funny, biting video

It takes a while to download, even on broadband, but it's worth it: Robert Newman's History of Oil. If you like Bill Hicks or other similar sharp satirists, you'll like this.

(EDIT: I'll never hear "bringing democracy to the Middle East" again without laughing...not that I could before, either ;>)

eating right, living intimately

My Lovely Housemate Paul turned me on to this excellent article about the "organic" food industry , written from both a practical and a philosophical point of view. Some interesting info in there about Whole Foods and other similar operations as well. Paul, a chef by training, has been doing a lot of research around making us "localvores" -- that is, getting as much as possible of the food we eat direct or semi-direct from local small producers, which are thankfully abundant around here. We're getting closer, in part because our local Co-op is very heavily into supporting local organic growers. It's still rather more expensive to "go local" than to buy the cheapest factory-farmed food we could get, but that may well change as the costs of transporting food long-distance starts to rise along with the cost of gasoline, diesel fuel, and petrochemical-based fertilizers and pesticides.

I want my local farmer neighbors to thrive -- they usually love what they do (no small farmer works because they want to get rich), they're good neighbors, they often produce unique stuff like heirloom livestock, fruits and veggies, a farm is much prettier to look at than condos, is healthy for the land (as long as it's not a factory-farm), and from a selfish perspective, they make stuff I absolutely need in order to live. There's also something very essential, very grounding, in our increasingly service-oriented society about having a certain critical mass of people who work with and know how to use their hands, who *make* things, and who live in intimate association with the land around them. It's not a romantic ideal -- anyone who's spent any time working on a farm will tell you that. It's not glamorous, or bucolic, or relaxing. It's damn hard work, for a very iffy return in financial terms, but I've come to firmly believe that it's also a necessary part of being in a sustainable society of human beings. The farther we get from our gardens, dairies, orchards and farms, the farther we get from some essential parts of the cycle of human life, and the more detached and vulnerable we get.

Not so long ago, when I lived in one mega-suburb and commuted hours daily to another, going from isolation to isolation to isolation, from air-conditioned house to air-conditioned car to air-conditioned office and back again, shopping at 11pm at night and spending most or all my daytime in a cubicle or windowless office, I had to *work* so hard in order to actually touch anything, to have intimate connection with anything of the natural world. The fact that I had to go out of my way to be connected meant that it often didn't happen, just as when I had to set aside special time to get any exercise, time that always seemed to be in such short supply. Heck, for a supposed pagan-earthy person, I'd go weeks or months without even knowing what phase the moon was in on any given day. Sure it's possible to live well in such an environment, but I found it so *hard* to do so. No wonder so many people feel isolated, seperate, apathetic, detached.

Do we all need to be farmers? Certainly not. It takes many kinds of people to make a healthy society, there's room for a lot of ways to live. But I'm realizing that being surrounded only by people who are largely detached, abstracted from the world around them, made it really hard for me to feel that sense of connection myself, no matter how much I wanted to. And I knew (or thought I knew) at least some of what I was missing. Imagine how much harder for all of the people who may have a vague sense of detachment, of missing something, but who don't have any real idea what they're missing. Yikes.

So support your local farmers, ask your local market what they do to buy from small local independent farms, and if they don't, if they'd be willing to give it a try. Even better, check out your local farmer's market if you have one, or get involved with a CSA and get the freshest, best-tasting food you've ever had, usually at a very good price, too. You, your community, and perhaps your life, will be better for it.

another video

This one from Lovely Housemate lylythe_strega's sister: 10 Things I Hate About Commandments. Oy.