I ever move back to Southern California, I might get the chance. (I had a link for this story, but I can't seem to find it at the moment).

Watching the Rifftrax Iron Man tonight. I just love these guys...

The New Year

This is the year I get serious about the environment and my health. While global warming is the greatest problem facing our planet, the thing I'm most worried about is water. It's no good to save the world if life on it has no uncontaminated water to consume.

This article illustrates why I'm leaving the southwest as soon as possible. Likewise, some good reading on the subect:
The Blue Death by Robert D. Morris
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner

More after my evening tea.