My dreams are usually bizarrely twisted versions of reality – but they are usually not anything to share…until now. I’m sharing the next two dreams purely due to the bizarre comedic nature of their freaky fun content.
Dream 1: I find myself in a vehicle traveling dangerously fast along an autobahn-like superhighway. I am in the back of the vehicle. It is a boxy, obviously an off-road “Jeep” type vehicle. It has many features that remind me of the 1960’s Series Land Rovers that I once owned and drove. A truly off-center difference is that the entire interior is carpeted in plush, deep, black shag carpet. It was really quite nice – in the dream. I then notice that I am sitting, not in a vehicle seat – there are no standard back seats or inward-facing jump seats as in some jeep-style two-door vehicles – I am facing forward and sitting in an old folding aluminum lawn chair with green plastic webbing. There are no seat belts and the seat is not attached to the floor as it should be. It and I are just at the mercy of physics should this wild ride abruptly end.
Weird. But it is about to get even weirder.
There is someone in the driver’s seat and someone in the passenger seat.
The driver turns to say something to the passenger and I recognize him – it’s Elon Musk. Then I recognize the passenger- it’s Neil DeGrasse Tyson. They are chatting about this new truck – so it must be that we are in Elon’s Cybertruck.
Cool.
LooBut it sure does not look like a Cybertruck on the inside. Anyhow, Elon then says into the air “Autopilot Engaged” then he gets up, climbs over the seats, walks past me, and gets a drink from the built-in bar, the bartender is a shiny stainless steel (probably 304L) robot who reminds me of Bender from Futurama – only chrome plated and more menacing with a HAL 9000-like huge red camera-lens-like eye and many more arms – I would guess at least 6 but he is waving them all around like Dr. Octopus so it was hard to count them. The bizarro-bartender-Bender-bot then handed Musk the drink – I believe it was a Mojito…but it was bubbling and glowing blue and had a mad scientist-like smoke-like vapor sublimating from its bubbling surface – Musk passes it to DeGrasse Tyson who thanks him and is laughing while sipping his drink and acting as if all this is nothing new.
I stand there watching the carnage and then say to myself: “This is just not possible, this is not reality – so this must be a dream and I am the dreamer. That is the only logical explanation of this event.”
All the while the Cybertruck is expertly navigating around all manner of speeding swerving cars that are smashing into each other, exploding into conflagrations of twisted metal and flesh, running off the roads, and smashing head-on into trees and careening off cliffs…suddenly the Cybertruck abruptly swerves and takes an exit onto a dirt road not much wider than the truck itself, it then accelerates to an unbelievable warp-like speed and everything out the windows is an unrecognizable blur – yet its electric drive train is noticeably and eerily silent…and somehow the Cybertruck is staying attached to the road – I think to myself “maybe it is using its cold-gas thrusters and/or Elon and team have invented anti-gravity technology…”
Cool.
Elon and Neil are laughing and drinking their bubbling blue smoking Mojitos and Neil says “How is it that physics isn’t coming into play here – by my best calculations we should be dead in the pool of glacial meltwater at the bottom of that giant crevasse?” I look left and yes, a giant crevasse – we are now on a glacier that is melting fast due to anthropogenic climate change brought on by excessive fossil fuel consumption…Musk says “It’s bad-ass Tesla technology Neil.” he laughs and Neil laughs with him and they drink more of their strange blue mojitos and all the while the Cybertruck is just carrying on without any issue as all hell is breaking loose around us…wait, are we flying?
All I can think about is how I am in a lawn chair, not wearing a seat belt, and the shag carpet was a nice choice – and then I wake up. WTF? I really wanted to see how that one ended.
Now I am worried that when I finally do get my Cybertruck – it won’t have the shag carpet or a bizarro-bartender-Bender-bot.
Dream 2: I’m in a public place. It seems to be a festival of some sort. I see a very buxom woman with long brown hair and a very low-cut tank top running a hot dog stand specializing in vegan brats – her sign reads “My wieners have all the length and girth you can stand.” Woah – really! That’s bold.
I then notice she seems upset. I move closer and she leans down to tell me something – when she does her massive breasts almost fall out of her tiny pink tank top and I notice she has sweat beading up all over her body and she is trembling with fear. She then says something about a snake. For a moment I wonder if her “snake” comment is just her way of coming onto me. My query is answered by her total fear-based reaction – she is clearly terrified of something. Obviously, I investigate further to see if I can assist her with her snake issue. She tells me there is a snake under her hot dog cart and she points in the direction – and I notice she has 2-inch-long electric-blue fingernails.
I look where she is pointing under the cart and discover a smallish snake. It is coiled in the grass near one of the cart’s tires. It is about 2 feet long. At first, it seems to be a Copperhead. Venomous, yes – but not anything to worry that much about as long as you do not get too close. So I get ready to go in and move the snake to a safe place so she can get back to selling her oversized phallically themed sweaty vegan brats.
As if all that was not strange enough…
Suddenly, the snake starts to rapidly grow! It grows and stretches to thousands of times its earlier size to become a monstrous snake-like creature about 20 feet in length with a girth like an elephant’s trunk. It has several rows of unusual crab leg-like venomous talon-tipped appendages below its head and dozens of black, unblinking eyes, and a huge venom-dripping stinger on the end of its whip-like tail. As it is writhing around above the hot dog cart the buxom woman and all the people nearby run off shouting in absolute terror…
Then I wake up.
Dang. I really wanted to see how that one ended.
No drugs, alcohol, or unusual foods were ingested before I went to bed. These are just the natural drugs produced by my own brain and some wild drugs they must be.
A few years ago on this very same night, I was trying to go to sleep and my next-door neighbor across the holler had other ideas – so he shot my roof with fireworks! I listened as at least four mortar shells launched, soared into the sky, exploded, and then their spent shells impacted and rolled down my roof! I do not believe it was intentional but then again one never knows. I had to climb up on the roof in the middle of the night while fireworks exploded all around me – just to be sure the spent noisemakers did not light my house on fire!!
Grrrrr…there he goes again…I may have to have a talk with him…or better yet have the sheriff pay him a visit.
Luckily, my house did not burn down. However, my warmongering pyromaniac neighbor ran out of fireworks and started shooting his guns into the air around 11:30 pm all while cranking ’60-’80s music over his overbuilt car stereo so loud I could hear it inside my house over 1200 feet away – even with a thickly forested buffer between us.
While I totally support celebrating Independence Day – damn, I really hate fireworks. There was a time when I liked them but that was long ago. Now that I’m older and wiser and I have cultivated a reverence for all life, I see fireworks as only a celebration of littering, war, and bloodshed and a garish waste of money and resources that needlessly scare wildlife, pets, people, create unnecessary pollution and cause fires and loads of other issues when used incorrectly.
It is no wonder they are illegal in many places. Grrrrr!!!
I was just about to call the sheriff when he powered it all down and all went quiet.
I can only imagine the scene – his house and yard littered with spent fireworks, shotgun shells, and beer cans, a bare-chested, drunk, passed out male bipedal primate – or possibly female …or both…or an assortment of drooling, inebriated, bipedal primates…I have no idea since I have never seen the house where the fireworks originate or the primates that live within it – reclining in a lawn chair with a smoking shotgun in one flaccid pale white hand, a bud “dumber” can in the other spilling warm beer into a puddle being lapped up by a filthy mongrel of a dog while another stinking drunk canine sleeps upside down – tongue and gonads hanging out – on a moldering couch covered in beer cans, cigarette butts, and empty firework and shotgun shell boxes, in the middle of the driveway while a dollar store likeness of a “murican” flag hangs limp in the clearing smoke.
A sad scene to be sure and a scene that is becoming all too common in some parts of this country. In my opinion, this blatant disregard for public safety, wildlife, and nature has little to do with patriotism and more to do with childish machismo, dangerous patriotism, and inane stupidity. Our brave forefathers would be sad and disgusted at the level at which many of us have fallen.
At least the bozo has good taste in music.
Here are a few ideas for a meaningful, lasting celebration of our independence that can improve our communities, our country, and our connections with each other and with nature:
1. Plant some trees that will provide oxygen, shade, and sequester carbon. You could make it an annual tradition and call them “Freedom Trees” and over time you would have a “Freedom Forest.” If you and your kids planted fruit trees you could produce some of your own “Freedom Fruit” and before long you would have a “Freedom Orchard” – you get the idea
2 – Plant a vegetable garden to produce some of your own food. You could call it the “Freedom Garden” or as they did in WW2 a “Victory Garden” – whatever you called it, it would be a great way to grow some of your own food and teach your kids where their food comes from and how to be more self-sufficient and therefore, truly free.
3. You could add some solar panels to your roof/property to lessen your reliance on coal and foreign oil and in doing so you would become more energy secure and self-sufficient by farming the sun and producing your own “Freedom Electrons” to power your personal energy needs.
4. You could trade in that old gas guzzler for a new or used electric car. If you only used it to go to work/town and back as a daily driver for even just a few times per week – it will save you loads of money on fuel, oil, and maintenance – especially with fuel prices as high as they are now – oh and you can charge it up with those solar panels I mentioned earlier and have zero fuel costs.
True self-reliance comes when you are not tied to the grocery stores and fuel pumps – which are tied to corporate farms and oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico and the Middle East by several hundred to thousands of miles long supply chains. Operating and protecting these supply chains – especially the petroleum “umbilical cord” without which all gas/diesel vehicles would be useless – costs billions of our hard-earned tax dollars, the lives of our loved ones in the military who work hard and give their lives to protect it, and what about all the toxic, health, earth, life, atmosphere, and future-destroying pollution that comes with every step of the process?
For a moment just forget all your pre-conceived and/or religiopolitical notions about this idea and just imagine never paying for gas and oil ever again. What would you do with all that money? Imagine quietly making your own clean fuel and energy at home and being able to unplug from the subscription to dependency at the gas pump and the local monopolistic power plant and not needing to feed off of the teat of the twisted, toxic, destructive fossil fuel-based energy system we have created over the last 200 years.
There is a better way and it leads to true energy independence – I know how it feels because I have done it. I have been driving a fully electric car for almost 9 years and I charge it with “homegrown” sunshine so my EV electron fuel costs are around 1 cent per mile! I never stop at gas stations, never worry about tune-ups, exhaust pipes, mufflers, emissions inspections, etc…driving electric is an amazing feeling of freedom and it is a great feeling in every way. If I can do it, so can you.
5. Here is another good idea – what about eating less meat even if only for one day a week.
Aside from the obvious health benefits, eating less meat means less land and resources will be used up for industrial animal farming – “Factory Farms” – and all the problems they create. If you just cannot fathom that move then maybe you can choose to raise and/or ethically hunt and fish for your own meat instead of supporting dirty, unhealthy, industrial animal farms – like gardening, it teaches the next generation where their food comes from, it teaches respect for other life forms, and it teaches self-reliance – aka freedom…and besides, getting outside in nature, be it for hunting, fishing, farming, gardening, planting trees, installing solar, driving your solar-charged EV, or taking a hike in the forest with your kids, family or dog or alone – is just so good for you and your loved ones and it is a great way to celebrate our country’s and maybe your own independence day
By now we were supposed to have flying cars, starships and space stations full of people, outposts on the moon and Mars, thinking robots living among us, renewable and fusion energy sources powering our lives, unlimited low-cost resources from a 100% recycling-based economy, equality, coexistence, and freedom for everyone and all creatures.
WTF happened?
A small number of greedy, wealth and power-mad, crusty old white men who fear change – choose to focus on outdated ancient dogma and toxically-tribal, control-focused, anti-progress, knuckle-dragging fear, and warmongering tactics – are hell-bent on stopping anything and anyone who wants evidence-supported progress, positivity, and coexistence.
These twisted, small-minded, hateful, heavy-handed, charlatans, are plotting and scheming to destroy any chance the majority of us have at a better future by undermining anything that works to better our lives.
The question is why?
Why are they so focused on destroying the future?
I am not targeting one specific political or religious “team” – I despise the competitive “team” approach because it was designed from the get-go to divide us from each other. I am calling out all of those – whomever they are – who constantly and consciously choose to ignore the evidence, ignore reality, ignore the voices of the people and instead choose to do all in their power to – out of greed, control, and possibly even out of spite – choose to do exactly the opposite of what should be done. It is as if they are choosing to intentionally screw things up for future generations.
Maybe I am giving them too much credit. Maybe they are just idiots who do not have the capacity to think ahead and see the consequences of their decisions. Maybe their minds are dumb from breathing leaded gasoline most of their lives, and/or numb and blinded by so many years of conditioning and programming from whatever cult of personality they choose to worship telling them their way is the only way no matter what the evidence, common sense, science, or their rotten, putrid little shriveled stone of a heart my try to say to them – if they even have a heart.
It seems that these toxic individuals may be working to infiltrate the very framework of our society and are trying to divide all of us from each other.
Why? What is their goal?
Why would anyone willingly choose to put their own greedy self-interests over any chance at a healthy, happy, future for all…hmmm…I wonder why?
I suppose the answer comes down to the fact that genetically we are still so very young in the evolution of our species.
It was not that long ago that we were living in caves eking out our existence with only rock, stick, and fire as tools. We were terrified of anything outside of our very limited frame of reference. Anything different than what we or our tribe knew in our daily existence would be labeled a threat and destroyed – out of fear and self-protection.
Therefore, since not enough time has passed to rid us of these ancient ways of thinking it seems that even though we have technologically evolved to turn our rocks, sticks, and fire into cement, steel, electricity, and rockets – some of us still have strong genetic traces of our ancient tribal tendencies and for some it seems that these fear-based tendencies are absolutely impossible to overcome.
We still often fear differences in others.
We still often attack that which is unknown to us.
We still often deny reality in favor of myth and legend.
We still often harm those we love for false feelings of power.
We still often seek comfort in what we know – not in what could be.
Even with all our amazing accomplishments – many of us still will often choose the path of fear, hate, greed, ancient comfortable dogma, and today, over the much better options of acceptance, love, generosity, peer-reviewed evidence, and tomorrow.
The big question is this: will we ever evolve past our infantile, child-like, me-first, bully-like, natures – before we kill ourselves off?
Maybe, maybe not.
Maybe one day we will overcome the natural odds and evolve to transcend our short-lived primate bodies and the physical world to become one with the energy flow of the universe.
Or maybe we are just a failed evolutionary experiment destined to become only a plasticized blip in the rock-recorded fossil record of deep time.
Only time will tell.
Strive to rise above the status quo.
Strive to find only the positive in life each day and to extinct the negative.
Sometimes, I have moments of mind-blowing clarity, epiphany, and illumination when I observe something that I thought I understood and accepted as scientific and factual truth in my limited tiny human way, then I find a new way to experience that thing, and my eyes are opened even wider than I thought possible and entire world’s of wonder are revealed – like living jewels floating in a sea of blackness. This happened tonight when I placed my eye to a telescope and peered at the distant planet Saturn and its moon Titan. Absolutely beautiful and mind-expanding was my experience peering through a rather inexpensive telescope from the porch of a beach house on Edisto Island, SC through 1.2 billion kilometers (746 million miles or 8.2 times farther from the sun than Earth) of space and time. Although Saturn looked like a tiny yellow ball surrounded by glowing golden rings and its fascinating giant yellowish moon Titan a shining point of light adjacent to the planet, I was blown away that I was actually seeing it in reality, as it existed in space and time.
Yes, I have seen it before – recently with my own telescope, at professional observatories, and so on – but the most memorable time was the first time many, many years ago – back in the late 70s when I peered at it through a friend’s dad’s telescope on the same night we watched Skylab crossing over only hours before it fell back to earth. But way back then I was a kid and I did not have a lifetime of experience with which to filter and understand my experience – tonight was very different and so much more powerful because tonight I saw Saturn again in reality. It was not a close-up photo taken by Hubble, a space probe, or a mountain-top observatory…it was a real experience that I lived and felt deeper than I ever thought possible. It was visceral, powerful, moving, mind-expanding, and all those other big words that try to do it justice but really cannot. It was the crushing, humbling, reality that we are such miniscule creatures yet we have built this incredible ability to see reality as it really is and to understand our tiny place in that reality. As Carl Sagan put it: “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
I was unable to acquire a photo due to technological limitations so the photo I have included is almost exactly what I observed although it was taken with a bit larger telescope.
This experience has reinforced what I have known for many years and what I live by:
Experiential education is the best way to teach a person a thing, no matter what that thing is. Turn off your tv and get off your butt and get outside, look through a telescope, play in the mud, climb a tree, travel to other places, eat strange foods, meet new people, climb mountains, swim seas, raft rivers, ride a bike, do good things, be nice, make a difference, coexist with all lifeforms, live in continuous awe of the amazing, grand, ancient and wondrous nature that is all around us and you will better off for it – and remember that all the craziness and insanity of today matters not at all when compared to the vast nature of space, time and the cosmos.
We are very, very small. Do not take things so seriously, live, laugh, love and above all else – do good things!
Fear, hate, aggression, anger, greed, judgment, spite, darkness – these things are mind and spirit killers.
Let go of them.
A few decades ago I let go of my fear, hate, aggression, anger, greed, judgment, spite, and darkness. When I did this an amazing cosmos opened up to me. A living cosmos of beauty, coexistence, love, truth, kindness, and light – a cosmos of amazing possibilities.
Today I choose to treat all humans and all beings with the love, kindness, and respect that they deserve until given a reason not to do so.
I do not hold grudges – what a waste of time and energy.
I do not target, belittle and bully those that do not share my philosophy. Doing so would simply breed more negativity and polarization and again – what a waste of time and energy.
However, when needed I will use scientifically supported facts and common sense to educate others on more productive, environmentally sound ways and options of being human. I am aware that sometimes these suggestions may be interpreted as personal attacks but rest assured they are not. A fact is not an attack, it is only a fact. Aggression and attack are easy, evidence-supported facts are sometimes hard because they may require change – and for some people change is an impossible task.
I am simply offering another opinion, another option, or another path based on self-supporting, peer-reviewed evidence and/or common sense that the reader may not have thought of in their popular philosophy. It is up to them to choose what to do with the knowledge I have freely offered. If it does not work for them – so be it – it is they who will suffer the consequences of their actions be they “good” or “bad” consequences.
In adopting this philosophy I have reduced my stress levels, opened my mind, had incredible mind-opening relationships and adventures, and made amazing friends from all walks and ways of life that have made my life so much more beautiful and full than I ever thought possible.
I have followed opportunities that have blossomed into amazing positive learning, teaching, and growth experiences. All of these things, all of these connections, and all of these experiences have worked to create the person I am today.
If I had continued to follow the fearful path, if I had continued to live in fear of the things the sensationalistic media, special interest religio-political, and business groups, and smooth-talking venom spitting charlatans with their powerful hate and fear-filled divisive toxic agendas are continually working to feed us through TV, social media, literature, and movies – who knows where I would be today or if I would even still be alive.
How did I rise above all this? How did I escape the fearful madness that tried to assimilate me into their mind-numbing collectives? How did I form a shield against the never-ending onslaught from all directions?
For me, my answer was and still is nature, knowledge, and willpower.
After spending many years living, working, and playing in nature, in the wilderness – experiencing the ancient, age-old beauty and complexity of all that is nature and all that is this thing we call life – I developed a deep, spiritual reverence for life. This reverence stretched deeper into the core of my being, into my soul than anything I have ever experienced in any place of traditional organized religion/worship or anywhere in the human world.
Unlike all the other ways of living and being that wanted my money, my time, my thoughts, and even my very soul – these powerful natural connections did not want anything at all from me – yet they deeply fed me and I thirsted for more. So I dove deeper into the great naturalistic, scientific, philosophical and religious texts/field guides, and manuals, of the world and I learned from them but did not put all of them on pedestals or see them as “gossip truths” – I saw them as the great and powerful teaching tools that they are and I left it at that.
I also spoke to many wise, well-traveled, learned individuals and mentors who had lifetimes of knowledge to share and I listened to them and often, I followed their examples, and sometimes I did not because their examples did not work for me. Soon, I came to realize that we – our entire species – and all life on our earth – are but an insignificant, yet somehow aware of that insignificance, a minute little speck…a tiny hot candle of life and consciousness in the icy blackness of space, a momentary flaring of self-aware existence in the stupendous grandeur of all that has existed, exists, and will ever exist in deep time.
The time we are given to live on this earth in this form is so very brief, so very fragile, so very special.
To waste this finite time living in fear, full of hate, fighting over petty differences, imaginary lines on maps, temporary things, with eyes closed, and heart hardened to all of the wonders of reality and nature that exist and flow around us and within us – would be the ultimate disrespect to our existence and such an incredibly irresponsible waste of our precious time.
I believe that the biggest decision one can make is how to use the time they have been given.
For me, that decision is to spend my time wisely, free of hate, judgment, and fear and in the service and support of others and in service and support of the infinite living organism we call nature that gives life to us and supports and nourishes us all.
To that end, I will work hard to continue to share with others this knowledge and this reverence for all things that I have found and hope to continue to find. I will continue to use the scientific method and the naturalistic eye to explore the natural world in all its magnificence and share with you what I find.
I will continue to work to respect, trust, love, and accept all life in all of its infinite forms, infinite diversity, and infinite combinations and I will work to promote and support all that is good, positive, productive, and supportive of this grand complexity we call life.
This way is my own and I totally understand that it may not be yours and that is OK, I accept and respect that 100% – as long as your path does no harm to others, works in support of peace, nature, understanding, and coexistence with all beings and all things now and into the future.
Some of us must follow our own path, no one can choose that path for us – so follow the beat of your own drum and when the chance to change, grow, and blossom presents itself, take it, live it, learn it, laugh, love, sing, paint, get out into the woods, rivers, mountains, oceans, and let your inner light shine, be the change, and above all else be yourself and do what you feel is right in your heart and all will fall into place.
The viral scourge has found her and infected she is, but it seems only a mild vexing.
Yet, exiled from society the fair maid has been by the local lords of the magic known as medicine.
Her beloved nature knight, his weapons of choice earth, air, fire, water, and loads of peer-reviewed knowledge freely passed down from the great natural philosophers along with a lot of practical engineering and improvisation, has therefore reclusively retreated into a miniature wheeled home of his own creation.
Within this tiny bean pod-like shell he must reluctantly reside for a fortnight at most – but less in probability – while his princess valiantly fights her battle alone, aided only by countless armies of microscopic bloodborne troops – enhanced by the magical art of medical science – working round the clock to massacre the many millions of maliciously malevolent microscopic monstrosities munching madly in maid Marian’s body.
Nature knight profoundly misses his beauty who is so close, yet so far away just on the other side of an impenetrable wall of wood and masonry – her only company, the mischievous red canine companion and two troublemaking flatulent felines.
The lone lovers are sad yet they know they will be reunited after the microscopic battle being fought within her flesh and blood is finally over.
Therefore, all he can do is wait, wait within his microscopically minuscule science and star-powered abode as he ponders the countless unanswerable questions of deep time, DNA, and the vast ocean of the cosmos – while partaking of vegan ice cream and chocolate stout.
The condensed version: My wife has a mild case of covid, I’m living in the RV for the duration making the best of it hoping it doesn’t get me.
A few days later…
The masked and gloved physician jammed the nasal probe of pain so far up I thought it might bust through into my brain…only to reveal what my rapidly advancing symptoms suggested – the vile microscopic beastie has finally caught up with me.
Frell.
Frack.
Damn.
I hope this thing is short-lived for I have dragons to slay, fair maidens to rescue, and seeds of knowledge to plant.
Be gone with you, vile, villainous, wretched, miserable, microscopic, malevolence! With what little breath I have left I stab at thee with many choice colorful metaphors – and a hefty, healthy dose of SCIENCE!!!
To the rest of you reading this I say this: WEAR YOUR GORRAM MASK AND WASH YOUR FILTHY POXIFIED HANDS!!!
I am tired of the senseless deaths of innocents continuing to stack up.
I am tired of the thoughtless thoughts and empty prayers from so many including our political and religious so-called “leaders” on all sides of all the imaginary fences we have created for ourselves and their sitting on their hands continued lack of action while many of their bank accounts continue to swell with handouts from special interest groups who do not care about us or the future.
I am tired of seeing the flag at 1/2 mast.
I am tired of seeing tears on the faces of my loved ones at the horror they witness almost daily on the “news.”
As a teacher I find myself looking into the eyes of my students – some of them not much older than those in the latest mass shooting terrorist attack – and I look into the eyes of my wife and many of my friends who are or have been teachers or work within the education system, and I find myself in a deep state of pain and despair knowing that any one of them could one day find themselves in a similar situation.
This really hurts me more than anything has in a very long time.
These wonderful students and educators with their entire lives ahead of them…what is next for them…I fear that I may one day see their names and faces on the news and that fear just rips my heart out.
These brilliant children and educators deserve better, they deserve a chance at life just like we had. They deserve a safe educational environment where they can learn in peace and not be fearful of their classmates and other dangerously mentally ill domestic terrorists bringing often easily available weapons of war to their school to massacre their classmates and teachers.
They deserve life.
Anyone who says otherwise while spouting 2nd amendment rhetoric or strutting around in the street brandishing their firearms and waving their banners in an attempt to prop up their fearful positions – is putting guns over the lives of their children, family, and friends and that is not acceptable IN ANY WAY.
Arming teachers will not help the situation – it will only make it worse. A large portion of teachers do not want guns or the responsibility and potential hazard of keeping a gun in the classroom* – they just want to teach.
Furthermore, to keep a gun in a classroom it would need to be securely locked away accessible only to the teacher by a key. To access the gun the teacher would need to:
1. cross the room from wherever they were at the time of an attack.
2. Get out their key and open the locked location.
3. Remove the trigger lock (it would be stupid not to have several protective locks on the gun to prevent accidents/theft/attacks from “inside.”
4. Load the gun. (Keeping the gun unloaded with the ammo in a separate, locked location is yet another safety precaution.)
5. Use the gun.
By the time all these steps have taken place the active shooter could have easily committed their crime against humanity. Keeping a gun in the classroom is just not feasible.
*I know without any doubt that I do not want a gun in my classroom.
Arming everyone will not help the situation – it will only make it worse. This is not the wild west – it is 2022.
More thoughts and prayers – no matter how deep or sincere – will do absolutely nothing to change anything about this situation we have created for ourselves.
If only the thoughts and prayers continue – then so will the mass killings by demented domestic terrorists.
I fear that our country is quickly killing itself from the inside – falling off a cliff while arguing over the cause of the issues as the bloody bodies pile up around us and we slide deeper into a death trap from which there is no escape.
Will it be your child or you that is next?
Are you ready to accept your child’s fate or your fate because of your blind devotion to your beliefs, politics, and archaic words on a piece of dusty ancient text?
The time for thoughts and prayers has passed.
The time for empty excuses has passed.
The time for common sense, evidence-supported action is now!
But here’s the thing – just like the thoughts and prayers will not help, banning guns will not help. The simple fact is that if guns are banned, then only the crooks, crazies, and dangerously mentally ill will have guns.
Yes, making guns harder to acquire will help some and I am all for far stricter, common sense, gun laws just like I am all for strict, common sense drivers licenses and driver training.
However, if an unstable/dangerously mentally ill person really wants a gun and/or wants to do harm to others – they will find a way to get it/cause harm by stealing it, buying it on the black market, or using another thing as a weapon such as an airplane, car, wrench, screwdriver, fork, pocket knife, piece of rebar, 2×4, log, a baseball bat, stick, rock, mouth, foot, fist, household chemical, match, bicycle lighter or pen or pencil, gasoline, toxin, or contagion.
Speaking of sticks, rocks, and such – there are sticks and rocks everywhere and it seems they are not going away anytime soon. If a person – 5, 15, 50, or any age – starts hitting people with said sticks and/or throwing rocks at others and/or their property, we don’t blame the sticks and rocks – we make the common-sense decision and we quickly take away the sticks and rocks and work to teach that person – be they 5, 15, 50 or any age – the errors of their ways. To not take the sticks and rocks away and to not reprimand/educate the person – is a recipe for future disaster. If we do not take the sticks and rocks away then we become part of the problem – not part of the solution.
So go ahead, think your thoughts, say your prayers, and legally, safely, and responsibly own your guns – but for the future’s sake – stand up for life!
The simple fact remains that thoughts and prayers help only those offering them and guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
People make the choice to pick up a weapon – whatever the weapon may be – and commit a crime against another human.
Those individuals doing the killing are not usually the responsible, ethical, safe, gun owners, they are not often military, law enforcement, hunters, homeowners, or hobbyists – they are most often people with serious and very dangerous mental health issues. They have to be because any sane person is not going to pick up a gun – or any other weapon – and turn it on a defenseless person or innocent child.
What is not being addressed here is the obvious huge mental health issue in this country. That, combined with the relatively easy ability to acquire firearms is a recipe for continuing deaths and disasters.
One way to fight back is this: If someone in your family or circle of friends is having problems with reality, is having dangerous mental health issues, is a bully/unstable/dangerous person who is often threatening others in some way – if they are quick to insult/hate/belittle another race/ethnicity/group/religion/political affiliation/”type” of person/the personal choices of others, if they are sounding off with racial slurs/religious and political hate speech, if they are withdrawing from society, or amassing guns and ammo and/or making plans to commit an act of domestic terrorism against other humans – – then please, do not just turn your back on them – intervene and get them some professional help or, if needed, have them separated from the rest of society where they can do no harm to others before this happens again and again and again.
You may be the only thing standing between them and the next act of domestic terrorism.
Photo Hubble Ultra Deep Field. An estimated 10,000 galaxies are shown in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Photo Source: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30946
Space is stupendously massive with countless galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars and trillions of planets and moons. Statistically, there must be life elsewhere in the cosmos and IMHO most of it is probably microscopic and/or not intelligent/spacefaring.
However, if there are intelligent, spacefaring species out there, and if they have visited us – then the massive scale of the cosmos and the incredible technology, knowledge, and ability needed to traverse it would suggest these beings would possess technology and intelligence as far “above” ours/us as we are “above” the chimpanzee…or the ant…or the bacterium…or the virus…and lately and with each passing day, evidence reveals that some humans seem to be de-evolving and acting more and more like a virus.
Therefore, as we mostly naked, multi-colored, bipedal, primates will often camouflage ourselves with our technology and technique in order to study other life forms upon our planet without revealing ourselves to them…
…it is very possible the extraterrestrials have similar technologies (yet vastly superior to ours) that would easily hide them from our detection. Yes, that would then suggest that all the blurry photographs, videos, books, and eyewitness accounts/interviews over all the years by all the people claiming to have seen/encountered/been abducted by aliens are in fact – 100% pure and total bunk manufactured by charlatans wanting attention and fortune.
Another possibility exists: they have been here in the past and yet may still be here (maybe not them personally but their technology – think: cellular/internet-connected wildlife/trail camera traps/webcams etc that would allow them to remotely study us from the comfort of their home planet) studying us as we study other lifeforms on earth – such as looking at chimps and deer in the forest, ants under a magnifying glass, bacteria under a microscope, or African wildlife visiting a waterhole…
It is also possible that many randomly selected and/or “of importance” or “special interest” humans have been “tagged” with 100% undetectable with our current technologies tracking devices (no, not injected via anal probes or vaccinations – oh lord people please grow up and just stop it with the TV/hollywood inspired stories and lame conspiracy “theories”) so as to be observed by these extraterrestrial observers in the attempt to study the mundane and unique among our species and learn more about us as we wildlife researchers work to learn more about the natural life movements of wild creatures currently existing with us on our home planet.
Or, they may, in fact, be so far evolutionarily, emotionally, and technologically advanced “above” us that we are only mere curiosities to them…or of no interest at all…
Maybe, due to the destructive, hateful, selfish, natures, and our viral reproduction and expansion without any concern for future generations – maybe our solar system has been put in a physically distanced quarantine zone far from the rest of the galaxy and its populated worlds until we children grow up out of our dangerous malignant infancy, start taking care of our planetary life support system, and coexisting with each other and with all species on this strange water-soaked living rock we call earth.
Another view of our home. Can you find the earth in this image? Yes, we are there, the tiny pale blue dot hanging in space under Saturn’s rings on the lower right.
“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” —Neil Armstrong
It seems that the majority of humans in power today are about as evolved as little children fighting over toys in a sandbox, driven only by emotion, fear, hormones, and greed, unable to see how childish and dangerous their thoughtless actions are to themselves, their futures, and to their tiny, fragile home – a water-soaked pale blue dot of rock orbiting a rather unremarkable star located in a remote outskirt of a vast and wonderful universe.
Driven by their primal urges the infantile children continue to fight each other – endlessly dealing out insults and eye for an eye punches over the finite resources and imaginary lines drawn on the maps they have made and wave in the air above their tiny sandbox.
Often, for whatever the reasons, they choose to unquestionably and blindly follow the dictates of xenophobic fear and hate-driven separatist policies penned by their long-dead heroes who rightly chose to attempt to remove themselves from all-powerful bullies who themselves, in desperation to be in the control of others and be above nature, dreamed up and revised even more ancient doctrines whose erroneous teachings continued to program the sheeple into believing their oh so short finite existence was to be followed without question and: “my way is the only way,” the earth is the center of the universe and was gifted to us to dominate, consume, and destroy because nature was somehow unclean, imperfect, and savage…simply because the writings of the high kings and obscure ancient soothsayers and snake oil salesmen say it was so and still take precedent over the impartial, observational, fact-based, tested and retested, findings of modern-day free spirits, critical thinkers, scientists, ecologists, and naturalists. Those early heroes sought to remove themselves from the control of their forefathers – but many of them failed and continue to do as they always did never learning anything from their past mistakes. Still questing for stuff and still endlessly bashing each other over the heads with their fists, and highly modified sticks and rocks.
All the while their fragile sandbox and all of its inhabitants suffer from their never-ending me first self-harming greedy assault.
I hope someday we thinking apes can somehow find the logic to grow up out of our childhood, think outside the sandbox, and protect our fragile oasis of life, this shining eden-like planet called earth…before it is too late and we wake up one day only to discover that we have blindly destroyed our home and our futures in favor of turning everything into ephemeral money and plastic just so we can live in a mythical eternal paradise after all our short lives have ended and there is nothing left but sand in the box.
Yes, whatever the cause may be, gas prices are getting higher and higher.
Along with this fact many people are now hating on and bashing electric vehicles and renewable energy.
Wait – what?
Yes. In the last two weeks, I have seen many posts and comments by many people about renewable energy sources and electric vehicles that try to paint them in a negative light.
It is all the same old cherry-picking FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) and nay-sayer arguments and then some.
Why?
IMHO I think it is because the bullies and bashers do not want to acknowledge that it is time to change from an outdated, toxic, war-supporting, finite, politically polarized, planetary-sourced, energy/fuel system to an up to date, much cleaner, renewable, energy secure, distributed, energy/fuel system powered by locally-sourced energy from solar panels on your own rooftop or wind turbines silently turning on a windy hillside or west Texas ranch. With our current technology, it no longer makes good science-supported common sense to power our society primarily on hydrocarbon-based energy products sourced on the other side of the planet – be it from the Persian Gulf or Russia – when we have the technology, engineering, and knowledge to get things done with clean, secure, home-grown energy sourced close to home – where it is needed and used.
Some will say the environmental impacts of renewable energy and electric vehicles are actually greater than that of fossil fuel sourced energy systems. This is a total falsehood manufactured by fossil fuel mongers using the same playbook used by the people who tried to tell us that smoking was not bad for your health or that lead in gasoline was safe and, more recently, that Volkswagen had developed a “clean diesel” engine – we now see where all those arguments lie – deep in a steaming pile of festering worm-ridden filth in the bottom of a long-forgotten moldering outhouse.
Yes, it is true that everything, even EVs and renewable energy systems has an impact – and the greater our population – the greater our need for resources so the greater our impacts. Our survival as a species is no longer about growing – it is becoming more about balance, it is about reducing our impact on our planetary life-support system so we can reach equilibrium and continue without harming the very life support system that gives us all life. So why do we keep accepting and using the worst possible energy/transportation sources with the biggest most harmful impacts when far better options with far less of an impact are readily available?
Many will often simply say it is too expensive – but my answer to this is have you actually done the math to support your opinion?
Driving electric and going renewable does in fact cost more upfront – but over the life of the product – the solar panels or the EV – you make up for that initial higher cost and the lifetime savings far offset the initial costs. As an example: I power my daily driver EV primarily with solar-produced electricity. Therefore, my fuel costs to drive the vehicle are less than 1 cent/mile. I drive around 200 miles/week – so therefore I spend less than $2/week to drive the car everywhere I need to drive it.
I do still have a legacy vehicle (Honda Pilot 4×4 SUV) for towing/hauling and short trips to town and getting to work in bad weather. It costs an average of 15 cents per mile (at today’s gas prices) to drive. So, to drive the Honda the same distance as I drive my EV I will pay ~$30 (200 miles x .15 = $30)!! Yikes!
How far do you drive and what are your costs per mile? (and don’t forget to figure in the costs of maintenance on your vehicle – all those tune-ups/filters/exhaust pipes/catalytic converters/oil/fluid/filter changes etc)
Now, imagine if you have a few solar panels on your roof and an EV in your driveway – how much money would you save now that you are not paying for electricity for your home and fuel for your car?
Some will say it takes forever to charge an EV. Earlier EVs – yes. They charged far slower than today’s EVs but today’s EVs charge far faster – some add hundreds of miles of range in mere minutes and the speed is getting faster every day.
Fact: Most EV owners charge overnight while they are sleeping or while at work and the car is ready to go when they are. If you can use a smartphone, you can drive an EV.
Some will say “charging an EV at home will raise your power bill unimaginably high.” Nope. In my experience charging at home* only raises my power bill by about $10/week – how much do you spend on gas per week? *back when I most often charged at home – now I rarely do since I most often charge at work so I can take advantage of solar-produced electricity.
Obviously, if you have an EV with a larger battery it will cost more to fill it up – but even a Tesla Model S Plaid with its massive 95 kWh battery would cost less to fill up than almost any fossil-powered vehicle in today’s gas market.
Some will also say “the energy for your electric car comes from dirty coal – so it is a coal-powered electric car.”
Nope.
Fact: even if an EV is charged with the dirtiest coal-fired energy – it is still far cleaner to operate than any petroleum-powered vehicle. Why you may ask?
Answer: because the entire fossil fuel mining/transport/refining and supply chain (and let us not forget the human costs from war/terrorism and the environmental costs from emissions and pollution from the final use of the product) is now out of the picture for the EV…AND the US power grid is getting cleaner every day as more and more legacy energy power plants retire and more and more renewable energy power plants come online – so every day your EV gets cleaner and cleaner to drive – that is an impossibility with any vehicle powered by fossil fuels.
Let’s face the facts: using fossil fuel-powered anything is simply a subscription to dependency. We are hopelessly addicted to fossil fuels…well, some of us anyway.
Some will say “at the end of their life solar panels and EV batteries cannot be recycled and are just tossed into landfills.” Really. You are really going there? Sad. Ok. Here are the facts.
In reality – solar panels are made mostly of glass and aluminum and these things can be recycled – into more solar panels.
EV batteries, when they are not able to push a car down the road, are repurposed into stationary energy storage such as storage batteries for homes and businesses (think backup generator – but with batteries.) Then, after another decade or so of life as a stationary storage battery – they are recycled – into more batteries. In other words, we can mine the battery for its resources and do not need to dig more holes for more raw materials to make more batteries – we already have them. It’s a win-win for everyone.
In fact, it is just stupid (and illegal in some places) to throw away a used battery due to the high value of the raw materials contained inside. This is why when you need a new 12-volt car starter battery the auto parts store will pay you money (the core charge) for your old one and it is then recycled into a new battery. It is no different with used Lithium-ion batteries.
There are countless erroneous and outright ignorant “memes” circulating on the internet that have been created to spread FUD around electric vehicles and renewable energy sources. One of the most recent I have seen involves the following:
From Diego Loredan on Facebook: “This is a used car dump near Paris, France with hundreds of electric cars. Please note, these are only used cars of the city of Paris and not personal vehicles. Everyone has the same problem …. the battery storage cells are dead and need to be replaced. Why not replace them, you ask yourself? Well, there are two reasons. One, battery storage cells cost almost twice what a new vehicle costs, and two, no landfill or landfill will allow you to dump batteries there. So these green fairy electric cars are dumping toxins from the battery right into the ground. Still think we need to think green ???” Very interesting!!??
I did a quick and simple Google fact check and discovered the following about these cars:
“The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
News reports from France say the cars are part of a fleet from a failed car-sharing service, and the vehicles shown in the field are being resold or sold for parts.
A French television news report in April, with photos like those appearing with the Facebook post, said more than 1,000 vehicles used in the Autolib program are being stored on a lot in Romorantin-Lanthenay, an area about 130 miles southwest of Paris.
The Bolloré company had a contract with local authorities in and around Paris to provide the vehicles, which people could borrow for a fee. That ended in 2018 when the service was in debt and failing.
Some 4,000 of the vehicles were sold, mainly to two companies that have been reselling them, according to the report. That includes the ones shown in the Facebook post.
The TV stories and a French newspaper article noted the claims on social media. “Unlike what buzzes on social media, this is not a cemetery,” the newspaper report said.
We rate the post False.” – From Politifact
Another thing to note is the following from Reuters:
“French media reports here , here and here which show pictures of the cars lined up in a field like those in the social media posts, explain that the termination of the contract meant that Bollore had to remove its 4,000 vehicles from the Paris region to Romorantin-Lanthenay, 200 kms (124 miles) south of Paris. Bollore sold the cars, most of them going to two companies, Autopuzz, which resells the cars throughout France, and Atis Production.
On claims about soil pollution risk posed by the cars, Paul Aouizerate, head of Atis Production, told France Info here “Our vehicles are properly stored. The firefighters are aware, the construction site is well organized. All the batteries have been removed and the connectors are isolated.”
He added that the cars were not going to a junkyard. Autopuzz told France TV Info it is reselling the cars to buyers across France at a rate of 50 per month (here).
VERDICT
Along with all that nonsense: many renewable energy haters/doubters/FUD spreaders will often say “wind turbines kill countless numbers of birds and bats” – another falsehood. While it is true that some of the earliest wind turbines were smaller, lower (closer to wildlife habitats), spun faster, and did impact wildlife – today’s turbines are designed from the get-go to lesson wildlife impacts and it is rare for birds and bats to die via modern wind turbines. In fact, do you know what kills the most birds, bats, and small animals in this country: pet/feral house cats and impacts with glass windows. The numbers of wildlife deaths from these two top killers are in the billions per year. Wind turbines do have an impact but it is minuscule when compared to bird/bat deaths from cats/windows and ahem: fossil fuel-related pollution from mining, shipping, spills, refining, use, and incorrect disposal of used oil, etc.
Partly false. These are genuine photos of electric cars in France, but they were taken off the road due to financial difficulties, not problems with the battery storage cells. More than 2,500 of the cars have been resold.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.”
If you remain unconvinced – do your own simple research.
This erroneous meme and many like it have been manufactured/miscaptioned in the attempt to illicit FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) about electric vehicles. More than likely the FUD generators that made this meme have money tied up in fossil fuels/fossil fuel infrastructure and are terrified at the prospect of losing their nest eggs.
Some people are even saying that when someone drives an electric vehicle they do not pay gas taxes so the roads will suffer. This is simply a falsehood. I have been driving an EV since 2013 and I pay a yearly EV tax which makes up for the gas taxes I would have paid if I drove a legacy vehicle. This tax then goes to support highway maintenance and infrastructure. I have absolutely zero issues paying this tax because I enjoy driving on nice roads as much as the next bipedal naked ape.
I believe that many of these erroneous myths have and are being spread by the fossil fuel producers themselves and the “think tanks” they have hired to sow doubt in technologies that are their competition, as well as those with loads of money invested in fossil fuels – at home and abroad…possibly even in part by Russian government hackers since we all know that Russia’s main export products are soaked in hydrocarbons and they will do anything to keep the oil flowing out and the money flowing in.
Just stop it, people – stop it.
Stop falling for and spreading the clickbait and lies being spread by those who do not want to change – it is not helping anyone or anything except the old fossils running the petroleum companies, their politician puppets, and the tiny dictators who do not want to accept that the future of our species is renewable energy powered and electrically driven.
Change is the way of nature.
The time for change is now.
Change is often scary and it is often hard but remember this: very often the life that exists on the other side of change is far superior in every way to the one you are living in right now.
Someone once said everything worth doing in life exists on the other side of fear. It is time to push through the fear and adapt – because if we do not adapt, we die.
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