spaced_in

I haven't written in a while. My muse has been asleep but received a jolt today in the form of a series of text message from my dad that read;
 
" Dave is throwing out some shirts. Check them out when next over. Dad."

I replied that I felt this may not be appropriate as my brother is 100 kilos where I weigh in at roughly 78 kilos. I could essentially live in one of my brother's shirts. I shared these thoughts via text message with my father and got the following reply;
 
"They're medium & one is 'very' you so I think the fit & look will be fine."

The text came complete with the word 'very' in quotation marks. I almost fell out of my seat. My dad is an intelligent well educated bloke (with an emphasis on bloke). We talk about world politics and the values of humanity on the way home to my place in the car but never the finer points of 'very you' fashion items. He is nothing like the coffee shop metrosexual from Paddington that the text makes him sound like. My dad is a dead set legend and his text only endears me more to my heart. Moments when you break out in spontaneously laughter are easily the best experiences in life.

Speaking on the finer points of the human condition I think everyone should see the documentary available on You Tube called "Home" by Yen Arthus-Bertrand. This documentary is a beautiful elocution of the Human experience on planet earth, how our interactions have made our way of life possible and also how they have affected and continue to affect our Home (Planet Earth). It succeeds education and enlightening without being dogmatic or lecturing. I challenge anyone to watch this documentary and not venture into a supermarket the next day without an altered consciousness of some kind. 

Please follow the link attached and watch this documentary: http://www.youtube.com/user/homeproject?blend=2&ob=1e 

I find it amazing that even if some people watched the above link they would rationalise and digest the content in a way that does not alter their values or consciousness but in a way that incorporates, manipulates and bastardises it’s value, its meaning, according to what the given person may already know! Granted, not everyone can be my father, sending texts in his mid fifties, open minded about me being gay, everything new and our changing world, but some people amaze me in their small minded approach!

There is a book I'm half way through reading call "Choosing Eden" by Adrienne Langman and I must say that I have found the first set of chapters rather disappointing.

Anyone with half an intellect is familiar with the concept of Peak Oil. Anyone without a dividend in the form of oil shares or associated political interests the finite nature of oil supplies. Hence I found the first 50 pages preoccupied with the narrators shock about Peak Oil nauseatingly unnecessary yett delightfully revealing regarding their mindset.  

It becomes a slightly disturbing and humorous glimpse into how someone can take something so big, so meaningful, and so impactful and turn it into a microcosm of their own life.

It was like going to see Turendott and ending up with a flea circus instead. Prior to learning about Peak Oil we learn the narrator couldn't care less about where the goods consumed came from, world politics etc...so long as her retirement was secure she really couldn't care. The third and most disappointing aspect of her realisation was that the only course of appropriate action to secure HER future, not humanity's future, but HER future. I'm not up to the predictable part where she moves out of the city as the death of suburbia is imminent but I'm waiting with baited breath. All discussions aside about the importance of Peak Oil and the various debates around the subject and alternative energy sources  what a shit house realisation! For a moment she was forced to consider the BIGGER picture and come out of her bourgeois, cafe late shell, only to take this fate/god given, mind opening realisation and perform  some sick minded, gymnastic, back flip and make it about her own interest and how they can best ride out the storm that is Peak Oil! 

Despite how her lack of personal growth has both angered me & saddened me her mindset reveals a modern day entertaining black comedy.

It is by no means intended or self conscious but this makes it all the more golden.

Some of my memorable excerpts so far commence with the opening page!  "Larry and I had traded Florsheim wingtips and Manolo Blahnik sandals  for muddy steel-capped work boots. We had given up our brioche and cappuccino in fashionable Double Bay in favour of home made bread and jam." - This was on the first page! I
 
thought I had hit pay dirt because the first four pages make them seem like lifestyle queens. Unfortunately at the expense of my bemusement they are not a heterosexual couple (Damn!). How disappointing. They go about incomes and friends in "Mensa" among a smattering of other self gratifying references for a number of pages. We then come to page 24; "And what if everyone on the East Coast of Australia sees this report? What will that do to the price of Real Estate here and in the mountains where we would be safe? What will it do to the stock market, our savings? How could we get our money out of a bank if all the banks are under 100 meters of water?" - By this point I had realised that there was little to be gleaned from this book with regards to a rational execution or survival strategy come Peak Oil. I considered discontinuing navigation through this residue of a mental break down over the coming pages but my own perverse desire to examine the unfolding of a  pocket of human nature and this person's twisted mind was just something I could not pass up. 

I was glad to persevere with this page turner with rewards like Page 40; "From the perspective of someone running a home; just the loss of cling film to cover left-over food is a prospect which weakens the knees". So far this is the most quotable, T-shirt quote yet. I cannot fathom how this woman has laboured over 40 pages about Peak Oil and what this means to come to the devastating, "knee weakening", realisation she will hot have cling wrap. Does this woman know that 30,000 children die each day NOW from preventable disease and 5,000 people die a day because they have no access to clean water. 

This lady so far has stricken me with sadness. After so much time spent labouring on a potentially global phenomenon all she can think about is what's in it for me. This is the Achilles heel of the human race personified in a latte drinking suburbanite of a woman who sets up a hobby farm come bomb shelter not understanding that the metaphorical devastation of Peak Oil (assuming it is true) does not rain down with the force of TNT but with the strength of an atomic annihilation. 

This journal is long enough already so I will not labour the finer points of why Peak Oil will happen but doesn't have to have the effects Adrienne consumes her thoughts with except to say given the abundance of alternative energies available us today there is time to act for the greater benefit of humanity. It is safe to say, from an intelligent viewpoint,  that hobby farms aren't the answer and won't save you from the hungry masses who couldn't care about the Title Deed to your "Hobby Farm". 

Eat less meat, walk where you can, buy recycled toliet paper, purchase fair trade coffee if you own your own home get a solar power installation, get a rainwater tank to! The human race needs to make this work together. You cannot run away from everywhere!