Coping with the Big Lever

"Hey humanity, what did you do today? " 

"Oh, I killed the gulf of Mexico". 

"Ah...good lad. Run along and play now." 

So how do you make peace with this? 

I actually had to call my mum this morning and ask her how she coped when the Cold War was at it's height. When it felt like a button might be pressed and that'd be the end of that. 

The thing the Cold War had over our War on the Environment is that, thanks to MAD, it was a very binary thing. Either somebody presed a button and launched nukes that started a chain reaction of retaliation which wiped out the species or they didn't. If they did then you'd have so little time to think about it before you died that you might as well not worry. Although you may very well end up living in a horrible blend of medieval technology and fascist government I suppose, though I always thought Threads was a tad optimistic. 

This isn't to trivialize the Cold War or provide a launching pad for a big fat, spittle spraying We Are Doomed rant. 

I just want to point out that the War on the Environment AKA Operation: Piss in Your Own Pool AKA Russian Roulette with an Automatic Pistol...is not a big red button to be pushed or not pushed. It's like a bloody great big lever that can be pulled or pushed closer to armageddon and it is very, very difficult to pull back. I could batter you over the head with statistics and links and flowery prose but that's not what I'm writing about here. 

I'm wrestling with how to cope and if you're paying any attention at all then I imagine there are moments where you struggle as well. So how do we do? 

With the Cold War it seems the most sensible thing was to remember that all you could do was try to vote in leaders who wouldn't press the damn button and otherwise remember that you were just one person with incredibly limited influence so you may as well accept your relative powerlessness and try to fucking relax. It'll happen or it won't. Though I'm not a fan of feeling powerless, I think I would have coped with the height of the Cold War reasonably well - not because I'm Batman but just because of how my mind works. I'm good at accepting things I have no power over, when that's truly the case. 

Operation: Shit in Your Own Mouth is different. I very much have an influence on it, we all do. Clearly world leaders and corporate CEO's have much, much more influence...but nobody can abandon responsibility like you could with the Cold War. Leaving your computer on overnight for no good reason? Driving any damn vehicle for any damn distance? Having a kid? Thanks buddy, you just helped lean a little more on that lever. That's good that you're recycling and please don't stop, but you could certainly do more. 

You could always do more. It's pretty overwhelming and a great way to become so neurotic it'd make Woody Allen say "Hey, slow down buddy" followed by "Anyways, it's totally less creepy I married my adopted daughter now that she's thirty-five".

In the same short period of time I read the thing that sent my head spiralling harder then it had done since I watched a certain film, this floated up to the surface as well. It's not like it's the first time I've thought or read about the idea that we should be the last generation. It's not like I didn't think "Well maybe I should off myself...or at least get a vasectomy". 

But it reeks of giving up. 

I hate giving up. 

It's clawing for an excuse to treat this like the Cold War, of wanting the lever we're all leaning on to be that big old red button. 

You don't need me to tell you how to live or vote more environmentally and like I said, that's not what this is about. It's about how do you cope? 

Well there's always denial, but you'll know what you're doing. If you have any conscience it'll eat at you and just cause a different kind of stress. So no, denial isn't the way to go for anybody except the kind of person who wasn't bothered by all this in the first place. 

I know the best thing for someone like me, someone who hates to give up, is to try and work things through in your head - perhaps sharing via writing or video - and then seeing what more you can do. I realize I won't be singlehandedly saving the world, but I'm starting the road towards becoming a vegetarian or at least cutting down to meat only once a week because I know that that will help. 


This won't be easy as I love meat, have been crap about vegetables my whole life, don't have any dietary need to stop eating it and certainly have no moral qualms with eating animals...but I know if I don't want to go crazy then I need to do more for the environment and, unlike having the CEO of British Petroleum forced to swim in the mess his company made, vegetarianism is within my reach. 

By the by, nobody will singlehandedly save the world by doing any single thing. Accepting that is certainly a good thing to help you cope. You're not giving up, you're removing a popular obstacle people often place between themselves and doing any damn thing. 


"Recycling these cans won't magically save the world and give me a ten hour solid gold erection so why bother?". 

Naturally I'm curious to hear anybody else's suggestions for how to cope wtih this thing. Like it or not, we're all in this together... 

I'm not a man with fists full of dollars...

...but I felt this was worth making a donation to - hopefully you will too.

This is why I lose my shit sometimes over things like the amount of humans on the planet or people not turning off the damn heat and putting on a sweater. It's why the past few days of unseasonably warm weather scare the living crap out of me. I know nobody wants to hear it, but man it's real.

We need more ads like this one, I feel. Also...do you think the wretched bastards who are trying to get people to think coal is cotton candy...well, what would their reaction be to Santa dropping coal in their stocking?

Radiohead strikes again

Man, I didn't know you could make a shirt out of recycled water bottles and cotton!

It's bloody expensive, though I don't know how much of that has to do with the way the shirt was made and the fact that it is band merchandise, which is traditionally about 200% above usual prices.

Life has been rather mad for the past two weeks but the dust is finally starting to settle and so I hope to get something substantial up here in the next while. Perhaps a dissertation on THE HORRIBLE URGE TO QUALIFY NOT HAVING WRITTEN A LONG POST ON YOUR BLOG?

Perhaps!

Give it up...

At first I thought...

...this probably wouldn't work in a city. But maybe there's a way around the difficulties posed by a higher density population?

Toxic Pacific

I wrote about this a little while ago, but I thought I'd point out that the VBS series on the giant plastic conglomeration in the southern Pacific gyre is now up to view.

Here's part one.

And I must stress, VBS's journalism just isn't the same creature as VICE magazine - which I find to be steadily deteriorating - and shouldn't be pre-judged on the magazine's merits. Give it a chance, I doubt you'll regret it.

Unlikely Alliance

I have to say, I'm rather keen on this "Unlikely Alliance" project by the WeCanSolveIt group. If they are still taking videos two or three weeks from now then I'd certainly like to have a go.

Here we go!

Well!

After some scrabbling and a very kind favor from a friend, I can finally say that my planned writing sabbatical is beginning and it begins at 5pm this Friday. I'm looking at six to eight weeks, depending on how I'm able to stretch my dollars, of getting up and scriptwriting from 9am-5pm (and probably more, but you see what I'm getting at here).

I got so exited over this that I even made an Excel spreadsheet - an EXCEL SPREADSHEET , PEOPLE -trying to plan ahead and draw up a rough schedule for the six weeks. Past the first week I can see this getting blown to hell by assorted circumstances, but as long as I'm wrapping up projects and getting the foundations laid for new ones then I'll be pretty happy. Plus I'll be able to avoid burning out, which I've seen coming at me like a monster truck for the past two weeks, from shoving what I really care about into the margins of my days while also trying to find time to relax, eat, sleep and shit*?

Aside from writing, writing, writing I am hoping to be able to get on the set of a friend's short film , shoot some episodes of a web show and learn enough CSS that I can wrestle a decent looking web page out of Wordpress. I'll doubtless write again at the end of these six weeks to say what the end result of my attempts is. Until then!

*I don't have time to pee! That is also something I look forward to in this sabbatical.
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Addendum: Holy crap this is pretty cool.

Also, here's my moment of punditry: Obama's got it and this seals the deal for me.

Online petitions...

...feel about as flaccid as [Republican Senator's member] after they were caught soliciting [sexual act] from [homosexual escort] at [public transit terminal or back alley]!

But this one seems worth a damn, particularly since it is the precursor to a march on April 22nd - aka Earth Day. If you live in Toronto, you may wish to attend.

Awesome

Al Gore has started something pretty interesting this week.

The project's own page.

And the video, for which they roped in William H. Macy.

Swans & Garbage

During the temp job I just finished, one of my favorite things to do during my lunch hour was to go down to the waterfront. Soon enough I figured out the specific spot that two particular swans (and two cheeky ducks that follow them to pick at the food the swans often get thrown at them) like to come to.One swan was noticeably slower than the other and thus, thanks to some half-memory from a Warner Brothers cartoon I saw years ago, I secretly named him "Wilbur" and sometimes provided him with dialogue of the slow-witted mountain person variety. He and his nameless, brighter accomplice would show up at 1pm each day like clockwork and once or twice a week I would take great pleasure and relaxation in feeding them bits of bread that I'd try to save for them. It's not hard to see why seniors enjoy doing this sort of thing. By getting lost in their little world I could take a nice break from the stresses of my own. It was surprisingly difficult to get a decent shot of the two opportunistic ducks that would always see me feeding the swans and then nip over to try and steal what they could. The smarter, nameless swan often got really pissed at the ducks and once it even managed to clamp it's beak over the neck of a duck and give it a good shake - followed by a honk which I can only assume was Swan for "Fuck off you little bastard". Swan's are pretty foul mouthed eh? Anyways, I managed to get one of them in the bottom right of this picture.Now, this is right along the waterfront - specifically the waterfront which is supposed to be the shining glory of Toronto with all those million dollar condos that get the Che Guevera T-shirt brigade rubbing their tits in a fury. A lot of effort has been put into the landscaping, architecture and general cleanliness of this place - a rough analogue to my beloved Thames Embankment. Thanks to where I was temping, I've even gotten some interesting glimpses at what is planned for the future of the waterfront along with plenty of Utopian concept drawings and models. All that said and I still caught plenty of this.Which brought my mind back to things I've been reading in general and specifically about microscopic plastics in the world's supply of water. The mind starts to reel a bit, or at least mine did. I began to wonder how much of the chemical composition of Lake Ontario has been replaced by plastic particles. Then I wondered how much plastic was inside the Swan's stomachs. How much they were taking in with each bite of the bread I was tossing into the water for them to eat. How much of my own body, no matter how tiny a percentage, was contaminated by these particles - given the old 60% water routine. Idly tossing the bits of whole wheat into Wilbur's path, I felt like what I was doing was all of a sudden a bit sinister on just about every level possible. In a word, it felt polluted.I appreciate that VICE magazine is an amusing and often offensive (though not for the reasons you'd think) source of information - but their Internet television network VBS is a largely different creature in terms of raw quality, particularly their journalistic programs. I've referred to their Toxic Alberta series before and now, in relation to what I'm talking about, I'll refer you to the preview of their upcoming Toxic Garbage Island series that will cover, firsthand, what is going on in the South Pacific Sub-Tropical Gyre. The author of the corresponding article for the magazine had a frank lead-in to the topic which I think, after having read more on this, stands as highly appropriate.
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I'm not one of those guys who corners folks at parties to rant at them about biodiesal or calls people "fucking idiots" for being skeptical about global warming. But I should also point out that I'm not one of those Andrew Dice Claw "Fuck the whales" types either.
The problem with all the bravado on both sides of the ecology debate is that nobody really knows what they are talking about. Trying to form opinions on climate change, overpopulation, and peak oil hinges on ginormous leaps of faith based around tiny statistical deviances that even the scientists studying them have a hard time understanding. It gets so convoluted with all the yelling and politics that sometimes you just want something huge and incontrovertibly awful to come along for everybody to agree on. Something you can show anyone a picture of and go, "See? We're fucked?"

Well, I have just such a thing. There is a Texas-size section of the Pacific Ocean that is irretrievably clogged with garbage and it will never go away. And I have seen it with my own eyes. Case Closed. Oh, you want to hear more? Ok, fine.
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That last hyperlink is, of course, to the full article online. I don't fully agree that the problem rests on understanding tiny variances, the variances are anything but tiny, however the urge to have something which can shock people out of complacency is something for which I have a great deal of sympathy.

Meanwhile the BBC has an ongoing diary that started a few days ago, which looks at the problem from the perspective of the bird population in Midway Island.

I present this information not to lord anything over anyone or to encourage a proper case of Doom to fall about you like a funeral shroud. I'm doing it partly to buck up the old sanity, partly because it's important that as many people be as aware as possible so that when they think about - say - reusing or not reusing those thing plastic bags we use at the supermarket for our fruit and vegetables, they maybe think of this shit and opt toward the more responsible option.
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ALSO: LET'S DO THIS AMERICA

Meaty Posts should start with Meat

These are the boys, the meaty boys, which have my back this week.
Last night Roberto and I finally saw "There Will Be Blood". I went in with high expectations which were completely met and then met some more. Daniel-Day Lewis earned that fucking Oscar! For those of you have either seen it or don't care about SPOILERS, here is that final scene which made me have to work very hard not to pump my fist into the air and scream "EEEEEE...YYYYUS!". It was not the only scene to have this effect!



For those of you who didn't already know, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood composed the entire soundtrack and did a magnificent job. During the very few shots where my attention may have wandered - namely broad California scenery shots - his soundtrack kept me absolutely riveted and contributed to the feeling that if I looked away, even for an instant, I would miss yet another magnificent example of What Film Should Do. Here's a clip of the music.



And if you feel like watching one of the horrors I came across in my failure to find my favorite scene, then go on ahead and do that to yourself!



Armed with what I knew going in, I very much expected the film to be evenly split between Eli the young pastor and Daniel the oil man. I should have paid more attention to the poster! This is a Daniel Day-Lewis marathon and though other actors put in strong performances, this really is all about him. He owns every scene he is in (about 90%) and you are always curious as to what he'll do next, even if it seems obvious. The charisma of his performance is such that you find yourself looking at the world through his characters own willful, misanthropic, pragmatic eyes and thus your opinion of his two more despicable acts has a way of being more sympathetic than it might be otherwise.

It's a shame we had to wait five years for another Paul Thomas Anderson film, but it was a wait that was richly rewarded. His cinematography took a film which may appear to have no need for the big screen and made that size screen borderline mandatory. Columns of oil, gritted teeth, bible thumping and other things which are not CGI muppets are presented with an intensity that matches Daniel Day-Lewis's frequent outbursts - including a part about halfway into the film where he just slaps the shit out of the sniveling young priest (which, frankly and a little sadistically I admit, I could watch on a continuous loop for some time).

So yes, this kind of plays to my "beliefs" at times and thus the final facet which the film maker has little control over - whether or not the story plays to your personal views - also fell into place. Grab your wallet and run to the theater as fast as you can!Speaking of the imaginary beast brigade, the second big Scientology protest happened yesterday in 'celebration' of L. Ron Hubbard's birthday. The Toronto protest got a decent crowd and I nabbed a few photographs. Good on the three hundred plus got out there and gave these odious shit-merchants a poke in the eye. Another protest is already planned for April 12th and I think I'll finally participate.Finally, I've recently learned of a real-life fellow who seems every bit as driven and strangely admirable as Daniel in "There Will Be Blood". His name is Joaquin Balaguer and I strongly suggest giving his wikipedia entry at least a little perusal, as he is just about the best example of a literal enviro-fascist as I've ever come across in my readings on history and politics.

One thing I've been thinking a lot about since moving to Toronto is the whole condo rah rah rah.A lot of amateur class warriors like to hate on them due to the opulence of several complexes, mixed with the greed which is plainly evidenced by the developers at times and the occasional hint at nefarious practices to serve said greed (i.e. pressuring the city to let them bulldoze historical and/or colourful neighborhoods to build more condos). I've also heard some complain about how they have a way of blocking everyone else from the lovely view of Lake Ontario.My temp job at the moment is with Waterfront Toronto and they are all about the redevelopment of a long stretch of prime real esate. The view from various windows on their floor affords a peek at precisely the tall towers which have some folk grinding their teeth.I think this is certainly something I want to learn more about. I know that my own life aspirations tend to steer away from living in the suburbs, in a house, raising some kids etc. Generally I want to live in a central, urban location and not have to deal with the multitude of maintenance issues a house involves. This sorta lends itself to my working towards a deposit on a condo instead of a house. Now, I'll have to do pretty well for myself to afford any of the places I'm showing here. Like I said, opulence.But there is another angle that appeals to me, the environmental one (surprise!). Surely it's more environmental to stick a few hundred people into one building which covers as much land as any condoplex usually does than to spread them out across several acres of lower density housing? I think this is certainly something worth researching and wouldn't mind if anyone wants to toss in their ten cents on this one. Plus, it's not a commune or anything but I know they generally have communal areas and one could hope for a better shot at getting to know your neighbors that way then what I've witnessed in places like Kanata Lakes or the outer regions of London.Meanwhile, I continue to work on retyping and rejigging "Tonight We Fall In Love" from top to bottom. It's strange to be doing this, it's somewhere between reading ancient diary entries and chastising your younger self for doing something worse than your present self is able.

Quiet day

Holy cow am I tired but tomorrow I'm looking at a post to go with some waterfront pictures I took today. I wouldn't be writing today but I wanted to share this interesting article, which may lead to some interesting ramifications on the U.S. presidential election as well as the semi-official war on science that is being conduced in that same country.

Now I gotta go continue to sleep off the housewarming wingding in which there were...TOO MANY MEN.

A slow day, though I plan to take in a show tonight. Progress is being made on the job front, which will be nice to get sorted because then I'll be able to focus more on my writing again. Toronto continues to be pretty okay despite a guy bumping into me yesterday and spilling hot chocolate all over my jacket.

And Victor and Ryan and I trying to meet up to see Cloverfield only to completely fail to find each other.

*Sob* These First World Problems will be the death of me yet...

Linky-rinky dinks!
It's drilling for science, now, but I think that maybe it could get put to another use?

A small start, though I cannot believe that planes and shipping are exempt from their calculations

This is a rather interesting option for home energy which I hope to explore.

....and one about UFO's.

This video makes a very good point about the body of discourse in the American primaries thus far, as well as providing a reminder of the kind of timetable we're looking at in regards to climate change.

In less dire news, I AM GOING TO GO EAT SOME RAVIOLI AND YOU CANNOT STOP ME OR ANYONE ELSE WHO WISHES TO DO THE SAME. CHOKE ON THAT MUNDANE BULLSHIT, WHY DON'T YA?

Can't see the woods for the housing developments

This is a pretty old story. We've all heard it enough times, but it keeps getting told.I think that if there is one trick our fuzzy neighbor to the south has taught us so far, it's that one of the tricks for making people accept something horrible is to do it often and without shame.These pictures work their way in from the edge to about a kilometer and a half into a section of woods not far from my home. The sunnier photographs are from March break 2001, while the overcast winter pics are from last week. I'm alternating between a photo of one spot from about six and a half years ago, then showing roughly the same location as it is now.I can barely walk five feet through here without tripping over a flashback to some important - or at least nostalgia inducing - moment from my life. The only area comparable to this part of Carp would be downtown Ottawa, in that both are densely laden with Firsts, Passion Plays, Unsolved Mysteries and other Memorables.This has served as my little escape from the world, when I've needed one.But a tedious, tedious story has begun to play out. The forest is being cleared for new housing, the likes of which tend to take their street and neighborhood names from the very terrain they are obliterating.Naturally there is a part of me which is furious, disappointed, disheartened and all the rest. There is also the part of me which knows that the owners of the land can either sit on it, making nothing, or sell it and make a very handsome retirement fund for themselves. Then my sense of taste is just outright offended by the style and size of homes being built, including how little they resemble anything else in the community, but that is very peripheral.Anyways.Eventually I'd come across a mound of earth which prods into the underbelly of a small lake and this is where Things would generally happen. On my own, I'd usually stop here to write or just close my eyes and clear my head. With others, a number of things might happen but the safe bet would be a good ol' bush party. In Carp, until you got your drivers license, your primary gateway to Adult Thrills would generally come via a bush party. A small circle of rocks sat there and was used for fires done up by tweens and teens for many a year.But it's recently gotten a lot less inviting.Yeah, private property and all that! I know! But dang if it isn't an unpleasant thing to see after being freely allowed to romp around this area all your life. It feels a bit childish of me to get uptight about seeing a polite, lurid, orange "Fuck off, unless you've got cash in exchange for planning rights" spray painted over somewhere you remember being led by your kindergarten teacher, along with all the other little ducklings, to see a beaver lodge. This isn't just where I discovered the folly of alcohol from that guy's dad's poorly locked liquor cabinet or how girls can be good for more than throwing snowballs at, it's where I made some of my earliest connections with nature - "Nature" being the primary element composing "The Earth".Yeah, it's fair to say that I'm being a little wrought up about this and that my personal perspective heavily influences how I feel about these changes. In this one post, I'm not even going to pretend to be objective. Once in a while, it's okay to emote - so long as you don't try to present it as something else. I am not Michael Moore, this is not the Charlton Heston segment of Bowling for Columbine.So that's that, then. I promised I'd show Carp and this is part of it. I feel that eventually I shall come back to take more pictures of Carp, but it won't be Carp anymore. It will be Stittsville or Kanata. It will be the new place that people want to move further away from, so as to live in "the country".I honestly try not to romanticize these woods, this village or it's inhabitants - the same way I try not to romanticize anything else, as doing so is a luxurious indulgence which obliterates objectivity and rational thought. This makes me sound like a goddamn Vulcan, but I'm just a guy who values seeing things clearly. But I can't see this sort of thing clearly through all the tears.

Ha!

Got you!

You thought this was going to get all stupid and weepy. No, no. I used to feel that way about the development in Carp and I still don't like it...but I find that I've reached an age and a certain level of knowledge where it becomes absurd to look at things in such a maudlin fashion. I'm still for denser, better planned development. I'm just no longer able to sustain the kind of intense angst and frustration which this shit used to provoke in me - I think the angst gland starts to shrivel on your twentieth birthday and is eventually passed like a kidney stone.

The fact of the matter is that I'm now seeing my frustrations with this shit with almost the same sense of temporal detachment that I see "all them memories" etc. Not being able to blind myself to other sides of the issue, I can't maintain the kind of tunnel vision required to be vehemently against or in favor. I do know that I wish the development was being done differently and for less assinine reasons, but I can no longer shake my fist at The Bastards and spit.

Big Ups In BlogTowne

Just thought I'd help draw attention to Green as a Thistle - a daily blog by a young lady at the National Post in Toronto. The idea is to, each day, make one green change in her life. The changes are cumulative and so, theoretically, by the end of the one year trial period she shall be living more environmentally in at least 365 ways. I've browsed through the archives and I think it's very impressive. Certainly, if you are wondering about things you could do then this will provide a treasure trove of practical and interesting ideas.

The other enjoyable part is, of course, getting her appraisal of each change and reactions to her steadily changing life as the changes start to add up and play into each other. This definitely feels like a kind of "everywoman", not one of the parodies of a parody which critics like to point and sneer at, thus making a rather radical experiment highly approachable and far more plausible to the reader.

A few of my favorite posts are...
"Go Big or Go Home" - Giving Up Plastic
"A Plastic Fork in the Road" - Chopsticks!
"From Record Album to Photo Album" - Fairly self explanatory!

Meanwhile - How to Green Your Sex Life