Fun all week

Ah, nothing like a post-season gingerbread house to make a rainy eveing fun. Nick bought it with his money, and asked that we all enjoy being creative with it. We did.

Update 1/1/2005

We took it to our good friends Steve and Ellen last night, New Year's Eve, and we ate it while playing Scrabble. It was okay. The kids liked it very much. I remember what real gingerbread tastes like, so I liked it just a little.

Hemptown Clothing

Can these numbers be true? Use this Hemptown Clothing Calculator to see how much water one of their shirts saves, versus a 100% cotton shirt.

For anyone who has seen the home movies of Tulare Lake and then driven through the cotton fields that are in its place now (this is along I-5) it's actually quite easy to believe how much water a cotton plant consumes. Tulare Lake was simply huge, an "intermittent" lake as large as 1500 square miles.

The California water crisis could apparently be averted, simply by not growing cotton!

Flash toons

Homestar Runner is very, very entertaining. I got to thinking, what sort of characters would I develop, if I had the opportunity to work on a flash toon? Dusting off my old skills, and knowing that it'd have to be something I cared about, I figured I'd need at least three. They'd reflect the sorts of things I am learning about me and the world.

So here's a manic character. Slightly scary to be around, you always hope they're going to keep it in check... but you never really know. This one would mirror the "If I just move a little faster, juggle one more ball, spin one more plate, borrow another $200, combine the trip to the grocery with the dentist with paying the late gas bill with buying the new blender I'll be able to get all the important things done today" attitude.

Prone to implosion or explosion: don't get too close!

Google Shuttle Powered by Biodiesel!

On theGoogle Blog, Cari Spivack writes about their earth-friendly fueled commuter vehicle.

So, what are the youth up to?

A'ight, fogeys, today's teens are called "The Youth" and they face issues that most grown-ups avoid. But overall and through it all, they are people, and mature in ways that many old people will never be. Still, they know how to have good clean fun, and online, too. Have you taken one of these silly personality quizzes recently? Remember filling these out in magazines as a teen? I did, and I took one of the online quizzes that is circulating in the youth culture. I'm "Inspiration Soup!"

You are Inspiration Soup!! You live to Inspire
those around you with your green beany, white
chunky, red soupy goodness. Many have come and
lit candles in your honor. You've inspired
them to become better people. Thank you,
Inspiration Soup... thank you.


What Weight Watchers recipe card from 1974 are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

The deep shallows

Wind blows cloud topped trees
colorlessly reflected
in a rain puddle

I'm becoming more me, everyday. My father told me about coming home early one day, and driving past me as I walked home from school. I didn't notice him: I was busy staring into a rain puddle. Dad says he pulled over and watched me, books on my back, hunkered down over the puddle, just staring. I reached down and touched the puddle, pulled my hand back, and just kept looking. He didn't disturb me; he drove home.

I recall being fascinated with puddles as a young boy, but for a long time I'd forgotten why. I see them again, now, and lose myself in them as I once did. Plant yourself at the edge of a puddle, and look through it at the mirror sky. Go ahead, do it! My description that follows is dry and void compared with the true experience.

The puddle is a mere fraction of an inch deep, yet it can reveal an infinite space beyond. You can look at its surface and see ripples, you can look into it and see the sidewalk, or you can look through it to the topsy turvy world reflected in its depths. The "real" world is the same in all cases... but we can change our perception to show us what we are willing to see.

How far do we see, when we look towards each other? Do we go beyond the surface? Isn't the true nature of reality revealed to us in something as simple as the world reflected in a puddle?

The world is changing now.

I made it over to the Berkeley Biodiesel Collective intro meeting. It was packed! There's many a-many people who have woken to the idea that voting with their dollars to support the petroleum industry can end now.

I've got so many threads going in my life regarding sustainability and stewardship and responsibility, that I probably ought to split off a new blog.

Hmmm.....

One man noted that the number of peopple starting to wean themselves from petrol is similar to the swallows showing up at Capistrano: there are a few "pioneers" but then one day, all the swallows show up. Can it be that it's really time for a sea change in how we conduct ourselves? The people in that room last night all understood that they could make choices right now that would change their part of society. BioDiesel is a flagrant example, but the small things add up, too, like investing in super efficient appliances, driving less in the first place, support local farmers... the web of things that could function in harmony to reduce the craziness is extant. We just have to choose it.

Festival advert

I like that the the reward for doing good work is more work. I have a few clients for whom I'm doing a really, really good job... and these guys are one of those. Here's a snapshot of a print ad that's going into a program.

I feel that there's too much info here, but at least I was able to arrange it so that the viewer doesn't have to read it of they don't want to. I know the style of design in "alternative" media is really, really busy. So many of those ads just look like wallpaper to me. I hope I get to see this ad layed out in the page, then I would really know how successful I'd been.