I am running, spinning in circles---

I am an endless loop.

I spend all my off time working, cleaning, organizing and actually fixing nothing. I look around me and I am worse off than before i attempted anything. Everything surrounding me appears to be half-assed or worse. I cannot fix it. I spend two days cutting the grass---- it immediately grows back into the usual disheveled condition. Work--work is an impossible tasking.

A recurring dream I have had for years is walking in a city attempting to get back to a location I am familar with. In this dream no matter how hard i try, no matter how perfect I walk the landmarks back---i am lost...the location is no longer there? I can't find it.... Sometimes it is an area of the city, sometimes a room in a huge hotel...no matter the setting the circumstance is always the same---i can never get to where i need to be no matter how perfect i attempt to make the process of getting there.

This is the result of life for weeks now---nothing....it must be wrong to want results....

I have lost all hope for us. I am feel bombarded on all sides by birthers, teabaggers, Palin supporters, right wing shoutdowners at town hall meetings, Holly Rollers, Fox news, incredibly stupid, conservative co-workers who consider everything bad that has happened to this country to be Obama's fault and if not his fault then it was Clinton's fault. Convieniently f course, forgetting Bush the second....The joys of a possible new world, a new us, that I felt on election night are gone--just gone, dissolved by the acid spewed by the others....

I am tired, so tired of hearing them, tired of their same old garbage-- unable to escape them by running in any direction...they want but they refuse to give, they demand but they refuse to be demanded of-----their morals, their religion, their belief is the right way---and if you do not comply then social and mental banishment for you. I am tired of them and tired of this...no matter what is done--cash for clunkers, adjusting mortgages,research funding, bail-outs, tax, immigration and health care reform----to them it can all be damned---- to these people nothing should be attempted and if attempted by others nothing can be done right....of course on the same hand......they are unwilling or too stupid to even consider the attempt.

I am done with us---the American public-----finished....I now walk amongst us but am not one of us---all of you out there that are like this are no longer my tribe...

Just a few lines..........

Everything I have touched for the past four weeks has literally crapped out---my cable Internet connection for reasons unknown at the moment sucks--I had to replace two toilets in the house---my phone mysteriously turns itself off---the inflate tires warning light on my dash keeps going on and off----there appears to be no reasonable explanation for any of this. I am just in one of those badddd streaks...where I spend all weekend working on the house and it still sucks---four weeks of this however is a long, long time. I seem to be lost in it unable to find a door out of this condition. If I touch it I screw it up.

I have always had expensive taste...a problem in life of course. So I go looking for a new netbook. I've always been interested in micro computing...I've owned three of the smallest laptops ever made from an original toshiba libretto purchased used on ebay---to being one of the first Asus EEE owners. So I am prowling netbooks like I do every so often...nothing interests me...execpt for the new super small Sony Vaio---runs vista does everything in a package small enough to fit in a BDU pocket---which of course is $900.00. Well something to put on the list for that "someday" time.

My JOJO came up with the idea of her getting a recumbent 3 wheeled bike---with a dog trailer for trips to the park with the dog boys. I think this is an incredibly cool idea. Between her recumbent and my Segway we could be, if necessary or for enjoyment, we could be completely free from oil dependency.

The dog trailer which is capable of also hauling supplies such as groceries..I am thinking that i

could find a hack that would also let me attach the dog trailer to my Segway as well.

This whole concept fits in with our drive towards self sufficiency. JoJo wants the exercise, me, I'm a Segway kinda guy. We are lucky in the fact that we have a perfect, little building at the end of our driveway, with a smaller than normal, garage door. It will be the perfect place to keep the recumbent/trailer in and launch everything from. I am beside myself with the coolness of this possible situtation. I really hope we follow through with this concept.

From the home office in Wahoo, Nebraska:

Top ten signs that you are obsessed with LOST

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zECDqruYbWw&feature=fvw

Top ten signs the government is spying on you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYsg4A8GfZ0&feature=channel

"Just because there are so many of them being wrong doesn't mean they're right".

Michel Colucci`

No farmers market for us this week....just too many detail items to work on for both the house and for us personally for all of two days off. So we decided to skip a week... I gotta tell you that

last week was really tough...and this is not just my opinion. Two toilets broken and replaced, daylight burglaries in the neighborhood...work sucked everybody was soooo needy....

I knew it was going to be a tough week when driving in to work on Monday morning a trailer load full of cattle pissed all over my Prius---I mean I had to use my windshield wipers it was so bad......it didn't take an Indian Shaman or a fortune teller to decode what that sign meant for my future...you could see the full moon during full daylight here in New Mexico this week. We are hunkered up at home this weekend doing the small, odd jobs that have been put off in this strange, strange, week....I am still off my game mentally---still unable to center myself but I am taking steps to rectify this circumstance. I did manage to change my nightly behavior patterns---I've been eating better and attempting to accomplish one task at home each night, something that I want to do, before completely falling out from the effects of 12hrs at work.

My self-sufficiency work this month focused on my Prius walk out bag..which is now complete. Regardless of weather or circumstance if forced to I can dump my vehicle and hump the 38 miles home from my work location.

Next month's paranoia, tin foil hat, budget---returns to food. I'm going to invest in two more cases of military Mre's next month. I had a small problem where my shed airconditioner just blew up this week. I aircondition the shed/workroom at my property to keep my food supplies at a constant 80 degree's.

Mre's will shelf life for 75 months at this temperature. The freeze dried supplies of course require no temperature maintaince. Luckily I had a spare small air conditioner in storage which was used as an immediate replacement. So no worries eh?....I received my Swiss water purification equipment last week and it is a very cool, very Swiss type system. I am definitely leaving it "in the box" until needed---no sense losing parts, spare filters and directions unless absolutely necessary. I am feeling pretty well satisfied with our accomplishments at self reliance so far.

The X factor of the flu season is coming up very soon....so no matter if it's flu, economic collapse, or peak oil we are starting to look pretty good---not finished, not complete but overall looking pretty good.

On the home front the garden is still producing really well for our first year at it and we are actually eating really well out of it---

lots of watermelon and cantaloupe at the moment--as well as tomatoes, cukes, squash, pumpkins, spices--blahblah. Next year will be even better with much less work. I believe we have proven that we can produce an abundance of vegetables if necessary or easily supplement our stored food with fresh. Chickens....I still feel like i need two chickens for egg production to round out our self-produced food supply system.....JOJO still doesn't think keeping chickens is too cool of an idea.....can you blame her? She's got to live with me...it must be like living with a paranoid Buckminster Fuller?

Does it seem strange to you that our ex-(thank God)-President Bush could actually be this stupid:

"President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”.

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=haught_29_5

Chirac just last week published a book on his time in office as the President of France. The above quote is directly from it...do you wonder why everyone in the world hated us during this time period? This of course also explains why the entire Iraq war made no sense to a standard human being. Close to 5,000 grunts died for this asshole. Not being satisfied with just killing, he then killed our economy. I know I should forgive and forget---but I'm not about to let the republicans walk away from what they created.

USA today is a newspaper for those with a mentality of a 5 year old----- I never read it.

Our leaders use this fish rag however as a portal to the country, to communicate, which shows you what they think of us. The Director of DHS is communicating, between the lines, big time to the masses on dangers of the second go around of H1N1/09 via this USa Today article:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-08-04-swinefluoutbreak-pandemic_N.htm?se=yahoorefer

Receiving input on commercial television via DVD can put me somewhat culturally behind..........

............(ya think?)---

10 years to find the X-Files and get hooked---now 6 years after the fact i find LOST. Consider me the Amish of what's happening now in popular viewing culture. As the last LOST season approaches in the real world--- my wife convinces me to watch the first season of LOST streaming on netflicks and I instantly become a junkie. Watching 7 shows in a night's viewing---but i cannot stand this type of material any other way.....how does the world suffer through commercials, and the waiting? What appears to me to have been broadcast stupidity with commercial interruptions---becomes a meaningful story line and acting without that inserted stupidity. How does the world put up with it?

I find it perfectly fitting that of all the castaways I find John Locke the most identifiable. "The geezer with 400 knives" as he is referred to once. Locke is almost the only character within my age bracket on this show featuring handsome 20-30 year old ex-models with square jaws, tattoos and California work out bodies. There is Hurley of course---but.... Locke is the one I watch. The one who thinks and has an agenda of his own no matter what appears to be going on. His previous real life and the life in his head, that no one else understands-i try to understand.

I am not yet wandering about my property looking for hatches--but give me time. I just finished viewing the first season and am into the 2nd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_(TV_series)

The inspiration for the week is the graphic below

warren

The faster I go the further behind i seem to be----

That's been my motto for this week---worked my ass of and see very little results---ah well....

We did the farmers market this am and that was fun---I always seem to like being there even tho a reasonable person would shudder at the work involved in setting up a booth for a few hours.

The garden is doing well---but---the tomatoes are still green and our corn didn't work out---the corn is our fault---we didn't plant it right since we really never expected it to actually grow. It fooled u

s by growing and producing no corn---you killed Kenny you bastards---it cries out to me. This week I ordered supplies for both the urban homestead and the vehicle walk out bag. I have water barrels, full at the moment, but my planning on insuring good drinking water was spotty at best. Water purification tabs--bleach etc. So realizing this flaw i ordered one of those pump water filtration systems from Switzerland that you can drop into the love canal, pump the handle, and out the other end comes great, pure water. Costs like the devil but worth it in the long run---i feel like I have a much more self-sufficient water supply at home now with the addition of this hand-pumped system. Anything that gets great reviews from jungle missionaries is OK with me. So pure water at the urban homestead is now checked off.

I also purchased a one man Eureka tent for my vehicle walk out bag. There has been weirdness at work surrounding the upcoming swine flu event. It became apparent to me that there is the remote chance that i may be unable to free my vehicle from my workplace and I may need to hump(walk) the 38 miles from work to home. So there are big changes afoot on my vehicle bag. What was an "emergency kit" now becomes a full fledged, ground covering hiking outfit. In my part of New Mexico a tent for shade is an absolute---one part of the route home covers ground where there is no shade for 16 miles. I found this Eureka, 3lb, one man tent on sale. The perfect item to shade me during the day for sleep and then walk at night. My new Rucksack is out and My Lowe Alpine internal frame pack is in the car. Other items needed to be added or replaced, more food, water capacity, hiking boots Shermagh the addition of items necessary for covering this amount of ground under the local conditions. Someday I'll tell you about why I have to consider this option but not now. That was this week. My mind was too bummed out to reach anything of any value.

When you heard the blurbs or talk that the economy is getting better read these links and come back to the real world:

Flags are too expensive for this city to keep up:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/article1023822.ece

This state cannot pay anyone for awhile--and it's not California:

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2009/08/members_of_the_pa_national_gua.html

Seems like disability claims are up---I wonder why?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090731/ap_on_go_ot/us_disability_backlog

Post office is hurting:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/07/hundreds_of_post_offices_could.html?hpid=sec-nation

A Florida Condo development with one family living there---they can't get out--

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/07/hundreds_of_post_offices_could.html?hpid=sec-nation

Arizona quality of life down the tubes but not to hear them talk about it----

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2009/07/29/20090729bestplaces0729.html

These are just a small few of the news stories out and around that seem to contradict the good times are coming again back spin.........

One of the odd things I am interested in is Neanderthals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal

I follow the subject when i can---collect books and suppose that this issue is the answer i would give to the standard time travel question. You know, the one that goes: if you could travel back in time to one era to find an answer to one thing---for me it would be Neanderthals. I'm not going to go into all the back and forth arguing the scientific dudes do over speech/lack of speech--cannibalism--growth rate of Neandertal children----Neanderthal vs. Homo Sapien Sapien---blah-blahblah--blahblah. We've mapped their DNA and they were our brothers. That is an absolute. Criminologist's have reconstructed the faces of their children from fossil skulls. There is just too much back and forth on what our brothers were, how they lived, how we lived with them for 30,000 years and how they went away. You can read too much on a subject...I think that is where i am at with this...My answer to the question of why did Neanderthals die out has gotten simpler over time rather than more complex. The more i read on the issue the more confused i get and the more useless the smart guy theories seem to be. So this is my answer---the Serenity theory----Neanderthals stayed the same for over 150,000 years without changing much. Maybe they got tired and maybe they just laid down one night and didn't get back up again.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-mysterious-downfall

One of the small jewels scattered about the net is---AfriGadget.

http://www.afrigadget.com/

A collection of stories, instructions, photo's-- displaying/describing Hack-Tech, Junk-Tech, making do, inventing with what you have.....from Africa---where creating something from nothing is a requirement. If you are at all interested in making your own technology you need to bookmark this site. Great idea's there.

"Studies into clinical depression have yielded similar findings, leading to the development of an intriguing, but still controversial, concept known as depressive realism. This theory puts forward the notion that depressed individuals actually have more realistic perceptions of their own image, importance, and abilities than the average person. While it’s still generally accepted that depressed people can be negatively biased in their interpretation of events and information, depressive realism suggests that they are often merely responding rationally to realities that the average person cheerfully denies."

warren