The Merits of TVlessness.

In addition to despising car use, I avoid TV like a plague as the web makes it even more worthless than it was before.

I'm literally crosseyed from watching it too closely as a toddler in a reversal of the Mimirs well myth regarding Odin. He gave up an eye to drink from the wisdom well. I half wrecked sight to imbibe imbecility.

And it is mildly galling to see how much time my beloved lefty blogosphere devotes to TV drivel from hacks like Billious O'Biley as it is a reactive posture rather than leapfrogging ahead to excite yearning supporters of a progressive future on how to actually build it.

There is so much education to share on sustainability, clearing house options on how to disengage corporate encroachment and how to finish off the flailing, self destructive GOP with real exciting ideas on how to get off the ratrace oil consumer debt treadmill in a way that allows people to thrive and prosper.

If we generate excitement about a better future with resources at hand people will be thrilled with the empowerment. It is what Liddle Hart would call the indirect method.

Knitting the Fabric of Community.

The corporate world needs to see us as little walking profit centers and finds it convenient to herd us into isolating demographic corrals to expedite sales and quarterly earnings.

Naturally this has little to do with our actual world and long standing bent to forming community and some succumb to these pernicious promptings and fall into a stylized cartoonish solipsism.

One direct and essential way to begin a national reclamation is to turn away from these hollow promptings and toward one another.

I got started on this blogging adventure because a wise friend who is also a shrewd investor told me about a visionary market analyst who has proposed the theory of 'Little Brother' as the greatest threat to the lying sloppy content oligopoly such as ABC News.

Google's 'pipeline' business model allows nearly anyone to report news, and so on and based on my preferences, the citizen blogosphere is leaving the Rupert Murdoch model behind.

Why wait for them to figure out charming satirical whimsy wedded to thought provocation when Citizen Boo is already on it?

When I lived in Seattle, I was acquainted with employee number 5 at Amazon. He left and ended up wealthy, but we'd have these conversations about 'Internet ubiquity' based on the number of search engine citations for something.

A slimier version dreamed up by marketing shills is now called 'going viral'. The ubiquity I propose is a more ethical, deliberate and thoughtful thing that intends to unite rather than exploit by 'viral' niche compartmentalization..

I try to be conscientious about serving my constituent readers in several areas of discourse because I see potentially uniting commonalities between progressive political bloggers, anti consumerist initiatives like SF Compact, fans of Avante Garde Jazz and the alt rock night club demi monde.

I readily move in all those spheres and a few more and when I see some mosaic pattern of interrelated community cohere through my modest efforts it lends a sense of purpose to my crackpot life.

The Merits of Carlessness.

I have always organized my life around a pre-fossil fuel human scale. I live in cities whenever possible as all other environs in most of America are geared to auto ownership.

I'm currently stuck in a quaint, upscale metro Boston suburb and haven't felt so isolated in decades. What with the exceptionally poor quality of public transportation, I may as well be in the North Pole.

This will improve with the end of winter as I do have a bicycle and am looking for some workable initial living space in town to resume life there.

To me, the advantages of a carless life greatly outweigh the transient inconveniences. For example, there are a suite of expenses from insurance, car loan payments, fuel and repair costs and depreciation that do not impact me at all. Then I also lose stress from attempting to drive around the area's horribly congested roadways.

It might surprise you to know how many friends I have who also opt for no car or minimal use of the things. And yet they all live fairly productive lives and will be well equipped to handle any challenges ahead as the oil era winds down.

There are a growing number of game plans to shift away from oil but none offer the elegance of simply abandoning personal motor vehicles until some significant oil less mode takes hold. The biodeisel option may not work to produce the real quantities of fuel needed to run the planetary vehicle fleet without causing even more catastrophic problems.

The utter configuration of land use patterns, such as vast car dependent suburbs may well be one of the biggest dislocation hazards staring at us if the Oil era tanks.

More efficient public transit infrastructure will eventually salvage environs like the droll little suburb that now houses me but the real remote places will be left in the lurch.