Clean Pipes and Opinions Revisited

Today THE Wife is resting, recovering from HER turn at that rite of old fart passage, the diagnostic colonoscopy. After suffering the indignities of the "cleansing ritual", we showed up bright and early (UNGODLY O'CLOCK in the friggin' morning, EST) and got the test over and done with. She was lucky in that she is in no way sensitive to the Propophal like I was and was immediately sent to LA LA Land while they did the deed.

The verdict? A CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH, see me in five years!

And now, a recap of the past few days...........The arbor is finished with the exception of maybe some paint touch-up, completed this time with paint brush and roller as not to tempt fate and screw my back up again like I did with the power painter. Not bad, huh?






Once again I had to patch the goat pen to thwart the efforts of our two escape artists, the twins (goats, not the offspring). How those little twerps can squeeze those beer-barrel bodies through those narrow spaces is an amazement in itself.

The Evil Twin, who will forever from this day forward be known as " the offspring in residence " (no, not "Resident Evil") comes home every work day to regal us with tales of total stupidity as she fields calls from clueless customers seeking to get their PC's to connect with the internet. As long as they continue to sell the Microsoft operating system known as WINDOWS (windows to WHAT, exactly? To HELL?) and run it on these boxes laughingly referred to as "Personal Computers", my daughter will always have a job, so I suppose I should be happy that Apple still has a limited market share overall, although it is the FASTEST GROWING segment of any computer company, thanks mainly to market dominance by the iPod and now the wildly popular iPhone. Now, to all you out there who insist you have NEVER had problems with your PC's or Windows, I salute your astute common sense and ahead-of-the-curve problem solving ability. Consider yourselves in a special class of people. My experience however has proven to me that you are the exceptions, not the rule.

On the spiritual front, THE Wife, High Priestess and Matriarch of Pendragon Hold, is now a legally ordained minister, able to perform weddings (or in our culture, Handfastings) and other duties associated with ministers. So, if any of you pagan's-at-heart want to "jump the broom" or need counseling in the ways of Wicca, drop her a line and she'll see what she can do. Just don't ask her to wear a pointy hat. (Oh, you thought I meant a "witches" hat, didn't you? Shame on you! The POPE wears a pointy hat to, ya know! hehe)

Me, I'm happy to remain financial officer. Just send me money if you are so inclined. If it makes you happy, who am I to stand in your way?

The garden? Well, the green-bean bushes are resilient as hell and are producing more than we can keep up with. ONE tomato bush has remained with fruit promising to deliver salad fixings in time. There are what appear to be lima bean pods still maturing, and we harvested our first cucumber. However, the damage wrought by the hailstorms is VERY evident, and the bugs have attacked the damaged plants with gusto, so those are still struggling to fulfill their destiny. The herbs are all doing well, and overall, I think the garden has been at least a partial success. Next year we will try to incorporate lessons learned in how we plant it out.

Which brings me to today's rant, concerning our place in this world we share with tomatoes, bugs, and other living things that we are busy either dominating or killing off. If most of us look around, the world we view has already been altered immensely by our presence, either by development or by the effects of our impact, such as roadkill, pollution, etc. We think that what we are looking at is "the norm", when in fact, if you could hit rewind, the world you would suddenly find yourself in would be so alien to what you are used to it would shock you. The world before us evolved to function according to an immense diversity, life forms interacting with each other to support each other in a very complex web of interdependency, which we as humans damage and alter inexorably when we "tame' the wilderness to suit our need for order and cleanliness. Even now we require waste disposal plants and clean water "technology" in order to support ourselves in a world that used to do that same job merely by existing and doing what it evolved to do. We grow crops to feed ourselves when all other species fed upon food plants that grow naturally and even depend upon that predation to further their life cycles. Myriad organisms live to break down waste materials that in OUR world we have to go to great and sometimes expensive lengths to deal with artificially. And in order to provide ourselves with all these material "riches" which are supposed to make us happy, we manufacture poisons that never existed in nature, with which nature has no way to deal and thus is threatened by. Why, thanks to our "intelligence", have we discovered methods of soiling our own nests that nature could never have developed? Why, being at the very top of the "food chain", and ethically the stewards of this incredible biological treasure chest, are we proving that what we are best at is utter destruction and even slow suicide? Knowing what we now know, unless we deliberately choose to ignore the horrible truth for some sort of questionable gain, WHY do we continue down this path that leads ultimately to the very end of all things?

What are some of the "states of mind" we as individuals can adopt to reduce our impact on our world? Well, there's an amazing number of things we can do without, if we think about it.

Are you a slave to fashion? Imagine how much of your income you are contributing to the manufacture of textiles when you have to go out and buy a new pair of pants, a new shirt or blouse, a new skirt, a new HOT outfit, etc, etc, when maybe you could possible SURVIVE on two dresser drawers full of T-shirts and jeans? Hey, I know you need maybe a suit and a few nice dress-up items, but once you are past the dating scene and are secure enough in your self-esteem, you could make a few clothing items last awhile and not fucking worry about looking so damn cool all the time. I could care less how hot you look, or that you are sporting the LATEST fashion. REALLY, I DON'T CARE! An neither should YOU! If you happen to have one of these corporate office jobs that demand the old neck-tie and suit, get two of them, and wear them out before even thinking about getting new ones, and for Flying Spheghetti Monster's sake, does it HAVE to be Italian? All I'm saying is a little cloth goes a long way and NO, you don't HAVE to get your threads at the Salvation army, but if you can get away with it, by all means do so.

The car you drive. Oh-boy, here we go......... Do you REALLY buy a car to make a STATEMENT? Do you drive a sports car because you deep down inside need to be Luke Skywalker flying his X-wing fighter while you are driving to the supermarket? Do you HAVE to be faster than the dude in the lane next to you? WHY? Are you driving that humongous leviathan four-wheel-drive SUV because you own a working cattle ranch fifty miles from the nearest town and there's no pavement in sight, or do you drive that big piece of shit ONLY because you think you DESERVE to? DO YOU DESERVE TO? WHY? Look, we all have to get from point A to point B, and in this day and age, doing that is one of the BIG contributors to Global warming. So, aside from the cold hard fact that gas is getting pretty damn expensive, getting back and forth in the most efficienct way possible should be your major priority instead of stroking your ego. Most Europeans and Asians already use rail and bikes because they always had to due to the fact that their fuel has alway been priced much higher than ours. Now that elephant is visiting OUR rooms and it's time to grow up and acknowledge it. Driving a high milliage vehicle no longer means you're a geek; it means you're not STUPID and CALLOUS.

The house you live in. Are you paying 30 times the amount of money (over the life of the loan) for a poorly constructed brick and stucco McMansion built on a quarter acre of land in a development where everything is groomed to pristine regularity and if you even THINK of painting your roof white a team of lawyers will appear at your door with a writ of habius-we-want-you-out-of-here-for-disturbing-our-nirvana? Are your "membership dues" (for having the privilege of living where you are living) almost half of what you paying for your mortgage? Does the amount of pesticides and herbicides and pool cleaning chemicals and pest control measures equal the toxic load of a small country?

Does all this really add to the quality of your life? At what cost? Do you even have a CLUE as to the cost?

Take stock of every THING you could haul out to the curb and get rid of in a garage sale. Why did you EVER, to begin with, acquire any of that junk, and after having acquired that stuff to begin with, probably at great overall cost, why do you NOT need it now? What do you estimate it cost the environment because you bought it , thus encouraging enterprising entrepreneurs to produce that stuff to begin with? Where will all that now worthless STUFF end up, especially when it doesn't sell and you end up putting it out with the garbage? Do you think perhaps you would be much RICHER and better off if you had never paid good money for those material goods, devoting that money instead to sustainable living practices which could have enriched YOUR life AND the environment, perhaps by paying for a solar power system for your house and a hybrid electric car and other more less harmful ways of spending your money?

WHO is the superior intellect? Man, or Dolphin, or Great Ape, or even African Grey Parrot?

This is what's coming out of Pendragon Hold, this is what I do, and I'll see you next post, Gods willing.