Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
No Dogs Or Personal Checks
www.storyofstuff.com
www.revbilly.com (The Church of Stop Shopping)
Global birth control. Plant hemp for fiber. Free exchange stores.
Good luck to us all.
Easter Week, 1971. A friend and I were hitchhiking up to Big Sur. In a van, cruising up Highway 1 through Malibu, we spotted three young hippie chicks thumbing alongside the road surrounded by a pack of dogs. The driver pulled over and the girls climbed in with just one dog. "All those other dogs are from around here. Whenever a car would pull over and we'd run toward it, the drivers would see all the dogs running with us and take off." Turns out they were part of a large group of folks from Long Beach on their way to a hot springs in the mountains up behind Santa Barbara. They'd loaded two cars with all the sleeping bags and food for everybody, and then the people had hitchhiked instead of taking a bunch more vehicles. Meeting up with about a dozen of their friends at State Street and 101 in Santa Barbara that night--back before the freeway ran all the way through town--I called an L.A. rock 'n' roll radio station about our location and destination, and a half-hour later two vans from a church group pulled up and, after a shot at saving our souls over hot chocolate and cookies at their lair, took us all up to the entrance to the National Forest and a few miles up the dirt road. Using what sleeping bags we had, we all slept in one large fun-filled pile on top of a moon-lit mountain, looking down on the clouds. The next day we started walking in, taking rides as occasional cars drove in. My friend and I ended up spending the week there, and then going to their big house in Long Beach to party with them there. (537 7th Street at Magnolia, by the 710 [back then the "7"] freeway on-ramp.) Several years later, my friend married one of the three girls in the first group we'd met. And I spent over a year with a girlfriend of theirs who came to visit the house from Key West with her mystical black Afghan hound dog, Hair. (I always loved when people laughed at me for hitchhiking.)
Those tomato farmers who recently lost all their crops for naught because of the salmonella scare remind me of the New York gang the Warriors from the movie by the same name. At the end when everybody realizes is wasn't a Warrior who shot Cyrus, after a night bopping their way home to Coney Island with all the other gangs after them, a radio dj says something like, oops, sorry, Warriors, but that's the way it goes sometimes in the Big City. Sorry tomato farmers, but it was hot peppers what did it. Oops.
I keep thinking: "The new [reluctant] hippies." From the bottom up, it's sinking in. Unrestrained consumerism is not turning out to be a workable long-term economic policy. Like when I was on the road having to carry everything I owned, it became glaringly obvious what was really important, and I adapted accordingly. Now with dropping incomes and rising prices, more and more folks are learning the same thing in their lives. Wise, concerned, and poor people have long known, but now the knowledge is quickly rising up the income chain. Reality is striking with a vengeance. Between the financial limitations we're facing and the doubtful continuation of life on Planet Earth, it's becoming obvious we need to start using less as a policy. Yet both major Presidential Candidates promise to "get the economy going again", guaranteed to hurry our doom. It's time to deal with what's really important to a good life, not keep Wall Street happy until we're all dead.
Yesterday the guy on the radio said that aware young people are beginning to sport thrift-store used jeans as a style, not the expensive designer jeans favored by their parents. I know that type thing has been happening in more and more ways, but what amazed me was hearing it admitted on a commercial, corporate-owned radio station. (I did only hear it once.) I'd love to see one of The Candidates show up somewhere in old jeans as a lifestyle statement instead of just always declaring their allegiance to Big Business and the Supreme Power: "The Economy." THAT's what it would take to get MY vote.
Group marriage. Six or eight or ten people living together saves the individuals from the horrors of monogamy, the dangers of STDs from just steppin' out on a partner, and helps save Planet Earth, needing only one vacuum cleaner, one big-screen TV, maybe even only one car, instead of each two people having to buy one of everything. At least it would be fun giving it a try. Saving the planet doesn't have to be boring.
Make love, not credit-card debt.
www.revbilly.com (The Church of Stop Shopping)
Global birth control. Plant hemp for fiber. Free exchange stores.
Good luck to us all.
Easter Week, 1971. A friend and I were hitchhiking up to Big Sur. In a van, cruising up Highway 1 through Malibu, we spotted three young hippie chicks thumbing alongside the road surrounded by a pack of dogs. The driver pulled over and the girls climbed in with just one dog. "All those other dogs are from around here. Whenever a car would pull over and we'd run toward it, the drivers would see all the dogs running with us and take off." Turns out they were part of a large group of folks from Long Beach on their way to a hot springs in the mountains up behind Santa Barbara. They'd loaded two cars with all the sleeping bags and food for everybody, and then the people had hitchhiked instead of taking a bunch more vehicles. Meeting up with about a dozen of their friends at State Street and 101 in Santa Barbara that night--back before the freeway ran all the way through town--I called an L.A. rock 'n' roll radio station about our location and destination, and a half-hour later two vans from a church group pulled up and, after a shot at saving our souls over hot chocolate and cookies at their lair, took us all up to the entrance to the National Forest and a few miles up the dirt road. Using what sleeping bags we had, we all slept in one large fun-filled pile on top of a moon-lit mountain, looking down on the clouds. The next day we started walking in, taking rides as occasional cars drove in. My friend and I ended up spending the week there, and then going to their big house in Long Beach to party with them there. (537 7th Street at Magnolia, by the 710 [back then the "7"] freeway on-ramp.) Several years later, my friend married one of the three girls in the first group we'd met. And I spent over a year with a girlfriend of theirs who came to visit the house from Key West with her mystical black Afghan hound dog, Hair. (I always loved when people laughed at me for hitchhiking.)
Those tomato farmers who recently lost all their crops for naught because of the salmonella scare remind me of the New York gang the Warriors from the movie by the same name. At the end when everybody realizes is wasn't a Warrior who shot Cyrus, after a night bopping their way home to Coney Island with all the other gangs after them, a radio dj says something like, oops, sorry, Warriors, but that's the way it goes sometimes in the Big City. Sorry tomato farmers, but it was hot peppers what did it. Oops.
I keep thinking: "The new [reluctant] hippies." From the bottom up, it's sinking in. Unrestrained consumerism is not turning out to be a workable long-term economic policy. Like when I was on the road having to carry everything I owned, it became glaringly obvious what was really important, and I adapted accordingly. Now with dropping incomes and rising prices, more and more folks are learning the same thing in their lives. Wise, concerned, and poor people have long known, but now the knowledge is quickly rising up the income chain. Reality is striking with a vengeance. Between the financial limitations we're facing and the doubtful continuation of life on Planet Earth, it's becoming obvious we need to start using less as a policy. Yet both major Presidential Candidates promise to "get the economy going again", guaranteed to hurry our doom. It's time to deal with what's really important to a good life, not keep Wall Street happy until we're all dead.
Yesterday the guy on the radio said that aware young people are beginning to sport thrift-store used jeans as a style, not the expensive designer jeans favored by their parents. I know that type thing has been happening in more and more ways, but what amazed me was hearing it admitted on a commercial, corporate-owned radio station. (I did only hear it once.) I'd love to see one of The Candidates show up somewhere in old jeans as a lifestyle statement instead of just always declaring their allegiance to Big Business and the Supreme Power: "The Economy." THAT's what it would take to get MY vote.
Group marriage. Six or eight or ten people living together saves the individuals from the horrors of monogamy, the dangers of STDs from just steppin' out on a partner, and helps save Planet Earth, needing only one vacuum cleaner, one big-screen TV, maybe even only one car, instead of each two people having to buy one of everything. At least it would be fun giving it a try. Saving the planet doesn't have to be boring.
Make love, not credit-card debt.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
The More You Buy, The More You Save
I've been writing this Grasshopper Planet blog pretty much two times a week since I started doing it in February. One woman wrote to me about a week ago on MySpace, telling me she'd taken a whole morning and read it through from the beginning. But anybody just checking it out for the first time, or only occasionally, is reading just the last chapter so far. Seems weird to me. Say I jump on a topic I've talked about earlier, it can give the wrong impression on where I stand or the point I'm trying to make to somebody just reading that latest thought on the subject. Rex Stout included all the basic info on the house and everybody in it each and every Nero Wolfe story he wrote. But that was for novels, or at least long short-stories, and he was making good money for his trouble. But every time I bring up, say, how religious people denying sex education to young people actually helps create the sex offenders they so love to persecute later, I can't go back and repeat everything I ever said on the topic each time. My predicament reminds me of a 1999 book I read by Chuck Palahnick, the author of Fight Club. It's called "Survivor: A Novel", and it's told completely backwards. I mean not only does it start at the end, but he goes all the way. It begins on page 289, and finishes on page 1, at the beginning of the story. Well that's how I feel the way this blog trip is set up. I try to keep that in mind as I write, but sometimes I just gotta live with it. So it goes . . . as they say.
The other day I spotted two bicycle cops parked near a corner by USC. I mean, they weren't waiting to cross the street or taking a break, they were both backed in and watching the street. In Portland or San Francisco I woulda probably made a remark to them as I walked by, but down here they're too quick on the trigger to joke with. I went into University Village to take care of business, then came out the other end, where I spotted two more officers of the law on bicycles doing the same trip. But here as I waited for the bus, I got a chance to see their mission. As of July 1st, California drivers can no longer use hand-held cell phones. (Might bring back the use of turn signals. I'm hoping.) These guys were zooming out on their bikes when they spotted any driver talking on the phone at the red light and giving them a ticket. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
MySpace came out with a book: "OUR PLANET Change Is Possible." About what folks can do to slow global warming. I just saw it today for the first time. Good for MySpace. I'm waiting for the Wall Street, White House, and Pentagon editions. I would sure welcome another New World to head to and explore. A place to hide. But when you're like in a boat--the Good Ship Planet Earth--and people are chipping away at it for fun and profit, and telling you, "It's okay, it's the OTHER end of the boat we're destroying. We'll be okay here," it's kind of hard to ignore. "We'd stop what we're doing, but it would be bad for the economy." And while this is okay to many folks, there's still being coverage on "the news" about a 9/16th of a second flash of a nipple during half time. And of course, that fifteen-year-old bare back hasn't been forgotten. But the ongoing clear-cutting of forests around the world and the dying oceans aren't worthy of (corporate funded) Network Mention. A dreary subject, I know, but, to quote Noah, "How long can you tread water?"
Today the Democratic candidate for President of the United States of America ("God will lead the way! God will lead the way!") gave a rousing speech in Berlin. I heard the Pie in the Sky, but was hoping for a few Nuts and Bolts. "The less you're happy with, the more fun you'll have." "Many of us on Planet Earth have been living at an unsustainable standard of living, and must learn how to be happy other than by consuming." "We need to take DRASTIC action, not just stop using plastic grocery bags." "We cannot maintain a Growth Economy on a Finite Planet." I did like the "It's all US; we gotta think together." But it's like we need to get fifty feet up to reach our goal, and we're getting a choice between a six-foot stepladder and a ten-foot stepladder. Sucking up to the folks who want to live a lifestyle that the planet can no longer support sounds great, but isn't gonna save us. There are folks who know how to live well on way, way less than the ones doing all the crying. Poor babies. But we just can't use resources up at a rate to keep them happy and continue having life on the planet. "The Economy" is the enemy. Preach the sacrilegious concepts of "enough" and "happy". THAT's what I want to hear.
Drink. Dance. Play.
Plant Your Seeds.
The other day I spotted two bicycle cops parked near a corner by USC. I mean, they weren't waiting to cross the street or taking a break, they were both backed in and watching the street. In Portland or San Francisco I woulda probably made a remark to them as I walked by, but down here they're too quick on the trigger to joke with. I went into University Village to take care of business, then came out the other end, where I spotted two more officers of the law on bicycles doing the same trip. But here as I waited for the bus, I got a chance to see their mission. As of July 1st, California drivers can no longer use hand-held cell phones. (Might bring back the use of turn signals. I'm hoping.) These guys were zooming out on their bikes when they spotted any driver talking on the phone at the red light and giving them a ticket. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
MySpace came out with a book: "OUR PLANET Change Is Possible." About what folks can do to slow global warming. I just saw it today for the first time. Good for MySpace. I'm waiting for the Wall Street, White House, and Pentagon editions. I would sure welcome another New World to head to and explore. A place to hide. But when you're like in a boat--the Good Ship Planet Earth--and people are chipping away at it for fun and profit, and telling you, "It's okay, it's the OTHER end of the boat we're destroying. We'll be okay here," it's kind of hard to ignore. "We'd stop what we're doing, but it would be bad for the economy." And while this is okay to many folks, there's still being coverage on "the news" about a 9/16th of a second flash of a nipple during half time. And of course, that fifteen-year-old bare back hasn't been forgotten. But the ongoing clear-cutting of forests around the world and the dying oceans aren't worthy of (corporate funded) Network Mention. A dreary subject, I know, but, to quote Noah, "How long can you tread water?"
Today the Democratic candidate for President of the United States of America ("God will lead the way! God will lead the way!") gave a rousing speech in Berlin. I heard the Pie in the Sky, but was hoping for a few Nuts and Bolts. "The less you're happy with, the more fun you'll have." "Many of us on Planet Earth have been living at an unsustainable standard of living, and must learn how to be happy other than by consuming." "We need to take DRASTIC action, not just stop using plastic grocery bags." "We cannot maintain a Growth Economy on a Finite Planet." I did like the "It's all US; we gotta think together." But it's like we need to get fifty feet up to reach our goal, and we're getting a choice between a six-foot stepladder and a ten-foot stepladder. Sucking up to the folks who want to live a lifestyle that the planet can no longer support sounds great, but isn't gonna save us. There are folks who know how to live well on way, way less than the ones doing all the crying. Poor babies. But we just can't use resources up at a rate to keep them happy and continue having life on the planet. "The Economy" is the enemy. Preach the sacrilegious concepts of "enough" and "happy". THAT's what I want to hear.
Drink. Dance. Play.
Plant Your Seeds.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Highway 101 North
I've been told that my posts here since I started writing this in February are "negative", "depressing", "pessimistic", but, as one person kindly added, "yet at the same time . . . funny." Well, that's kinda how I feel; I look around and I could cry . . . if I could just stop laughin'. I'm sad that so many people make life hard for themselves and each other. I think it's funny that lots of folks with so much--more than anybody ever in the history of the planet--snivel and moan about their condition, and don't seem to have a clue how to enjoy themselves. The happiest years of my life were the twenty-two I spent hitchhiking around with just a sleeping bag and a suitcase--"on the road", not "homeless"--so you can see why I'm bummed; I've learned how little it takes to have a great time, and I think more of my fellow Earthlings should be having a ball with all we've got going. But, alas, The Great Spirit--"The Economy"--rules all, and there's no such thing as "enough" or "happy" in that church. The Holy Trinity--corporations, the news media, and governments, in that order--worship and defend The Great Spirit above all other considerations. The Mindless Bottom Line is devouring all in its path, and the masses are blinded by faith in the gods of commerce. Yes, it's negative, depressing, and pessimistic, but so dumb ya gotta laugh. (They'd sell all Earth's air to Mars if there was a buyer up there.) "It's BUSINESS." Praise Wall Street!
Right now I'm taping 20/20 with the TV off. It's about SEX. I've written on the subject here some. A MySpace anti-porn site sent me a friend request a while back, and the woman and I have gone back and forth a bit with e-mails. She just thinks the world would be a better place if everybody was normal sexually, like her. I figure to watch the show over the weekend to get some facts and figures maybe, but I've long been a student of the issue. (You can read, "Other People's Sex" and "OPS Part 2" if you want at www.grinnninsinner.com, or through Helium.com, Bob Thatcher.) I'm a Veteran of the Sexual Revolution--wounded twice--so I care about the new recruits who are now entering the fray. Support The Troops.
The Democratic Presidential Candidate ("God will lead the way! God will lead the way!") is in Afghanistan as I type this. I remember reading the book Caravans: A Novel of Afghanistan by James Michener. Written in the late 1940s, it told of their concern of being invaded by the Russians, which eventually happened decades later, with the result predicted in the book. Now WE'RE there. (Suggested reading: Ed Deline's Pillow, by Me.) At least the soldiers have that excellent Afghani hash to smoke while they're there.
It's now Saturday afternoon and I just started watching that 20/20 show about sex I taped last night. My profile-page blurb on MySpace for the past few years has been, "The Morally Superior Are Dangerous", and by golly, the show is reinforcing the truth of that statement, and it's really being hard for me to watch. Those smug, self-righteous worms who know what's best for everybody. I think their problem is they think we're all as sexually squirrelly as they are, so feel justified ruining lives in the name of decency. (They give "decency" a bad name.) Normal people certainly don't care what others are doing consensually. And it all stems from that nonsensical religious "sin" crap. ("You're born in sin! Aren't you ashamed! Now you gotta suffer to make it right.") Damn, I don't know if I'll even be able to watch the rest of the show. I've seen enough of those sickos over the years. Like the creeps who take pictures of the license plates in the parking lots of strip clubs and adult book stores, then send them to the owners' homes as a post card with an invitation to attend their church on the back. I don't think there are words in the English language to describe how low I think those people are. "Despicable", not strong enough. "Loathsome", too kind. It's why I've started losing patience with the guilt pushers out there on the street, preaching their perverted superstitious nonsense. (I better change the subject before my blood-pressure pills can't do their job.) I'm just trying to point out with this blog that the less a person is happy with, the more fun they have and the better it is for Planet Earth. But it's hard to avoid the believers, "God will lead the way! God will lead the way!" And they're my greatest fear.
Monday night now. I got unexpectedly invited away yesterday and it turned into an all-day scene. (It included a long-winded prayer over the PA system at a pancake breakfast they took me to that included calling upon God to sprinkle the blood of Jesus over our food. Yum.) I've been watching more of the 20/20 "Sex" show. The tone is pretty favorable, kinda being incredulous at the anti-sex folks for their unsupported claims. But the next part just started about a guy having to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life over consensual sex with his high school girlfriend. I had to shut it off for a while again. It's like I do watch the TV show Cops when they're breaking up fights and such, but when they do their drug and prostitution stings, I can't handle that. Taking people's freedom, money, cars, and reputations, often ruining families, for the sin of wanting to feel good, out there doing the Lord's work at taxpayer expense, I just can't handle that. A pox on the suckers.
Plant your seeds.
Right now I'm taping 20/20 with the TV off. It's about SEX. I've written on the subject here some. A MySpace anti-porn site sent me a friend request a while back, and the woman and I have gone back and forth a bit with e-mails. She just thinks the world would be a better place if everybody was normal sexually, like her. I figure to watch the show over the weekend to get some facts and figures maybe, but I've long been a student of the issue. (You can read, "Other People's Sex" and "OPS Part 2" if you want at www.grinnninsinner.com, or through Helium.com, Bob Thatcher.) I'm a Veteran of the Sexual Revolution--wounded twice--so I care about the new recruits who are now entering the fray. Support The Troops.
The Democratic Presidential Candidate ("God will lead the way! God will lead the way!") is in Afghanistan as I type this. I remember reading the book Caravans: A Novel of Afghanistan by James Michener. Written in the late 1940s, it told of their concern of being invaded by the Russians, which eventually happened decades later, with the result predicted in the book. Now WE'RE there. (Suggested reading: Ed Deline's Pillow, by Me.) At least the soldiers have that excellent Afghani hash to smoke while they're there.
It's now Saturday afternoon and I just started watching that 20/20 show about sex I taped last night. My profile-page blurb on MySpace for the past few years has been, "The Morally Superior Are Dangerous", and by golly, the show is reinforcing the truth of that statement, and it's really being hard for me to watch. Those smug, self-righteous worms who know what's best for everybody. I think their problem is they think we're all as sexually squirrelly as they are, so feel justified ruining lives in the name of decency. (They give "decency" a bad name.) Normal people certainly don't care what others are doing consensually. And it all stems from that nonsensical religious "sin" crap. ("You're born in sin! Aren't you ashamed! Now you gotta suffer to make it right.") Damn, I don't know if I'll even be able to watch the rest of the show. I've seen enough of those sickos over the years. Like the creeps who take pictures of the license plates in the parking lots of strip clubs and adult book stores, then send them to the owners' homes as a post card with an invitation to attend their church on the back. I don't think there are words in the English language to describe how low I think those people are. "Despicable", not strong enough. "Loathsome", too kind. It's why I've started losing patience with the guilt pushers out there on the street, preaching their perverted superstitious nonsense. (I better change the subject before my blood-pressure pills can't do their job.) I'm just trying to point out with this blog that the less a person is happy with, the more fun they have and the better it is for Planet Earth. But it's hard to avoid the believers, "God will lead the way! God will lead the way!" And they're my greatest fear.
Monday night now. I got unexpectedly invited away yesterday and it turned into an all-day scene. (It included a long-winded prayer over the PA system at a pancake breakfast they took me to that included calling upon God to sprinkle the blood of Jesus over our food. Yum.) I've been watching more of the 20/20 "Sex" show. The tone is pretty favorable, kinda being incredulous at the anti-sex folks for their unsupported claims. But the next part just started about a guy having to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life over consensual sex with his high school girlfriend. I had to shut it off for a while again. It's like I do watch the TV show Cops when they're breaking up fights and such, but when they do their drug and prostitution stings, I can't handle that. Taking people's freedom, money, cars, and reputations, often ruining families, for the sin of wanting to feel good, out there doing the Lord's work at taxpayer expense, I just can't handle that. A pox on the suckers.
Plant your seeds.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
I Thought I Was Wrong Once, But I Was Mistaken
With damn little I can see to vote for that really matters, my civic duty is to write this blog. Like until there's a "None of the above", or a vote for qualities and topics other than which group of short-sighted rich folks do you want to have putting it to you, I don't much see the point of voting. It wasn't too important who ran the show until lately, but with the fate of life on the planet seriously at stake, I'm giving this a shot. I'm well along in years myself and had a ball pretty much my whole life, but I have nothing to leave my substantial progeny in the way of wealth or property, so I'm hoping something I write may do some good for their future. That's my motivation for doing this. I don't have a whole lot of hope, I feel like the prairie dog on that T-shirt, giving the finger to the eagle that's swooping down and about to snatch it. My hero.
The practice used to be, when lightning struck a house, folks would rush in and protect the neighboring homes, but let the burning house go, believing the lightning had been sent down by God, obviously to punish the inhabitants of that house for their sins. And it was death for anyone who worked on Sunday, (or Saturday, depending,) had sex with someone they weren't married to, gave their parents a hard time, or any one of a long list of other offenses that ignorant, uneducated people decided would make a god unhappy. And both the major Presidential Candidates here in 2008--in 2008!--are still into that same superstitious invisible-guy-in-the-sky crap laid down thousands of years ago.
Rock the Vote. (Yeah, right.)
It's Monday, Bastille Day, as I type this. Gas, oil, and food prices have been going up for a while now, and home foreclosures are all the rage. More evidence is being revealed every day that our life-support (Planet Earth) is dying. The U.S. of A. has the largest percentage of its citizens imprisoned than any other country in the world--even those real bad ones. And now the stock market is not only dropping like a pipe out the window of a car getting pulled over by the police, but banks are starting to go belly up while depositors nervously stand in line hoping to get their money out. Kinda bleak. It reminds me of my thoughts way back in 1992, when I first wrote "Off The Road" when I sadly realized I was getting too old to hitchhike all the time anymore. The second paragraph: "Looking around, I have to go "whew". I feel vindicated for the last twenty-five years I wasted on fun and travel. With every new wave of layoffs and failed pension funds and savings institutions, my knees go weak. I could have worked all those years and then suddenly still been in the same boat I'm in now." (If you want, you can read "Off The Road"--Parts 1 and 2--and several other articles and essays I wrote at: www.grinninsinner.com., or just: Helium.com, Bob Thatcher.)
On the bus the other day, I saw two teenage young men with their pants cuffs pulled forward and tied under their shoe laces. The first time I ever saw that and I have no idea what it means. Back when I was in 7th and 8th grades, pants had buckles across the back above the pockets. If you wore yours buckled, it meant you had a girlfriend. If unbuckled, you were looking. I remember guys saying to me, "Bob, you have a girlfriend, so why is your buckle undone?" That pretty much signaled my future: a girlfriend, but still available. (We'd later be called 'swingers'.) I would really like to learn the significance if any of the pants cuffs under the shoe laces. Just style? A serious meaning? A signal to others? Anybody know?
A well-known church, known for its celebrity members, was set up on the street the other day offering free stress tests. When asked if I'd like to take a stress test, I said that "stress" was trying to get off their mailing list, and they all suddenly just looked away. (My friend tried for over twenty years to get them to stop sending her stuff. Finally, after she retired, when she couldn't empty her small P.O. Box daily and it got filled with their junk, stopping them became a top priority. After years of letters and phone calls to please stop with their mailings, she had to do something. She saved up all that they sent her for a while and put it in a large envelope, addressed it to them with no return address, and placed a single stamp on it so they'd have to pay the remaining postage due. After twenty-three years of pleading, she suddenly stopped hearing from them.)
Ever notice that when the time changes, people are often an hour late to work, forgetting to change their clocks? . . . but nobody is ever an hour early when the change goes the other way? Hmmmmm . . .
Where might we be today if Ronald Reagan hadn't canceled the programs to research alternative energies started by President Carter?
Plant your seeds.
The practice used to be, when lightning struck a house, folks would rush in and protect the neighboring homes, but let the burning house go, believing the lightning had been sent down by God, obviously to punish the inhabitants of that house for their sins. And it was death for anyone who worked on Sunday, (or Saturday, depending,) had sex with someone they weren't married to, gave their parents a hard time, or any one of a long list of other offenses that ignorant, uneducated people decided would make a god unhappy. And both the major Presidential Candidates here in 2008--in 2008!--are still into that same superstitious invisible-guy-in-the-sky crap laid down thousands of years ago.
Rock the Vote. (Yeah, right.)
It's Monday, Bastille Day, as I type this. Gas, oil, and food prices have been going up for a while now, and home foreclosures are all the rage. More evidence is being revealed every day that our life-support (Planet Earth) is dying. The U.S. of A. has the largest percentage of its citizens imprisoned than any other country in the world--even those real bad ones. And now the stock market is not only dropping like a pipe out the window of a car getting pulled over by the police, but banks are starting to go belly up while depositors nervously stand in line hoping to get their money out. Kinda bleak. It reminds me of my thoughts way back in 1992, when I first wrote "Off The Road" when I sadly realized I was getting too old to hitchhike all the time anymore. The second paragraph: "Looking around, I have to go "whew". I feel vindicated for the last twenty-five years I wasted on fun and travel. With every new wave of layoffs and failed pension funds and savings institutions, my knees go weak. I could have worked all those years and then suddenly still been in the same boat I'm in now." (If you want, you can read "Off The Road"--Parts 1 and 2--and several other articles and essays I wrote at: www.grinninsinner.com., or just: Helium.com, Bob Thatcher.)
On the bus the other day, I saw two teenage young men with their pants cuffs pulled forward and tied under their shoe laces. The first time I ever saw that and I have no idea what it means. Back when I was in 7th and 8th grades, pants had buckles across the back above the pockets. If you wore yours buckled, it meant you had a girlfriend. If unbuckled, you were looking. I remember guys saying to me, "Bob, you have a girlfriend, so why is your buckle undone?" That pretty much signaled my future: a girlfriend, but still available. (We'd later be called 'swingers'.) I would really like to learn the significance if any of the pants cuffs under the shoe laces. Just style? A serious meaning? A signal to others? Anybody know?
A well-known church, known for its celebrity members, was set up on the street the other day offering free stress tests. When asked if I'd like to take a stress test, I said that "stress" was trying to get off their mailing list, and they all suddenly just looked away. (My friend tried for over twenty years to get them to stop sending her stuff. Finally, after she retired, when she couldn't empty her small P.O. Box daily and it got filled with their junk, stopping them became a top priority. After years of letters and phone calls to please stop with their mailings, she had to do something. She saved up all that they sent her for a while and put it in a large envelope, addressed it to them with no return address, and placed a single stamp on it so they'd have to pay the remaining postage due. After twenty-three years of pleading, she suddenly stopped hearing from them.)
Ever notice that when the time changes, people are often an hour late to work, forgetting to change their clocks? . . . but nobody is ever an hour early when the change goes the other way? Hmmmmm . . .
Where might we be today if Ronald Reagan hadn't canceled the programs to research alternative energies started by President Carter?
Plant your seeds.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
BARBER SHOP "We Shave Legs"
Yesterday (7/11) was disastrous for many Americans. A real heart breaker. This could actually start a movement and force some meaningful protest. Finally something to unite a large number of people. Many of the new iPhones couldn't be activated. Riding on a dying planet, no biggie. A new toy won't work, people squawk. But there is a glimmer of hope for the future of humankind. Hannah Montana is going 3-D!
Though both being fine musicians, neither Kevin nor Paul are very good straight men or comic partners. Oh, they do try, but therein lies the problem. One would think that Jay and Dave would have recognized this long ago. Either spring for a talented side-kick, or just tell the band leaders to button it, that this is the big time. There are clever sixth graders doing a better job of cracking wise from the back of the room than those two music makers.
This is not the tone I try to strike as I write these posts every few days, but it's early and I'm just on my first cup of coffee. The main theme I'm shooting for is that a better life is easier on both people and the environment than everybody focusing exclusively on accumulating as much wealth as possible their whole lives. Lighten up, have some fun, give Planet Earth a break. But that message doesn't really shine through until after my second cup and a shower.
Okay, I've even got my shoes on now. I'm officially up for the day. Unlike Mr. Tony Snow, successful, popular, rich and famous, and now dead of natural causes at age fifty-three. How would he have lived differently if he had known he'd never live to retire? I know, I know, he had a family and had to provide for them if something should happen to him, but I'm thinking more like what he'd think about when he was alone in the bathtub, how he'd spend his days off, what would have been his priorities if he'd had a clue. A guy I knew in San Francisco used to tell me or anybody else who tried sniveling or being petty around him, "What's it gonna matter in a hundred years?" In other words, "You're wasting your precious time." (That guy died at age 50 by the way.)
Last night I heard about a couple very promising power sources for autos and solar electric. The discoveries had been made back during the energy crisis in the 1970s, but work on the ideas had been dropped when oil became readily available again. Who could have guessed back then that we'd ever have another problem with oil availability? ("Brilliant management, Brother Rabbit.") And right now commercials are running on TV about the drastic water shortage facing California. These spots state that 70% of SoCal's water is used outside, like for lawns and watering flowers, so they ask that people water the yard one less day a week. As hard-hitting a suggestion as the G8's non-binding proposal to cut greenhouse gases by 50% by the year 2050. Like pissin' in the wind.
My problem is I've seen too many different lifestyles in my decades on the road. I know how little it takes to be happy, and how people with so much more than most are often joyless. That would be their problem, except in the futile quest to lay their hands on enough treasure to get happy, they're killing us all. Corny or lame as what I've been writing about here since February may sound, that's the long and the short of it.
Free birth control to the world, fast-growing hemp for fiber instead of cutting down all the trees, go dancing and play volleyball more. It could happen.
Though both being fine musicians, neither Kevin nor Paul are very good straight men or comic partners. Oh, they do try, but therein lies the problem. One would think that Jay and Dave would have recognized this long ago. Either spring for a talented side-kick, or just tell the band leaders to button it, that this is the big time. There are clever sixth graders doing a better job of cracking wise from the back of the room than those two music makers.
This is not the tone I try to strike as I write these posts every few days, but it's early and I'm just on my first cup of coffee. The main theme I'm shooting for is that a better life is easier on both people and the environment than everybody focusing exclusively on accumulating as much wealth as possible their whole lives. Lighten up, have some fun, give Planet Earth a break. But that message doesn't really shine through until after my second cup and a shower.
Okay, I've even got my shoes on now. I'm officially up for the day. Unlike Mr. Tony Snow, successful, popular, rich and famous, and now dead of natural causes at age fifty-three. How would he have lived differently if he had known he'd never live to retire? I know, I know, he had a family and had to provide for them if something should happen to him, but I'm thinking more like what he'd think about when he was alone in the bathtub, how he'd spend his days off, what would have been his priorities if he'd had a clue. A guy I knew in San Francisco used to tell me or anybody else who tried sniveling or being petty around him, "What's it gonna matter in a hundred years?" In other words, "You're wasting your precious time." (That guy died at age 50 by the way.)
Last night I heard about a couple very promising power sources for autos and solar electric. The discoveries had been made back during the energy crisis in the 1970s, but work on the ideas had been dropped when oil became readily available again. Who could have guessed back then that we'd ever have another problem with oil availability? ("Brilliant management, Brother Rabbit.") And right now commercials are running on TV about the drastic water shortage facing California. These spots state that 70% of SoCal's water is used outside, like for lawns and watering flowers, so they ask that people water the yard one less day a week. As hard-hitting a suggestion as the G8's non-binding proposal to cut greenhouse gases by 50% by the year 2050. Like pissin' in the wind.
My problem is I've seen too many different lifestyles in my decades on the road. I know how little it takes to be happy, and how people with so much more than most are often joyless. That would be their problem, except in the futile quest to lay their hands on enough treasure to get happy, they're killing us all. Corny or lame as what I've been writing about here since February may sound, that's the long and the short of it.
Free birth control to the world, fast-growing hemp for fiber instead of cutting down all the trees, go dancing and play volleyball more. It could happen.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
FTW
I just heard a couple days ago that people are not allowed to flag down a passing taxicab for a ride here in Los Angeles.
"It's not IF your pet monkey is going to attack you, but WHEN."
FTW. (Fuck The World.) I got it tattooed on my left forearm during the first half of 1968. I was twenty-two and going nuts. Everything suddenly got good toward the end of the year when a little redhead was given to me for my twenty-third birthday. She turned out to be my psychological savior. She pointed out ways of looking at life that made it not be so overwhelming, no matter what was actually happening. Ever since then, FTW has been a grinnin' attitude, not a snivelin' lament. Thank you, Gerri, wherever you are.
A fast-food executive was being interviewed on TV the other day. He was asked about a boycott of his chain of restaurants being promoted by a conservative group because his company had supported an organization they didn't like. The executive said they weren't concerned, that they would never feel such a boycott. He said if the boycott was about the environment or gay rights, then they'd be worried about it costing them business. The pendulum swings, as they say.
It's gotta be like a sick joke, right? Every night on "the news" they give yet another example of our imminent demise, followed by both candidates promising to get gas prices back down and the economy rolling again like the good old days. Today it was the death of ocean coral. The other day the story was alligators going blind. A week ago it was the disappearing salmon and the stopping of all commercial salmon fishing. Fires, record-shattering storms, rising temperatures, dead spots in the oceans. The melting ice caps and the plight of the polar bears is old news, now the stories are all about the new drilling the oil companies can do in the Arctic Circle with the ice gone. We need bees to pollinate our food, but they can't find their way home anymore, possibly because of cell phones. The Earth was a perfect life-support system for hundreds of millions of years, until the Stock Market hit town. Mindless profits know no limits.
It being summertime, I of course have been thinking a lot about "the road". Hitchhiking up and down the West Coast for twenty-two years, Daylight Savings Time was my High Holiday. Summer was the best. I could just roll out my sleeping bag and sleep anywhere. Swimming in rivers, being a guide for fun tourists, backyard volleyball, giving runaway girls from Back East a friendly California welcome, psychedelic softball in mountain meadows, concerts and gatherings and barbecues. (I found that if you have a drivers license and can cook, people are always glad to see you. And if you don't deal, steal or get rowdy drunk, the cops leave you alone. Staying clean of course helps with all of the above. That can be the hardest thing on the road, finding a shower. Way harder than sex, drugs, or food. But even that can be an adventure out there.) Now I need pills to stay alive and couldn't get up in the morning if I slept on the ground in my trusty sleeping bag. I think of my tiny hotel room as a campsite in the trees of a favorite on-ramp up north, only with a sink and a door. But try as I may, there's just no replacing all the different people I used to get to meet every day, free of knowing anybody they knew or ever expecting to see them again, so there was a real openness that most normal, day-to-day encounters can't risk. High stuff, month after month after month. (Details upon request.)
Okay, I'm calling it a day. I watched my usual Leno monologue, and tonight being Monday, "Headlines". I washed all my bedding today, so I'm looking forward to stretching out for the night. (Cheap Thrills.) They're calling for another heat wave starting tomorrow and the air conditioning is broken here in my hotel--it sure works in January and February, but never in the summer. I haven't figured that one out yet.
Plant Your Seeds.
"It's not IF your pet monkey is going to attack you, but WHEN."
FTW. (Fuck The World.) I got it tattooed on my left forearm during the first half of 1968. I was twenty-two and going nuts. Everything suddenly got good toward the end of the year when a little redhead was given to me for my twenty-third birthday. She turned out to be my psychological savior. She pointed out ways of looking at life that made it not be so overwhelming, no matter what was actually happening. Ever since then, FTW has been a grinnin' attitude, not a snivelin' lament. Thank you, Gerri, wherever you are.
A fast-food executive was being interviewed on TV the other day. He was asked about a boycott of his chain of restaurants being promoted by a conservative group because his company had supported an organization they didn't like. The executive said they weren't concerned, that they would never feel such a boycott. He said if the boycott was about the environment or gay rights, then they'd be worried about it costing them business. The pendulum swings, as they say.
It's gotta be like a sick joke, right? Every night on "the news" they give yet another example of our imminent demise, followed by both candidates promising to get gas prices back down and the economy rolling again like the good old days. Today it was the death of ocean coral. The other day the story was alligators going blind. A week ago it was the disappearing salmon and the stopping of all commercial salmon fishing. Fires, record-shattering storms, rising temperatures, dead spots in the oceans. The melting ice caps and the plight of the polar bears is old news, now the stories are all about the new drilling the oil companies can do in the Arctic Circle with the ice gone. We need bees to pollinate our food, but they can't find their way home anymore, possibly because of cell phones. The Earth was a perfect life-support system for hundreds of millions of years, until the Stock Market hit town. Mindless profits know no limits.
It being summertime, I of course have been thinking a lot about "the road". Hitchhiking up and down the West Coast for twenty-two years, Daylight Savings Time was my High Holiday. Summer was the best. I could just roll out my sleeping bag and sleep anywhere. Swimming in rivers, being a guide for fun tourists, backyard volleyball, giving runaway girls from Back East a friendly California welcome, psychedelic softball in mountain meadows, concerts and gatherings and barbecues. (I found that if you have a drivers license and can cook, people are always glad to see you. And if you don't deal, steal or get rowdy drunk, the cops leave you alone. Staying clean of course helps with all of the above. That can be the hardest thing on the road, finding a shower. Way harder than sex, drugs, or food. But even that can be an adventure out there.) Now I need pills to stay alive and couldn't get up in the morning if I slept on the ground in my trusty sleeping bag. I think of my tiny hotel room as a campsite in the trees of a favorite on-ramp up north, only with a sink and a door. But try as I may, there's just no replacing all the different people I used to get to meet every day, free of knowing anybody they knew or ever expecting to see them again, so there was a real openness that most normal, day-to-day encounters can't risk. High stuff, month after month after month. (Details upon request.)
Okay, I'm calling it a day. I watched my usual Leno monologue, and tonight being Monday, "Headlines". I washed all my bedding today, so I'm looking forward to stretching out for the night. (Cheap Thrills.) They're calling for another heat wave starting tomorrow and the air conditioning is broken here in my hotel--it sure works in January and February, but never in the summer. I haven't figured that one out yet.
Plant Your Seeds.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
"It's A Business Doing Pleasure With You"
"Welcome Home." If you ever go to a Rainbow Family Gathering of the Tribes, that's what The Rainbow People say to everybody as they arrive. "Welcome Home." That's kinda how I feel as I watch more and more folks descend out of the clouds and land back here in the real world. Reality strikes. People have been trying to point out for decades that living beyond a certain level is fun while it lasts, but--one way or another--it can't go on forever. Surprise!
It's summertime. That sure doesn't mean the same as when I was on the road and living outside most of the time, but it still sure has a nice ring to it. Long days, no coats needed, the river. I did a lot of outside work over the years, clearing brush, cutting firewood, planting trees, caring for critters, picking apples, digging various holes in the ground, and I enjoy mowing grass. Besides getting a free work-out as I performed my duties, and making a few bucks of course, I liked up in Mendocino County where I worked sometimes, the sound of the wind through the trees. Always made me think of a 1949 or '50 black and white movie wind-through-the-mountains soundtrack. And whenever I got one of those jobs, it was always fun as I broke the people in to that I'd have one or two tall Budweisers during the day. It's never been a problem, so that is non-negotiable in any agreement to work that looks like it's going to go over a day or two. I never asked about how much the pay was, I'd leave it to the people who needed my help to bring it up. It really didn't matter to me; however much it was, after the job I'd spend it until it was gone. So any money would do. If anybody seemed too cheap, I just wouldn't work for them again. I'd bounce around an area until things to do ran out, then stick out my thumb and move on down the road. Zero overhead. Summertime. (And some winters, but that's another story.)
I heard on the radio today, I think it was Philadelphia, that there are a number of spots around town with vehicles which people can register to use as needed, like for a grocery run or to pick somebody up at the airport. But you don't have to maintain your own personal vehicle 24/7. NOW you're talkin'!
There have been some fine, funny TV commercials over the years, and some I even looked forward to. I like when I recognize actors in multiple commercials and can informally follow their careers. But many commercials have me flying for the mute button every time. I even compare the psychology of some spots to various crimes. That commercial would be a sneak thief, or a hustler, and that one just took a club to people's heads. Ones that really drive me up the wall are those that suggest to varying degrees--in a society that is trying to totally restrict a citizen's sexual options to get married, abstain, or wear an ankle bracelet until you're 90--that if you buy this product you'll get sex. Those I think of as nothing less than forcible rape.
I just got a recorded message from the library. Two items I put on hold are in. One is a DVD showing how to play Texas Hold'um. I love playing poker. Not playing more in my life is one of my few regrets. But every time I've run into a chance to play, I've loved it. One of my favorite poker books was "Poker According To Maverick", written through the eyes of Bret Maverick. "My old Pappy always used to say . . . " But I've never played this new game. I've read how to play it a couple places, but I think actually watching a few hands on DVD would be worth a thousand words. Just in case I should run into a chance to play and that's the game. And the second item is a book written in the late 1940s about Bible questions to ask children. I need some fresh facts to stump Believers who start in on me in public. It never takes long to have a religious person talking in circles, but it's more interesting for me when I find new circles to travel with them. I know I can't win--eternal life vs logic--but I gotta do SOMETHING while I'm waiting for the bus. It's an old book, but unlike science, travel, discovery, medicine, music, communication, and everything else in the world, religion is unchanged from when it was first invented by people who thought the world was flat and were always on the lookout for witches and demons, so an old children's book is just as good for finding new questions to challenge untenable convictions as a book just published last week.
Lots of folks are scrambling to come up with new ways to live on less and help save our life-support system here on Planet Earth. The reluctant new hippies. Welcome Home.
It's summertime. That sure doesn't mean the same as when I was on the road and living outside most of the time, but it still sure has a nice ring to it. Long days, no coats needed, the river. I did a lot of outside work over the years, clearing brush, cutting firewood, planting trees, caring for critters, picking apples, digging various holes in the ground, and I enjoy mowing grass. Besides getting a free work-out as I performed my duties, and making a few bucks of course, I liked up in Mendocino County where I worked sometimes, the sound of the wind through the trees. Always made me think of a 1949 or '50 black and white movie wind-through-the-mountains soundtrack. And whenever I got one of those jobs, it was always fun as I broke the people in to that I'd have one or two tall Budweisers during the day. It's never been a problem, so that is non-negotiable in any agreement to work that looks like it's going to go over a day or two. I never asked about how much the pay was, I'd leave it to the people who needed my help to bring it up. It really didn't matter to me; however much it was, after the job I'd spend it until it was gone. So any money would do. If anybody seemed too cheap, I just wouldn't work for them again. I'd bounce around an area until things to do ran out, then stick out my thumb and move on down the road. Zero overhead. Summertime. (And some winters, but that's another story.)
I heard on the radio today, I think it was Philadelphia, that there are a number of spots around town with vehicles which people can register to use as needed, like for a grocery run or to pick somebody up at the airport. But you don't have to maintain your own personal vehicle 24/7. NOW you're talkin'!
There have been some fine, funny TV commercials over the years, and some I even looked forward to. I like when I recognize actors in multiple commercials and can informally follow their careers. But many commercials have me flying for the mute button every time. I even compare the psychology of some spots to various crimes. That commercial would be a sneak thief, or a hustler, and that one just took a club to people's heads. Ones that really drive me up the wall are those that suggest to varying degrees--in a society that is trying to totally restrict a citizen's sexual options to get married, abstain, or wear an ankle bracelet until you're 90--that if you buy this product you'll get sex. Those I think of as nothing less than forcible rape.
I just got a recorded message from the library. Two items I put on hold are in. One is a DVD showing how to play Texas Hold'um. I love playing poker. Not playing more in my life is one of my few regrets. But every time I've run into a chance to play, I've loved it. One of my favorite poker books was "Poker According To Maverick", written through the eyes of Bret Maverick. "My old Pappy always used to say . . . " But I've never played this new game. I've read how to play it a couple places, but I think actually watching a few hands on DVD would be worth a thousand words. Just in case I should run into a chance to play and that's the game. And the second item is a book written in the late 1940s about Bible questions to ask children. I need some fresh facts to stump Believers who start in on me in public. It never takes long to have a religious person talking in circles, but it's more interesting for me when I find new circles to travel with them. I know I can't win--eternal life vs logic--but I gotta do SOMETHING while I'm waiting for the bus. It's an old book, but unlike science, travel, discovery, medicine, music, communication, and everything else in the world, religion is unchanged from when it was first invented by people who thought the world was flat and were always on the lookout for witches and demons, so an old children's book is just as good for finding new questions to challenge untenable convictions as a book just published last week.
Lots of folks are scrambling to come up with new ways to live on less and help save our life-support system here on Planet Earth. The reluctant new hippies. Welcome Home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)