Don’t Blame the Russians

Increasingly, information on the internet comes to us in tiny fragments. Texts, tweets and memes dominate our online interactions, while millions of tiny articles so short you can hardly tell them from the picture captions, break information about the world down to the most basic unit, the solitary fact. Today, every fact now spawns an anti-fact, because disinformation can be created almost effortlessly online, so each granule of online information now requires real world verification. It’s as though reality has been ground up, sifted, and mixed with equal parts fantasy, hokum, and lies, and served to us online.

Who would today claim that this intensive exposure to online information has resulted in a more well-informed society? Has the internet elevated the quality of public debate? Has the internet strengthened our democracy and made it more responsive to the people it serves? Does anyone still believe that the internet is making us smarter or the world a better place?

Instead of debating ideas, we now debate the facts, and because we no longer agree on the facts, we no longer inhabit the same reality. The internet has become a vast wasteland of granular information, a featureless landscape that shifts, like sand-dunes in the wind. Since nothing on the internet is real, nothing on the internet is true. Information on the internet amounts to nothing more than the finely ground detritus from the collision of a billion different private realities. Objectivity has always been an illusion, but on the internet, there are no objects, so there can be no objective truth.

As the internet distracts us more and more, we know less and less about the real world around us, and instead inhabit a virtual universe of information, like a mirage on the desert, personalized for us, based on our browsing history, demographics, and shopping proclivities. We have all the information in the world at our fingertips. Has it made us smarter? Do we make better decisions? Of course not! We’re more alienated and deluded than ever.

We can’t really blame the Russians for using the internet to corrupt our democracy. After all, we developed the machinery to do it right here in the USA. We demonstrated that it could be done, showed them how to do it, and we were well into the process of doing it to our selves, when we left a door open that let the Russians push a few buttons. If the internet hadn’t already shattered the world into a billion pieces and ground it into such a fine powder, the Russians would not have been able to reshape it so easily.

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The True Meaning of Christmas

My partner, Amy Gustin had a great idea the other day. This is not at all unusual for her. A lot of my columns begin with one of her great ideas, and this is one of them. The other day, Amy was perusing some books about the cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet while contemplating the flora and fauna of Ice Age Europe, and speculating about the Paleolithic origins of certain pagan European Christmas symbols, when she said this: “Environmentalists should take over Christmas.”

“What?” I replied. She explained that a lot of European pagan Christmas symbols celebrate the Boreal Forest and an arctic climate. We have Christmas trees. Christmas is the only time of year when snow is popular, and Santa lives at the North Pole and gets around on a sled pulled by caribou. All of these things remind us of the arctic, and they should remind us that the arctic is undergoing dramatic changes due to global climate change.

Can you think of a better symbol for global climate change that Santa Claus? First, he drives a zero emission, carbon neutral vehicle, and he’s been doing it for centuries. Second, everything Santa owns faces imminent destruction, unless we can stop the sea ice from shrinking. Santa, Mrs. Claus, all of the elves and the whole toy factory are headed straight for a watery grave at the bottom of the ocean, unless we stop global warming now.

Suddenly, Christmas made sense to me in a whole new way, and I knew I had to write about it. Global Climate Crisis is the biggest challenge we face as a species; it deserves our biggest holiday, especially since those Sciencism dorks took over Earth Day. Fuck them and their March for Science. The people who gave us nuclear proliferation, and put 250 different persistent man-made toxins in every mother’s breast milk came out and walked all over Earth Day to tell us that scientists agree that global warming is a real phenomena, and by the way, go vaccinate your kids, eat your GMOs and have faith in Elon Musk’s space program. May the force be with you. Nanu Nanu.

We need Christmas if we are going to turn around the climate crisis. Forget about the baby Jesus and the Catholic Church’s first victim of sexual abuse. Jesus has always been a divisive figure, even as a baby, and nativity scenes often stir controversy. Who needs it? If you want to put out your creche, go ahead, just leave the holy family in the box. Go ahead and put out all of the animals. They’re the only parts anyone really likes about your creche anyway. Then go ahead and add a few more animals. Christmas is all about protecting biodiversity, so go wild on the animals.

Coca Cola has done a great job of making the polar bear into a symbol of Christmas, and we should adopt that symbol wholeheartedly. Instead of Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus, put a mother polar bear and her two cubs in your nativity scene. I’m all for wise men, if you can find any, but how wise can your men be if they’re standing next to a hungry polar bear.

Global Climate Crisis effects everyone, and it’s time to make Christmas into a holiday for everyone. From now on, Christmas is about the North Pole, and the gift of a stable climate. Being born doesn’t get you a holiday, in my book. Jesus has a holiday, it’s the one he lived and died for, and Christians should go ahead and do Easter big, but Christmas is too important to let Christians hog it to themselves. Besides, Christmas is better without Jesus.

We’ve still got Santa Claus, but now Christmas is about saving Santa. We’ve got reindeer and sleigh-bells, snow and Christmas trees and we’ve got all of the animals coming together to help their friend the polar bear. We’ve got the Nutcracker to help us crack the nut of global climate change, and we can re-edit the Charlie Brown Christmas Special so that Linus’ big speech reflects the holiday’s bold new direction. Everything you love about Christmas will still be there for you, but now, Christmas has a mission.

Did You Celebrate Earth Day?

Did you celebrate Earth Day last Friday? Me neither, and I don’t blame you a bit for letting it slip by. Earth Day has quickly become our most depressing holiday. A lot of people find Christmas depressing, especially if they spend it alone. Memorial Day is a real bummer, if you lost friends or loved ones in a war, but compared to Earth Day, these quaint celebrations seem naively joyous.

Even if you think of Christmas as the mythical origin of the Christian tradition of clerical sex abuse, and Memorial Day as a glorification of technological warfare, which I do, the blackness of Earth Day overshadows them all. Earth Day is more like Good Friday, except that there’s no Easter to follow it up. For people who believe in science and technology, democracy and civilization, Earth Day is a day to observe the crucifixion of their savior, in real time. Nobody wants to see that.

Earth Day didn’t start out as a depressing holiday. When we first established Earth Day, we thought that a day to celebrate the environment would help us re-prioritize our values and change our culture to meet the challenges of the looming crisis. Those were hope-filled times. We were all really high on LSD, and we thought we could do anything if we just celebrated it enough.

Forty years later, we can’t say “We didn’t know.” Today, the truth stares us in the face. We know we’re killing the planet. We know that we’re destabilizing the future, and we know that it’s killing us, but we don’t know how to stop. Forty years ago we had some ideas about how we could apply the brakes, and turn things around, perhaps even before it was too late. Today, we’re out of ideas. Nothing we’ve tried works. We’ve won a few battles, but we’re still losing the war, and losing it faster than ever. A recent survey estimates that we’ve lost half of the Earth’s biodiversity since the first Earth Day.

 

Not only have we failed to stop the environmental destruction, we’ve failed to slow its acceleration. We have failed, as a culture, to meet our most pressing existential threat. Knowing is not enough. Understanding does not help, and the more we know, the more we realize that it’s worse that we feared, and harder to change than we ever imagined. Against the hard truth of the environmental crisis, the myths of our culture unravel like a cheap sweater.

Today, we can look back on the whole history of civilization since the agricultural revolution, and project forward our global environmental impacts. From this perspective, we can see, pretty clearly, I’m afraid, that the costs of civilization far outweigh the benefits. What’s worse, the benefits of civilization lie mostly in the past, while the costs of civilization loom large over our future. After centuries of secular skeptical scientific inquiry and bold technological innovation, the only thing we know for sure is that everything we know about how to live on planet Earth is wrong.

How do you turn that into a holiday? …that doesn’t make you want to kill yourself? Some people still do the Earth Day festivals, but, you know, any excuse for a party. So go ahead, enjoy the music,

eat the organic veggie hippie food,

shop for fair-trade, creatively recycled handicrafts…

…and try not to think about it too much, because, believe me, you don’t want to know.

We don’t need another depressing holiday to remind us of how we’ve failed as a culture. We need to pick a day to take back our lives from the economic machine that consumes us all, and the environment around us. We need a global Day Off, just to remember what life is all about, and if people like having a Day Off, just to enjoy life, maybe we can stretch it to a week.

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in Humboldt

Introduction: I read today that the average age of the 30 most popular Christmas songs is 61 (Thanks you Harper’s Index). So I figured, “Hey, if people can listen to the same old Christmas songs they’ve heard a million times, every Christmas, they won’t mind rereading this old Christmas classic that first appeared in Savage Henry #7, The Holiday Issue, way back in 2010. It appeared here at lygsbtd a couple of years ago as well, but in the spirit of holiday tradition, and with apologies to my most dedicated readers, here we go again. Happy Holiday of Choice.

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in Humboldt

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through Humboldt County
Not a creature was stirring, not even Sheriff Mike Downey

The herb was all trimmed up and packed into bags
For smokers of taste, who will not smoke swag

Me in bed naked, my wife in her panties
It’s that time of month, so it’s the ones that are ratty

When out at the gate there arose such a racket
I got out of bed and threw on my jacket

Put on some pants and picked up my rifle
So they’d know I was serious and not to trifle

I stepped out of the door and into the rain
“To be out in this shit, this guy must be insane”

I thought to myself as I trudged up the path,
“This better be good or he’ll feel my wrath”

What did my dumb struck eyes then behold,
But a bearded old man in a late model Olds

I yelled, “It’s Christmas Eve, are you out of your mind?”
He said, “I’m Jewish, you’re Pagan, why’s this a bad time?

My friends all need weed, and I’ve plenty of cash,
At $3,000 a pound, I’ll take your whole stash”

I thought to myself, “Well that’s quite a laugh,
These days I’d a probably sold it for half.”

He showed me a bag that was packed full of bills
So, I opened the gate and we drove down the hill

I made up some coffee, and rolled up a jay
And showed him a few of the buds on the tray

He said, “This is the stuff that my friends all love.
They say that your stuff is a cut above.

They’ll pay what I ask for all I can get.
Did you have a good year? Is it all trimmed up yet?”

“This year I grew more than ever before,
It’s weighed up in bags just behind that door.

You can inspect it while I count this cash,
Hand me that ashtray, and I’ll knock this ash.”

We packed all the weed in the trunk of his car.
I said, “You found me out here, you must know where you are.”

“Oh yes, he said, “I know my way around here,
And I’ve many more stops to make, far and near.”

He started the car, and then turned on the lights,
And I heard him say, as he drove out of sight,

“Marijuana to all, and to all a good night.”

The End

Some Unfinished Business From 2014

Last year got so hectic towards the end, that I haven’t gotten around to cleaning house here at LYGSBT until now. This week, I’m clearing out all of the images I’ve collected throughout 2014, in the course of creating for you, the finest possible blogging experience.

From time to time, I find images that I really like, but don’t quite fit blog the post I’m illustrating at the time. By the end of the year, that folder contains a lot of such pictures, and before I back that folder up and delete it from my hard drive, I share them with you, as an excuse for taking a week off of writing. Here goes:

Let’s start with this one:

OK sure, people in Denmark are happy, but you’d think they could find shoes that match.

Do you think people in Denmark are happier than this charming, obviously American, couple?

If you plan to fly to Denmark, bring a pillow…

…but flying has its hazards.

So, you might as well hang around awhile.

Sorry, I guess that last image was a bit intense.  I didn’t mean to shock you.

I guess you can’t be too careful, and it helps to read the signs, or you might find yourself up…

without a paddle…

…but it could be worse.  You might find yourself here:

or here:

If so, I hope you know where you’re going.

..and that you eventually join us here:

just look out for:

because he’s probably on:

But maybe you just want to get away from it all, and go somewhere more secluded:

I saw some amazing Halloween costumes this year:

…and a few costumes intended for other holidays:

I guess the Easter Bunny has been busy.

..and here’s a modern take on a Christmas favorite:

speaking on Christmas, we should always remember the “reason for the season”

So, join us in celebrating.

Of course, if you are on drugs, every day is a holiday.

…but where are the drugs?

well break ’em out!

now we’re partying!!

Yes, drugs can be fun, but be careful, or you might start to see some really weird shit. Like this:

or this:

or this:

or this:

Take it from me…

Well… That’s it for 2014.

Did you like it?

Oh well.   I’ll be back with another post next week.

Unexpected Gifts

The week of Christmas seems like the ideal time to acknowledge a couple of gifts I have received this year which seem somehow related to my work here at lygsbtd. I don’t know whether these gifts came in appreciation of my writing, or just to show me how it’s done.

The first of these gifts mysteriously appeared in my mailbox at KMUD. It was a little book titled Yet Another Beautiful Day in Paradise by Fred Inthehills. I’ve heard Fred’s voice on KMUD, but I’ve not yet met him. I’m not at all sure I would recognize him if I saw him in town. I assume he put the book in my box, but I don’t know for sure.

The book I received had a much nicer cover than this.

What I liked best about Fred’s book was Fred. I like the way he thinks. I enjoyed his story and I encourage you to read it. It’s short. It won’t take you long. Yet Another Beautiful Day in Paradise has all of the elements of a classic Humboldt “back to the land” fairy tale. Every good Humboldt “back to the land” fairy tale has to have these elements:

The Cheap Land Story Every good “back to the land” fable has to have a story about how the person got their land, and how easily it came into their possession. For example, they came up here to attend a party, got shitfaced drunk, and woke up to find half of their money gone, and the deed to a 40 acre parcel in their hand.

The Marijuana Story Every “back to the land” fable recounts the protagonists long relationship with that misunderstood friend, Mary Jane. Every “back to the land” fable portrays marijuana as a positive influence, and as a helpful ally. Marijuana is a beautiful thing. What makes these old “back to the land” fables great is that when the describe all of the great things that marijuana does for them, money has nothing to do with it.

Instead, they talk about how marijuana saved them from alcohol, or fighting, or hard drugs, and that they were able to substitute marijuana for any of these things, and no matter how hard they tried to abuse marijuana, they could not hurt themselves. That’s some special magic there, and that’s a true story if ever I heard one. Marijuana saves lives, especially when you’ve got plenty of it, and finally, we get to the last element that every “back to the land” fairy tale must include…

The Sex Story. Eventually, all “back to the land” stories include a tale of a memorable night of amazing sex, that invariably leads to real offspring. If you live around here, and you read a lot of these stories, there’s a good chance that you know more than you need to know about the origins of some of your friends.

These “back to the land” fables all end there, with the happy, poor, family living in a tiny, hand-built, unpermitted, cabin in the woods, with more marijuana than they could possibly smoke.

I call these stories “fables,” not because they never happened, but because they never happen anymore. If it isn’t true now, then it was never true. Today, it is nearly impossible to find a place to live in Humboldt County, and the prices are ridiculous. The hills are full of dope yuppies, and nobody around here talks about marijuana except as a product, and as a business.

In contrast, the other gift I received this year revealed a more enduring truth about this community. According to the barista at the cafe I frequent, “This weird guy” asked her to give this pamphlet to my partner Amy, who in turn, gave it to me. This pamphlet turned out to be an issue of the Gulch Mulch, an underground zine out of the Whale Gulch area. The issue I received, dated Spring of 2002 includes a lot of historic artifacts that seem timeless for this area. The Anti-Hippie Petition of 1969 could have easily been written last week, in regard to “the homeless.” The names and the faces have changed, but the bigotry and intolerance remain.

The Gulch Mulch dutifully reported the endless petty bickering and behind the scenes drama that engulf every local institution in a murky shroud as thick and impenetrable as the fog in Redway. That sure hasn’t changed, but I wish we had a little gossip zine like the Gulch Mulch today so that we could get all the dirt, without actually getting dirty.

The Gulch Mulch included some funny bits and some autobiographical pieces as well.

I really enjoyed The Gulch Mulch and Yet Another Beautiful Day In Paradise. So, to whoever among you sent them my way, Thank you very much.

The LYGSBTD Holiday Gift Guide pt 2

As you could probably tell from last week’s post, I’m just so full of Christmas Spirit this year, that I’m about to hurl eggnog and candy canes into the next manger I see. Yes, it’s the holiday gift giving season, and Christmas is right around the corner. That’s right, you worked right through the Spring, Summer and Fall of 2014. Now it’s Winter again. The weather sucks. You hate your job. You hardly recognize your own family, and you’ve accomplished none of the things you hoped to do this year. Merry Christmas! You have no money, but your credit is still good, so you’re going Christmas shopping!

You can’t buy your life back, but you can buy people off, and an extra special Christmas gift will easily make up for all of those months of neglect. But what do you get for the people who mean enough to you to spend money on them at Christmas, but not enough to really care about them the rest of the year? How can you know their likes and dislikes, their interests and proclivities, their long-term dreams, or any of the other things that make them a unique individual, without actually paying attention to them the rest of the year? If you don’t know anything about them, how can you pick out a gift that will mean something to them? The challenge can be overwhelming.

I understand, and I’m here to help. Your loved ones don’t understand how much stress you are under. Being around them is work, and they expect so much from you, but you love them, at least you did before you went completely numb. You don’t want to let them down at Christmas time. You’re willing to spend the money. I won’t let you blow it.

When buying a gift for someone who means a lot to you, but that you don’t really know very well, keep this in mind. Get them something that will impress their friends. Even if the person you give it to, doesn’t like it, their friends will see this gift, and remind that person of just how lucky they are to receive such a nice gift, and that whoever gave it to them must really love them. Even if they know better themselves, hearing that sentiment expressed again and again, from their friends, will keep their feelings towards you in a state of perpetual conflicted ambivalence. Call it “love.”

Here’s a few suggestions:

Jet Pack. This will instantly make anyone popular and change their life, if they survive. With this, you can pack a whole lifetime’s worth of “love” into a single, explosively powerful, spectacularly impressive gift. Gift’s like this obliterate the individuality of the recipient, while they celebrate the generosity of the giver, so choose the gift based on your own personality, rather than that of the recipient. Here’s another idea:

Quad/Jetski I’ll bet that a lot of people around here will find one of these under their Christmas Tree this year, but maybe making noise and going fast doesn’t float your boat. Try this:

Barbecue Boat Everyone eats. Why not do it in the middle of a lake? Big ticket gifts like this really steal the show at family get-togethers, making other people’s gifts seem puny and insignificant by comparison. That’s how you solve your little gift-giving problem. If you can afford it, crush it!

This kind of generosity drives our economy and makes our world the miracle of modern technology that it has become. It isn’t what we wanted, but everyone keeps telling us how lucky we are to have it. Thanks… I guess.

Speaking of technology. Here’s a gift for that special woman in your life, the one you haven’t had time for lately, but hasn’t filed for divorce yet. It’s a very personal gift, made uniquely impersonal:

OhMiBod vibrator app for smart phones. OhMiBod consists of two parts, the hardware: a small, blue-tooth enabled, battery powered vibrator, designed to fit in a woman’s underwear, and the software: an app that you download to your smart-phone. The app allows you to control the vibrator from up to 26 ft away, perhaps even from another room, by blue-tooth, or from anywhere in the world, with a wifi connection.

Imagine. You could be watching the game with your buddies.

They’d just think you were sending a text to your bookie or something. Fiddle with your phone for ten or fifteen minutes while you drink beer and joke with your friends. Then call her up and say “I love you babe” and hang up. She’s satisfied, and you didn’t have to miss a single play.

What about gifts for men? Well what do men like? Men like boobs. Men don’t care what it is, as long as it has boobs, so give men something that has boobs.

Boob Radio. Yes, this radio has boobs, but when it comes down to it, all knobs and buttons are surrogate nipples and boobs, so most guys like almost any gadget. The more knobs and buttons it has, the better.

That just leaves pets. Pets don’t really care about gifts, unless they can eat them, and then they are always welcome. Still, some people insist on buying inedible gifts for their pets, so why not take their money.

Who cares if the pet enjoys the gift. That’s not the point. Usually, the pets do not like the gifts at all. In fact, animals generally have to be sedated before they will tolerate most of these products long enough to snap a promotional photo.

Here’s a selection:

Beaks for Dogs. Is this the “Crocks” of dog muzzles? These dogs hate this. They have better taste than that.

Knitted Hats for Dogs Do you think those dogs like those hats? No! Those dogs are wasted! If you want to make your dog happy, give them drugs, and then don’t dress them up in silly costumes. But what about cats?

DJ ScratchCat Turntable Scratching Post. Your cat would rather have a cardboard box to tear-up, but whatever. You’ve got $35 bucks to blow.

There you have it folks:

Gift ideas for everyone on your Christmas gift list. Wake me when it’s over.