Sunday, April 17th, 2022. Week number 15
Good morning. It’s 4:20 which means something to somebody. Unfortunately, that’s not me. I am not in the marijuana business so I would happily have some on hand. If you think that this takes away from my credibility, I apologize. I like cannabis and it makes my life better when I have it. But for probably all of the reasons I like it, it is ridiculously illegal in a fascist country who likes to keep people crazy. I don’t think I could have possibly said that any better. I like sanity and I live in a world where the leadership treasures perpetual insanity.
Probably, if I was more observant, I would not be writing today. It is Passover and today is one of those days that you’re supposed to take an extended day off. I don’t know what to say about this other than I am acknowledging the day just like I will end up having to acknowledge whatever holidays are sent my way but I am going to continue following my own physical schedule. I keep Saturdays as holy as holy can be but I like to stay active the rest of the week. I can’t really continually lie around and this is true even if I do have some marijuana.
I am terrible at doing nothing.
Probably, I don’t want to start speaking about vices. Probably there are some things that I would gladly do other than work but even those things reach their limit eventually. Sometimes you just want to get out of bed and go do something real. Probably, finding a relationship that allows both work and rest can last a long long time. People who can’t get that schedule correct are never happy.
I can’t say that this is universally true but the math makes sense to me. I also have quite a bit of anecdotal evidence.
I’ve always believed in the family business as being the backbone of good relationships. When I was younger, I thought it was a good idea and tried to pull people together into such an endeavor but nobody wanted to do it. People like going their own ways and they do not like deferring their individuality.
This is not always so in the world. And right now, ignoring global warming or even considering the people that most contribute to it, the opposite is exactly true. We have a massive class of people who have absolutely no problem giving up their individuality or at least they’re personal opinions for the good of participating in a greater picture. The glue that binds is money of course. The flaw in the argument is that it’s almost always public funds and never earned by any of these parasitic characters.
To get into this thought, I have a few links. I also want to apologize in advance if I am channeling Rachel Maddow. I am very fond of the way she weaves her impressive stories of political corruption from the conservative Americans as well as the global oil Business who for all intents and purposes seem to be their main benefactor.
In fact, why don’t we start with some Rachel Maddow to get the ball rolling.
I am not the only one who recognizes the connection between the American conservatives and the oil business. I’m also not the only one who notices that we have a severe lack of democracy in the world because of this. Specifically, it seems that the idea of people voting their conscience goes out the window when the fat checks from the oil business are going through our political system. It is absolutely true in this country, it’s absolutely true in my neighboring countries and it is unilaterally true in the country whose passport I carry. We are not really voting for our constituencies, we are voting for oil.
When I say that I am not the only one who knows this, I can also say that the president of Ukraine is well aware of the power of oil and that this is most probably the main reason, along with anti-semitism, for the Russians attempting to level the country of Ukraine.
So next, we have three Zelinskis asking the world to simply stop giving the Russians money for their oil.
Why are they still buying oil from Russia?
And in his daily speech, this idea is seconded. Let me lend my agreement as a third.
And finally a film driving the point home. It’s time to cut off Russian oil. (And as an aside, I deeply regret the shot in this film of the president of Belarus shaking hands with Putin. The association is directly responsible for most of the grief and misery that goes along in this country and I hope it is understood that my voice is one of opposition to this and has been forever.)
When Joe Biden’s son got caught with his hands in the cookie jar in Ukraine, why wasn’t this the end of his bid for the presidency? The logical answer is that he was the conservative choice for the Democratic party. I don’t remember Joe Biden being The logical favorite during the debates. I don’t remember Joe Biden tearing up the competition with his ideology and vigor. I remember suddenly finding out that he had a massive lead despite never showing well during any of the massive televised debates amongst the 20 or so respectable candidates. Plenty of young blood and energy, plenty of idealism and even some radical ideas about universal income or forced equality. Just the oil business telling everyone that we didn’t really have a choice.
This morning, I asked the following question of Google:
Why is betrayal so profitable?
I didn’t really get the sort of satisfying answer I was looking for but I did find quite a few articles basically telling us to expect betrayal. The obvious answer is that people will betray you for money and with Christian Easter coming up very soon, let’s be clear that this is not in any way specifically a Jewish trait. You can’t blame the Jews for Judas because it seems that betrayal is an almost universal Christian trade as well.
I think the point I’m trying to make here is that in the story of Christ’s crucifixion, the main business of Christian Easter, The story goes that Judas betrayed Jesus for a bag of silver. This led to one of the original anti-semitic ideas that the Jews were to blame for all economic problems in the world. And quite a few people have been murdered for this idea.
But then again we can have a look around and we can see that the idea of betrayal is pretty well embedded in the Christian world.
In Russia, they have a political party Единая Россия, this would translate as One Russia or United Russia but basically it is the ruling political party of the Russian Federation. You know laterally, the One Russia party is a self perpetuating borglike organization that basically has their fingers in every single region around Russia. They are the controlling majority vote in all things, they are extremely well known for both corruption and abuse of power and they are also very good at playing political games. Does this sound familiar?
Living here, you get to understand how Putin’s party works but it did seem strange to me to notice how the American conservative party was beginning to vote completely unilaterally without any dissenting voices.
It seems that agreeing to follow the party line has replaced American voting democracy and it also seems that the model for how to run a conservative government is almost identical between the two countries.
If Russia has a notoriously well monitored national media propaganda machine, America does as well. I’m talking about Sinclair media and their 400 plus radio and television stations throughout the Midwest and deep south. Christian conservative radio is Big Business and keeping people’s minds on the game, just keeps things rolling along.
When Trump won the election in 2016, the conservative party went online asking people to be calm and passive and let them do their job. They could complain about it later. These were the absolute identical words used after the Belarusian election and the Russian election of the same two leaders we’ve seen for the last two decades.
When there was a protest in Belarus, it seems that someone suggested that people stand out on the street and wave at the parade of cars as a way of showing support for a free and fair Belarus.
In the United States, someone came up with the great idea of having truckers drive across the United States while people waved flags and cheered them on as a way of showing support for a free and fair America.
In Russia and in Belarus, nobody thought of having any lockdowns or keeping people at home for an extended period of time to fight the pandemic. The pandemic was seen as fake news and people were told to just deal with it.
In Florida, one of the most notoriously corrupt conservative States, Governor Ron Santos tells us that no one is going to stop Florida from getting their money.
We are looking at the end of the world. We are looking at massive ecological destruction and mismanagement and the culprit is the financial system that enriches a very few people and steals from and betrays the trust of the vast majority of life on the planet. I’m talking about people and animals and nature.
We are having our lives stolen from us. Our lives, our time, our Land, our air and our water. We are being betrayed and we are being betrayed for a bunch of bags of silver telling a bunch of greedy parasites how to keep a system rolling despite all scientific evidence that we have created an unhealthy habitat.
Me? I really didn’t think about this very much until I stepped off of the train I was riding and stopped poisoning myself. I would agree that the catalyst of change was the opportunity to have some cannabis. I believe the phrase people use is that I got woke. I would not say that cannabis is the only thing that happened, but it was a catalyst that allowed me to hear myself think long enough to make a clear decision about alcohol. I had already made the clear decision to stop eating meat. The clarity of mind and additional energy that came along with not eating meat and not drinking alcohol allowed me to do quite a bit of studying and thinking for myself. Enough thinking I think to understand how brainwashed the world is and who is doing the brainwashing and why.
And of course, I’m not the only one who thinks this way.
Why are most people disparaging toward vegans?
Best answer:
Many people, in my opinion, have been brainwashed their entire lives. I was. Since birth we are showed a culture and traditions that say we should eat dead animals and animal products. Since birth we have large companies showing us commercials hundreds of times a day, saying we should eat dead animals and animal products. Questioning these beliefs is right up there with discussing religion and politics.
But, since we can look around and see elite world class athletes that are Vegan, like Serena and Venus Williams, Kyrie Irving, Scott Jurek, Rich Roll, half the Tennessee Titan defense, Nick n Nate Diaz, etc etc etc…as well as million and millions of regular people…so we know we can THRIVE on a whole foods plant based diet. So it becomes a moral question…if we do not need to torture and murder 56 BILLION innocent animals a year, why is it happening ? People don’t like being shown that they have been doing something horrific their entire lives. It is an ugly look in the mirror.
The hardest part of being Vegan is when the fog clears and this disconnection is gone, you have this hard look at the darkest side of humanity. You explain all of this to your friends and family, but many of them continue funding this holocost and continue consuming dead animals and animal products right in front of you. It is sickening and hard to deal with. I have a Vegan wife but we have 4 daughters and 9 grandkids that are not Vegan. Do we join them for meals and watch as they shovel down what a couple weeks ago was an innocent animal that did not want to die ? It makes for difficult situations and hard feelings. And we haven’t even touched on the diseases and illnesses that consuming dead animal flesh and animal products causes.
And this is just about having pity for animals. The only two things that I want to add to this is that discussing religion and politics is what we should be doing without any sense of emotional uproar whatsoever and that we are amongst the animals being tortured as well.
***
It’s about 8:20 and I’m in the kitchen feeling really full. I would say that breakfast was a failure. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a tasty thing but to me, I feel that I rushed it and I feel that I’m going to be paying for this breakfast for quite some time.
I tried to do that vegan matzo brei and now I’m sorry. Matzo brei is basically scrambled eggs with matzo. We are in the middle of Passover or at the beginning of it and you’re supposed to eat matzah. I got a box from the Jewish community, thank you very much, and I mixed it in with some ground up split peas and spices and then cooked it until it pulled together into something like the consistency of scrambled eggs. More like scrambled eggs and concrete really.
The problem with matzah is that it doesn’t really go through you very easily. My normal diet has a lot of fiber in it and going to the bathroom is normal. I don’t mean to make a massive point of it but if you have ever had problems with constipation, you add more fiber and water and things should move along. Point number 785 why a vegan diet is good for you, I’m talking about a whole food vegan diet, is fiber everywhere and a very normal colorectal system. Not glamorous, not Instagram worthy but definitely prayer Worthy. Thank you God very much for not giving me problems with my intestinal tract.
This monster though is something a little different. Sure, it’s filling but it’s kind of a brutal feeling. It just sits there and wants to stay with you for a very long time. On Friday night and on Saturday morning, I had matzah and hummus and it was lovely. I made an exceptionally wonderful hummus with some sesame seeds and peanuts to complement the chickpeas, no oil but vinegar and spices and it was wonderful. During those meals, I realized why I like crackers so much. Seriously wonderful food that you eat with your fingers and it tastes lovely and both got prayers.
This breakfast though made of very, very similar ingredients is a different animal altogether. I don’t feel sick per se, I just feel like I’ve gone to a gym and eaten some of the workout equipment. I have some kind of metal chunks right now in my belly and I’m not exactly sure why I have done what I have done.
So I guess I will deal with that over the course of the day.
I have not talked to my ex partner yet so I don’t know if we have a story today. Somewhere, we talked about her coming up today and maybe helping out. It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful warm day and the company would be nice. But I don’t know. She hasn’t called me and I haven’t called her yet. I suppose I should do so. Actually, I should probably do that right now…
…Well, she had a nice Saturday. This is nice to know. Went for a bike ride in the morning, had a rest in the afternoon and then hit the yoga class in the evening. She is a conventional modern woman. Can’t argue, couldn’t even if I wanted to.
She has made an arrangement with the guy who is selling us our water tanks currently and I think we have three more coming up today with her somewhere between noon and 1:00.
I’m not sure exactly how much work I really want to do. On friday, I finished another field dirt level on my raised bed lasagna. I have been alternating Forest topsoil and humus with land that had been probably plowed 50 times or more. The land here is very Sandy to start with but if you plow it and plow it and plow it, there’s not much life left in it. It’s My Hope that some Forest land and a little bit of fertilizer mixed in will make for a decent enough growing medium. I also think that we are going to use Forest leaves for mulch.
So if I want to get moving and physical, that’s one job that needs to get done. I also came up with another idea that might work really easily and solve several problems at the same time.
I have several structures other than the house with roofs that can work to catch rain but we have one spot in back of the root cellar that hardly gets any direct sun. I had never thought of this before but if I were to put a line of water tanks directly under the roof overhang, I don’t really need to put a gutter there because the openings of the bottles will catch them. I also thought of perhaps using some gutter material to fill the distance between the tanks. Also, the distance from our well to these tanks is not so much and it’s very close to our raised bed gardens.
Unless I want to seriously upgrade my water system here, and I don’t, the main deal is going to be moving water around so we can get it to the plants. I do not have enough water in the well to water the field and I have not emptied the well yet to find out how long it would take to refill. The only thing I do know is that we have more than a decade of drought, fruit trees do not grow very well naturally anymore and I need to do everything I can if I would like some fresh apples, pears, apricots and several different types of nuts. Even if I overplant and just let the trees be shade for me to enjoy, they are still going to need more water than our current environment allows.
I don’t know if this is the actual science but my feeling is that we have an excess of Auto fumes going up into the air and that the particles from this end up getting stuck at the bottom of clouds preventing water from going through. Perhaps a good term would be cloud constipation. I think it’s the exact same thing as human constipation in that you don’t have a free flow of material going through. Again, not known science, just a guess from a guy on the ground.
I guess it’s time to get moving. If my ex partner is only coming up at noon or 1:00, this means I only have her help for about 4 hours. That’s plenty of time to do a session of material gathering. We don’t really have any planting to do and as far as moving the water buckets around, if there’s no water in them right now, I can do all that myself.
Planting day is 2 weeks from now and all of my garden space, both the raised beds and the beds I have cut out of the field have to be ready. I think I will have enough material to put some life in there and I think I will have the water system nailed down and ready to go.
It’s not a pressure day. At least it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be a day of yelling and screaming. But it’ll be a good day I hope and it will be the start of the next level of my project which is carrying the water, keeping the weeds to a minimum and watching all of our Little darlings grow. Not a bad way to spend the summer, don’t you think?
I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
***
Well, ask a stupid question…
And I was thinking of the war. So foolish.
***
Then this. I brought home the factory type and turned down the round. It wasn’t snobbishness or anti-snobishness, I just didn’t have room in my bike bag for more. Matzah.
***
Only three loads done so far. This belly is not going to allow me much work today nor are the legs. A day off is a wise and good thing and it is the thing that separates us from slavery. This I believe to be true as much as I believe that slavery is the evil of the world. This would be both man over man and man over animal. Actually, I’d even be one of those people who believe that property is murder and this despite being a property owner.
But this stewardship that goes along with feeding myself is a mighty task for me. It takes you a little while to warm up into it and carrying around this sack of food doesn’t help. I’m also dreaming of my partner showing up even though I know that’s not going to be all the help in the world either.
You can’t depend on anyone but yourself but that doesn’t make the task that you have to do yourself any less difficult. No, I’m not dreaming of machines to do this work for me. I am trying not to screw up the forest and I’m only taking what I need and only from places that will not be harmed by removing a little topsoil. But this is hard work even on a day where there are no particular mosquitoes.
Okay, quit your bitching. Time to get back into it. I’ve got at least six more runs to make before I can stop. And if I’m not talking about six, I’m actually talking about 16. There are 38 wheelbarrow loads to make a layer. Maybe this is the last full layer or maybe I will put one more layer of sand on the top but this is the job at hand.
Oh, and I also need to do some work on the other gardens before we plant there as well. I don’t know the number yet but it will be at least 10 to 20 barrels of fertilization more before we’re ready to plant everywhere.
Blah blah blah.
***
Well, that was a completely miserable afternoon. I’m worn out. I’m really tired and I feel completely fucking empty. You just can’t talk to Russians. Russians don’t want to talk. Russians just come in and do what the fuck they want to do and they don’t give a shit where they are. Russians just fucking shit on you and then they say they are sorry if they caused you any consternation.
We made about 10 runs to put some nice soil in the boxes. But it took so much energy from me to deal with the help.
For sure, I have a really rich guy from here that I know and one time I asked him if he had ever met the president of the country. And he remembered the moment with great difficulty. His hands came to his face like in a prayer trying to find the exact words to describe the experience.
Eventually he said that it was a wash. He got a contract from the state but the amount of extra work he had to do to deal with the state bureaucracy took away from time and energy he would have had doing things without their help. Perhaps he made some money but it cost him time and money to get this and so he could not say anything good.
I got his meaning but sometimes it’s better without the help. Without the arguing, without the brutality, without the contradictions and without the problems.
How do you explain to someone that doesn’t talk and that you require a conversation? How do you explain to someone that you do not want them taking their frustrations out on your territory and that you’re trying to do things with some subtlety? How do you explain to a Russian that subtlety exists.
I think we might have reached the crossroads today. I don’t really think she’s going to move because I don’t think she’s capable of change. Unfortunately, she’s well invested in plants that have been growing over at her house but I don’t see a happy ending for any of this. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with all of this because frankly, I think I would have been happier with trees and berry bushes. All of this extra work I’ve done here requires some level of nuance and I don’t really think I’m going to be able to fulfill this contract under its current situation.
Maybe it’s just town. Maybe I’m just tired of township and town people. Maybe I’m tired of town noise and I’m tired of people that don’t know the difference. Maybe I’m just tired of the fucking brutality from people who can’t even breathe.
You know, my neighbors are Town people. All the neighbors that I don’t particularly care for are all Town people. I get along very well with the people who live here, the homeowners, Who do not go to town. I have no problem with their relationships. They are polite and they are quiet and they do not require an inordinate amount of energy just to interact. Town people are different. Town people are just really fucking different.
I’m just going to adopt a wait and see attitude. If I was in Vegas, I would not bet a penny on this thing working out one way or another. And I feel bad but I just don’t have the energy to do the accommodation. I know that when I visit town, I bring my Best manners. I know how to be a decent guest. It’s a way different animal when someone from town comes up here. I do not feel any compulsion to give them deference. I don’t feel any compulsion to feel the slightest need to move to their whims. I don’t need the brutality and I don’t need the push.
Really, I’m not being dramatic, I’m just tired of these things. It takes five times the energy and I don’t get five times the work. I just get more messes to clean up. I just feel like I’m getting stolen from.
I want to say just one more thing and it has nothing to do with my ex partner per se but it does have to do with my ex-girlfriend. Today is a big day for her. I’m sure people are just giving her love. But during the time that we were together, I really needed to talk about the situation. I needed a touch of behavioral modification on her part and I needed a modicum of kindness.
What can I say? Russians are bullies. They don’t know any other way to be. It never occurs to them not to be bullies and if you don’t understand and like the brutality of the bullying, they just don’t feel anything.
Tell me again how this is my fault. Tell me again how I should have known better. And please while you’re at it, tell me where my genuine opportunities were elsewhere.
Thanks for the misery babe. I’m sure I just didn’t have enough of it all on my own without your help.
Fuck.
***
Okay, this was a pretty big writing day so I’m not going to waste too much more time. The only thing left that I really want to talk about is that today is April 17th and April 17th is a pretty interesting day. Both of my parents we’re born on the same day. April 17th. It’s a pretty interesting thing when both your parents have the same birthday and mathematically speaking, the odds are 133,407.563 to one. I got this number by multiplying 365.25 by itself. This is one quarter of a leap year. If my mathematics are not perfect, I am sorry.
There is more to this story. My daughter’s mother also has parents that have the same birthday. And I am not making this up but both of my daughter’s grandparents were also born on April 17th. That is exactly the truth and I wish I was lying but I’m not. The odds against that are probably 133,407.563 squared which would give us a number of… just a second, I broke the calculator. Let’s do this but only to a round number because my calculator won’t go that high. Basically it is about 17.8 billion to one. That’s a pretty cool number because it means that if we count everybody on the planet, it’s about two to one against that it could happen to anyone else. That’s pretty cool.
You want to know what else is cool? She was born on December 25th and statistically speaking, that is the rarest day to have your birthday. Not bad.
I think about this because April 17th is always a special day for me. And if she even misses them, I doubt she remembers any of them, my daughter might feel even doubly so.
April 17th is also in the middle of a couple of other cool days. April 15th is of course tax day in America and Jackie Robinson Day in the major leagues. And just on the other side, April 20th is coming up in a couple of days and for all the stoners in the world, that’s Christmas.
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