Gridlock on the Grid

Animal Farm was my favorite book growing up. The parallels between that novel by George Orwell and our corporate lives as we now know them are truly stunning. First you become an owner and then your privileges slowly dissipate. That piece that you owned just became a lot less valuable. Knowledge is power you say? Knowledge is a curse. Oh how I wish I could simply surf stupid on Facebook. Isn’t that what it is called? When we are clicking links to zone out of reality or voicing our latest meal, thought, song lyrics..we are surfing stupid. There was no point to get on. No destination to discover. We weren’t trying to look anything up or research anything. We simply wanted to check out for a while and look at posts. This would be the equivalent of sitting on your porch and watching cars drive by. It’s what we did as children in cars on long road trips. We zoned out the window and looked at passing billboards. Only now those billboards are written by our friends or semi-acquaintances to you thousies out there.

I’m coming up with new terminologies today. Thousies are you brave folks that accept and add everyone to your Facebook...you’ve exceeded a thousand friends (or are on your way). Oh I’m sure you really are that popular. Maybe I’m just jealous, yet I know that you won’t be reading this anyways because thousies don’t actually have time to read anything on Facebook. When you have that many posts on your news feed my blog link is a distant memory. It is like driving on the freeway at 200 miles an hour and every billboard is a blur. And you can’t post anything of significance on your wall when you are a thousie because well you really don’t know the other 800 plus people that you added. It would be like going in the middle of a busy street in a city and yelling out your personal information. And the problem with too many thousies on your Facebook friend’s list is your news feed gets clogged with all the latest friend additions. I’ve scrolled though two pages of friend add notifications just to find out what one of my friends ate for dinner last night. It was quite frustrating.

Of course I am being cynical. I am as guilty as every one of this stupid medium and my ranting and raving against it is simply a re-circulated blog from last year but that doesn’t change the fact that it is true. We are simply frying our brains on a slow simmer. Going off the grid never seemed so appealing. Just disappearing into life somewhere, be it a tropical island, an isolated wilderness cabin, or the Bermuda Triangle. Maybe Amelia Earhart was really just trying to get away. Perhaps she finished her life on a remote island and left the show behind. Watching the show Dual Survivor a lot has me envying the lives of Dave and Cody. Maybe technology isn't what it is cracked up to be. It sure gives us a lot more to desire and a lot less to accomplish. Yet seeing an episode where Cody built a huge tee pee out of the trees in remote Argentina seemed more appealing to me than some over-priced beach house in Malibu.

There the stock market isn't on the radar, nor is the latest celebrity gossip. We could care less about the new Fall line up of television series debuting or our fantasy football leagues. It is primitive as surviving. Making shelter, starting a fire, and finding food. Granted I don't envy their meals. Yet the bugs and critters they have to eat to survive are probably healthier for them than the garbage most of us fill ourselves with on a daily basis. And yet as much as I enjoy the show, it is simply staged scenarios and watching survivalists make it out of the jungle in an hour long episode is pretty easy while sitting on my couch with a bag of Doritos.

We are spoiled by technology and our generation. We can whine about the job market but 100 years ago people were just lucky to live past 40. We can travel the world with a touch of a computer button where 100 years ago many people had no idea what other parts of the world looked like. We can decry that the end of the world is coming, but our indicators are exaggerations blown out of proportion compared to the real hardships past generations suffered and prospered through. No one said this life would be easy except for the reality television shows. Of course it isn't for them either, and maybe most of all. Exposed and disposed of after their 15 minutes. Their illuminated skeletons our guilty pleasure. You want to envy the Situation? Fine, but lets re-examine his life in five years (or even one). The pretty picture and glossy images only hide the reality of these so-called realities in plain sight.

I read an article that said there are less men in the job work force than any time since 1948. There are more women than men currently employed. The jobs that were once available to men who wanted to work with their hands are no longer available. Industrial and manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, to the benefit of corporate shareholders. Foreign and illegal workers take farming jobs that are paid far less making them undesirable to most US men again for the benefit of profits. Meanwhile there is less disposable income to purchase these products. Men are told that it is their lack of education holding them back and that they are being lazy, but tell that to the coffee barista with the college degree and 60K worth of student loan debt.

For too long we are getting told that there is a model to follow for success. Yet no one told us this model was glued together with plastic. The college professors teaching business are themselves detached from the industries they are training their students for. It's the blind leading the blind, yet the only one holding their hand out are the universities subsidized by the government and it's hard to lift someone up when you are reaching for their back pocket. Trade schools which can actually offer a career path and available jobs are unable to offer financing options for their students. Yet you can get a college degree paid for by the US government in French poetry as long as you sign off on the 30K loan you'll be paying off forevvver with your job at Applebees. Suddenly that tee pee in Argentina looks a lot more stable doesn't it?

Staying optimistic is fine and dandy. Everyone should focus on the positives and we are lucky to have the things we do, but we are following roads to success paved with reality land mines. We can start making wise decisions and saving our money but the instruments to increase our wealth are being directed by people with a lot more of it. I guess the more we sit and analyze the things the more that surfing stupid on Facebook has it's advantages.

Fight or alien flight??

I don’t know about you but I’m tired of being on the ropes. We are like some beat-up prize fighter wailing away with wobbly footing. We can’t focus. Our eyes are darting off to some flying circling birds around our head. The punch we are countering with has the power of a teenagers pillow fight. And we are taking straight head shots the likes unseen since Rocky vs. Ivan Drago in the Soviet Union. We are being clobbered. This is the kind of damage that turns our brains into Anderson’s split-pea soup. What are we to do?

Do we stay off-kilter and wait for the white towel to get flung into the ring? I hate to tell you this but Mick is busy watching the Bachelor Pad. That towel you are waiting on to bail you out is being used to wipe his chin after an episode of Man vs. Food. He is not paying attention to the carnage unfolding in the ring in front of him he is listening to CNBC tell him how the instability in some bank in France is causing his retirement fund to shrivel up like his..gloves. Yes, Mick will not be bailing you out of this beat down. So what is plan B?

Do we wait for the vicious final TKO blow? It’s got to be coming right? Aliens are shortly making landfall to evaporate us into fuel for their distant planet. The stock market will crash completely with every stock reaching zero simultaneously. The gas prices will grow so high that people will abandon their car at the station and at stop lights in every city. Television will soon realize the only show we will actually ever watch will be one where we are each the star and will implant cameras into all of our houses only for us to discover that we are completely boring after all having lived the last several years through the lives of others. No, we will not get knocked out people. Ivan Drago was juicing remember? While we await that final knockout punch so that we can sleep in peace the U.S. government wants to seize all evidence of this film enhancing drug activity. Who was that Russian doctor injecting Drago’s biceps? Can we call Dolph Lundgren to testify? The public wants to know! How dare they falsely enhance such an important movie to our culture? The people must know the government means business. Ok..so plan C?

Fight?! Do we fight back? Do we grit our teeth and refuse to accept this national malaise? Do we search for a deeper meaning? Do we train harder and stronger so that we can no longer be a punching bag for all the calamities that life is currently hurling at us? Do we all make like little Rudy’s and be the underdog so that we can get some five minutes of mop up time? Are we going to come to the realization that the safe road is now lined with land mines? Life is supposed to be hard and challenging and if we want the prize we have to endure hardship right? But, it would be a hell of a lot easier if these damn aliens would hurry up and get here already.

Surfing a bubble

I am not a surfer. I have never paddled on a board out in the ocean. I have never balanced on the pounding ice cold blue water as a wave crested behind me. I've never jumped a shark, nor have I come in contact with one. The idea of surfing is what drew me to my blog title. It has always been something I've wanted to do, but never have. It seems like surfers possess some kind of spiritual intelligence and depth even when speaking in two-syllable words. No, I am not a surfer as the physical and literal description of surfing describes. However, we are all riding the wave.

Economist call our economic downturns the popping of bubbles. When the stock market crashed in the 1920's it was a bubble. The technology stock collapse in the early 2000's, another bubble. The housing meltdown we are still all in the middle of? Once again another bubble. As if we blew them up with a child's bubble wand in our front yard. Or if we were chewing a wad of bubble yum gum. It gives us the feeling that we somehow control the outside forces of this so-called bubble. That we are all children playing. As if we could even blow up a bubble big enough to burst and cause such devastating ramifications. We were all so irrational. We should have known better. If we had just played with our toy guns and G.I. Joes instead of blowing bubbles as children maybe we wouldn't have these things happen to us. No these economic downturns are not fun and bubbly bubbles. They are waves. The force of them too strong to say that they were simply man-made irrational creations.

 This analogy always makes more sense to me. You see a bubble will always pop but to a child its results are harmless. We simply blow up another one. There are no dire consequences of it. We don't get spanked or yelled at. No one laughs at us or calls us names. It's simple physics. A bubble created by hot hair eventually pops. Yet it doesn't grow so massive as to cover entire cities with it's carnage. We don't hear about bubble yum damage to vehicles or houses. You can not die from a bubble. You can however drown from a wave. And every time our economy collapses due to a wave of economic force that is both created and natural people drown all the time.

You see a bubble is always going to pop, but some people are amazing surfers. The economy can collapse and they will still be riding their board. Some of these people even thrive in periods of intense misfortune for others. They've either been wise enough to ride on a smaller wave behind the gigantic wave everyone else swam up to, or they rode the wave before the fatal one and are already back on the beach drinking a Pina Colada. You see the wave is timing. You see other's on top of it and the water is incredibly inviting. It's calling you out. Maybe, just maybe I can ride the wave too you think. Maybe I am a natural. Of course a lot of people who die on this wave thinking they are naturals have never had a surfing lesson in their life. No one is a natural born surfer. If you jump on the wave in the mid force of it with no skills you will not be prepared when that wave collapses on you. Even the best surfers in the world die on waves.

Of course many of them don't. They time the wave perfectly. They feel the wind on their faces and the dampness in their hair as they master the water beneath their feet. The feeling must be incredible. To somehow balance on such a powerful force of nature that claims so many others year after year. And as they jump off their surfboard after an exhilarating ride and feel there truth could not be any clearer, they are greeted by a shark and eaten to death. Oh yeah they live in the ocean too. And whether you are a professional surfer or a novice lured into the wave, you taste all the same.

I came to collect

What makes us remember what we do and forget what we shouldn't? I always have ideas for great stories or business ideas and when they hit they will rattle around in my head like a quarter in the dryer. It is so overwhelming and all encompassing as to drive me mad.  I try to hold it and keep it inside as the day progresses or before I can write it out and by the end of the day I don't even remember my first name. You spend so much time zoning out to distract yourself from the monotony of the day that what you actually do want to hold on to washes away to sea. It's a message in a bottle floating out in the universe so someone more adapt at writing things down can absorb and make millions. Thanks asshole!

I want my 10% commission off every good idea I've floated into the universe. There must be a bit to collect. I'm sure I came up with songs and movies before they were written. I am sure I created the pillow pet before that woman claimed it and made hundreds of millions. All I want is my cut for floating it out there originally. Call it my thought finders fee. I am not asking for half or even a quarter. They had the gumption and the follow through I lacked. They bled the sweat and tears to get it off the ground. They invested capital and man power. They stayed awake nights unsure of themselves while I slept, on my elephant pillow pet, like a baby. But I floated it out there. I created the mojo for the magic to follow. Without my positive karamtic vibes they would be sitting behind a desk somewhere slinging something for a living. So hook me up already. Give me my dime bag of the profits!

Wouldn't that be great if we could repo our thoughts or feelings? To hell with vehicles..I want my idea back and I'm coming to collect, you can keep my kidney! I just want that idea I gave you ten years ago. I want that attention I showered you with. I'm repossessing it, pronto. There is no way to pay it off. You are way past making payments. I'm just here to collect it and move on. I guess that was the basis of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Let's free up some mind space. Wipe the slate clean from all associations and start anew, clearing our head like you would the cache in your computer. In Memento short-term memory was the driving force to that fun motel adventure. Who needs a vacation when every ten minutes we can start all over again. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray lamented how he is stuck reliving the miserable day in Puksatawnee. Why couldn't he have his one day on the beach to live over? Why can't those memories be bottled up and sealed tight? Why do our memories, or in his case recycled days, seem to focus on the should haves or could haves, instead of the haves?

Well I for one am done floating out my ideas for free. I am holding onto my idea like child does a balloon and not releasing it's hot air into the atmosphere. Instead I will carry it around with me and I don't care what anyone says about it. A grown man can carry balloons with him wherever he goes. Ok, well that idea can go...nevermind. Released. But no seriously, I want to finish what I start. I have ideas..bold, crazy, ideas. Sometimes I share them too soon and it is like releasing the air out of this hypothetical balloon. It sputters out and dies or pops unceremoniously. I'm going to keep these things tight until they are strong balloons, huge balloons, I'm talking massive balloons. Do you see where I am going here? They will be almost offensively gigantic balloons.

That doesn't mean I don't want to collect on my 10%. It just means I realistically realize that by donating it into the universe I have contributed to the economic well being of our society. I am always a giver. If we can find a way to write those kind of contributions off on our taxes, now that would be ideal.

Carny Street

The Giant Dipper at Santa Cruz is an old wooden roller coaster constructed in the the 1920's. The only people who die on roller coasters, I once heard a broker say, are the people who jump off in the middle of them. Of course he was referring to the hellacious ride called the New York Stock Exchange and the riders being like poor saps at the county fair who were strapped in for the Ferris Wheel only to get the Zipper instead. That carny pulling the levers appears more sober every day with drugs apparently less a hallucinogenic than stock projections. That flavorful pink cotton candy stock you ate before you got on that melted in your mouth like air led you straight to the even pinker pepto bismo when you realized it was worth less than it.

Suddenly it's chic to live paycheck to paycheck. If we can make the 1970's cool again maybe we can bring back the middle ages and that awesome feudal system we've heard so much about. I've always thought we could bring back moats and bridges to our architecture. Yet instead of keeping out attacking marauders we are just protecting our assets from Billy Bob's Lizard Towing service and his claim on our two months past due vehicles. Even the fiscally responsible are getting jabber wockied by this financial death star. I think that they should add sound effects to the market as it plunges. Maybe Darth Vader's breathing as the stocks dip into triple digits or the music from the shower scene in Psycho before the closing bell of an especially brutal financial beating. If we sense the doom of a bad report maybe we can start off the morning with some Jaws music to fire us up for the carnage to come.

This is a market correction. No wait, it is an anomaly. No wait, it hearkens back to the Great Depression. No wait, this is unprecedented. No wait, this is usual and ten year averages state..what's that? ..We've lost money on a ten year average? Oh...

Meanwhile we are getting lectured from countries who purchased US debt like USDA sirloin only to find out they've been served fried Twinkies. Oh...

In other news Apple has decided to start it's own country, maybe then it can buy some of our debt. This benefits them because with the freed up assets we'll just go buy a new Iphone or Ipad anyways. Then we can upload those Darth Vader breathing noises through an app. Or maybe we can record those screams on the Giant Dipper and buy them through ITunes instead..but why is it linking us to our online banking homepage? Oh...

Admission is free

I believe my blog is like one of those wayside novelty stops on the highway. It’s the Paul Bunyan and Blue Ox off the 101 before Crescent City or the Shark World in that same wonderful city. People drive by thru their FaceBook surfing, see the blog updated; click the link and next thing you know you’ve paid $10 for “that?” What a rip off! So I drain ten to twenty minutes of your time instead. What else are you going to do? Surf for another video or music link to post on your wall? How original. You know that you were the 300th to like that post in the last half hour? Awesome! I think you should add lemmings to your favorite animal on your profile page too.



That is how I start off a long blog hiatus. I berate you for stopping by and reading. Maybe I am inspired by the movie Talk Radio. I want to yell at my readers but am grateful they stopped by so I can yell at them! Of course that is joking, I appreciate I was missed. Even if you do spend the twenty minutes and wonder why you wasted your time. At least I didn’t try to sell you any cheap trinkets on the way out. Once I figure out how to market this thing, watch out! Shark key chains on the way or little “Your shark name is Mohican” danglies you can hang from your rear view mirror.

I am in a creative phase of my life again. The moon must be tied to the Pisces constellation in the third hemisphere of Krypton. I have worked in Ashland too long. My daily clientele consists of Renaissance flute distributors and International treaties signed to eliminate space based weapons to welcome extra-terrestrials. I wish I could make this stuff up. The material this place provides would make Ray Bradbury have a creative head explosion. It’s almost too much to absorb which is why I have to suppress it or else surrender to it completely and start churning out manuscripts to Morgan Freeman’s wormhole. That sounds terrible, but if you’ve seen the show you’d get it. And if you can’t follow well then that twenty minutes you sacrificed just got a little more painful didn’t it?

I am working on a new business idea/documentary I want to put together. You know it is a good idea when you can slap the documentary on top. That way if I bomb financially as a business owner I can piggyback my artistic expression and say that my failure was part of my creative experience. And truthfully the failure part is a lot more endearing than the success part nowadays isn’t it. A documentary about someone making millions and becoming an overnight success just seems a little gratuitous. Yet if I fail miserably and humiliate myself in the process..now that is some award –winning film making!

This is just a dive back into the water today. A quick swim through the blue green algae of Emmigrant Lake. I can’t stay inside too long or I’ll get that madness they keep talking about. Oh wait a minute, nevermind…might as well gulp it up in gallons.

It's the end of the world as we know it..and I'm building an Ark.

Day 38 right? This has to be day 38 of the great flood that will overtake the planet and turn our world into Waterworld minus Kevin Costner's brilliant performance. It's been a long arduous wincing...that is winter and spring mixed together, wincing. The flowers have a hard time blooming when they are being doused with rain forest water. Suddenly the ecosystem in Southern Oregon has turned into New Zealand, once again minus the Hobbits. It has been almost two months since my last blog and I'm sure if there were such a thing as cyber dust I would have had to wipe this blog down with some pledge to start up another post.

A lot has changed to keep me from posting. The primary reason is my computer took a dive which has left me netless. Walking the world without the net is kind of invigorating. Sure I have my smart phone (which those of you who have seen the See's candy phone know the only thing smart about it is that I keep it hidden), but it is difficult to blog on a tiny phone without going crazy unless of course those New Zealand Hobbits spring up in this new ecosystem and then I have a new labor force. I missed writing. It has been a while since I have typed on a keypad that wasn't work related. I find myself with great blog ideas that fizzle in the day to day and dissipate like the sun dissipated from our atmosphere.

Many good things have happened since I've last posted. I met an amazing girl and have been spending a lot of time with her. She is someone who laughs as much as me and doesn't take herself too seriously. Huge qualities that never grow old. She also draws little hearts on my Americanos which I am drinking right now. I'm still employed and doing pretty well at my job. It's been a fun place to work lately and I appreciate my position though I'm definitely open to a promotion anytime soon. I see the folks in a couple of weeks and I look forward to that. I think I have amazing parents who sacrifice so much and I only hope I can be half the parent and son to them that they are to their parents one day.

I though I had more to say but I realize that time away doesn't necessarily guarantee the flood gates of thought will spring forth. Well there be flooding of something and for that I'll get back to that Ark building, but until then see ya later.