December 1, 2014

I'd like to live in a world where the question is, "Who would want to buy a car?"

Any car at all.

I bought a new car once when I was young and foolish and poisoned by newly experienced testosterone floods. I won't do that again. I deeply resent how so-called adults in this society, those who do not live in urban areas with good public transportation, are expected to own and drive automobiles lest they be considered not fully functional human beings.

Not once in my life have I considered driving a car to be a valid "rite of passage" or privilege of adulthood. I'm a licensed driver and have been since I was sixteen but I don't usually carry my license with me. I've only been in one accident, when I was nineteen. It hurt bad, it was expensive, but I was insured and fully recovered.

As an eccentric mostly harmless white guy I can get away with challenging "papers please" fascism. I know my driver's license number, my car insurance card is in my glove box, and the picture downloaded onto any modern patrol car's computer looks like me and matches the name and address on the insurance card.

The thirty year old piece of shit car I drive is a form of protest. I mock the shiny new Lexus or Mercedes. The only thing I wash and polish on the outside of my car are the windows and mirrors. My car has lichen growing on it, like a rock in the wilderness, or the tiles on the roof of my house..

This Thanksgiving I drove hundreds of miles to my brother's house for the holiday, and then Saturday to the memorial service of a childhood friend. It would have been a much nicer visit for me if I'd been able to sleep on a train, especially for the trip back. I was burned out on life but not quite a danger to myself or others on the highway, well more functional than drunk/distracted-by-smart-phone/sleepy/horny/blasting-heavy-metal/little-kids-screaming/air-conditioning-on-high-in-my-face/distracted-by-work-stress levels of typical automobile driver irresponsibility.

But I was still hurting, relying on pain and my fuck-it-all mental state of mind to keep me driving home in 100% plus driver awareness. I even saw a bald eagle on an insulated-top-wire power pole in San Ardo. That was cool. That's why the insulation is on that line, for the eagles and the condors. In the bad old days bald or golden eagles and California condors would spread their wings and be electrocuted. Good people fixed that.

But when I got home, safe from automobile driver danger, I got really, really, angry. My childhood friend, not in an entirely direct way, was killed by our automobile culture. He was severely injured in a transportation industry accident directly related to our automobile culture. He was something of a wizard with coastal construction, often highway construction, on sand and other unstable ground. As a consequence of the accident his driving skills were impaired . Later he wrecked his personal automobile and lost his ability to drive and driver's license entirely. From there it was a downhill spiral of angry self-isolation, pain-killers, and alcohol.

For any number of reasons, from the perspective of individual humans to the entire earth's natural environment, the automobile culture needs to die. We humans can kill it (with extreme prejudice) or wait for Mother Nature to do it by far uglier means.

November 12, 2014

I've been naked and afraid.

Years ago, before I had my shit together enough to play well with others and understand some basic rules of society, I was body surfing naked in the moonlight, sometime past midnight.

Some concerned citizen probably thought I was suicidal and trying to drown myself, so they called the police. I always look suicidal in heavier surf, with or without a board. A true danger to myself and others. That's partly why I was out there at night, nobody wanted me around in the sunlight.

Anyways, I came out of the surf and was looking for my clothes on the beach when the police arrived. In the moonlight a pile of clothes and a blue backpack look remarkably similar to piles of washed up kelp.

Fortunately it was a community where the police were tolerant of a few eccentric citizens, and not long past the age of streaking and other frivolous nudity.

With the assistance of a police flashlight we found my stuff, I put on my clothes, and got a free ride home.

November 8, 2014

There are a large number of heirloom potatos and a very rich gene pool.

For every corporate foray into GMO foods I'd like to see publicly and privately funded efforts, magnitudes greater, to preserve heirloom genetic combinations and to create new Free and Open Source varieties of fruits, grains, nuts, and vegetables. A development process that works for computer software ought to work for potatoes too.

Imagine if there was a non-patented, non GMO potato, that competed favorably with this potato, and could be further developed by farmers to suit their local environments and practices. The world would be a wealthier place.

Monoculture of patented food varieties creates vast deserts lacking in biodiversity. That's bad.

November 8, 2014

Very similar to the stew of drugs in my blood, minus some.

Anyone who thinks I'd be better off without meds is welcome to take me in for the experiment. All I require is an internet connection, some plain food (rice and beans will do; I'll find or grow any other food I need) and somewhere to sleep. For all I care it could be a shack in your backyard and a pile of clean rags.

I'm always ready to reestablish a reputation with some local community as an off-my-meds eccentric but mostly harmless dumpster-diving semi-homeless guy. I may be living in your shack (or not) at various times, or hours, but I might also disappear for weeks at a time and if you are any kind of compassionate person you will wonder if I am dead or held against my will somewhere. Probably not, I'm just wandering, oblivious to clocks and calendars.

My grandfather was a similar sort but his obsessions and compulsions were useful to the Army Air Force during the Second World War, and later the space program including the Apollo Project. (My own obsessions are rarely useful, not in this society.) My grandfather's doctors prescribed amphetamines. He lived 90+ years, so drug abuse obviously wasn't a problem.

It would be interesting to know a little more about him but mental health issues were kept deeply in the closet in past days. Intriguingly, mathematician Paul Erdős used amphetamines too. (That drug has no appeal to me at all. Blechhhhhh.)

The drug warriors always claim drug use is the cause of problems when it's usually the other way around. Sure people can slide down the slippery slope of addiction and abuse, but for the most part drugs are very useful for many sorts of chronic health problems including mental illness.

Nevertheless I think our culture could reduce drug use by being less cruel to people who are different in some way and by treating addiction as an ordinary public health problem.

Robin Williams was taking these meds to keep himself out of some unimaginably terrible mental state. The odds are these drugs didn't put him there, they were simply not working, the same way an antibiotic might not work against some infections, or a few aspirins might not effectively treat some sorts of pain.

November 4, 2014

Solar panels over parking lots for electric vehicles is a good idea.

Free shade and "fuel" for employee and customer vehicles, all in one.

It's already reality in some places. My own community has a few solar parking lots.

Nobody should have to buy fuel to drive to work or go out shopping.

I'd personally prefer a world where legs either natural or electrically powered artificial were the dominant form of transportation. Nevertheless, electric scooters, motorcycles, and automobiles are still much preferable to the stinky fossil fueled machines most of us now drive.

Example of electric legs:

Similar machines have also been built as exo-skeletons for people suffering paralysis.

Ordinary walking (even for those whose natural legs don't work or are lost), solar powered rail and bus and doorstep self driving car transportation, and very comfortable high technology sailing ships... these are my utopia.