die energie der sonne

rejoice!
solar power costs are plummeting with each new innovation, wind technology is becoming more efficient, and ocean power is sounding like less and less like aquaman's fantasy. take the wind energy company flodesign for example.
with a little funding, ok well a generous buttload of funding, they can flesh out their prototype and initiate construction. i have to admit, it looks like the freakish bastard child of a jet engine and that mechanical shark thing from james & the giant peach, and the risk of migrating birds being sucked into turbines will increase thirteen-fold, but i'm sure these minor issues will be resolved in due time.
in the mean time, stew this over in your bubbling neck-mounted thought kettle:
in a few hundred years we went from dumping our shit out the window to electronic talking toilets that wipe our ass for us and thank us for stopping by. (a thin stream of water shot into my ass is not my idea of refreshing, but to each his/her own.)
in a hundred years we went from the homely model-t with a blood-thirsty top speed and laughable mileage to a land rocket powered only by some sunlight, gas, air and a daredevil driver of questionable mental stability. (commercially available sports cars are ridiculously powerful and have some very nice designs, but you'd get better fuel efficiency if you drank a gallon of ethanol and tried to run the nyc marathon)
in thirty years we went from room-sized, vacuum tube powered computing monstrosities to tiny handheld devices that have a better memory than we do. (what's your current longitude and lattitute? yea, i thought so.)
even with all our faults, we are clearly becoming smarter in some way, so let's make this happen. let nature power our toys. we can build a bunch of machines that harness the elements, and just sit back to enjoy the ride.
oh and one more thing.
i really hope i'm not around if flying cars are mass produced. people are oblivious, selfish jerks as it is, and we only drive in two dimensions. give the general public a third dimension, and say goodbye to the pedestrian. you might as well say goodbye to your life as well, because two weeks after you buy your first flying car, some douchebag is going to vertically t-bone you at 230 km/hr because he was trying to get his iphone 6g to sync with his gps mind-controlled steering wheel.
sigh.

life of the living homeless

we all know investing in property is very profitable and is much preferable to renting, and if you didn't know that, well sorry to break it to you on a lame web log.
but why pay for a home at all? how often are you in your own house? excluding unconscious refueling, how many hours a week are you actually making use of your square footage? ok you eat in your kitchen and clean yourself in your bathroom and probably do dirty, debasing, unspeakable things in your bedroom. if you are like most consumers you watch tv shows or at least movies on your unnecessarily gorgeous screen before wasting hours of your life hitting refresh on your favorite social networking website and deleting the spam that always seems to get past the "smart" filters. sit your life away. burn all the coal so we have to use food to power out gadgets. join the nonrenewable party! we can learn to live on much less, and i will show you that the cheapest way to be single is to be homeless.
but oh my sweet, delicious lord where will you keep your clothes? first of all, you really don't need that many outfits. mix and match. be creative. no one will notice if you wear the same pair of jeans every week or so. if someone does notice, they really need to get a hobby. there are many large-scale storage facilities in cities, and you can store all kinds of fun stuff in there. dressers full of clothes. bedroom furniture. hygiene paraphernalia. you will probably pay one tenth the price you pay now, and you could probably get away with sleeping there. now i'm not advocating blatant disregard for strict company policies, but do what you want. find a nice comfortable part of your favorite simulated forest and set up a tent or just rawdog it in the grass. crash at friends' houses on nights when the weather doesn't agree with your sleeping arrangements and throw them a couple bucks for the hospitality. or yes, sleep in your storage room. weirdo.
you know your pudgy ass should join a gym, or at least go to the one where you are already a member. most gymnasiums have locker rooms, so there's your indoor plumbing, running water and reflective glass needs right there. the three s's are covered. plus you will be in even better shape walking around the city between your faux-bedroom, faux-closet and faux-bathroom.
eating is simple. dine out. restaurants, local farmer's shops, friend's houses. of course if everyone followed this lifestyle there would be no "friends with a house" but i'm fairly certain this won't ever be a problem. as long as you don't insist on le-bec fin every weekend, you should be fine.
now i realize it's difficult - well not difficult as much as creepy - to bring a girl back to your friend's house, but there's a simple answer: go to her house dumbass. or his house. whatever floats your boat. sex in public places is generally frowned upon, and once again i'm not advocating any rule-breaking, but do what you want. there was a case recently of a british couple who decided a beach in dubai was as good a spot as any. that was more about unmarried, intoxicated intercourse and indecent exposure, but i don't know bring a blanket, wait until the sun is down. do i really have to explain this to you?
for entertainment, i suggest some good old-fashioned paperbacks. or for a more tree-friendly approach to reading, get one of those portable ebooks. or you can head to your favorite pub to catch the game. again, knowing other humans that like you enough to invite you over is always a plus.
everyone these days with a decent job has a laptop, and our cities are blinding beacons of undetectable light: radio waves. wireless data. your least favorite coffee shop provides all you need for a morning rich with caffeine and news updates. many public places offer electrical outlets for powering your various digital toys. walking past a potted plant in central philadephia, i noticed the familiar surprised little plastic face that indicates available electricity. now if that electricity was generated by solar power, we'd truly be in business.

writer's block

i don't know what to write. i'm just typing. free wheeling. free spirited. constant flow. no stopping. just think. no don't think. no more periods. they take too long. every period could be another word. the period is so far away. too close. not close enough. not anything. stop. bite fingernail. nibble. gross self out: complete. quit it. terrible habit. idle hands need something to do. keep typing. don't think. next paragraph.
these keys could use a good cleaning. dirty glyphs. smudging clean fingers with month-old gunk. don't touch me. dirty fingers. dirty money. bring loose change to the bank and exchange it for paper money. not really paper. more cloth than paper. if you called it cloth money too many people would try to wear it. sew with it. the economy is on a sled down the fresh powder and i'm just along for the ride. soon we'll have winter coats sewn of currency. stuff it with money. save the geese.
so back at the bank i dump my change into the counting machine. the insufferable little 2d blonde girl on screen tells me that i've sure collected a lot of change. yea, no shit. thanks penny. copper-plated eyes. count it all up. not as much as i expected. mostly nickels and dimes. $26 is still a good amount for coins worth less than one unit of currency each. steak burritos tonight. walk to the counter. laziness forces me to stop at the first teller. proximity wins. the second teller is much prettier and definitely not fat, i mean she's much prettier. the tubby one greets me with an obese smile while the healthy one two meters away frowns flirtatiously. flirting in a financial institution. can't say i have many moral boundaries left either. you two can share, i smile back at both. hinting at a ménage à trois is always a great opener for fresh faces. she offers me candy but then rescinds the offer when the fat, i mean closer, teller takes my receipt for processing. i joke that i'll come over if it's chocolate; i love chocolate. i really do love chocolate, i think to myself, but i realize this could be misconstrued for a race comment, but then i also realize i over-analyze things.
over-analyzing is a misnomer created by greedy psychologists, psychiatrists and psycho-analysts, who's very jobs require them to "over-analyze" things. how else can you stretch out repetitive, infuriatingly open-ended questions like "how does that make you feel?"
how else do crimes get solved? if every detective stopped when the first couple leads proved unreliable time wasters, we'd have even more despicable mounds of flesh roaming the streets. leave the bank. get some damn food, my stomach quakes at me.
beef, peanut butter, sharp cheddar, rice, root beer, dinosaur snacks. not all together you sick freak. too much trans fat. too much sodium. not enough protein. i'll starve while deciding which brand is better for my dying body. microcosm. living city. living world. living universe. parallel universe. multi-verse.
straighten out your favorite roller coaster so it's a big first drop then one long line. now get on. you're born. ratcheting up the hill. growing. learning. infancy. childhood. look around. take it all in. experience. grade school. tighten up. tense up. check your safety harness. college. university. institute. pick your flavor. grab your cap and hurl it into the air. now get a job. hold on for the big drop. no turning back. yell out. lungs straining. you can't help it. scenery screams past your face. hair whipping behind your skull. wrinkling your skin. your mother says don't cross your eyes because they will stay that way. bullshit. live a little. if you don't want to get wet stay away from the water. trees blur into greenish-brown towers. pedestrians with their unnecessary cars and trucks. utility vehicles with roof racks used twice a year but owners that pay extra for the awful aerodynamics the other 50 weeks a year. let it fly by you. meaningless. focus on what's important. find happiness. laugh. don't laugh. make them work for it. make them think. scratch a head or two. zoom down the hill. into the straightaway. maybe a few kinks. a loop or corkscrew or small dip. you can't plan everything. decades fly by. how am i 30? how am i 40? how am i 60? physical breakdown. mental collapse. disintegration.
modern medicine is killing us slower. we're not made to last this long. people wonder why we all get cancers and strokes and neurological disorders. put leftovers in the freezer to extend their life and then wonder why they taste awful a month later. prolonging the inevitable. with liberty and justice for all. average age three centuries ago? think about it this way: at twenty-two you'd be working a manual labor or desk job, married with five kids. your wife conceived fourteen times but we all know what happens with that. penicillin? not quite yet. colds kill. sore throats kill. tally them up. by the third loss you just shrug off the tears, bury them and try again the next night. you love your wife. you want to pass your genes on. add a branch to the family tree. pass the torch. hurry up, because you're dying. next time clean that scrape. now gangrene wins the battle. survival of the least stupid.
entire square kilometers dedicated to corpses. not another farm. no crops allowed. not another school. no knowledge allowed. not another hospital. no treatment allowed. dig holes for the dead. rotting bodies and expensive threads and endangered tree slabs. entire industries based around the misconception that we need to stick our deceased in an underground box. they're not seeds. nothing fertile to sprout. useless. meaningless. fruitless. careless. lifeless.

body surfing

panicking after my quadruple underwater somersault, i swim hastily for a fresh breath, but i slam into the sea floor and quickly realize i've chosen the wrong direction. flipping around i plant my feet on the aquatic quicksand only to immediately snap my legs straight open and explode upwards out of the ocean.
i voraciously inhale air as soon as it hits my face. sand-laced winds batter my cooking skin. i relish a slow breath or two and clear my eyes in time to see the next mass of water approaching.
it's already taller than me and it hasn't even gathered its full potential. the energy rushing towards my frail frame in enormous, and the liquid in my chosen six-foot width must weigh upwards of two hundred tons. i spin around and freestyle towards shore, racing as if in a city-wide swim meet, and i can still feel my body being pulled helplessly out to sea. i catch the tip of the breaking wave perfectly, pumping my legs furiously to keep up with the immense power. i am at least ten feet above the surface of the water, flying towards the beach. i give one last arm pull and zoom forward like the rocketeer, traveling over twenty meters at automobile velocities until the giant water wall collapses on itself with a thunderous crash, taking me with it face first into the sandy bottom.
i emerge in a foamy wasteland, now able to stand in the knee-height surf. i stumble towards the dry sand and stop near a inquisitive gull.
i sway slightly in place, dripping with cold salt, mesmerized in my natural euphoria.
the edge of the atlantic.

pearly whites in the dark of night

i brushed my teeth last night. yea nothing special, right?
wrong. i brushed my teeth in the dark. now that is something quite different.
i opened the circuit - flipping the switch down with a satisfying click - and plunged into a world without light. then i closed my eyes to experience true darkness. after a few monotonous bristle strokes, i released my eyelids and saw a detailed silhouette of myself in the mirror. i was not aware that a silhouette could have fine details, but mine did. that is the difference between light scattering off physical objects, and shading a figure completely black with paint or graphite. the photons whizzing through my bathroom window at 186000 miles per second bounced around like an acid-fueled game of pong. when they ricocheted off my face and finally onto my rods and cones i could distinguish the outlines of my nose, lips and various other facial features. no camera could reproduce the subtleties of this scene. disregarding the fact that this barrage of light waves/particles was already more than eight minutes old since it left the scorching gaseous surface of our closest star, i wondered why i ever kept the lights on while performing such menial washroom tasks. within the first few dozen months of this life i was able to rely on a common hand-eye-coordination that many humans take for granted. the ability to blindly touch my nose or scratch an itch is purely a miracle of nature. whether or not the phrase “miracle of nature” is loaded with enough oxymoronic wordplay to start a new religion remains to be seen. every person with a semi-functional brain-stem has a certain innate self-awareness that facilitates such extraordinary actions. this is exactly why roadside sobriety tests contain examinations of this gift. this ability is recognized as a large part of consciousness and any failure to display said self-awareness is a sure sign of temporary - if not permanent - mental dysfunction. this topographical image we have of our bodies is the closest approximation to a “sixth sense” we can ask for. it is much more challenging and enjoyable to maintain dental hygiene while immersed in the mental clarity of visual ambiguity.

personality test

scuba diving or sky diving? sea or air? hypothetical scenario: you can only pick one. go ahead. i'll wait.

your choice says a great deal about your psyche. if you boil both exhilarating activities down to their bare forms, you are basically choosing between the illusion of control and lack of control. are you the dominant type, or are you more of a passive individual?
side note:
both require a great deal of mental and physical preparation and extensive training before you can make a solo attempt. both require detailed knowledge of proper equipment operation and maintenance. our body's density is somewhere between that of air and water, so we fall down in air and up in water. the trick is to control these uncontrollable physical forces. for scuba diving it involves weights. for sky diving it involves a parachute. tremendous care is necessary to strike a balance between enjoyment and death. if you fail to utilize your scuba weights properly, you could rocket up to the surface causing your blood vessels to violently explode. if you fail to utilize your parachute properly, you could splatter across the landscape in a beautifully mathematical pattern. either way, it's a pretty messy scene.
sky diving - unless you have one of those jet suits or specialized government training - traditionally involves careful planning to ensure you land somewhere near your destination and not on a cactus. aside from slight mid-air maneuvering, there is not much one can do when accelerating towards the earth's crust at almost 10 meters per second. of course, air friction limits your top speed, but no one wants to hit anything at that velocity. unlike scuba diving, there are not as many animal-related injuries possible while sailing through the air, but there is always the slight risk of slamming into a migrating goose or a propeller plane. scuba divers face the perils of ocean currents, curious mollusks, hungry fish, jagged cliffs, and of course the crushing pressure of water. that is one of many things i find fascinating about our gas-based atmosphere. our physical structures are so finely balanced to ensure survival at our average air pressure. we are not meant to inhabit any other locations. if we were tied to a balloon and set adrift into the clouds, we would slowly explode. if we were tied to a stone and dropped into the ocean, we would slowly implode. those are some pretty painful and disgusting images (not to mention the sick bastard who decides to torture people in these ways) so i do apologize. i think i am about seven tangents off course, so let's journey back.
while sky diving you agree to let go of the wheel until the last possible minute when you pull the ripcord and drift safely to the ground. while scuba diving you struggle to keep the wheel straight the entire time. both of these sound awesome. count me in.

the lowly status of chicken

being a chicken sucks.
i'm not speaking of guys who are too intimidated by their own happiness to approach a girl in a bar. i'm speaking about the bird that finds its way into countless deep-fat fryers, bread-crumb batters and cordon-bleus.
let's put ourselves into the mind of a chicken. let's also disregard the fact that this chicken probably lack the consciousness necessary to contemplate the existential emptiness of its own miserable existence.
as a chicken, we tend to have way too many roommates. think about your college dorm room, and how crowded it was. now add about 9 other humans. yea. the logistics of living comfortably in this situation are almost not worth debating. who moved my eggs? am i certain this is the right nest? are they going to open a damn window? these are just a few of the unanswered questions a chicken is faced with every day.
as a chicken, our entire lives are dictated by another animal. live. breed. procreate. die. we are lucky to experience two of those four things, and even the few experiences we do have are not very pleasant. my current girlfriend has a misshapen beak, but when farmer jerkface locks us in a cage for two days, the only thing to keep me from going insane is to take a deep breath and fertilize some eggs. after that ordeal i don't even get to meet my kids. that hairy, sweaty human comes in and steals our children before they even hatch. even if i can get over this horrible fact, i have to live with the idea that everything i create is taken away. except, of course, my excrement, which is left here for days before being cleaned. not a very fair trade, but life is not meant to be fair. this is clearly evident when we are taken to the big machine room and mechanically separated from ourselves to feed so many gluttonous mammals across the globe.
the only redeeming factor in our pitiful lives is that our flavor is brought up so frequently. ok back to human form.
surely a disturbing thought but completely true. how many times have you heard that something tastes like chicken? quite a bit i presume. it may be more prevalent in the united states of america, but whenever one dines on less-common flesh one finds themselves thinking about the last chicken dinner they devoured. in a country where a more common meal involves a snake or lemur, the utterance may be nonexistent, or even reversed when someone finally tries the illustrious bird they've heard such great things about. i've tried a few different animals during various meals, and i've never found myself thinking "hey this tastes like alligator" except when i was actually eating barbecued alligator. quite delicious, but i began thinking that if it reminds me so much of very tender chicken i should have avoided the extra cost and just went with chicken in the first place. well the human desire to experience life to the fullest is strong. so i ate alligator. go cry about it.

opening day

welcome to the first post, as these consciousness streams seem to be called on our wide world of web.
i find that capitalization is unnecessary in general sentences. sure, names of people and places should be visually distinguished from the rest of the word herd, but i would rather avoid the extra effort required by the shift key. yes, i am aware that many pieces of software will automatically capitalize the first letter of a new sentence. i would rather that software not control my words. even for those people so sheltered from the media that you have not seen james cameron's directorial debut, realize that computers control traffic lights, airplanes, and how many tv dinners are churned out of a factory each day. most people can't remember more than a few phone numbers because they rely on their mobile device, and even i admit to avoiding phonebooks. a real science program is named "skynet" and if an emp was detonated in a major city, chaos would immediately ensue. just saying. let's ween from the teat of the transistor. but i digress.
if you are concerned about discerning between the end of one subject/predicate sandwich and the beginning of another - besides utilizing syntax and context - punctuation can do the job quite well. see? this sentence is over now. feast you ocular nerves on the wonderful invention of homo sapiens - the lowly period. complexity buried in the simplicity. this dot has the power to end a thought, but string three of them together and you get something completely different. the ellipsis can even take the place for entire thoughts.
earth. what a great place.