How I Waste My Precious Time

Read this today, it’s connected to the way my point of view has been evolving lately. There’s also a nice bridge here between “the nature of things” part of it all and the “why are we in this predicament” view of society at large.

I’d been thinking mostly about the first half recently: it’s in our nature and an expression of life itself to do unlikely things, to pursue something bound to fail, to create something for no reason, to be (willfully or ignorantly) defiant of the odds. That was starting to be a hopeful point of view too, but as Wil points out it could be responsible for humanity’s stupid pursuit of extinction and catastrophe as if we can’t tell what’s coming.

Well that’s a bummer! Something positive to take from it: at least the remnants of civilization will have the will to push on after the rest of us die off. Of course, it’d be nice to think we could moderate things just a tad so as not to hit the finish line quite so fast.

That last video I linked too said that we were spending over half of all tax revenues on the Military!?! Is that right? Holy fuck! Can’t we just switch most of that money into space travel? The same Military Industrial Complex can build everything with the same wasteful amount of Government money, so we don’t even need to get rid of corruption to do this. At least there’d be a chance that as a side effect human Lunar and Martian Colonies would make it after Earth becomes a little less comfortable to people. Maybe they could teach us how to live in bubble cities?

I just moved a number of posts here to “private” status, just to make sure I don’t cause any stupid issues for myself. Pretty lame, but I’m shy anyhow so I hardly needed the excuse.

The current theme, Gray gets Green by Fred Banuelos, started with this image up top, which is gorgeous:

I hope it’s not too plagiarist to steal the idea and colors and rebuild it with my own imagery. I decided a Chicago skyline would give it a nice local touch, and this resulted:

I think it is pretty apparent that it’s a rush job, but it also captures the intent completely so it’s fine for starters. Seeing the rough edges up there gave me the idea that I could just build up better versions over time, which appeals to me completely, I’ve already added an estimated outline of the under construction Trump Tower, and I expect subtle enhancements will appear frequently.

A link to the source image, a photo taken by my buddy Josh Lane and used without asking his permission (yet), clearing violating the Copyright which does not permit derivative works.

I’ve been cooking like never before during the year 2006. That’s a relative measurement, but I’ve also gone out for awesome brunch/breakfast more than any other year to date. Today I made that expense irrelevant by cooking up this masterpiece:

Breakfast potatoes have always been one of my favorite dishes, due to growing up eating the best ever from Santa Fe Restaurant in Glen Ellyn. I’ve never been able to reproduce theirs, but I find if I boil the potatoes for a few minutes before I fry them they are similarly soft in the center.

I got WordPress going apparently, so I now have a respectable blogging engine. Now then for something to say …