On The Money, Cheap Calories

On The Money;

Economic Advice for the 99%

Cheap Calories

 

Its official. July 2012 was the hottest month in history. The last 12 months have been the hottest year in history. With the Olympics going on right now, it seems like a great time to break records, don’t you think? Maybe it’s time we gave Global Climate Crisis a gold medal for its performance this year, now that half the counties in the US have been declared disaster areas because of the heat, violent weather events, wildfires and drought.

 

I think Global Climate Crisis has really proven that it has what it takes to beat war, disease, poverty or political oppression, hands down. We’ll call the event “biggest threat to life on Earth”. This relative newcomer to the pestilence field has had to overcome a lot of obstacles to even be considered a contender, but this summer’s performance has really done a lot to remove those doubts.

 

NOAA’s chief climate scientist, James Hanson, says that this summer provides statistical proof that global climate change is real, and that it is man-made. However, if you don’t believe the evidence of your own eyes, and have gotten used to dismissing climate scientists as alarmist, Chicken Little types, statistical proof probably won’t change your opinion either. Such is the nature of denial. Reality doesn’t affect it much.

 

So, if you like triple digit temperatures, bizarre new weather events, dust-bowl-like droughts and giant wildfires, you are in luck, because we’re going to see a lot more of them. Yes, global climate change is likely to be more fun than you ever imagined. So get ready for some climate excitement, and be sure to thank the 1% for turning up the global thermostat.

 

Last year they gave us the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The year before that, it was the BP oil gusher in in the Gulf of Mexico. I can hardly wait to see what happens next year, because it only gets worse from here, but what do they get out of it?

 

Why do the 1% keep investing in fossil fuels, nuclear power, and GMO crops for that matter, even though it will almost certainly have disastrous long-term consequences? After all, if the richest 1% of us can’t take the long view, and base their decisions and devote their resources towards what’s best for the survival of life on Earth in the long run, who can?

 

Remember, that we, the 99% are just now figuring out that the 1% are ripping us off, destroying our planet, and ruining our lives, but the 1% have known that all along. The 1% knows that their empire would crumble, and that we would kill them if we ever get out from under their thumb. They really do have their hands full keeping all of us in line. Enslaving 7 billion people takes a lot of energy, and so, energy, not life on Earth, remains their highest priority.

 

If you want to watch the 1% in action in your life, look for the cheap energy. Gasoline, diesel fuel, grid electricity, natural gas, propane, aviation fuel. We wouldn’t have any of these without the 1%. Drilling platforms, nuclear power plants, oil refineries, etc. all take big capital, and the kind of government support that only really big money can afford. Whether you eat them, burn them in your car, use them to dry your clothes, watch TV, surf the internet, or fly to Miami, those cheap calories work to undermine the value of everything we do a human beings.

 

How so? Simple, you can’t possibly do as much work, in one day, as a gallon of gasoline. At today’s prices, that means your labor is worth less than $4 a day. That’s one way that cheap calories undermine your value as a human being. Cheap calories means it doesn’t cost much to ship jobs overseas to the cheapest labor markets, or to ship products and resources to the highest bidders, and cheap calories means our population continues to expand.

 

Cheap edible calories means most of us don’t ever struggle to find enough to eat. Instead, we struggle not to eat too much. By keeping food artificially plentiful, with capital intensive agribusiness techniques like high-tech factory farms, GMO food crops, and monoculture on a massive scale, the 1% has removed any sense of of our connection to the carrying capacity of of the land. As a result, global human population continues to explode exponentially, further lowering the value of any one individual.

 

So, if you want to see the 1% at work in your life, look at the places you find cheap calories; the gas station, grocery store, your electric bill, the corner convenience store or fast food restaurant. You’ll find cheap calories everywhere, and everywhere you find cheap calories, you’ll find the 1% using them to control your life and wreck your planet. Cheap calories cheapen life, and the 1% feeds them to you to keep you under control. There’s a view of the energy crisis that’s On The Money

 

The Thing That Wouldn’t Die

The Thing That Wouldn’t Die

We bought this pumpkin, a few weeks before Halloween last year, partially as a festive holiday decoration, but partially because a cat psychic told us that our black cat Nigel, really likes them. Nigel did, once, many years ago, when he was a kitten, enjoy sharpening his claws, and sitting, on a large orange pumpkin, and looked adorable doing so. However, he has completely ignored subsequent pumpkins, including this one. Although this is not the first pumpkin Nigel has ignored since we talked to the cat psychic, certainly by now, Nigel has ignored this pumpkin longer than any pumpkin in his entire life.

 

I’ve done my best to ignore it as well, but the pumpkin has begun to get on my nerves. This pumpkin takes up a lot of precious real estate on our coffee table. Being round, you can’t set anything on top of it, and being bright orange, you can’t help but notice it. I’ve learned to work around it, keeping my coffee and magazines on the end table instead, although that’s getting a bit crowded with my bong and ash-tray there as well. When I spill bong-water on my American Craft magazine, I try not to blame the pumpkin.

 

For ten months now, this traffic cone of the vegetable kingdom has dominated my field of view. The pumpkin still seemed like a perfectly natural Thanksgiving decoration, and did not seem at all out of place, except that it got in the way of Thanksgiving dinner. We live in a very small place. Our coffee table also serves as our dinner table, so the pumpkin served as an over-sized centerpiece at our Thanksgiving feast.

 

By Christmas, the pumpkin seemed a little strange, but rather than buy a Christmas Tree, we just slapped a Santa’s hat on it. The cone-shaped red hat with fuzzy white, trim looked a little Christmasy, but it also kind of looked like we had Santa’s head on our coffee table.

 

For New Year’s Eve, I thought about hollowing out the pumpkin to use as an ice bucket for champagne, but we had eggnog with homemade blackberry brandy instead, which required no ice bucket. So, the pumpkin sat there through the winter. All winter the pumpkin sat between me and the wood-stove preventing me from seeing the fire within, unless I craned my neck, but we weren’t going to throw away a perfectly good pumpkin.

 

When Springtime came, we had no place to put a vase of wildflowers, because the pumpkin took up too much space.

We let it substitute for an Easter egg, although we’ve never celebrated Jesus based holidays in our household. This pumpkin constitutes the first time we ever had an Easter, or Christmas decoration in our home, but it only happened because we had this pumpkin left over from Halloween. Call us reluctant Christians, at least reluctant to throw away our Halloween pumpkin.

Now, its the middle of August, its 103 degrees. I’m melting, but that pumpkin is still as hard as a rock. We dusted it off again today. No soft spots. The great orange orb sits there on my coffee table, mocking me in the summer heat. “What are you still doing here?” I ask it. The heat is getting to me, I’m starting to lose it.

 

I’m afraid that if it somehow makes it to this Halloween, this pumpkin will somehow be rejuvenated, and last another whole year. I couldn’t take that. I’d have to move out. It’ll be me or the pumpkin if it comes to that. I can’t take it any more. I hope I never see another pumpkin for the rest of my life.

 

Introducing: The Living Earth Connection

Introducing: The Living Earth Connection

 

Maybe you don’t get my perspective. Maybe you think I’m just a knee jerk reactionary, or maybe you just think I’m a jerk, but if you want to know why I see the world the way I do, you should listen to my partner, Amy Gustin’s radio show, this coming Sunday April 29 at 9:30 AM on KMUD (or you can download an mp3 file of it here, to listen to at your leisure). I cannot recommend this show highly enough.

Her program, The Living Earth Connection draws from the writings of Daniel Quinn. The show takes a long view of human history, instead of dividing the story of our species into “history” and “prehistory”. From this perspective, the program examines the success of our species as well as the success of our culture, drawing conclusions that shatter the dominant paradigm.

Amy did a great job of putting this material together. She’s put together a program that can change the way you see the world forever, but just because its profound, that doesn’t mean its going to get religious. Our problems run deeper than religion, and so does this show. You should listen.  (This link takes you to the Living Earth Connection blog)

 

How to Survive the Heat Dome

How to Survive the “Heat Dome”

 

104 degrees Fahrenheit in NY City yesterday sounds hellish. Not that I wouldn’t find New York City hellish at any time of year, but at 104F, surrounded by hot concrete, the powerful stench of concentrated humanity and ozone rich smog, and with 200,000,000 gallons of raw sewage pouring into the Hudson River, fouling all of the local beaches, the Big Apple must rival Mumbai or Calcutta for epic urban misery right now.

I’ve dealt with a few heat waves in my day, I once worked in an auto service garage in Houston, TX, spent a summer on the Black Rock City Dept. of Public Works preparing for Burning Man, and spent a couple weeks evading authorities in Death Valley. I know how to cope with heat. So, I offer these tips.

1. Go to the produce aisle at your grocery store, pick out a fresh organic romaine lettuce, and pat yourself down with it, head to toe. If anyone asks you what you are doing, tell them that’s how your mom taught you to pick out lettuce. If anyone asks what’s wrong with it as you put it back on the shelf, tell them its all sweaty and smells like BO.
2. Identify corpses at the morgue. Show up at your local morgue, tell them your mother was just too broken up to give much information, but she asked you to go identify the body. Hopefully you won’t really see anyone you recognize, but they always keep it nice and cool in there, so take your time about it.
3. Put 5lb of dry ice in a canvas shopping bag and hang it around your neck. Now put on a parka and some mittens over it and go for a walk around town just to freak people out.
4. Read the account of Scott’s fatal antarctic expedition (The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley George Benet Cherry-Garrard). As you read the grisly account of this ill-fated mission, it will transport you to the most inhospitably cold place on earth. As members of the party freeze to death one by one, until, ultimately, they all succumb to the frigid temperatures, the relentless bitter wind and the vast featureless landscape, you’ll believe you are freezing to death yourself, as you die of heatstroke.

5. Go Bowling, They always keep bowling alleys air-conditioned. They have plenty of seating and they serve beer. What more do you want from life?

6. Have yourself cryogenically preserved until October. Since most people have realized that things are getting worse rather than better, the whole cryogenic suspended-animation industry has fallen on hard times. Who wants to go into deep freeze just to wake up in some cannibalistic, dystopian war zone of the future? So, lately they offer some short-term options, say 60 to 90 days. Let them put you on a shelf in a freezer, next to Timothy Leary’s head until Fall.

Hot Sex. That got your attention didn’t it, but what I mean is “hot weather sex”. During heat waves, no one wants to wear any more clothing that they absolutely have to. So, all of these naked people are bound to get you horny. Unfortunately, its too hot and sticky to have another hot sweaty body right next to yours. So try these suggestions.

1. Oral sex with an ice cube in your mouth. Those round, gumdrop shaped ice cubes are best for this. Be careful not to choke. Make sure you have enough ice for both of you. Start by kissing the back of your partners neck. If you’re one of the millions of people without a sexual partner, try..
2. A popsicle as a dildo. I’m sure this is quite messy, however you women have a safe, cheap solution to your high-temperature horniness. Just flag down the Good Humor man. Men on the other hand have no choice but to…
3. Fuck a Salad Bar. Just climb in under the sneeze guard, and stick it in something cold, wet and squishy. Be prepared to get arrested.

Try out all of these heat-beating tips, and before you know it, it’ll start snowing again.