Back To Art - Thank You, Godlets!

Picnic Pavilian, Clallam Bay Park

I was so sick and tired of fighting for the local silent weaklings, but it looks like Rayonier has finally shot itself in the foot. Can we say, "Tumbling Rapids?" Maybe Forks has more guts than Clallam Bay and Joyce, after what happened to Pillar Point. And you moron fishermen - you really think we can't see you in Clallam Bay trying to harass the sea mammals? That better not be a rifle, asshole. But enough of talking to resource idiots; one of these days Mom Earth will take care of THEM. HARD.

Anyway, I was begging to go back to the arts, where I belong, and stop messing with numbnuts local rural politics. They're easy, but they're not my baby. Solar will build itself, from the ground up, while the whimperers with the 1970's information will lose. Those making fake assumptions about things that DO work and are improving will be laughed at. In their faces. So, as usual, the godlets answer my vague thoughts (and you really have to be careful what you ask for).

Wild Sorrel, in the last of the summer sun.

Forks is opening a new arts center. Yay, Forks! An event I am thoroughly on board for is coming up in April. It's run by a local gentleman who has his head on straight, and wants to learn more. More news to come, and I'll be promoting it everywhere, including letting them use my international press release list.

But, let's have a little air cleared about the local attitude toward the arts. We won't go into the truly moronic shutting down of the arts, dance, music, etc., that goes on in the local schools - we know the pointless dumbness of that, and if they won't work for their own good, I'm not their mommy. And I'm not listening to the crying and whining when that comes back to bite them in the ass. Enough of the spoilt babies. Here we go:

Neah Bay Popsicle ARTIST:
see definition in text.

"Twilight" taught the local community that the future of human existence is entertainment (we sell and buy to and from each other). Of course, all single book markets fade, and that one is, too. But as people who come to the Clallam Bay Comicon know, I can help them get ALL the books and movies and set-building, and put everybody up here on the road to fun, clean, well-paying employment (not "jobs" - that 200-year-old paradigm is dying, and good riddance). All it takes is using the heads a bit, and I don't know anybody stupid up here, anybody who can't do it. I've seen lots of stupid behavior, but that's just lack of trying, not ability. 

However, they're stuck firmly in the 19th-century world of gallery artists snubbing each other, thinking they're avant garde for copying van Gogh with a palette knife, and calling fabrics and basketweaving "crafts." This note is to start to educate 'em. 

First of all, if you designed it yourself, it's "art." If it's out of a kit, it's a "craft." Doesn't matter if you carved, painted, beaded or cooked or photographed or filmed it. Or danced or sang it. There's original art, and there's Cover Art (as in, I suspect, to "cover" the bills until your art takes off for real). Now I'll dust off my hands and get on to the next lesson. Ready? 

The guy with the arts center messaged me to tell me there'd be an "arts" event. He made some remarks I and some other entertainment-industry people had to straighten out, and he immediately learned and got on the right track. This event will be a success if he keeps on that road. He's good people.

But now to talk to the local arts scene, and tell you you're not good enough to be as snobbish as you think you can get away with. You're going to be facing professionals, and not just easy-going me, who for years has simply let you slide. This is a wake-up call.

The first time I saw this sloppiness was at the Clallam County Fair art show. Two pieces should have won. For ability, experience, and use of materials, a couple of paintings that wouldn't have looked bad at a minor Seattle gallery. But what won? Some poorly-done pencil/watercolor thang of an old lady with white curly hair, and a still-life that looked like the label of a jam jar. You're letting THESE people run your art life? Please. It's embarrassing. Then again, the stars of a fair are lambs and potatoes, so they're not exactly a professional arts venue.

I THINK the gang up here thinks "art" means "we can put it in a frame" - which is why they call pressed seaweed and fishprints done on copyrighted maps - "art." (Of course, they ARE art, but just being put in a gallery isn't how you define art.)

And those of you thinking you can do abstracts - give me air. An abstract is for long-practiced experts, who are tearing apart their medium to view it more clearly, to see what their eye is really seeing. Slapping paint on a palette because you think that's how it's done - what do you think a true expert can see? We saw what you did, there (hell we can see the guy who did the bison in the cave-paintings invented the first filbert brush). You have at least 20 years of hard work and learning, before you can even begin to think you can approach a full abstraction.

(Of course, all art is abstraction, but let's keep this simple. As for copyright, just hit the page and don't argue about it. Those are the rules, and that's IT.)

And teaching and learning by copying out of somebody else's how-to book? And offering ignorant versions of native art because "Them injuns charge too much?" Gallery prices at 50% markup, with no framing, insurance, advertising, travel? And artists dumb enough to pay it? Oh, yeah, I've seen it all. The amount of ignorant arrogance is simply breath-taking. As a long-time attendee of comicons, I can tell you the stupidest newby wouldn't make these mistakes. There are too many hard sharks in that business to put up with the dumb and self-satisfied. Cross those big fish, and there's blood in the water.

And please, while you're looking at my page for the comicon, look at my artist rates. This is where it STARTS. Art is our future. Pay for it correctly, and it will come back as collectibles. You didn't know that? 

So get ready for the art world that Twilight handed you. And either learn to surf properly, or get slapped with the board and sent under where the sharks can get you. Because they're swimming in, with gleaming teeth. And soon.

One last thing: CONTESTS for art-festival posters? REALLY? Find an artist you like, and hire her or him. Damn, people. Stop whittering, "It will give you such good exposure!" People die of exposure. But don't feel bad - the world at large tries this crap, let alone your little elbow of the earth. 

Into The Future

I've been doing my gloating and kidding around over on Facebook, so it's not going to end up here. Every time somebody gives up and joins me, I don't gloat - I start telling them how to do cool stuff. And the photos in this post are just for the pretty and happy.

The Clallam River, recovering and cleaner.

Thank you to everybody who's spreading the word on this blog - including the people who hate it. Remember, I'm just the messenger - I'm just outing bad behavior, not making it up. And there are a few people, who know the resource/greedhead past is going to die within a generation, who are bringing their kids to me, knowing I won't hurt them and will make their future here, in a decent rural area, possible and hopeful. 

I can't clean up your history - there are too many people with photos of exterminated wolves, and pictures of

Happy Beach Monster!

grandpa with walls full of dead bears and cougars, or so proud of themselves standing on the stumps of destroyed forests. The Natives in boarding schools - the survivors still over on Facebook, breaking hearts, talking about the horrors of The Bad Times. You're stuck, like America, with its genocidal past, the whipped slaves, and the pyramid of buffalo skulls. None of us can bury that - nor would decent people want to. But we CAN make a better future.

So, leaving the anger and fear behind, let's all look at the latest possibilities. First of all, arts and entertainment can and will have clean, low-footprint jobs for everybody. This includes forestry and construction. They need real wood and real set-builders. Don't let your forests go to toilet paper and chipboard, when you can carefully steward your future beautiful boards - which

Makah Days canoe crew.

go for huge prices, when treated properly. When you look at a tree, you shouldn't see something to take your anger out at, something to - as I've heard confessed - to enjoy being destroyed - but an ally and friend. Nature gave you a chocolate cake covered in gold. Don't stomp it or shit on it and then expect to be able to spend or eat it. 

I speak as pulp-industry spawn. I've seen the bad happen. Listen to the warnings of one who has been there, and doesn't want it here. Not without a fight.

Small point: solar use. First of all - it is NOT the 1970's. Most of what you get from local government is mentally nailed into that era. It's antique. Look at Germany, and pay attention (yes, and that translates as "Achtung!"). Speaking of Germany, it's pretty much solared up - with the same

Pebble-roasted, buttered oysters.

climate as ours - and it's gotten out of gobbling up all the solar equipment. So the prices are dropping!

Everybody up here immediately talks about hooking into PUD and "selling power back." But that's a 1970's concept. It's an attempt to keep the locomotive, when we need the SmartCar. And my dad was a long-distance trucker, who said that forget trying to out-muscle a semi for safety, and get the smallest, fastest, most agile car you could find. You will LOSE a crash with a haulage truck - better to AVOID it. And you people can't DRIVE or PARK those pretend tanks you got now. Let's all get light on our feet - and our footprint.

Speaking of unwieldy crashes:

Sequined Hummingbird, Neah Bay.

We MUST drop the idea of huge grids. Every one of you I've spoken to GETS it when I talk about rivers being kinetic energy, and fossil fuels being second-level fuels. And understands when I say that a huge grid is not only antique, but expensive, inefficient - and hooking directly into a star. A huge grid is capable of not only turning birds into puffs of smoke, but being massively dangerous. 

Now, we've handled dangerous things before, because we needed to - and not always well (ask the Russians about that) - but why do it if we can't do it as book says: "Smaller, Faster, Cheaper" - ? (Hard copy at the library). Solar is about little 12-volt appliances, some of them with their

In Clallam Bay Park.

own dinky panels. Solar is about Neah Bay turning neighborhoods into mini-grids, so that a central battery bank keeps chugging, even if one house goes down. 

Clallam County is fighting over what kind of meters to have, electronic, or analog. This is like fighting over who gets to make the buggy whips. You're wasting your time, people, over the unimportant. Get your heads in the real game.

Water? Why isn't every neighborhood taking care of all this rainfall? Perhaps bigger grids work in cities, but everything goes out here all the time, including electricity, water and sewer.* We have to think smaller, cheaper, faster. It's just how it is.

Look, folks, sooner or later, every empire eats itself alive, after the resources are cleaned out, and it's been doing war as business. Then Rome has to cut back on the far colonies and take care of the homeland. Guess who we are, out here on the Olympic Peninsula? That's right - Great Britain. And when Rome left, the Dark Ages began.

Sprinkles Yogurt, Port Angeles.

But does it have to be dark here? Why don't we get started, now? Let's take power and water out of the hands of the utilities - except as the base for making and centralizing lower-cost bulk equipment orders and storage - and use that money for the things government is REALLY good for: roads, bridges, public transportation, education, libraries, and health care. 

Perhaps if we all buckle down and make our small power work, every single kid could be funded by us to get an education at the Peninsula College - which is the ultimate investment in the future. Let's pay for the good stuff, and take care of the smart basics ourselves.

We can all do this. I KNOW you can - you're all smart enough and you love this place too much to fail. This is the New Frontier - you have a chance. Get started before Earth imposes her deadline - because she will call it in, and then it will be too late; she will drop her mask of Kind Mother and reveal herself, Kali-like, as the great Juggernaut she is, stomping forward in her power, and flipping out any little useless cog (like us) that gets in her way. Don't wait for the deadline; keep Mom happy. 

Mom likes fun. Look at the animals when they're on their own, most of their lives. The great thing about the new future is, it will depend on doing what you want, for the fun of it. You are no more on this earth to work yourself to death, than a seagull enjoying September, floating on the waves during Grownup Summer. Neither are your children. Give them the chance. It's being offered to you, with both hands. Stop complaining about how the kids won't dig ditches (have you not heard of the backhoe?) and start being proud of how they're renovating our world for the good.

Get to work. No - Come to PLAY. 

(*I didn't bring sewer up until the end, because Americans are big babies about it. We're so scared of considering it, we flush away our poop in our drinking water. Sooner or later, we'll have to organize for disposal without water. Face it, before the typhoid or cholera epidemic starts - and it will. And it's not difficult. Just ask the library for Humanure. Oh, don't whimper. Any of you who have enjoyed Beyond Thunderdome - did you think they'd brought along the pigs to power the cities? If you guys can't face it, ask the moms to work on it - they have to deal with diapers, so it shouldn't freak them out.)

Stockholm Syndrome in the Forest

Oh, NOW I get it.

Why the local population says nothing about the destruction of their parks, the clearcuts, the pumping out of all the money overseas as the forests are scarred.

Stockholm Syndrome.

I know, because I'm starting to do it myself. I "expect" my favorite groves to be flattened, and if they're not, I expect them to be ruined next year, so some guy can have more condos in France or Poland, and so the Chinese have something to ship goods to us on. I am beginning to pretend the alder/big-leaf maple, fir groves are okay, even though they're just green bandages.

Is this what the logging companies mean by "We're going to show those City Folks what a Scenic Route LOOKS like!" ?

Now I'm not mad at the locals as cowards or greedheads or fools. They're damaged. They're trapped. They HAVE to lie to themselves, and pretend this is all right.

I'm not going to try to compare them to women trying to raise kids in a war zone - but the blind eyes walking by a flattened campground, as the privatizers destroy our national legacy - are the eyes of the broken and defeated. 

THAT's that look. I've never seen it before. And it hurts. My god, and they raise whole generations in that pain and defeat and self-delusion?

What pain. More than the forests and animals - what helpless, disabled, human pain.

Testicle Object Lesson

A couple months ago, I'm in the parking lot, minding my own business, when I see the little old guy who runs the Food Bank. No doubt he intends to innocently introduce me to a guy with him I don't know, but who I will later find as a volunteer at the food bank.

And it starts. Harassment, attempts - oh, in the most jovial tone - to frighten me. Passive-aggressive hatred you can just see. At the food bank. At the co-op. Wherever I see him. Who the fuck IS this guy? Who the fuck does he think I am? Some old girlfriend who dumped him?

Since I don't know him, and didn't go to school with him (and what are you people doing, still hanging out with people from high-school - is this "American Grafitti?"), I assume he does this to all women and girls.

Next time, if he tries it again - even though I've backed him off repeatedly, and the people around him showed how men and women are supposed to act - his photo goes up here. Because if he's done it with me....

There was another guy who tried this on with me, but I threatened to post his photo on Facebook, and he backed off pronto. I figure this new guy has a track record, too. 

Women face this kind of trolling, stalking and harassment every single day. We're on errands, and we get distracted from our work, and it makes more time and trouble for us. Many men don't seem to be able to act like decent people. They seem to think women are just here to entertain them, every single minute.

If you know him - warn him. People CAN be taught.

Or exposed. Call this me preparing him a nice, shiny raincoat, and socks with garters.

(And yes, I'd have the option of contacting the Food Bank's granting committees about mistreatment of women in one of their organizations, but since I've already asked the boss guy at the bank to talk to this guy, and he's a pretty good boss guy, I'll assume the moron is deaf. Or really really angry at some other woman, and like most of these morons, can't tell us apart. So, I'm giving everybody one more chance before official emails start up the chain of command. Because they are nice, decent, sweet people, and don't need one bully to ruin it for everybody.)

Don't Try Talking Like Liberals

No more chanterelles.

Facepalm.

As usual, whatever I loved or used, the clearcutters got it. Then again, I'm not the only one - everybody knows the animals are being driven into the people areas. Owls are getting hit by logging trucks. Bats with rabies flutter down from the hot, dry destruction. No use telling the pro-loggers. They repeat whatever their daddies told them. 

They have no idea that the cycle of logging will just get shorter and shorter, as the vitality in the soil disappears. They don't understand put/take. 

Then we'll have to listen to whining about, "I came up here to log and the work disappeared." 

"Cedar Recovery?" REALLY?

And watch the chipboard houses thrown up all over the place rot on riversides while the owners disappear and nobody buys. Round and round and round she goes.

In the meantime, they think using the right words will make it all better. They're using dictionaries like bandages, and forgetting we can read.

I think that's a dead sea otter, there, the second of two. I hope it's just because the populations are recovering, and with more life you get more death.

"GREEN Crow?" Are we on the same planet?

Then again, at least one drunken moron spends his days ripping around the bay with his boat. Speed? And I mean it both ways. One of our neighbors runs the motor on his bad-bargain boat all the time, gasoline fumes flying out - while smoking. On the one hand, I don't want him to blow himself up. On the other hand, when he does it at 5:00 am.... one cannot help that head file coming up. And if he does, I get paid for news story and photos. I'm only human (I make no comments on other people's genomes).

What's up with people and making as much racket as they can in the forest? I swear, so many people are scared to death of nature. It's our own planet, and so many of us act like terrified Martians. Do they think something will sneak up on them if they're not drunk and raving out there? Not the way humans smell.

Finally got the cheap but sturdy fencing for the Ugly Dog Fence (your choice on which is ugly).

I may put up a bragging sign: "Quieter than YOU." 

Dead Sea Otter #2

Oops. Better check the waffles. Or is it the tortillas? I'm cooking both in the Belgian waffle maker. To go with all the fresh blackberries. Himalayans - juiced for wine, the pulp made into dumplings or just jam.

Who cares about seeds? They're good for old people. FIBER.

Guess we better go find some other Chanterelle patch.

Cornfields and Loads of Fertilizer

Well, no more chanterelle picking up the Hoko. We knew that, sooner or later, like everything I'd actually taken a liking to up here, the woods where we found them would be turned into cash for Rayonier's out-of-country investors. 

The Hoko is pretty much a clearcut nightmare. I wouldn't be writing this, but a few people drinking beer - and they were trying to be friendly - tried to tell me it was "The most beautiful scenic drive in the world." Just because I wear glasses, do they think I'm blind? Or I can't tell scrub and plantation from an actual forest? 

The regrowth is at least alders - maybe they're finally getting that through their heads that the little firewood trees are the only fertilizer they've got.

Which brings me to the myth up here that forests are "forty-year-old cornfields."

First of all, we know the trouble cornfields and other grain ranching is in. Rivers are full of destructive nitrogen leaching into our oceans. Goodbye fishing - goodbye sports fishing and fishing derbies (which are pretty obscene, considering the extinction event we're watching unfold all over the planet). Fossil-fuel-based fertilizers are more and more expensive. Soils are filling up with salts and toxins.

Forests are the lungs of the planet, and the cooling skin we naked monkeys evolved with. It's one thing to carefully harvest wood selectively from old stands - and quite another to pump every skinny stick into the toxic pulp and artificial products industry. One that can pretty much be fulfilled by any fiber industry. And no, I don't mean cut down all the trees for hemp - that plant is a jungle plant, and grows best shade-grown. Which would be a selling point up here if anybody has any marketing brains. "Shade-grown hemp" will be a preferable commodity to an artificial crop exhausting the soil.

A lot of people in Washington State were shipped up here from the South, and by the time they got here, they were thoroughly trained in the idea of being a serf, and all all of nature being harnessed to be serfs to the same feudal masters. They tell each other this cornfield myth to - what? Assuage their consciences? Deny the inevitable future? Bullshit to make themselves feel better and hold off the moment they have to face what's coming?

Lost Resort thinks its safe - but the forestry corporations want every last scrap of land and trees. They've already cut down some State and private parks, without a peep from the locals. The investors want their hands on the national parks. The Lodge at Lake Crescent better keep on the alert.

Drink beer on the porch while you can - until the day you have to give up your homes to the same eminent domain that trapped the natives, and have to go work in a city slum. Because that's coming if you don't pay attention. I saw it happen where I'm from, and I've warned and warned you.

Stop telling this corn-field myth - because it's just one more way for the corporations to cornhole you. 

Boys Need The Burqa On The Bus

Okay, once again, it happens to me, so I have to fix it. It's my place in life. And, since boys don't seem to have any sense, we have to control them every moment. It's not girls who need the burqa, but boys.

Anyway, somebody in Port Angeles has a cute blond kid who slops down into a bus seat with his legs spread, so he touches the other person (yes, we know, men taking up more than their share of space on public transit has already come to the world's notice), and then puts his hand on the seat and fingers start... wandering. 

Women who stab or punch boys get prosecuted. Old ladies who stand up and protest get ridiculed. So - cute boys in Port Angeles, I'm sorry, but you have to either sit by yourselves, or with your friends - or stand up. You can't be allowed to sit with women, or girls, and this is why.

Here we go.  Just sent this email to the listed emails (and if you feel like copying, please do). I get this on the bus again, I'm stopping it, removing the next boy or man, and standing up and giving a lecture on bus manners - first welcoming anybody who wants to film, photo, or Facebook it. And pissing off everybody who is trying to make the Sappho connection. 

And I was called by the supervisor of Clallam Transit, and by the time I was done praising his system and then describing a scenario in which a girl gets finger-played, then a gang of boys get off at her forest stop, and the peer-monkey stupidity - well, let's just say I scared the hell out of the man. He knows it can happen, and a bus is like a hotel - it happens on your watch, you get the lawsuit.

To: mdoherty@co.clallam.wa.us; sheriff@co.clallam.wa.us; cbaron@forksforum.com; mnichols@co.clallam.wa.us; jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com; pahsinfo@portangelesschools.org; john.brewer@peninsuladailynews.com

Subject: Girls and Women under threatDate: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 09:04:07 -0700

"Hello --

As more and more people ride the Clallam County busses, more and more women and girls are going to be exposed to a long-running threat: boys and men who sit down or stand beside them and not only push into the female personal space but begin to grope or handle.

This is an old - and extensive - problem on all public transit, in all cities and towns, worldwide.

Women and girls cannot respond with violence or immediate reporting, because they will be prosecuted and ridiculed.

The Sheriff's office needs to work with the bus system to place advertising-block announcements in the buses, with contact numbers, so a female rider can report abuse in privacy and safety. On-board cameras are expensive, but not as expensive as lawsuits.

The extant posted lists of "unacceptable" behaviors on the busses and at transit stops, while well-thought-out and extensive, does not include prohibition of the man-handling of fellow passengers.

Riders need to be aware that such attacks begin by slow nudging or pushing into the woman's space, and then careful, secret extension of fingers or feet. It can even, among standing males, include touching the female with the crotch.

Please address this problem, as I know our excellent transit and police services, and all our caring public officials, will be eager to do. 

Thank you."

CC To Community Leaders, Sheriff's Office, Transit and School leaders.

Positive Reinforcement.

Okay, time to stop picking on ALL the locals.

The readers of this blog split right down the middle - the ones that want to gut me and take my eyeballs out - and the ones that are cheering, "Go get em! About time SOMEBODY said it!"

But - more and more people up here are getting it. Fishermen are willing to fight to stop catch-and-release. Loggers are beginning to understand careful forest care and the danger of corporations and capitalism. Farmers are making lives better for their animals because their kids are begging them to stop trading off cruelty for profit. Everybody's beginning to realize we CAN have a different future - and whether you believe in an afterlife or not, we have a chance to make heaven or hell right here, where we all are.

People are discovering that being a liberal means being unafraid, all-inclusive, and sharing everything. And the more we share, the more there is. Life should be a party and a journey, not fear and anger. This is a NICE planet - the one we evolved for - and all its creatures should have a chance. 

And... we all know 'em - there's the former bad guys who just want to WIN. And if our side is winning - and folks, just face it, no matter how long it takes, the liberal folks ALWAYS win - there's conversion going on because a lot of Americans just want to be on the winning side.

We CAN be taught.

(And don't come on an start a fight with a liberal, okay? The nice people have learned that it's okay to be pissed off - and not put up with crap. And we're better educated and just plain smarter - and we actually KNOW history, and not some cartoon version of it. We'll embarrass you in public. Don't do that to yourself. Or your family.)

How The Logging Industry Fucks Up

Jeeze. Don't get on me and try to tell me how the logging interests are good for everything (Oh, and don't even TRY the crap of telling me "enviromentalists cause urban sprawl." Not everybody is dumb enough to believe the lies you tell yourselves. 

I'm not BLIND. 

Every town the chop-boys can get near a town with the clearcuts - admitting, in so many words, that the sound of a tree tearing down gets their 'nads all tingly - they take down everything, and then shoot the panicky wildlife that tears into town. They love killing shit for amusement. It gets 'em off.

Old, peaceful, starving bears. Plots to kill starving mom and kid cougar (we saw what you did there). Whatever herbivore that wanders into view.

Whop down the wetland on a nice town road, because you thought you could build a truck-washing station there (that would sit and rot as soon as Rayonier had ripped everything out and moved on). It's amazing your ass wasn't fined. 

And now trying to hit every decent tree in town. WTF? Even the campground shade? If you LIKE deserts, why don't you move to Arizona? Or are you so desperate to squeeze every last dollar out of the place? Whose idea was it that you didn't have enough picnic space in the park? Had to get your hands on that, too, did you?

Well, why not? Clallam Bay had a chance to actually start getting into real tourism and entertainment, and we had just gotten rid of one junk-yard, and some moron comes along and builds an even BIGGER one.

And no doubt thinks he's being an industrial tycoon. These people have junkyard minds.

And junkyard hearts.

P.S. No, capitalism is NOT socialism - eat eat eat eat crash move on is not take out put in take out put in, etc. 

There are no more frontiers. You have to whip down the stick trees to make enough palettes to ship in the shit from China, with its cheap, non-unionized labor. We're not going to Mars, moron. There is no air there. You can't run a planetary atmosphere. You're fucking the one up on the one planet you evolved to fit. 

And it's MINUS 67 degrees on Mars. I don't think you can BRING enough hoodies.

And sitting down and "respectfully" debating with you? I don't respect you. You'll kill me and everything and everybody I love, for a buck and a tingle. I would no more debate economy and environments with you, former high-school hero, than I would debate science with a creationist - or a chemtrailer.

Of course, those "nice, middle-class Americans" you claim are "making everything better" are shoveling their kids into a corporate war for pay. And cheering the war like it was a football game. And crabs-in-a-bucketing every thinking, hopeful, trying kid they can get their hands on. I live here, too. And I'm not deaf, either. The school has lots of football uniforms and a big field - but no arts, music, graphics are dance. So much for YOUR futures.

Logging Camp Whores and Live Trolls

Wow. I got a live troll - spouting the right-wing Facebook arguments, like he was reading it from an online script - complaining that in this blog I'd called the wives of loggers "whores."

My dears, NO feminist would use the word "whore" as an insult for women; sex workers need a union.

Just as no lefty would call a Vietnam vet a "druggie." Please. We've finally gotten on the way to legalizing marijuana.

However - I DID quote a person who fifty years ago was a victim of the logging industry bullies. SHE was the one who called the old gang "Logging Camp Whores." (Well, she IS a church-goin' woman. They DO use the word "whore" as an insult, because that's the way their system works.)

I was just reporting some interesting and spicy language from one of your own abused. Sooner or later, bullies get theirs.

The troll, by the way, admitted he'd been listening to predictions of the end of the world for 50 years. Fifty years we've been trying to tell these morons, and they're bragging about being short-sighted?

Oh, well. I guess they'll just have to feel. How's the weather out where you are?

Somebody's Watching

The other day on Facebook - trying to get caffeinated, again - I snorted about a recent story: "I'll bet a Chinese dinner there's a clearcut in there somewhere."

Some journalist (a real one) must be watching my feed:

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023235343_mudslideovercutxml.html

Before the blatting about "Oh, that's not a good study!" starts, people are showing up on Facebook bitching about how the logging companies are treating them like collateral damage. Study THAT.

The local paper that's supporting this mess? Prediction: it's going to end up being one of those local-color handouts you get at the restaurant where the stuffed elk head - full of chemicals and godlets-know-WHAT parasites - hangs over your food. 

So far its editorial page has collapsed into two versions of - probably unpaid - Erma Bombecks, and photos of logging truck "convoys" that the dumbest of the locals are so excited about. One of them was going on about how the town gets no respect, and how some logger gave toys or something to kids (what? You thought I was going to read this stuff in DETAIL?).

Of COURSE he did. Industrial resource-rippers think they're the POINT, and only care for their own. As soon as the corporations get every last bit of what they came for any pump the resulting cash into overseas accounts, wait for the whining - these people care for nothing but themselves and their immediate circle. They're beginning to realize they might NOT be the good guys - and the horrible history of environmental mistreatment in the forestry industry is coming out of the dark into the light where everybody can see it. No stuffed animals - originally alive or not - are going to save that.

Hey, dancing around waving in ecstasy at bad leaders ended up with the Germans having to hang their heads over and admit their pasts, too. Bad is bad. 

And that wetland the local doofus clearcut? There's skunk cabbage up in it.

Garbage minds at work.

Might be the right timing to send that to somebody, and see if we can get his ass fined for watershed damage. Let him stick to putting fences up around a big chunk of downtown and filling it with crap, while the best the locals can do in protest is help the kids put fish art on the fence.

We no sooner get rid of one garbage-head, than we get another one. Lord, this is like that episode of Stinz, about the spite fences. I live in a comic book, I swear.

I need a T-shirt: "I told you so."

Yes, I need that T-shirt.

Once again, someone was telling me this blog makes people angry. GOOD.

If it makes you angry, it means you're a bad person doing bad things. Too bad, now everybody knows. 

Other people were trying to whine about the clear-cutting catastrophe as though they'd just discovered it.

I warned you. I told you so.

Other people are suffering flooding. And wind exposure.

I told you so.

You've destroyed the future of your communities and your children, because you've let the ego-driven boy culture - that enjoys the sound of suffering and destruction, and is scared to death of everything - destroy your future.

I told you so.

Too fucking bad. One doesn't have to feel sorry for the weak, the mean, the cruel, the cowardly. You asked for it, you got it.

I told you so. 

Good stuff and bad stuff

Good stuff first! I'd like to thank County Commissioner Mike Doherty and various other parts of Clallam County and the Bus system for fixing a problem that could have gotten very nasty. Okay, this is just a small problem, but hey, it shows how things can get done.

This problem was bearable, but as gas prices go up and the busses become truly packed day after day, it was getting not just horrid, but dangerous. 

Admittedly, I used scare tactics: "The Sappho bus stop - after an hour on the bus, everybody who has to make the next bus connection between Forks, Port Angeles and Clallam Bay is filling up the woods nearby with human waste! We have many foreign travelers now - we could have cholera or typhoid!"

Which, I know, is over the top, and I did it on purpose. But it's true.

Mike emailed that he'd started talking to the county, and they'd come up with a $15,000 estimate for a pit toilet. They'd be working on it.

BUT - when I rode the bus last time, there was a porta-potty at the park-and-ride.

So thank you for whoever was involved to help keep the woods clean and people from getting sick.

And to the bus-drivers, whom I have seen wedge a moment into their tight transfer schedule to let people use the toilet.

it's just a little thing - but we have a very responsive county government, and it listens. Thank you, folks!

**********************

Now for the bad - let's just put up the Times Magazine Cover. 

Cartoons speak for themselves. So here's my comment. I didn't color it or nothing. 

Hunting Like Clean People

Hm. While the clear-cut behind town goes on, and starving, misplaced predators have no home or food for winter, I've noticed many missing-small-pet posters around town. Coincidence? Really?

In Seattle, at a ghost-hunting club dinner, I met a clean hunter. He told me what one mountain-lion hunter said he did with the "cats" he shot out of trees (oh, how brave.).

"He said he just uses the skin to train his dogs."

Before you wonder WTF? remember that's how an entire resource industry works. As it comes to its end, as the resources die and fail, the resource pays for the machines to rip out the resource, to pay for the machines, to kill the forest, to pay for the system, to....

These moron hunters are hunting for FUN. For AMUSEMENT. They're like their fellows, the catch-and-release fishers. They torment and kill animals for the fun of it. Not because they're hungry, or need food. And then, when the resources or animals are unbalanced and trying to find a way to survive, they strike out at them and accuse them of infringing on human lives.

There are even books about an "attacking" ocean, as though the seas that let us breathe are some kind of enemy. Everybody is our enemy in our eyes, as though we're run by some kind of space-clearing bacteria that took over our brains. We seem to need to live in a desert with only a few tame animals and plants around us. We live in horror that the world might be different than we want it to be. We're Douglas Adams's Cricket Robots. The end of one of the books says we all have to work together to "control the planet." Can you see the coming cliff we're going to all go off of?

The Clean Hunter told me he and his friends went out for spike bucks or elk, because they taste good and have tender meat. When they get one, they quarter the animal among the four of them. 

And then he said, "But I can't help it. I kill quick, with a neck shot, but I always feel guilty."

I told him he needed to thank and respect the animal, and that would help. I told him the native peoples of the Southwest would hang turquoise in the antlers of their deer brothers, whom they considered members of generous peoples who fed the humans. Perhaps having a ceremony of ritual thanks for the animal who had died to feed and clothe him and his friends and their families would help? The Makah considered the whale they brought in to be a Great Lady, coming to Feed The People, and they welcomed Her with ceremony, gratitude and even grief for Her sacrifice.

The young man told me Clean Hunters have a word for trophy dorks, with their megastore equipment. They called them "Cabelas," after the stores and catalogs. Cabelas just hunt for anything with horns. The Clean Hunter, when I explained that big antlers meant "My daughters are good milkers," and asked if it was a good idea to shoot the biggest, strongest herd bull, just to get off on it, said it was not.

Then I told him the Cabelas, and the people who thought the environment was there to rape, would take it all away from the Clean Hunters if they got the chance. They'd move on to something else to destroy, and leave the Clean with nothing. I told him he'd have to be active socially to stop it.

He admitted he just wanted to hunt and relax in the woods, but he got the point - if we don't all join politics and become activists, if the Good People do nothing - the Good People will lose.

I hope he thinks about it, and does something about it. Because if he doesn't, he won't have any more venison or elk to eat or share or respect. 

The developers are next.

Lastly, here's an article that puts together what I've been saying for a couple years. If somebody uses the phrase "job creation," they're up to no good.