Passive aggression can be a terrible thing when you experience it firsthand from another person. I think you’ll be seeing lots more of this form of anti-social behavior from people as the economy deteriorates further and the pressure to maintain one’s personal status quo and lifestyle increases. I certainly am experiencing it.

Recently a person I believed was a fairly close and trustworthy friend decided to end our friendship in a rather spectacular manner. Even though he’s the one who blew up the friendship for no reason in particular, he blamed it all on me with a searing email that basically took me apart, piece by piece. “I’m selfish. People don’t like me. I don’t do anything for anyone. My pessimism is stifling. My politics are insane.” (He’s a Republican.) I’m a fierce independent who doesn’t cotton to party lines or parroting what I’ve heard somewhere else. Yea, having a personal opinion and the guts to lay it out, I guess that’s insane.

M’kay…So it’s pretty hard to be friends with someone who now thinks that low of me. But I won’t return fire what I could say in response because I still like the guy, in spite of his crudities and massive failure to cope. I think he’s under pressure to keep his life from blowing to smithereens because his family’s overhead is far larger than his family’s income. He could lose his house.

I “caused” it just by being myself, not for having done anything in particular, just for being who I am. Who I am is apparent within an hour of meeting me. It doesn’t take three years to discover what I’m about and form an opinion. I see myself as being like garlic and onions. You either like me or you don’t. Just don’t act like my best buddy for three years, then blow up and expect me to believe the incredibly personal criticisms.

I’m going to keep the sunny side up in all of my interactions with other people even if the other guy goes Ape shit.



jay_toups_telecommuter_since_1998In Montana, short visits can turn into long ones.

In 1998 almost everyone worried about the Y2K issue.  It turned out not to be a big deal.  Then came September 11, 2001, which continues to be a big deal (at least for some), and our rosily naive American outlook began to crumble across the board, eroding by the day.  Wars, killer hurricanes, and economic calumny ensued. 8 more years pass and today we’re worried (some terrified) about almost everything: the climate, the economy, and the environment.

It’s all gotten much worse, hasn’t it? Oh, you haven’t noticed? Been living under a rock? How about in front of a television? What mainstream media is serving up might not be the whole truth.

Can you see, learn about and appreciate the world better by staying put and browsing your way around the world? Would the world be a better place if more of us stuck closer to home and practiced what is often our worst skill: Internet computing? The answer from my perspective is a definite yes!

By inclination, and twelve years of work-at-home conditioning, I see our world and interact with other people from a very different angle as a telecommuting techie type.  Face time is a rare luxury to me because we live in the woods, and all my clients live somewhere else. Online is it. So when I do interact with people in the real world, it’s a treat because I’m not living among the teeming hordes. As a result I’ve lost that weary, urbanized social fatigue somewhere along the line…I’m not tired of people. Yay! Life among people is a carnival and I have the energy to enjoy them.

For most people I know, travel is something that happens almost exclusively in the physical world, such as driving to work and back each day. Or going on vacation, or “expeditions” to far flung corners of the world.

Online travel? For most people it’s limited to shopping at Amazon (online mall if there ever was one), and Facebook excursions, where people can hook up and exchange one liners across great distances, mostly. Facebook has become the new email on steroids, easier to use, and with words, pics and videos posted in full view of one’s friends, which makes it even more stimulating. But it’s kind of like cotton candy. Tastes good, but gives you no nourishment, save for the few people who take the time to comment or post their own stuff.

After 12 years of working from home here in outer Montana, I’m sure my perspective isn’t just a paranoid Kaczinsky-esque delusion fueled by too many lattes or too many hours years working alone. (I’m down to 1 cup of java a day, so that’s definitely not it…and I’ve been making sure to get out and interact with real people instead of mailing them bombs.)

In the meantime, our world suffers ever more dearly from the byproducts of our supposed freedoms. Travel (at least in a car or truck) is a big nasty byproduct! Until mankind learns to stay put, we’re screwed. Got it?

Recreation, online or offline, is where you find it. And so is a contrary thought to stir the conscience of anyone who ventures here.

A local couple looks forward to a long weekend attending a music festival 120 miles from their mountaintop home.  Man gets up early the day before they plan to depart and drives his econobox diesel import 90 miles closer to the event to set up a tent early (he’s a cautious guy) to reserve a spot in a campground located 30 miles from the festival grounds.

90 miles later, the man returns home, having laid the groundwork for a wonderful American-style weekend.

Early the next morning the man gets up and drives 40 miles round trip to drop off their dog to a dogsitter. (Me.) Man then returns home, hooks up pickup truck to his 5th wheel RV and along with spousal unit drives 75 miles up and over a mountain pass back to the aforementioned campground.  Sets up RV camp, eats dinner. Probably asleep before sunset.

Friday morning they get in their pickup truck and drive 30 miles to the festival. Drink beer, eat food, listen to music. All well and good. Then its 30 more miles back to camp.

Saturday morning they again drive 30 miles to the festival. Drink beer, eat food, listen to music. All well and good. Then its 30 more miles back to camp.

Sunday morning they drive 30 miles to the festival. Drink beer, eat food, listen to music. All well and good. By afternoon they’ve had enough of the sun, food and music, then its 30 more miles back to camp. The man and woman pack up and head home, 75 miles away.

Once back home, man drops off spousal unit and RV, jumps back into the econobox and drives 40 miles round trip to retrieve his dog.

He was dog tired too.

Isn’t freedom wonderful?

180
40
90
180
90
40
___
720 miles

But is this kind of excess an anomaly for the couple in their quest for mobility? Uh, nope. The man has driven more than once from Montana to the east coast to bring cases of wine to his old friends.

Enjoy what could well be our last few months of culturally reinforced American insularity and relative plenitude. But at least put this bit of news in your pipe and smoke it in the meantime.  Talk about it with family and friends. Or start digging up your backyard to grow some veggies.

I’m a happy guy despite how it may appear, but I am concerned about our economic situation. And I’m sure you probably are as well. If you aren’t concerned yet, you will be, even if you are a filthy rich redneck living off the grid at the end of your private road.

I think Americans across the board are about to experience a whole new world of hardship and economic pain that is incomprehensible to most of us at this juncture. I really hope not, but I’m not going betting against this out of control economic freight train.

“Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle silly video moments, fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.”

Link to Truthdig article.

So what’s the big problem? The rest of the world’s leading nations are actively dumping the dollar as reserve currency. What does this mean? How about the end of the American way of life. The end of American hegemony. The end of rampant militarization.  And possibly much, much worse.

When we elected Barack Obama, I was hopeful until I realized (again) that the problems which ail our country are fatal flaws that no politician can possibly fix. We are beyond broke. But of course, Obama’s good at fixing small problems with a single swat.

We are to put it mildly, screwed. Don’t say you didn’t know or believe the worst was still in front of you, read the article and get ready for the next economic crapstorm.

Hide me as a friend if you don’t like the topic. Or thank me later after you acknowledge that nobody you know is really talking about what’s going to happen next in this country. It’s called denial.

Or don’t thank me at all. But at least try to remove as much of yourself from the tracks as you can or you might get squashed flat like a Lincoln cent or smushed like the fly in the vid.

Everything Americans think they know, they learned from a televised morality play. It’s all theater. You root for some good guy and boo some bad guy. You pick your own, but you dance to the tune of the men running the show. It’s mind control, pure and simple, and if there is an American immune to it, then he is probably living in a snow cave somewhere in Alaska.

- Gypsy Joe Hess (1919-1988), prospector, self-educated philosopher and horse trader

Source: Joe Bageant

We are supposedly a God-fearing country. You may or may not be a God-fearing person. But there’s something even more fearful going on right before our very eyes: the crumbling of America’s economic foundation.

The United States economy is in freefall across all sectors. Banking. Finance. Insurance. Housing. Commercial Real Estate. Automobiles. Auto Parts. Retail. Fast Food. We are sliding into a bottomless chasm of long-term debt from which we may never recover. America and its people are being led off an economic cliff by horribly stupid politicians, anachronistic budget policies, and a preoccupied, mostly clueless electorate.

Americans saw $1.3 trillion of wealth vaporize in the first quarter of 2009 alone, as the stock market and home values continued to decline, according to the flow of funds report by the Federal Reserve released Thursday.

I believe America needs to do an about face and invest in peace for any real positive change to occur in our country’s direction. I don’t believe we should invest heavily in the tools of war and expect our desperate economic and environmental situations to improve.

Why do we insist on digging America’s hole deeper? Is this the real American Way? Why will we burn through more than 600 billion dollars on military expenditures in 2009? Look at the difference between the USA and its nearest-spending military and economic “rival” China. That 522 billion dollar differential could solve a lot of problems in this country. And to keep us all safe, we’d still be at parity with China’s military budget.

Another way to look at this militarized rape of the country’s budget?

Add the figures for the next 9 countries and you get 476.4 billion. That’s right, America spends more on planes, guns, bullets, grunts and combat boots than the entire rest of the world combined.

This is not the kind of momentum America needs or can afford. We need to secure our borders here at home and invest in domestic programs that result in greater economic security. We need to stop the bleeding and start healing our national psychosis. We can claim there are bad guys out to get America, but the baddest, most dangerous guys are the folks in Washington selling us all up the river without a paddle.

President Obama, are you listening? You better listen, that’s why we elected you and not that other guy.

Top 10 military spenders in 2008 ($bn)

1. USA 607
2. China 84.9
3. France 65.7
4. UK 65.3
5. Russia 58.6
6. Germany 46.8
7. Japan 46.3
8. Italy 40.6
9. Saudi Arabia 38.2
10. India 30

These are conservative estimates, putting America’s military expenditures at about 36 percent of our annual budget. Some watchdog organizations peg US military spending at 54 percent of the US Budget for 2009. That’s 1.449 trillion dollars!

At what point will the straw break the camel’s back, President Obama? Congress? The middle class can only take so much. Will you raise my taxes to pay the interest on the national debt? I hear my share will soon be $155,000.

Send me a bill. I dare you.

Source:  Yearbook on Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri)

Ready to live more in the next couple of hours than the rest of your life to date? Just tell yourself you have only 120 minutes to live. (Whisper it to yourself a few times, it helps to get this profundity front and center in your mind.)

Of course time will pass the same no matter what you tell yourself. Months. Years. Decades. But when you forget to seize the day in bite-sized, 120-minute chunks, tell yourself again and again whenever the urge strikes: I have only 120 minutes to live.

One day it will come to pass that you find yourself arriving on the doorstep at the end of your life. And there will be no more seconds, minutes, days, months, years or decades.

You now have 119 minutes. Good luck making the minutes count.

Sage words of advice by Koa on finding true freedom in this whacked-out world.  A compelling personal statement wrapped around a warning to prepare for what’s next if ever there was one.

Thanks to Survival Acres (John) for posting this where I could stumble across it.

Status Quo

People generally like to change, but only because they want to: lose weight, quit smoking, find or lose God,  make or save more money, get sober, or even get drunk. But sometimes people are confronted with change because they have no other choice.  Since this involuntary change taints America’s manifest destiny to do as we damn well please, it will take a while before we realize those uncontrollable changes are often the changes we need to make most.

We’ve thoroughly exhausted the cherished capitalist premise that more is better: we built bigger houses for all our stuff but they became too big to heat; we bought cars that could ferry a soccer team (or just a soccer mom) but were too big to park and too expensive to own; we thought we were embracing a simpler life by squeezing in a day in the garden between working and shopping and even an extra job to pay for it all.

No more.

I’ve done my share of propping up the American status quo. So have you. Admit it, we’re all culpable for the bubbles and the busts that have stolen the soul of our country. Not just the other guy or other party. No amount Tea Partying is going to fix the mess.

Now that America is bleeding like a stuck pig, you’re probably doing less propping up of the status quo in lockstep with everybody else because you can no longer afford to. That’s why Detroit is in the shitter. Ditto every other business you can think of. Why? Because you have to reign your purchasing in, not because you want to, most likely.

So finding yourself having to do much more with far less, what’re you going to do? Change your lifestyle and purchasing habits, only more than what you’re doing already.

I’m as guilty as the next person who lives in the industrial world when it comes to consuming stuff as my birthright. But I’m not so caught up in personal psychodrama (maintaining the status quo) that I don’t feel the need to rebel against this dangerous, bleeding beast called consumerism, wherever it rears its ugly and stubborn head. And I see it in the lives of people who call themselves environmentally aware, responsible adults. Uh huh.

You can rebel. And then you can rebel some more. But first you have to let go of some of your stuff, both mental and physical. It isn’t easy getting over yourself and your stuff. I’m slashing my consumer footprint. I seldom drive my car, which I bought new in 1989. I’ve worked from home for 11 years, eat little meat, drink water from a creek, wear extra layers instead of reaching for the thermostat, and while I’m at it, tend a compost heap and a garden (with my wife and partner Tamera) and chop wood to burn in a high-tech soapstone stove. Oh yeah, we don’t watch TV either. So pin a medal on my chest, right?

Years ago I made a decision to live more like people did 100 years ago and still do in developing countries because it’s far more sustainable and affordable. I ride a bike for recreation, or ski, hike, raft or kayak. Human-powered recreation is one way to pummel the status quo because when you do something physical it’s always in the moment. So we moved to the mountains next to a real river with fewer than 10 people per square mile. The simple life only makes sense in a simple place. If you’re in the middle of the urban milieu, good luck cutting through your own crap that keeps you there.

While we choose to live differently, some people I know and love (though not necessarily respect their rec choices) choose to race cars, motorcycles, ATVs, etc. Some have 50-inch flat panel televisions in every room and leave their computers on all the time. Or stay stuck in places that cost an arm and a leg, clinging to their personal traditions and lack of inertia to make real changes.

Seems whatever some people do personally to conserve is lost in a mad rush to entertainment by fossil-fueled lifestyles and diversions that are so deeply ingrained it is astonishing.

“It’s overconsumption, not population growth, that is the fundamental problem: By almost any measure, a small portion of the world’s people – those in the affluent, developed world – use up most of the Earth’s resources and produce most of its greenhouse gas emissions.”

Here’s an interesting article that explains why (y)our precious American-style consumerism is more dangerous than overpopulation.

Here’s another brief but interesting article about “economic survivalism.”

Running and writing for a blog that deals head on with you and your connection to some of the top issues facing humanity and all life on Earth is tantamount to standing on a street corner 24/7 handing out “Repent Now!” flyers to people as they pass by. Most of the flyers get tossed without a read. Normal people seldom bother to look up, stop, say hello, ask a question, or exhibit interest that could somehow derail their headlong rush to wherever.

Some are curious enough to cast a sidelong glance at the billboard I’m wearing or stop to consider the content of the flyer before moving on. Others are hard as stone and keep their attention focused on the sidewalk. They’ve seen it all. Right.

If you’re one of those people just passing by, I’m the foam-flecked, bearded guy with flame in his eyes and passion in his voice, urging you to mend your environmental ways. But unlike most street corner evangelists, I’m on EVERY street corner.

Ignore the messenger if you will, but you ignore the message at your peril.


The venerable “Doomsday Clock” from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been expanded to include the ever increasing climate threat.

Add global warming to nuclear threats. Move the minute hand to five minutes before midnight. Set your alarm. Sweet dreams…

Link to article

Here it is, Christmas Day 2006. It’s been snowing gangbusters here in western Montana. All is quiet, all is still. All is peaceful. Or so it seems.

2006 was a year of treading water, at best. The rich got richer. The poor got poorer. Governments became even more ruthless and reckless, pursuing nuclear technologies, testing nuclear weapons, wasting soldiers lives and hundreds of billions spreading the seeds of “democracy” where it is neither welcome or understood, all while ignoring the real environmental problems they are facing in their own backyards. And we proles kept spending.

And since you’re likely to be somewhere in the gaping maw known as the middle class here in Amerikay, you probably felt the squeeze on your resources from every direction; energy, food, transportation, housing. No wonder we don’t have much of our collective human spirit to focus on solving environmental problems when it requires all any one person can muster to sustain their lifestyle.

Oh I know. It’s all just business as usual. The way of things. For now at least. But while you were living your life and feathering your nest, the earth got hammered, again. Worldwide, we exceeded all records for carbon dioxide output, and moved the bar higher on solid waste. Temperatures have risen to their highest in the past 1 million years. How can next year bring any improvement, unless we take a closer look at the real source of the problem: ourselves, the 7 billion people living like there’s no tomorrow?

Hmm, maybe tomorrow doesn’t mean very much after all the lip service and wishful thinking I’ve heard from well-intentioned people. Could be why nobody in this country saves much money either. In tomorrow’s world, money won’t mean much because our progeny will have much bigger problems to cope with, like finding themselves without clean air, clean water, or food.

So be thankful you live in a time when you can ignore the world at large and block it out with material comforts. We of today are truly blessed, in a wickedly finite way. And successive generations cursed—saddled with a diminished set of expectations and a polluted planet as a result.

Whirled Home Journal wishes you and yours a 2007 full of happiness and joy driven by introspection and reconsideration of the material world that defines us all. A self-reckoning for the good of the world around you. Because who you are isn’t best measured by what you own or what you preach or believe. It will be best measured in the world of tomorrow by what you do (or don’t do) about the environment around you today.

And here’s wishing you a little less of everything to illumine your path.

“Move along when the crowd is right, stand alone when the crowd is wrong.” John Gorka

A friend’s email this morning prompted this post. In it he suggested that I learn to act my age, strive to be more positive, and consider setting down my “gauntlet” and let the younger generation take up causes I spend considerable time on, including political and environmental issues. He further asserted that we are 180 degrees apart, and that I should calm down and be more like him, in particular, singling out my belief in reopening the 9-11 investigation as an obscure point of view. Obscure? Dark? We obviously don’t live under the same rock or enjoy the same pursuits.

I’m a member of the ‘something beats nothing’ club. Which is to say that I much prefer to remain involved in affairs of the world, contributing to whatever dialogue and discussion there is on important topics, than simply doing nothing. I’m not old and tired or scared enough to leave it to professional politicians and pundits. I have opinions and I have the dedication, energy and will to advance those opinions.

I don’t believe in the standard polemic definition of “positive” and “negative” that describes everything in terms of good or bad, black or white, dark or light. There is richness in the infinite shading of colors that constitute the real world. Outside the imaginings of one’s mind little of it is definable in such rote terms. And there is something more than positive or negative at stake. If anyone really thinks it negative to write about topics they choose to avoid, fine. But don’t ever ask me to behave differently. That’s the quickest way I know to sully a friendship, and expanded to worldly proportions, the quickest way to destroy this rich and varied world.

Find a way to celebrate the differences instead of doing your level best to drag me or anyone else down to your level of comfort. I am quite comfortable in my skin, saying what I’m saying. For me, at least, I prefer the blood sport of telling it like it is, or how I see things are, than quietly going along with whatever the world serves up. No, I’m not a golfer, I have more interesting and “positive” things to do with my life.:-)

We will sleep forever. Why go to sleep before we actually have to? And why on earth should I join those who choose to put one foot more or less in the grave while still living in early retirement? Now that’s dark.

Okay, so I bit too hard on the fruit of bitter words in the prior post. I’m sorry and this is an apology (Exception to Disclaimer #1). This time I’ll try to avoid insulting anyone I know. In fact, I do know people are making changes in their lives that are big-time friendly to the environment.

My sister Christina dumped her car in 2001 and usually rides a bike to work. What was essentially a financial decision also had enormous personal and environmental impact, all of it positive. She’s lost over 100 pounds and transformed her life. But that’s her story, and one that I hope she’ll tell someday.

A friend named Kevin Wadsworth, to the best of my knowledge, has never driven a car, much less owned one.

I haven’t driven my car since November. So I guess I should apologize to myself as well. I’m less of a hypocrite today than I was yesterday.

How about you?

Take a hard look around. What do you see, really? A world consumed with itself, billions of people whose only principle motivation is to feed their faces and buy stuff to feather their nests. Damn the environmental and political torpedoes, it’s full speed ahead. Business as usual. The corporate makeover of our beautiful world continues apace and you are a pawn in the game. Responsible for the outcome even. And the outcome doesn’t look too good.

If you don’t believe me, take a hard look around.

I’ve been writing this blog and beating this drum now for over 4 years. In that time, not a single reader has weighed in with a rebuttal or “right on” acknowledgement that this assertion “we’re doomed” may very well be true. And if not one reader can even bring themself to endorse the notion that things may be worse than we realize, it is a sure bet that they aren’t doing anything to ameliorate the problem, like walking to work, recycling, nocycling, bicycling, or being a vegetarian at least one day a week.

Funny thing is, most people who read this blog are my friends and family. What does this mean, other than nobody, not even one’s mother, loves a gloom and doomer? It means most people, like you, can’t handle the truth, much less do anything to shape the outcome. Just like Jack Nicholson said to Tom Cruise.

At this point, I’ve learned not to care what people such as you think. I have learned that it doesn’t matter what others do or don’t do. It matters what I do. I can control that. Which means I can control what flies out of my fingers as I write this diatribe. And adjust accordingly.

What about you? Is your head buried in the superifical sand, or burrowed deeply up the eliminative canal where the sun doesn’t shine?

I thought so. Have a nice day being a wallflower AND an enviro-schmuck.

Fight for our beliefs. It is what humans are born and bred throughout life to do. It’s the basis of America’s two-party political system. We do it unconsciously and consciously. We learn at an early age to slap labels on the other side of our public (and private) issues rather than dig for common understanding and resolution that benefits both sides. We almost never ask whether there is a more holistic, consensus-based approach to resolving such things. That usually comes after the damage has been done.

We learn to debate and entrench, not necessarily to resolve, our common issues. And the entrenched political debate is tellingly inefficient at producing tangible results, such as reducing our dependence on imported oil, or even more tellingly, reducing our national debt. We have learned to be exquisitely stubborn. We have also learned to ignore the elephant in the room of all public discourse in this country: the truth.

Choose any public issue. The war in Iraq. The price of gasoline. Guns, abortion rights, freedom of speech, the environment. What does it all come down to? Your opinion. My opinion. Right, left, red, blue, Democrat, Republican, atheists, neocons, etc. Money and power. Most issues come down to the pitting of one faction against another as the best way to move forward. Whichever group has the strongest argument (replete with means of funding) wins. And as a result of this outrageously expensive and wasteful political sideshow, we’re not moving forward. On the contrary our country is moving backward because we’re not practicing anything more than how to be good team members in whatever games we’re currently playing.

Polemic and polarity is no longer enough. It’s not a game with two sides.

Why do our politicians divide universal issues, such as the environment, into parts? Why do you? Do tree huggers and real estate developers have anything in common? We all breathe the air, and we all want to ensure that our progeny will be able to breathe the air (and drink the water) in fifty years. Instead, this country pays lip service to the global environment even as it wages a war to ensure that it continues to lead the world in per capita energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. actually increased its output of gases 2 percent this year, according to the government’s latest report.

Bottom line: we’re all hypocrites because the numbers don’t lie.

Our soldiers are dying in Iraq for oil, to implement democracy, and to ensure that Americans continue squandering the very substance that threatens to poison our beautiful country and the entire planet. The USA is setting a particularly tragic example for India and China, which have both, along with USA, opted out of Kyoto Treaty protocols. So we have nearly half the world’s population committed politically to endorsing and protecting their short-term interests on one “side” of the environmental issues facing all of humanity.

It is a dangerous game that cannot be won by any amount of partisan politics and cultural denial. This is a game we will all lose. The environment we are collectively destroying today all but assures a bleak future in which succeeding generations will pay with their lives for our heedless abnegation of moral responsibility.

We’re Not Number 1: We’re Better Than That

Why does the US government have 8 trillion dollars in debt? How does being in hock up to our ears benefit America in world affairs or at home? Does anyone really believe that our crushing debt doesn’t matter because it will be offset by ‘growth’ in our GNP? I would happily write a check for the $28,000 dollars representing my portion of the national debt if I thought it was a good investment. Would you write a similar check?

My fellow Americans, might we try to practice our worst skills for a change? Don’t leap to judgement, suspend it. Don’t slice and dice the issues and focus on your side of the big story, focus on the whole solution. Don’t practice being right or “first” at all costs. Practice self-doubt, real soul searching, and compromise with the world around you for the good of all. Don’t wait for our leaders to lead. Develop sustainable lifestyles in which “less” is actually “more.” Practice happiness through equanimity. If you can get through this letter to the editor, and fully understand the word equanimity, you’ll be well on your way.

The Truth Is Not a Football, Sis Boom Bah

Still equate economic progress with taking everything good and whole in this world and cutting it into parts? Just keep doing what you’re doing and watch what happens in coming years.

When a sufficient amount of this beautiful blue and green planet is burned to cinders and riven into cutlets, it will be game over. No side will win. There won’t be a Hail Mary, 4th-down conversion that saves the day either way. The teams, fans, and cheerleaders on all sides will fail to avert a disastrous outcome by having done nothing, either politically or personally, to change the course of future events while there was a fighting chance. The NFL, the NBA, and NASCAR Nation will all be no longer because humanity will be no longer.

Perish the thought.

Some things are better off viewed from all angles but left alone and appreciated intact. Like rattlesnakes, grizzly bears and frogs. Like the truth in all things big and small.

- Happy Holidaze from your pal in the pines…

“There should only be one billboard in America; one that says Buy Stuff!”
George Carlin

Okay, off come the nice-nice gloves. I’m calling out any and all WHJ readers, most of whom who have everything they’ll ever need in the way of security and material comforts, who have nothing left to give back to life beyond their own noses and personal interests. What am I talking about? Let’s begin with long neglected friendships, or the non-existent dialogue on politics, or your complete neglect of your impact on the environment, or neglect of any other good cause (such as donating to Katrina victims through a trusted charity), because you’re too wrapped up in your own psychodrama, too stingy and prolly too pooped from trying to keep up with your many obligations.

Sure you’ve got opinions, but you’re too busy, and mostly you have learned that it doesn’t pay to make points.

What are you doing with them besides “stuffing them” or bolstering your self image (and feathering your own nest) in life? There is a larger world out there, and it needs you more than ever, in case you haven’t noticed. Try noticing how many times each day you hold your tongue because you don’t have the time or energy to make your point. The result of everyone holding their tongues is the circumspect, suspicious, deteriorating world of today, being lead down the road to ruin by a few verbose idiots with bottomless checkbooks.

Is there a workable solution that will help you pull your head out of the warm orifice of apathy and do something about the cold, hard world around you? I think so. Take the offense. How about fewer obligations and less stuff for starters? You won’t be able to take any stuff with you; give some thought to this now, before you’re at the end of your days wondering what to do with all that stuff when you check out to the afterlife.

Speak up while you still can. Stand for something more than stuff. The time you save will be your own, and you’ll save money too. Which buys more quality time to spend any way you want: with your kids, your old friends, examing and re-calibrating your moral compass, making your thoughts and opinions known, and ultimately improving our world by making a difference in the world just beyond your nose.

Here’s Why You Suck

Got your attention? Most people really suck at communicating, especially writing. People who hate to write usually don’t write well, so they don’t write at all. Or they write drivel to cover their circumlocutory tracks in the digital sand.

Some people who pay me to write marketing poop for them are such poor communicators that they literally cannot ennumerate what needs to be said lucidly and intelligently enough to be credible. And it’s their business! They love me because I put into words what they “would’ve said” if they only had the time.

Yea, right.

On a personal note, people I’ve known and still know hate to be outwardly introspective and take positions, so they adapt themselves to their national origins, religions, and economic interests, cultural programming and so forth and basically go on autopilot with regard to how to live and interact with their fellow beings on the planet. Relationships have become as disposable as the rest of our culture, apparently.

That’s right. Everything about “you” and your peoplesphere is obviously more important than anything else beyond it, including taking time be part of something beyond yourself. If it’s not somehow about you or your family, political party, football team, etc., you’re probably not interested in it enough to lift a finger to affect the outcome.

Yet, here you sit reading my blog and being a spectator instead of a participant.

It’s become a world where most pathways for interaction, communication, news, culture and art are all one way—downstream from corporate America. Television, Gasoline, Swill. It’s no wonder you’re asleep! The byproduct is waste: wasted time, burned bridges, war-for-oil, body bags, beheadings, our wasted environment, and closer to home, wasted relationships with me that, in a prior time, used to have meaning.

You suck at communication. The sucking sound of most people who visit this blog and give nothing back is deafening. If you don’t communicate, it’s too bad, but it’s not my concern. You’re too busy being a catatonic host for what’s wrong with our world and I no longer believe I should maintain a relationship of any kind with you.

If I’ve hurt your feelings or reached anything emotional inside, then at least I succeeded in communicating with you, right? I don’t expect to hear from you on this post, but if you’re inclined, please do leave a comment by hitting the “+” below. I’ll be amazed and impressed. But I won’t be surprised.

Communication, if you do it ofen enough, works, by hook or crook.

How much waste, garbage and trash did you generate today? How long, stinky and ugly is your personal slime trail, you petroleum-addicted slob you?

Okay so I’m likely insulting my blog readers, if there are any. I may have broken the first law of successful writing and journalism, but I’m also feeling a bit righteous about minding the store. (The phargin’ planet, you moron.)

Sure your consumptive life is none of my business? Wrong. It’s everybody’s business. And since it isn’t against the law to be a rapacious consumer, other methods of behavior influence must hold sway.

Avoid. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Re-think while you still have the luxury of even lightly considering the havoc you wreak on this planet with all that you consume and throw away each and every day. Repent, sinner, and be saved.

Nobody’s perfect, true. But a better world has its origins in folks like you and me doing an about face on the consumptive lifestyle we live as Americans…if you still drive an SUV, you’re part of the problem and definitely not the solution. Sell that pig!

Americans in particular will define success in the 21st century by finding ways to profitably deconstruct the monster economy we’ve built that espouses progress at all costs and cares not a wit for what our unrelenting lifestyles of conspicuous mass consumption is doing to (y)our planet. Yours. Mine. Dubya’s.

Why am I taking the high ground? Well, it’s not that I’m all that high, but I do live where it’s very hard to make a living as a writer. Consequently, I’m wired. I live and die (work) through an Internet connection. That’s my highway to work and back. It’s always free of traffic. And my commute is 40 feet and dress is informal at best so getting on that highway isn’t a matter of life and death. It’s as simple and as effortless as turning on a light switch. My cars are sitting in the driveway literally rusting away and not getting used.

©1997-2011 Jay Toups :-)