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I’ve decided to add a new feature to the site, in part to keep folks coming back to take another peek at what’s got going on around here, but mostly because I keep finding really great blogs and I want you to know about them to. Located to the left of your screen you will find the . . . → Read More: Featured Blog Of The Week Kudos to Tom George of Warsaw, Ohio, owner of an adult entertainment venue and bar called The Foxhole seven miles up the road from New Beginnings Ministries, led by pastor Bill Dunfee. According to Dunfee, “Tom George is a parasite.” Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion regarding both flesh baring watering holes and narrow minded fundamentalist churches, but in these times of scarce job opportunities, I would think perhaps the real parasites here are pastor Dunfee and his flock of sheep. Every weekend for the past four years, Dunfee and his flock of meddling do-gooders have done their damnedest to shut down Tom George’s legal, licensed, tax-paying, job providing business by taking up residence in the highway right of way with signs, video cameras and bullhorns. Dunfee and his congregation videotape license plates of bar patrons and then post them online in a misguided effort to force their beliefs onto those who disagree. Continue reading Freedom Fighter Of The Week Regular visitors to this space will have noticed many changes to the layout and content feeds over the past several weeks. These changes are part of my ongoing effort to find my niche in the blogosphere. Although I’ve not made much of an effort to follow conventional blogging guidelines, such as focusing on one subject and proceeding to beat it to death, I have been a bit discouraged by my seeming lack of coherency of late. As noted in my last post, it turns out that the career move I made back in March of ’09 might not have been as good for my soul as it was for my bank account. We all need money to survive in this capitalist paradise, but some of us have a conscience, and mine is really working me over lately. In a way my little adventure in small-scale corporate tomfoolery needed to happen. The idealist that I am needed to be shown once again that the love of money and power – that thing we call the profit motive – is universally evil and cannot be reformed Life requires work, but we’ve gotten it all wrong, especially here in the US, and allowed capitalism and its holy grail, the free market to become our state religion by default. Work shouldn’t be a death sentence or a soul consuming act of immolation. I find the words of a recent high school valedictorian inspiring and fitting.
I originally posted this little piece of religious propaganda without comment, but the more I look at it the more I feel the need to pontificate. I’ve made no secret of the fact that as far as mainstream monotheism and most other recognizable religious movements in the world are concerned I’m an atheist. I’ve also been pretty blatant in this space with my disgust for most facets of capitalism as practiced in it’s American form today. As far as I’m concerned, the profit motive is at the root of just about every ill in the world today, and those that don’t fit that model stem from religious zealotry. I’ve been in a pretty foul mood lately. Work is turning into a living nightmare as I’m discovering that the noble entrepreneur I thought was my employer is just another hypocritical greedy bastard hiding behind the legal shield of his corporate status and his professed religious beliefs. While my co-workers go without basic medical care and show up to work in worn out shoes and clothes full of holes, Mr. Big Bucks goes on back to back vacations in the Caribbean and buys himself and his wife ginormous high dollar SUV’s. The guy claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ, yet when he goes on his regular biblical tirades in our company meetings, all I ever hear him spew is blood and guts stories from the Old Testament – never a peep of anything his lord and savior said. I grew up in a few different Christian churches, so I’m familiar with the message of love and compassion Jesus preached. My employer’s words and actions remind me of the male chauvinist attitudes and ignorant bigotry that was more common in my great-grandparent’s time than most people can stomach today. Continue reading No Wonder I’m So Grouchy Some things just shouldn’t be mixed, water and oil, alcohol and sleeping pills, electrical outlets and butter knives. Combinations such as these are just plain wrong, usually make a terrible mess, and often end very badly. Yesterday I paid a visit to the local Wallyworld; that bastion of all that is vile and repugnant in our consumption driven society. I don’t like to shop there, but there aren’t many alternatives left around these parts. While in the store I noticed a huge display containing almost every album ever recorded by the band AC/DC and it brought back fond memories. When I was a young troublemaker in training, still wet behind my ears, AC/DC was one of my favorite bands. They scared the living shit out of my parents and most other adults I came in contact with, but then that was the entire point. AC/DC offered everything I desired all in one not-so-neat package: crunchy loud guitars, fairly simple tunes, and all the attitude any misguided adolescent boy could ever want. I loved that band! I was in the seventh or eighth grade when the Highway To Hell album came out, and it was a monster. I used to drop that big chunk of vinyl on the turntable after school, tune up my guitar, and jam for hours. Continue reading AC/DC & Walmart: A Marriage Made In Hell I haven’t had a real vacation in years, probably more than a decade. Sure, I’ve taken time off, a day or two here and there, even a week sometimes, but always in order to get some huge project done, like moving to a new residence or repairing my house – working time off; not a real, leave town, turn off the phones and relax holiday. As team leader for my employer, my job requires that I start early and stay late every day, and while the rest of the team gets three days off each week, working four ten-hour days to save money during these tough economic times, I have to work Fridays to cover any unfinished business or emergency calls during the fifth day. I knew this would be the case when I accepted this position, so I’m not complaining. More than two months ago I asked to take last Friday and today off for some much needed down time and to be with my family for a few days near my daughter and my birthdays and our anniversary, all of which fall within a four day period at the end of July. No problem, my boss says, I’ve done a great job and earned it. So last week, one employee gets conveniently stranded at the coast and doesn’t make it in to work at all, another quits for a better job with one day’s notice, I have to hire and train his replacement in one day, and my boss informs me that our new contract, slated to start after August first, must begin today. Continue reading What Part Of VACATION Don’t You Understand? |
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Gardening Without Gas
I’m one of those nut jobs that believes there are limits to our natural resources, at least some of them. Solar energy is virtually infinite, but that’s an exception I can live with. I also believe in the fairy tale that is the greenhouse effect and the impact of human industrial activity on the global climate.
Call me crazy but some things just make sense, like the idea that if you spew tons and tons of carbon dioxide, methane, and a bunch of other chemicals into the atmosphere there’s a better than good chance that you’ll eventually upset the balance of nature and alter the cycles and structure of the biosphere.
Another of my favorite “myths” is peak oil, which suggests that there is a finite amount of fossil fuel (oil, natural gas, coal, etc.) in the world and that sooner or later we’ll use up most of it. The other side of this coin is that after we’ve sucked or stripped most of these naturally occurring substances from the subcutaneous layer of the planet’s skin, it will get too expensive too continue doing so while still banking a healthy profit.
Everybody knows profits are the only reason our best and brightest minds bother getting out of bed in the morning, so when the money stops flowing one of two things will be the likely result. Either the extracted petroleum products will be so expensive that most of us will get priced out of the market, or the profit mongers in charge of the operation will find better ways to make obscene amounts of money, the lights will go out, and trucks, trains, and jet planes will cease to deliver the lifestyle we’ve all come to depend on. Continue reading Gardening Without Gas