really busy. too many phone calls. so much planning.

Teenage Bottlerocket adventure maximum in Carbondale tomorrow. And I didn't even have to skip outta work!

I have a new head of hair that looks pretty rad. Tessie did a fine job.

Last night was the FBC fiasco. I think I probably rode at least 30 miles by the end of the night.

I finally booked the Film fest for Monday. It was a close call. now I have to convince these STL cheapskates to fork out 8 bucks for some really good shit.

alright, thats it.

Mom thinks I have diabetes

Diabetes? How on earth will I bake and then consume an entire batch of treats if I have diabetes? I think it's anemia. But last time I had my blood tested they told me I didn't. So who knows. I probably just need a break. I need one week of someone else calling the shots and me being completely content with it. Hiking? Camping? Sitting on someones porch or driving around? I don't care. I just want to relax.

My friend is writing a paper for college about young people reverting back to simplified living. She does not however, want to focus on the fact that it is so obviously a trend. She asked me why I think people currently crave less technology. Honestly I don't think people do. It's one more thing to buy and sit on a coffee table looking neat.
So here is what I think happened. A long time ago people lived in a really basic way. They had what they needed and not much more. This is because we didn't actually have the technology to become so consumed by consuming. So we started to advance in science and medicine and machines. Some people continued to hold onto their roots. They understood that they didn't need a bunch of stuff. These people, like farmers and the Amish and native Americans, passed on their values to their children.
We reach a little bit more modern day lifestyle and we have some hardcore environmentalists and some real animal lovers etc and they pick up on the idea that moderation is really best. They practice this where ever they live. Subcultures like "anarchists" etc. pick up on these ideas of staying in touch with nature, taking only what you need and giving back, making, with your own hands, what you need.. they take these values and twist them to meet their own needs. Business men see this happening. Business men see room for growth, room for profit and gradually create a trend. All of a sudden people miraculously realize that this earth can not sustain human life, and most likely no life, at the rate of destruction we are at. "green" becomes the biggest buzz word to hit this nation. People start buying. With all of this good for the earth minimalist ingredients i am simple marketing comes the hipster. Business men know to target young people with their trends. it works. So now we have a wave sweeping over the nation and kids are buying typewriters and buying handmade silk screened tee shirts with pictures of cassette tapes on them. They are buying fixed gear bicycles and loft apartments with hardly anything in them. Owning things that exemplify simplicity does not make you an earth conscious person. does not make you aware. does not mean you know minimization. Most people these days don't understand why minimal technology is important. plus, they use technology to buy their Henry David Thoreau books and their organic cotton bedsheets. I sit here using a computer(mind you I walked to the library to use it.). I have a cell phone in my bag. I understand that our advancement in technology is destroying this planet, and destroying us. It's a trend. That's all you can do to explain it. Sorry friend.

It's been awhile

I have so very many things to say, and if I said them aloud it would sound more like screaming. It's all been heard before.

I've had so many conversations these past few days about the economy, about the presidential race, about how fucked things are. Can't say I'm surprised. Can't say that anything will change or help or be the "lesser evil", because it's all just stalling. the decline is going to be slow and painful, the people will vote to save whatever they can while they can, and while in the past (and even a little currently) I have very frighteningly looked forward to this, I also can't say I want the whole idiotic nation to go to shit at once. I need to procure some land first.

I am looking forward to gardening in an actual yard. and perhaps being able to compost etc, once I move!

Good Luck is playing here on the 17th. They played Berea fest and were really good. I honestly didn't want to like them because Ginger was in One Reason and they played at the skullfuckeree a couple years ago and everyone in that band was so rude because I made them vegan pancakes for dinner and they didn't like that or something. Despite that, I am still looking forward to seeing them.

The 23rd is Lemuria and that's pretty freaking cool. I think they are playing with Robert Blake? but I might be mistaken.

And on the 21st is Fucked Up. They put on a fucking incredible show last year. And godfodder is on this show for I believe their first show since Pat returns!

that is all.

I wish I had some Pie

So I think I'm recovering rather well from this little surgery of mine. I can't talk however, and swallowing water hurts.

I am proud of myself though, as far as whole foods go, I managed to eat almost an entire biscuit today. Hooray! The pain medicine they game me makes me vomit, so I am currently narcotics free.

Ben gave me an opportunity that makes my life look a hell of a lot better right now. Too bad I have to worry first about paying freaking laclede gas, ameren UE, cingular, etc. Never before have I felt so idiotic with finances. But I'll be a good tenet, I promise.

My family has been treating me really well with me not feeling so good. It's really nice that they are so willing to spend countless boring hours in my apartment with me while I drool and whimper.


All over the news people are freaking out about gas. "they're holding out on us!" a woman trills. Well people, you insist on constant drilling for oil, then nature blows your whole fucking operation down. Like I declared in the past - War on Mother Nature! We'll make magnetic ribbons for cars and everything.

I'm sitting here withing for foods I can't eat. Lasagna, blackberry pie, salt and vinegar chips, french toast. Even if I do get a bite it'll taste like blood and pus. haha de-lish.

enough griping for now.

Oh, and Ben, Y: The Last Man is fantastic. I'm waiting to borrow the next few books from John and Jenna. You should check it out.

Stagnation Changes.. a paradox?

A great period of both Stagnation and incredible financial and physical changes approach. It began last week, the climax arrives Friday, and it all just mellows into the same old shit sometime after that. Can't say I'm happy about all this. It's very difficult to feel the force of an unforeseeable future push you to make permanent decisions in life.

At least I still enjoy my new job. Although I haven't had a day off in a while. I'm becoming an excellent cook, and surprising myself with my own inventiveness when it comes to rotting vegetables. However as my skill in producing mass quantities of yummy grub increases my skill with a knife decreases. I cut two fingers at the same time today and went clear through the nail on one. All these band aids and I'm starting to look like a modern day mummy. Or a little kid ... all I need are grass stains on the knees. Also, I have been commissioned by John to bake a few things for the Royale. That's pretty cool I guess.

I am being forced to sign a six month lease with my landlord. I guess there isn't really any force involved, just a lack of options. Tessie has decided that most every apartment we looked at is too expensive at this point. Unless it's affordable enough for one person, then split in two, she can't do it. So I will stay in my lousy little tenement of a home until March. I also fought with Laclede Gas today. They are thieves. It's unbelievable. Budget billing and a 95 dollar gas bill from "winter usage" when I didn't have heat until January. Bullshit. So now I've quit the budget billing and owe 198.30 by the 26th. Some day I will have a lovely little home with a pot bellied stove for burning wood and heating my home. In some ancient cultures it was very common to build stone into the floors immediately surrounding the fire to heat the floor. I think that's what I will do. So eat that Laclede Gas.

"I had tampered with the mystery of existence and I had lost the sense of my own being."
I started reading Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin.

I have a lot of things that I'd like to write about but the public library only allows 60 minutes per person per session.

Oh Humanity

I am sick and tired of humans. The end.

No, but seriously, how can one species manage to be so incredibly dim witted, and fuck up so often when they haven't even been around very long?

Let's start with politics. Today the news told me that Barack Obama will be speaking in a stadium that holds 76, 000 people. If 76, 000 people were to show up, that's 76,000 people who are delusional enough to think that their vote counts, to think that driving the speed limit at all times is going to save enough gas to keep this civilization afloat, people who think one black man can change the world (and sure, I am all for diversity in this godforsaken government, but there were plenty of black men and women before Mr. Obama that only scratched the surface, as a whole, the world thrives on racism...) 76,000 people for the more liberal vote. jesus imagine how many are on the other side? I'm sick of this.

Children. Another thing the news told me today was that children can't only play with electronic toys for the rest of their development. And may I say duh? Everything, which we all know by now, is run by money. Parents give birth to kids and from the time momma pops em out, the majority of parents spend the rest of their lives worrying about their kid's college funds or some such nonsense. So big manufacturers make smarty pants toys. Electronic books that talk and make noise while your toddler looks at pictures, miniature laptop computers with word games and numbers and puzzles, they have video games that mom says "finish playing before you have your dinner!", there are computer games, dvd's, fake cell phones. Getting little Timmy ready for college was no problem, we started when he was in utero. These parents plop their kid down in front of some cancer causing toy and convince themselves that their kids will be smarter than the rest because they have the best educational recreation on the block, meanwhile mom finishes her three way call business meeting then uses her elliptical trainer, while dad can stay late at the office. These kids get to have leap frog, fisher price, and the discovery channel kicking out microchip after microchip of fun education to babysit your little pookie. These kids have worst allergies than ever and are fatter than ever too.
What ever happened to playing out in the yard? I'm smart as hell and I spent a huge portion of my childhood munching on dried leaves and hitting the tree in our front yard with a wiffleball bat. But seriously, when we were young everyone met up in someones back yard and decided on a game. Then all the kids would play until it got dark. When I had to stay in my own yard we played spaceship, witches, cooks, prairie times, and dogs. We rode our bikes around the neighborhood, played in the woods, and made a scarecrow every autumn.
It sickens me that parents need to be told that their kids will only benefit certain ways from all these technologically advanced "games". Like sure, they'll have extensive vocabularies, good computer skills, and be ahead of the game come first grade, but they'll also lack any social skills necessary to make a healthy human being. sucks for this generation.

Lastly I'd like to rant about humans butting into nature's course (as always) and our need to control all living things. National Geographic is a great read for me. I learn a little more about things I already knew, I learn completely new things, and on top of that I get to look at incredibly photography. Elephants. I learned long ago that elephants are deeply emotionally advanced creatures who have very complex relationships with one another. There has been an ongoing battle to protect elephants from poachers who seek their ivory tusks. But now, even wildlife management and elephant protection groups are considering re-allowing culling of elephants. This is where they go into an area where the elephant population is becoming too large and they seek out families of elephants to murder. Usually this is done by a team flying over the family and first shooting the matriarch on the group straight through the top of her head and killing her, then picking off her calves and any other adult females. (sometimes the culled elephants are taken to factories where they are turned into canned and dried meats, of course after their tusks have been stolen) Now why would anyone do this to such sensitive and amazing creatures, let alone ones that have been struggling to stay protected for so long? They answer is that some conservationists in these areas claim that there is not enough biodiversity. That the elephants are wreaking havoc on the landscape, therefore making it hard for some other species to find adequate food and shelter.
Every week I go to a place where I help repair injured birds and then re-release them. I am trying to ensure the survival of species who humans have done much damage to. The ones that are too weak, we let nature have her way with. We try not to harm what is natural any more than it has been. But these measures are extreme. If you want to be that in control of non human animal populations, it's called a zoo. And the animals are better off dying of dehydration than being shot in the tops of their heads. To make even more human like, they are waiting to begin culling again , after it's been banned since '95, until after the soccer championships are held in Africa to keep their hands clean before a monetary event takes place.

I hate us.

I've been reading a lot of comics. John lent me the first two books of Y: The Last Man. It's pretty crazy and I find myself periodically siding with the amazons :