Strong Medicine

Ah back to the grind. I had a few weeks there where I was free of obligation. It's a strange feeling – one I don't often experience. Now it's time to jump start these writing reflexes and get things going one more time. Luckily, there is strong medicine for just this type of situation. So strong medicine it will be – until the scientists or the sociologists come up with something better. Maybe meditation is the key, or stretching, or masturbation without achieving ejaculation. But these are contrived, cliché, or just downright improbable feats of willpower. I won't challenge myself to that degree.

I've made no resolutions for 2010. I gave up on those a long time ago. The last resolution I did make was over a dozen years ago, when I vowed to drink more gin. That was successful – that's the benefit of setting likely goals for yourself. A self-help guru I stole some snippets from and posted on my wall says to “think win-win” and so that was a win win resolution, I managed to drink more gin and obtain a goal I had established for myself. Sometimes you have to think outside the box, and inside the bottle. Strong medicine.

Burn Ban – Framing the Debate

I get frustrated every time I hear the way the news reports the potential burn ban hear in Chico. They make it sound like its an argument between environmentalists or health advocates, and semi-rich members of the bourgeois class who simply will not do without the luxury of burning fires in their living rooms for the sheer pleasure of the combustion. We burn wood for one simple reason – because over the course of a winter, it costs about three or four times less than heating our house with gas. We're talking a savings of many hundreds of dollars, money we don't have in the first place. Yeah, I feel badly about the air pollution, but unless someone wants to supplement my gas bill, then more than likely I'm going to resist any bad on burning. This isn't an issue of freedom of expression, or the government infringing on personal liberty – it is plain and simple economics 101. Wood costs less than gas.

Plus, I can't help but think about the “not in my backyard” aspect of this argument. Here the whole community is continually talking about keeping it local, and we are surrounded by orchards and forests, and yet we're getting our heating gas piped in from God knows where; and God only knows what the people with the gas mines in their communities have to deal with, in terms of environmental contamination.

Paving the Way

Thirty year old heiress Casey Johnson passed away last Monday. She was the heiress to the Johnson and Johnson empire, and allegedly was engaged to Internet fame glutton Tila Tequila. Johnson once sited her turning down of the co-starring role in Paris Hilton's quasi-reality show “The Simple Life” as the greatest mistake of her own life. I don't mean to downplay the significance or the tragedy of Ms. Johnson's death – it's a genuine shame. There is always a tendency amongst the youth to glamorize an early death, and the older I get, the sadder I find that. I get it – when you're a certain age, you don't think you'll ever be middle-aged or older, it just doesn't make sense. I get it, but it just makes me sad, the waste of it all. I mean, if there is any reason to this chaotic, crazy existence, I can't help but think that reason has to be to clear a path, cut through some resistance, and just try and make things a little less cruel for those who follow you. We break ice with our lives – we clear detritus from old paths, or forge new ones. So live as long as you can contribute something to those who will follow; and pay attention to those who have gone before you.

Wrapping Things Up

I am currently wearing a sweet Winston Cup Racing jacket a friend of mine gave me for Christmas. It's an absolutely amazing garment. It's light-weight, but warmer than anything I own. It must be made of some crazy 70's asbestos or something. We've got the fire burning and Trish is making fettuccine Alfredo – or, I think that's the name of it. It's a new year, my fingers still seem to work, and my brain isn't any deader than it was two weeks ago. Things are looking up.

madbob@madbob.com