F3 addenda

After this morning's fiasco, the third day of telephoning the La Poste service numbers and getting shoved from phone to phone, and finding they all know nothing, or, only what WE know, (nothing), and spending this afternoon trying to get on with our project here in Slovenia, and calling the company we ordered aggregate from Monday, and being told tonight, 'ena ura', one hour, I stayed around the site, till well after dark, set up lamps so the delivery would be hassle free, and, no, with about eight degrees of frost, and a three hour wait I gave up, went home to the apartment where, with two heaters going and a power cord melting down when we switched a griller on to finish a fine cheese souffle, and the temperature just creeping over 15°C, I decided I just can't give a fuck anymore, about anything, and glimpsing on the CNN news the major industrialists of the civilised world have just put up a proposal to do something about climate change by 2050 and I think...yeah, who gives a fuck? But they stymied Donald Trump's attempt to build a golf course on a fine piece of bird country in Scotland, so, someone up there does..... I've been rained out on all my attempts to get to Scotland, DT too...... nuff said

F3

We've been awaiting the arrival of a new computer, being sent from France, for a variety of good reasons, and the freighters have a very cute blobby window which pops into our life and allows us to track our parcel; well, that's the idea, however, the tracking blob does not seem to be attached/connected to any sentient lifeforms at the other end, and for a week we've watched a 'no progress' situation develop in our heads, mainly, as phoning Slovenia and Germany, the two likely transits, get us zero, and the French end doesn't know anything at all. Wouldn't you like to be able to sell a well-decorated box of nothing to some freight giant for half a million, and go out and pose on the proceeds? There are too many such events going on for me to be content with the state of affairs. What really troubles me is having shown us an apparently 'instantaneous' update of our progress, the process of being compensated for these idiots losing our computer will take three months... you don't believe it? That's what it took to get recompensed for a digital camera sent France - Italy, when the clerk INSISTED we describe the contents, a detail specifically to avoid at all costs when sending to Italy, and which brings me to the obvious; shouldn't all our purchases be in plain brown wrappers instead of blaring to all what's inside? Well, we don't get to control how something is wrapped, but we'd sure like to change how ALL of the freight systems in Europe operate, but don't hold your breath for positive news.... Nuff said.

Blog I

'm indignant. Is this century 21? Are we beset with 'Branding' everywhere? Well, if these brands are so big and important, (to the point of seeing all the minor competitors off the adjacent shelves..) isn't there an obligation for those big names to make sure their place in the shelves is always full/well stocked/at least some stock to choose? It is not high summer where I am, but the Raid brand of 'plug in insect repellant' which I hate for it's market position, is currently out of stock in the four supermarkets I checked this morning. We are in the middle of vinyards, which are in the middle of the harvest/winemaking cycle, and on these progressively cooler evenings we are being increasingly occupied with an insect population keen on a warmer space, and human protrusions to land on make a night's sleep a bit disturbed. I personally will slap my head till my ears ring, but my partner is rendered miserably itchy for days, reacting badly to all insect bites, so in the name of peace we installed a Raid device in the next room, which deals to quietening the whole apartment, and gets us both a night's sleep. Until now, that is. The tiny bottle of liquid, half the size of the one it came with (whose plot is that?) expired too rapidly; the big bottle special is no longer available, the ridiculously expensive small bottle refill is off the shelves, and short of paying for a second plug in unit with the tiny bottle, which is in stock in one supermarket, we stew in our insect bothered sleepless nights, and Raid, bless their black little hearts, cannot be emailed in any shape or form in my corner of Europe, and yet no alternatives exist anymore. There is a malicious monopoly, and I particularly object to big names not caring about their customer(s). A similar event occurred when we needed an accessory or two for a Mac computer, and the french Mac dealership we've dealt with in the past would not send to Slovenia. (Both EU countries). I cannot start to imagine the time and difficulty involved in ordering a non-Slovenian keyboard from a Slovenian distributor, nor the complexity of detailing the connection cables between totally dissimilar language sets for such terminology. This might seem nitpricking to some readers, but let me assure you, Slovenia has no communications networks in place that even recognize Mac OS, and it is only Mac's incredibly proactive processors that allow us to operate such computers here. Yet read Technology Review, the 100+ year publication of Massachusets Institute of Technology, and their contributors hardly can concieve of a person who would continue to use a PC, when iTunes/iPhone/iEverything is rampantly dominating the technology market where it matters...(you do the math).
Am I alone here? Do you plod on with a computer handed on from your cousin, a dot matrix printer and a dial up modem? We have an A3+ HP printer, with a rack of A3 papers, cards, photographic paper, A4 ditto, plus 6x4 photopaper for snapshots, an Epson scanner, an iPod we just drove the car over, and the iPod runs the best of the bunch; we can't get the HP to print dead straight on the page, and we waste close to 50% of our paperstocks, (something I recall when I first employed specialists in desktop publishing in the early 90s), and our scanner has just been redeemed from the scrapheap (15 months new?) by a third party software upgrade, which mollifies me a little, but honestly, HP AND Epson can go whistle when we seek a new printer, and scanner, as big names in the 21st Century are 99% bullshit and 1% the goods. Nuff said.

Blog H4

What do you know about hygiene? A fair few years ago I ran a small and entertaining pub in a ski region, and had a funky little restaurant that specialised in cool jazz on the soundsystem, backgammon evenings with fondue, and some pretty crazy nights prompted by beer tanker driver strikes, plumbing explosions and other hazards of the funky pub trade. I also had a crazy local Swiss guy who brought me his backdoor special sausage which graced my pizzas, and I'm sure contained at least 50% donkey meat which, as anyone knows, makes the BEST sausage, along with a load of other secret ingredients. No one ever got sick from the food at my place; and anyone drinking up to and over a reasonable limit got supplied a free meal to keep things in perspective. So when the health inspectors came and impounded my collection of knives, all nice handmade stuff I'd gathered over a few years of kitchening, all with rosewood handles, as WOOD  was capable of harbouring GERMS, and took my superb fine grained beech chopping boards, as they were the same health hazard, and insisted I replace them all with plastic/Polyshitelene products, I got out of the trade; they even closed up the Swiss guy; Horror! Donkey meat?  I have never cooked in a commercial kitchen since. I've been a maitre d', waiter and bartender, and I did a lot of restaurant and bar fitouts, BUT ONLY AFTER THEY ANNOUNCED THAT PLASTIC WAS A HEALTH HAZARD IN COMMERCIAL RESTAURANTS. I've been a wood person all my life; sure I like a bit of hitech here and there, but if I can resurrect an old piece of wood, or age a new piece, or reuse some plank or other, I'll go for it, as I see all of that melamine/PVC/plastic imitation stuff costing way more than the real stuff every time. My partner has just complained of the stench emanating from her plastic chopping boards, but will not use the wood ones I made for her as they're too beautiful. I'll go out tomorrow and find the oldest hunk of cast aside spruce or beech I can, and trim it down to a board she will use. Expensive? Hygiene? You do the math. Nuff said.

Blog H3

Reality check; here in Europe, where there is no sense of environmental awareness AT ALL, we've had our thermostat not control the central heating for the last four weeks. The result; we've been forced to open windows to keep the temperature down to bearable, while warming the poor old universe again; now, do we pay for the two hundred litres of fuel we've used in one month? Figure another four months of winter.... we've asked, as the technician said on his second visit, 'it's all fixed', for the system to be shut down. That happened tonight. The building is cold in a matter of minutes. This apartment is owned by an electrician; there is one power plug in any room max; one in the kitchen, behind the fridge, one in the bedroom, behind the wardrobe, and our floors are criss-crossed by power boxes and leads trying to get electricity to where we need it. We also have a thousand bucks worth of perishable building materials which need storage at 19.5 - 20°C, and there is, so help me, no insulation anywhere in the structure. Welcome to YOUR reality; ours too. Forget the idea of care/education/values for the environment; you can be camped out where you like; we're on the same planet. Do you think it is worth going to the local council and asking who sets the standards for heating? Duh? Nuff said.

Blog N2

Ever had the notion to live in New Zealand? Do you have some nice pictures in your mind of those isles? I lived there for more than fifty years of my life, but fell in love with a foreigner, the process of which, naturally enough requiring to discover this new heart-course, meant I went and lived in her world for a while. Great; I'm totally happy with that; returned to briefly settle up my affairs, and now I live away from NZ; the upshot of which is a set of rules preclude me from ever getting a pension from those microcephalic prisoners of the bureaucratic gaggle of idiots known as the New Zealand Government. Which begs the question 'what happened to the IQ of the population there, and how did they let whatever intelligence they had left fall under the spell of the worthless dross who've finagled their way into control of what should have been a fine little country?'
I first had suspicions about this when I was asked to run for a political party there when I was just twenty years old, in the mid sixties. (Apparently the country needed 'people like me'...) About that time too, I read William A Robinson's book about his cruise around the world as a young man in a small yacht, where he disparaged the administration of small Pacific islands by the low grade of bureaucrat New Zealand had chosen to inflict on them. I'd also witnessed my sole encounter with assisting the NZ law, concerning some criminal activity I had happened to have a possible lead about, and saw the entire effort of the police turned upon my family. There is only so much one can take of this sort of bullshit. I took it for far too long. But I had to be living there to meet this love of my life.. Yes, NZ is a great little place, but it is totally fucked by the pricks who run it; it always was, it always will be. Visit it if you will, but don't stay there. Life's little twists and turns are not assisted by fifty years of paying them some enormous taxes. They're thieves there. Watch out. Nuff said.

Blog J2

Since I wrote Blog J, the golden girl has retired from athletics and returned her Olympic Gold Medals. New event? The Retro Olympic Ceremony? The Silvers get a Gold, and some really good athlete, unable to get a podium ever, gets pulled off the delivery truck he now drives, to get a Bronze which would have changed the course of his/her career had this all happened four years ago.... the golden girl has, of course spent all her money, soaked the contracts and endorsements, shed a tear for her honesty, and returns to her mansion in the sun. All the big time drug people I ever encountered were above the law, by being smarter lawyers, or crushed by the law, being pulled off their luxurious perches by loose lipped friends and the police special branch, or OF the law, being police in need of an extra buck and distributing their drug recoveries further downstream for a wee profit. So how much are we achieving here? The joy of watching an athlete surpass a pinnacle is a big deal; ALL the drug companies have experts formulating ALL the drugs, and ALL the regulators have ALL the athletes being tested for SOME  of the effluents of these substances. Lets forget it? Let those who want to take drugs do so; those who don't, just refrain, and those too young, just continue to do what they like, and perhaps we can have those non-drugged athletes just doing their thing because they like doing it, and those who want to be on the podium no matter what just go ahead and do it, and we can admire WHO WE CHOOSE, as long as the TV coverage just doesn't cover the first three, as, I fear, it is the media's idolatry of the front three that has caused this nonsense in the first place. Athletics needs to be mixed with money? Money needs winners? Winners need drugs? Drugs need proponents? Proponents need money? Just do the math. I want to watch athletics. Nuff said.

Blog P2

Years ago I was always fascinated by the cartooning ability of Giles, always a dry and cockney accented wit of observation, and THE image of his, that is indelibly printed in my grey matter, is of an arab sheik in a Cadillac convertible, followed by a fleet of totally veiled wives on motor scooters, and his shouting 'once more around the block oh loved ones, we've got to use this stuff up somehow'...... and of all the mixed up images I hold in my head, the promotion of Dubai as a sports venue, with western women, especially, in their regular clothing, going about their professional golf and tennis for staggering amounts of prize money, while the wives of any spectators of a local variety will be invisible by their absence, and if you are so lucky as to see one, she'll be head to foot in black; a prospect of 'interest' I place at the absolute bottom of my scale of things I must see in my life. I've been to Egypt, Aden, and a fair whack of muslim countries elsewhere too, and nowhere do I see the woman so morbidly represented as in the oil rich countries. I love watching WTA Tennis; there are few 'steroidal' sights there, and I love track and field, and have watched it with interest for fifty years; I've seen Abebe Bikila, Kip Keino, and Heike Drexler, and where and when are these arab nations going to show us that their women measure up to ours? Every time you fill up your tank you are supporting repressive regimes; largely Muslim in nature, though I haven't assessed Brazil yet and THEY'RE getting bigger in oil; how about repression? I think they can't control the beaches, if you watch the volleyball, but the rest of the nations in oil are absolutely no fun; and I mean NO FUN. I used to hang out with anyone; numbered South Afrikaaners, arabs, knuckle hard South Carolinians, Kiwi motorcycle riders, Australian cons and car salesmen, black soul singers, Singaporean electronics aces, ethical drug salesmen, AND a Mr Big, (who ended headless and handless in a Yorkshire quarry) and all had that element of fun in their lives, but nowhere did I see an arab woman in any social context, and while the odd Balkan lady raised an eyebrow to me, in an only slightly Muslim atmosphere, the majority of my life has been denied the prospect of a dialogue with an arab woman. Power. It's another form of fascism. It's alive and well, despite heavily subsidised acts of world war to eliminate it, and everytime I think of Giles' picture, or Dubai Golf Classics, I realise very little is changing, and it needs to, I'm afraid. Nuff said.

Blog N2

Since my first 'news' blog, there's been another classic snafu in Bangladesh; people dying like flies, unaided, unreported, unadministered, villages with '70 daeths' have over 500 dead, unburied, or perhaps in a shallow grave in a nearby field; have you seen the Bangladeshi Parliament? Go look. I say, give the people cellphones, let them call their own salvation, as there is more good stuff happening with cellphone technology in third world countries than between ALL the ears of the administrators. Give these people a voice; not CNN. Give them a way of calling out; you'd be amazed what a peasant can do with a cellphone, and don't give me any shite about 'support'; check the number of cellphones in the hands of peasants now, and check what they are achieving with them. I'm not going to give you the references; you go look; you go get involved; you be amazed. Nuff said.

Blog Z2

Spent Sunday across the border in Zagreb; for years I've heard jokes about cities in the South Pacific being 'closed' or 'put your watch back ten years', but on the fringes of Europe, Sunday, not a decent cafe/snackbar open; a petrol station offers as much as is available in the rest of Zagreb on a Sunday. I always wondered why the incredible supply of Catholic churches in this region had so little patronage on a Sunday, yet the rules of the land decree everything be closed. The region is brimming with modern cars; why not some modern life? We found an unmemorable cafe with a couple of yesterday's pastries for sale, the tables wobbled, and the other tables were occupied by chainsmokers; we were clipped about ten percent on the change, which my partner , always accurate, corrected them on, but this land is queueing up to be let into the EU. Slovenia, already in, has a bit more on offer, at least the very low priced restaurants are open Sundays, but it doesn't take long to exhaust the possibilities culinarily around here; we've got a couple of favourite places, but they test us regularly with poor quality; regulars deserve a bit extra I reckon, but we get the opposite. So we dine in; treat ourselves when we can to the good comestibles, which are NEVER regularly stocked, and keep our treats for the odd trip to Italy or France. But if you are in the Balkans, cancel sunday; unless you enjoy spending time in a church sharing the incomprehensible with the incomprehensible. Nuff said.

Blog H2

This is an afterthought of Blog V2; last Tuesday, after two successful removals of the vet's row of stitching, we finally created a dressing/truss which Holly, our superactive little rat, could not rapidly remove, and hence, we have been able to supervise the so far successful healing of the large scar left from surgery, to remove a growth that these little critters are prone to. Now I have to watch in awe as she contends with the maddening itch that lurks under every dressing; we have replaced it once, after day two, with a slightly less restrictive truss, but she, a four legged beastie, still has to suffer the destabilisation of her front half. Add to this the hopeless task of reflexively scratching her itches through the dressing, and you start to get a picture of the burden this little creature is coping with. I am filled with admiration. Cats and dogs, being bigger, withstand and take human style dressing proceedures; I've seen dogs and cats live with plaster casts and all sorts of encumbrances by just taking it easy; not so for a rat. You object that I add the lowly rat to the 'man's best friend' notions propagated for cats and dogs? Considering the shorter lifespan of rats, and having a sixty year history of a few dogs and many cats, I rate Holly as equal to any of them for fortitude, stamina, and sheer determination to be her hyperactive little self; she almost never relaxes, but has succombed to some sympathetic little massages since the surgery, and I hope she will continue to be so soothed after this is all over. But being herself is her strong point. Her sister too is a character of totally different perameters, and only goes to underline the amazing variety of personality one may find in this perrenial rodent. ('Rongeur' is the French term; I prefer it.) It is the constant, (almost) concern for this little critter's progress that has had me design a dressing system for tiny beasties, which is formed from virtually indestructible thread (stronger, more resistant than Kevlar is available now) in a series of four point adjustable loops, which can be set to anchor accurately the dressing on said tiny body, but allow full movement, the space to continue to scratch and groom, and, when it finally gets chewed through, can be replaced with an identical, low cost replacement. (Aha! low cost? I hear you crow? Can I describe the investment in time and effort to get this process reasonably right the THIRD FUCKING TIME?) Dear readers, necessity is the mother of invention. I have the material readily available from European sources. I have overcome our crisis, as getting this material would take longer than the healing of Holly entails, but I'd like to work with a Vet Supply Organization to get a suitable product into the surgeries of the world. Small stuff; great purpose. I will try. Nuff said.

E3

We don't use buses very much for getting about, but if we have a major voyage to make we always check the buses out, and this is a big shout out to EUROLINES, a French company who cover Europe, and for the three years we've had them on our list, have made fucking sure our chances of actually making any successful contact with them are fraught with failed emails and more unresponsive telephone lines than any organization we've struck that actually have a website up there in cyberspace. I presume these fuckers have identified a market amongst PEOPLE WITHOUT ANY OTHER FORM OF TRANSPORT, and have chosen to exercise there microcephalia on them, and any normal, sensible, 'alternative option'- conscious people who feel it is worthwhile to seek something other than a five dollar jet ticket are fair game for their ultra-studied indifference.
The trip in question is Paris-Zagreb, which pretty much passes by our door, in Slovenia, BUT THEY WON'T LET YOU GET OUT THERE. Instead THEY TAKE YOU TO THE NEXT COUNTRY, where I have to drive, through three toll/customs gates, EACH WAY, and fight my way through a congested, polluted city where the bus depot is. (Needless to say, there an't a bus....)
We can do the air trip, cheapest €35 option, but it goes via London, with a long wait for the connecting flight, and as my partner will be carrying a new Mac desktop computer, (read WMD) the thrill of hanging out in a London Airport for several hours, (you've been there recently? No luggage facilities anymore; you piss where you sit or you take the computer boxes with you into the cubicle, in the john, two floors and several kilometres from your departure area) and one starts to realise just what a hold those pricks in Eurolines have over you.
I feel like I am in the real 'war on terror', and it is only the impossibility of owning a couple of vehicles in Europe that causes us this angst in the first place; we'll take a car back to France, sell it there, and bring the money back to buy a car here; re-homologation we have done once, an astounding experience requiring detailed contact with all the thicknesses of bureaucracy here or there, and we'll avoid doing it again. This is one Europe, but it is controlled by the motor trade/mafia who want you to have as much contact with them as you can possibly imagine, and the insurance? Don't ask...while we see the future, OUR future, as having as little possible contact with these cretins as possible, as the only viable way to survive into my children's dotage....
But the problem remains; we need to get from there to here, and short of following my partner in a second motorvehicle, there is no logistical way of making a sensible, brief, (24 hours for 1500kms?) trip in this century, and RAIL say three days, and that is TWO hotels, FOUR taxis, and godknwswhatfuckingabout, so..........
Where do you think your future is headed? Do you think living in the South Pacific might be a safe number? Free of environmental catsarsetrophy there are we? If you have a permanent job somewhere, please look closely at how you do it, and please, if you deal with the public, remember they chose to come and see you (probably) and in that case it behooves you, as a paid member of this muddle we live in, to give them an easy run; it will go on down the line, I can assure you; good news spreads fast too y'know.....
Nuff said.

Blog G2

Great Burdock Oil; someone told me it was good for a dry scalp, which I get, and while in Ljubljana I spotted an industrial size pharmacy, and asked the bright tight thing for the aforesaid oil, and she went straight to it, which is commendable in comparison to the average staffer in the average pharmacy. I paid my seven Euros, or somesuch, and tried it out; yuck! Not good! I felt contaminated! So I got my magnifier out and read the label. Not the title, which was clearly redable in 2 languages in 15 and 10 point type, but that tiny stuff; about one or two points in size; I can just make it out under a ten times magnifier; parafinum liquidum; olea europaea; isoproply myristate; arctium lappa; tocopheryl acetate; rosmarinus officinalis; lavandula angustifolia; propyparaben; propylene glycol; BHT; ascorbyl palmitate; glyceryl stearate; glyceryl distearate; citric acid. So, a little miffed, I checked Wiki for some info, and 'arctium lappa' is the name of the plant in question, OK, but there is no actual reference to the oil of said great burdock being in the bottle. I definitely asked for the oil. The label in big type says it; the small print has no valid reference to it being in the mix. I don't go to Ljubljana very often, but Slovenia is the only country I've ever lived in that has no allowance for ANY alternative medicines, not even homoeopathy or biochemics, (yet a big 'wellness' tourism industry?) but anywhere in this world where I ask for an oil of a specific variety I expect to get it; not some trumped up concoction that I would not put on my rusty pliers, let alone my precious noddle. I look forward to a curt, well-directed tirade and a refund. Nuff said.

F2

I am astounded that any white man could deride the badly named 'Bollywood' film industry when the 'original and best' Hollywood has such an output of unmitigated, relentless crap.
Maybe the 'made for TV' industry is estranged from the big H, but where I live I get a non stop homogenised supply of not even B grade American movies on my redily available Slovenian and Croatian TV channels; tonight, true to form, three military films, one a series, but uniformly (pun intended) pulp literature on celluloid, low grade half hearted war films with great prejudice displayed... I'm sorry; I have the remote; off goes the TV. If I can be bothered waiting till after midnight I might cop an early Jim Jarmusch, or another B&W gem from way back, but these never get aired when my brain is up. I'm starting to realise an early to bed routine which I was never known for. If I had a choice, I'd plump for the Wim Wenders/Werner Herzog/Lars von Trier style of films; there is a ton of distinctive talent out there that cannot be replicated by the Tom Cruise/Nicholas Cage/Harrison Ford style of same old same old, and yet we have a supply chain drizzling this turgid effluent into our homes every night, without anyone crying 'Stop!' CNN have a similar mindset, and they are a 'news' channel, yet, repetition of yesterday's news is, to my mind, not; OK, they're Time Warner; Ted Turner was a brash and pushy bloke when I met him in the early seventies; now he has allowed his product to become the very shadow of what he set out to create; Ted's a yachtsman, but you'd hardly know that any sailing boats were currently engaged in a variety of really fascinating races; that one of the big names in yachting had retired in the face of a doping scandal, and that there are more life threatening challenges being overcome every day on the waves, if you relied on CNN for your daily dose of sports coverage. So call me sour if you like, but I cannot imagine a bigger network of people than the CNN crowd being 'everywhere' on this globe and specifically avoiding most of the interesting stuff, and specifically targeting the mundane and tediously repetitive low interest nonsense that they manage to fill our day with. (And will someone tell me that a pair of 'anchors' is necessary to deliver this drivel, with their bright smile at the intro of every fresh disaster?) There is a new software coming up now called 'Twitter', a term describing the utterly lightweight chat that emanates from low intellect social butterflies of the 20th century. Facebook I can understand, but from hanging out with the slacker crowd a few years back and hearing the perennial question 'what're you up to?' and the standard 'nothing' or 'not much', as acceptable dialogue between acquaintances, I think it is fair to assume we have seen the death of creativity as we knew it, and we now are well on the path to blinding, grinding mediocrity. Nuff said.

Blog V2

I've known a few bods in my time with the desire to be a vet; vocation and viability is often a questionable factor; in France, you have to be 'connected' to get into a veterinary school; I've known people achieve a double degree in Veterinary Science, but, having spent the best part of a day getting a dodgy lump removed from one of our two rats, with six visits to two vets, and just completing a return trip to the successful vet to have the stitches renewed, as small furry animals seem to be more active than even vets imagine, I am beginning to reflect on all these folk who want to care for animals, and if I could ask one thing of veterinary science it would be to get the art of dressing wounds down to a more precise science than I have witnessed today. Perhaps I am a pioneer in the field of casual observation of veterinary problems, but I'd wager I'm not the first to be assured of a traumatic evening as we collectively try to keep a dressing on this little rat. I have taken in all the advertising on the walls of the waiting rooms and surgeries; take it from me if you haven't been in one recently, there is a huge market out there that the companies are identifying and targeting; Pfizer, Hills, Eukanuba, Bosch, they're all there, so please, can we get this 'effective dressing' system sussed befor I get much older. Perhaps I am meant to be the one who pioneers it; I'm just raising awareness, as I'm fed up with the hundred odd kilometers and the many Euros I've shelled out today for what I can only describe as a job uncompleted and mischievously lacking in finesse. Whatever product or service you plan to build your life around, for chrissakes make sure you complete the job; I don't want to labour the point, but if you want to put men on the moon, meals on wheels, or bandages on bodies, please assess the whole picture FROM DAY ONE, and continue to review the results of all that investment in your time and effort, and GET IT RIGHT. I've had spray on dressings on my many injuries and repairs for at least the last twenty years; today's experience with the rat was the worst of this twenty first century that I can recall, and if we are going back to bog primitive, can you at least make your bills reflect the last century too?
Nuff said.

E 2

Called up an old acquaintance on the other side of the globe yesterday; I needed some electronic data and he blathered on for an hour about a new pogo stick, and a vertical takeoff aircraft for personal use with four hundred horsepower.
I need to create a wind generator system for my new house, and he's telling me I need More Watts; whereas I see a future where we all learn to get along with less, he sees a future with more; and if his enterprise doesn't offer the 'mores' and 'pluses', (he thinks) he'll lose customers.
I searched hundreds of TVchannels this afternoon and could not find one programme with environmental interest; no wildlife/conservation/seascapes/global warming/Cuddly-animals-in-disappearing-trees/altenative-energies/solar-challenges........nothing to tell me anyone else is waking up to a dreadful new day with no future for our children. Do any of your children work in environmental sciences? I've got a Marine Biologist, and a Change Management Specialist. And a hospitality management graduate. Two out of three ain't bad, but what do we all want? Is the 500 HP Porsche Cayman still your objective? Really? There's a man with a gun pointed straight at your children's head. What will you do? Have the .0001% of concerned population got to do the whole job?
Extreme futures need extreme measures.
Conservative futures need conservative measures.
I feel the world needs to be a bit more realistic; a hundred bucks a barrel for a product just pumped out of the ground? Fucks the ground, but what oilco puts the earth back to pristine after he's raped it? So who's costing 30% of that barrel for reparations to the globe it is polluting? Who wants to be accountable? Who should be accountable? Is there any correlation with the christian work ethic and the nation that consumes the most of these resources and the motto 'in God we trust'?? Is some hopeful character praying out there???
I love technical fabrics; I wear the whole gamut of sport technical clothing; layers 1,2,&3, and yet I know that duPont is one of the guiltiest polluters on this globe; they built their factories before and during the second world war, (parachutes were an early synthetic) and their investment is in the delivery of the new; the old production facility pollutes enormously; they won't change it, yet their product evolves constantly; can you explain that to me? They don't bother; they think I only read their advertising; I refuse to read the advertising; fucking hypocrites. But my fabrics come mostly from China, I'm sure, and trying to find an A+ clean producer is tough. We buy A+ refrigerators; why not grade the cloth factories too? (You DO read the labels, don't you?)
We're in the market for a new washing machine; I emailed the manufacturer of the one I fancy asking for a spare motor; no reply. Imagine him getting my business? Maybe he'd sell me a washing machine WITH a spare motor? What does it take to get service and attention? Our money is all?
Which do you really want? 'The Good Old Days' are gone; in every sense. No new value has any other attachment than the much vaunted 'bottom line' and who controls the bottom line controls the top, too, and you think you live in a free country? You who have a computer and the time to read this? The prison is self imposed and lives between your ears.
Nuff said.

D 2

I'd like to give you my personal, reflective, historic viewpoint on that old favourite substance; Dope. I can't remember every variety I've tried, but I gave them all a pretty good workout, and, unlike a lot of the youth of my day, I held down a good sequence of executive jobs and didn't end up in any limbos, while socialising to the full and observing my fellow tokers with a keen but sometimes blurry eye. The biggest drawback I can see with this stuff is what goes on at cellular level in the participant's body; it coats the cells, that THC oily substance, and it doesn't want to shift; I say this as, after a lengthy involvement, I decided to go clear, and needed the help of a homoeopath to affect a total clearing of that ligering influence. You can guffaw at this; fine by me, but the same scientists you are listening to were really cool about tobacco for too bloody long for my liking; sure, I used to smoke tobacco too, but only the cleanest, preferably export to Japan grade tobaccos, free of the nefarious shit that every tobacco company sees fit to foul their product with; the Japanese rejected shiploads of top brand tobaccos, and it was their attitude that woke me up to being careful what one inhaled. So yes, I got clear of the influence of THC, but still socialised where a lot was being smoked, and the passive participation still needs clearing on a regular basis. Since going clear, my decisionmaking processes have hardened up; I don't accept second grade options in my life, and I don't regret being clear about all that. I know, above all other impressions of dope and its adherents, that even a casual user will develop a fixity of outlook that absolutely spoils their chance of a great view of the world. Compare this to the LSD crowd, who had the acid break down the cellular boundaries and open group consciousness to unprecedented levels; often to a level that average intellects find hard to encompass, and you have suddenly two fringes, supposedly similar, who are; a) too wide eyed to comprehend anything deeper than the 'geewhizz' factor, or; b) too fuzzled to see anything that isn't already 'far out' and clichéd beyond belief.
I've got a few acquaintances who still smoke; I don't see that it improves the quality of their life; whether it is physical or intellectual, there is nothing I've found that cannot be matched and exceeded 'straight', and as a pretty fast and furious skier, there is only one memory I retain of an awesome experience; I was given one of the first Walkmans in the country, a tape of Santana 'Borboletta', and a tab of unidentified LSD, to experience off the top of one of New Zealand's more exciting skifields; that was a fine day, but I just need me and the mountain; keep the rest; the experience is very simple, and mostly between the ears, and we kid ourselves greatly about what makes it great for us.
Nuff said.