The Collapse

[pan]

OK, I'm an idiot - how do you upload video?

Watch this

[curt]

"Wonder how Curt is getting on."

Pretty good, thanks! Rode a good 300K today. No real probs. That seat is a back-killer. Its days are now numbered. Don't know the exact sum, but the days are numbered. Looking into a solo seat like the one Waldo suggested I get.

Actually, my back is doing okay. It's not the same as it was before that last slip of a disk. Haven't seen a Dr. yet. Don't trust those guys.

Doris (my partner) was in our garten today while I was out having fun. Not quite sure what all she planted. Perhaps nothing. She herself just got back from brief ride on her bike...a Honda CX500C.

Told the chaps about rice being rationed in the US. They thought I was joking. So as you can see and read, everybody is still fast asleep in lala land.

Have a craving for italo-westerns lately. Don't know what brought it about. Things come and they go. Sergio Leone. Love that music.

[BO]

Taking a break from gardening meself. Mainly pruning the overgrowth and taking out the dead stuff. Finally, a decent day here in the NW. Might have to go for a scooter ride myself.

And Curt, interesting you should mention Sergio Leone. I just ordered 'Once Upon a Time In the West' after signing up with Netflix. Been spending too much money to rent movies at the grocery store and iTunes is too expensive. I also loaded windose on my Mac last week since all the movie subscription services are windows only. Now I can go both ways. And shit if it doesn't work great.

And the deluded? Well, I mentioned all the shit going down lately to a neighbor--one of those over-the-fence type conversations. The neighbor was aware of pretty much everything happening--oil, food rationing, the economy--but the response to it was: 'The Rapture is almost here'. After that the conversation then came to an abrupt end. Once responsibilty for the mess we're in has been handed over to God to deal with, there can be no talk of solutions.

So yeah. Better to escape into a good movie. Or go take a ride on the iron horse. (In my case, the plastic horse)

[Cal]

You guys are all planting things and getting ready for summer! I am envious. We're getting ready for winter down here - days are getting shorter and colder and this evening I've got my heater going for the first time this season. I'm busy harvesting the fruits of the summer crops - little red peppers (peppadews - delicious), tomatoes & oranges. I'm planning to get some pots for planting veggies in next spring like you have done Mouse - what size are yours? My new pup is a real liability with planted crops. She dug up most of what I planted the last 4 months and chewed her way through all the smaller plastic pots I had.
No talk of impending famine here yet ... but there was no talk of an impending electricity shortage either until it actually hit us. Food prices have just been creeping relentlessly upwards while farms have been closing down due to bankrupty, high crime rate or land redistribution issues. Sooner rather than later we are going to hit the crunch.
Busy trying to decide whether to go for breast reconstruction surgery. I thought I wanted to have it done until I went to see the surgeon and heard that it entailed taking skin and muscle from my back. The surgeon's before & after photographs of other ladies who underwent the surgery looked good ... but I am still feeling a little weak stomached about voluntarily submitting to further mutilation.

[waldopaper]

Ah! South Afrika... the southern hemisphere... i quite forgot! Been lookin at Afrika as an "escape" destination lately. but there are lots of gangstas with guns THERE too. Been rethinking the shotgun lately... have dismissed it in the past because of the size and weight of ammo... and the short range. especially in the milieu of gangstas with mac-10s and kops with god-nose-whatall satellite-directed gps-based high-tech night-vision whateverthefuck. But seriously... enough o that shit. Buncha bullshit being the dude-induced "hunter" instead of "gatherer" frame.

The great ladies here are starting the plants... and I'd rather hear more of that. Should have been digging today... but still unsure of exactly where to put the raised 10x10. Decided rather than shooting the bunnies (at least here)... i can snare the bunnies... got lots of old guitar strings... and rabbits here are a MAJOR problem. The square-foot approach has been dismissed by most of the fam as "too much work," which is odd... I'm the LAZIEST one of the lot... and the reason I'm attracted to that approach is because I researched how to get" 1) the most amount of food in 2) the smallest amount of space with 3) the LEAST amount of work.

Curt... gitcher mc ya-yas out while possible... not sure what kind of vehicle it will be for the crash. Ye might wanna think about sidecars... a whole nother wonderful world. My own mc days are over. I shouldn't even be driving a fucking CAR. But California Sidecar got the best 3-wheel hoodoo happening.

[curt]

Sidecar? Not yet. Buddy just derailed his sidecar. He had one on his forty-something shovel for the longest time. Loud mofo!

Check out http://wildthymehorticulture.tribe.net/ over at the tribe. Somewhere in that tribe, we had a discussion about raised patches. Can't find it just now. Neighborlady cross the street has nothing but raised patches. She hand picks the critters from the things. No pesticides at all. She's almost always out there tending her raised gardens, when not looking after the chickens. Compost ist another thing worth looking into.

I'm busy gettin my kicks and rebelling while I know I should be tending the garden. Still looking into getting a bigger patch of land and a small trekker to till it with. Can't have both ya know. Once my thumb is green, no time for the mc. It's not reall an mc though, just an online community.

Check this out. You can make it cheap and easy or the other way round. As lazy as we know we are, we need to go for the quick, easy and cheap methods.

[Mouse]

Ennio Morricone was Sergio Leone's composer for those wonderful spaghetti westerns. My paintings of the last few years have been made with the help of this cd:
Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone.

it is perfect, you can go anywhere with it and it supports you emotionally. I think it must reflect a great range and huge emotional depth of the composer, expressing in a way so valuable and rich what it means to be human.

I'll quote Yo-Yo Ma from the notes on the cd, because I so agree. "This is gorgeous music, but music can be deceptive, skin-deep. When I looked inside it - at the blood and the bones, the muscle and the craft of what he has written - much music that is so unique and expressive - to me, it is extraordinarily moving. It goes very deep, and I can't get it out of my head."

It's particularly brilliant at helping a person to keep their nerve while still feeling the pain, not switching off, staying fully alive.

Now I'll be looking at those interesting raised bed films. I'm worried about how to do things when no-one will help. Which is generally the case. Little Red Hen here, who will help me sow the seeds, not I said the pig, not I said the dog....
Then there's Chicken Licken of course, with the sky falling in. They were good stories, there was a lot of truth in them.

Thank goodness for Morricone.

[littleoldme]

We have a Garden Weasle, best money we ever spent. No bending to weed.
Raised beds are the best way to go, we did those when we were stationed in Massachusetts. My daughter saw an add for a thing called the topsy turvey, it's a kinda flower pot thingy that hangs, you plant in it, hang it up and the plants grow down out of it. Looks pretty intersting. Here's a link. http://topsyturvys.com/10001.html
The mocking birds have built a nest in my jasmine under my bedroom window. They have baby birds, I can hear them just squeaking away, too sweet.
Went swimming yesterday with the grandson, ouch, I can't lift my arms today, my damn shoulders are killing me.

[Cal]

No Waldo - Africa is most definitely not an 'escape' destination. Take the 'third-worlder' concerns you have over on your side and imagine them in the majority and you floating (?) like a marshmallow in cocoa as you once put it, and you start to get the picture. Those of us that still live here mostly dream of excaping to more first world climes. It's been really interesting for me to read here what is going on in the worlds we dream of escaping to.

Curt's raised bed video link took me off to videos about 'sqare foot beds' which once I've translated into meters & centimeters I think I might just be able to make myself without too much trouble. I'm off shopping tomorrow for an Enrio Moricone CD & some timber planks. I'll just have to think of some way of fencing the beds off from canine marauders. The other marauders here are vervet monkeys which theoretically I could snare and eat ... but they're much to sweet and primitively human for that. I'll just have to rely on planting what they're not interested in.

[pan]

GasHole: Dirty Oil and the Biofuel Myth

This dangerous combination of unfettered greed, lack of serious leadership, dumbasses, and the unwillingness to collectively sacrifice in the name of a better tomorrow has led to this panicked moment of chaos.

[BO]

I thought this was an interesting article about what it now takes--income-wise--to live in southern california. It's not much different here in Seattle. Generally, people's response is..."Gee, I'll never be able to retire with this kind of inflation." Yet, only half of retirees actually make the choice when to retire--most forced out of the workplace through other circumstances. In another ten years, boomers will be retiring in droves with little savings. It won't be pretty. I envision a lot of warehoused old folk eating cat food and rotting away in studio apartments. If they can afford it. Maybe we'll get lucky and the PTB will legalize voluntary euthanasia.

When $100,000 makes you Go Broke: The Invisible Hand Forces America...

[littleoldme]

Hubby retires in 7 years, I'm in 11 years. Cat food stinks, yuck!

[littleoldme]

I have a problem with this guys graph, who spends $500 a month on entertainment, or gives $100 a month to charity, when they are running in the red? That's just silly.