Back?...

They say the blogosphere is just a place where where folk can rant on and on about stuff....Who are these morons, and maybe somebody ought to boycott them, I'm sick and tired...oh, sorry!...I remember this (blog) spot, that place we used to go in a pre-Facebook world (some of us just never quite made the myspace leap, and so our pop music careers will remain the unrealized dreams that never were)...My son and I customized this template, chose the colors, and for a while I met a few folk here...I think right now there must be at least 4 people who come here anymore: Johannes, Sam, Lisa, Patrick, Claire--wait! That's five...We've all been having a real party over on Facebook, and it really is a lot of fun, the communication is lively, stimuating, I like it a lot...Especially seeing people's photos..And communication takes place in nice, crisp, precise short sentences...So that's not really the place for l-o-o-o-o-o-o-n-g editorials on Al Gore or indeed the death of hip-hop...But they better not push the commercial advertizing thing too far in Facebookville, or some of us will simply move on...We want a break from someone trying to sell us stuff or pretending life is one endless all-night party for hot singles spending weekends on Grand Cayman...Cultural snobbism...I'll settle for a jazzy evening with friends who like where and who they are just fine...Stockholm, Palo Alto, Corvallis, Lycksele, Lyon, Turlock, Santa Cruz, or wherever...Tropical islands seem over-rated, boring weather, ugly shirts...I'll take Monterey!...

Hey, some tank-ship just, and of course these things can happen, gashed itself on a pillar of the Bay Bridge and now 60,000 gallons of "heavy fuel" has spread all over beautiful San Francisco Bay, tarring up coastland, killing animals, and just 10 days before a friend of mine visits us from Sweden!...Ah, nature has quite the power from the Creator to renew-repair itself, as it/she has before in lots worse, plus human ingenuity, but still: It makes one stop and feel angry and slightly nauseous about the lifestyles and cultures and living standards that require tankship-loads of this crap (this "crap" being necessary for our lives as we have decided they must be lived) by the mondo-millions of gallons to criss-cross ecosytems, oceans, rivers, to (and I realize I'm oversimplifying) pump into our Texaco stations to fill our did-you-notice-my-pimped-out-shiny-Hummer/monster F250 pickup?...

Here in California, which I dearly love by the way, you see that, inherent in American wider culture, is an agreed-upon tolerance for showing off, that is noticeably absent in other cultures I've lived in, or at least less present...If enough people in a society agree that certain things just are over the edge and unacceptable, only the rare instance of it occurs...I'm not for conformism, but it is fascinating what level of all-out in-your-face showing off is accepted here: It's perfectly fine to cruise around the Central Valley in a monster jacked-to-the-sky Chevy crew-cab with fully room under it for use as a covered shelter for the local homeless, its bumper at the level of my Honda Civic roof, everyone knowing that it is partially responsible for those tankerloads of the aforementioned petro-crap in the Bay, that it will never leave the asphalt to get sand on the Armoralled moon-tires...Clearly, looking stupid is, collectively agreed, OK, that's seriously part of a free society, and I'm not knocking that, just makes for hilarious sights even while cormorants suffocate off Hunter's Point and coastal peoples everywhere see their lives and livelihoods irreparably altered...

But no ranting on the blog, please!...Don't even get me started on the big bad yellow Hummers...

Here's some places I haven't been to and want to go: Tokyo, Shanghai, Mexico City, Baja California, Greenland, Nordkapp Norway, Crimea, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, India, Nunavut, Miami, Morocco, Tierra del Fuego...Let's do it!...If your country is not on here, don't worry, it will be...Got the World-is-so-Big-Itch, no cortisone, please!...