inside - out

Doodle Feb. 5, 2018.

Might explain later... #drawfool

.... sometime later the next day. So? Fear. Looking out through the teeth of death from the inside. Perhaps this was an exaggeration? The red eyes are only tail lights. The dark rainy zero visibility stop and go traffic, cut into by oncoming headlights might form a jagged jawline. A crash could chew up our fragile human bodies like an ambivalent monster. Except, bumper to bumper at night in the rain, even for a couple tiring hours, isn't death. I did draw this after we got out the car. We had cut over from a stop-and-go highway to another parallel highway, and on that tree-lined road, we hydroplaned in complete pitch black. The water deep enough to not be able to see the asphalt, any lines, nor the edge. That slipping zig-zag lasted only a couple seconds at most. Probably less. We didn't cross over. We didn't hit a tree or slide into a ditch. It was just another commute.

Regardless, these long tiring commutes are why I daydream about number 9 from last week. No matter how many trillions it will cost, no matter how many decades full of engineering challenges would be required to finish that paradigm shift worthy transportation redesign. I escape the fear monster and daydream how things could be better.

Captions below read:

1. Me: When I like an idea, find it clever or funny even no one responds. Only to crap or in reply about themselves. Why?

2. Plant: Did you just ask some crap about yourself and ask me to reply? ... That's why.

drawfool doodle Feb. 6, 2018.

Daydream number 12/50. Crowdsolving how-to-save-the-world with the collective intelligence. 

As any Science-Fiction fan knows, from the Star Trek TV show abomination -- The Borg, the idea of crowdsourcing could go very badly. The Borg are extremists, relentlessly attempting to assimilate everyone with any brains into “The Collective”. But, data results like how people’s attention shifts from the characters in a movie or show, when a dog is in the scene, are consistent. We’d much rather pay attention to the dog.

I thought I’d write up an idea about how crowdsolving metadata could be used to solve climate change via the wisdom of the crowd. But, then some Trump supporter started tweet-yelling at me. True confession: I’ve had better conversations with plants. After that, I got distracted by reading some science blog articles as a logical antidote to our current social insanity. 

Crowdsolve question: How are you? dear crowd to solve "everything". 

Doodle in the corner of my thought book, 2/7/18.

Sheeples are a thing, very relevant currently. 

Daydream 13/50. Goats and sheep, lama, etc... in movable fences, to clear brush and trim landscaping near paths and roads, fertilize and aerate land - instead of herbicides, controlled burns, machines and chemical fertilizers. 

This is happening. Tho it’s been my observation that people often get impatient with the pace of the animals. The goats don’t clear as fast and as sharply as the machines. The problem is the same. We live in a capital-first time-is-money “free-market” valued over life, economy. Our entire way of thinking about roads and yards, and grassy areas that are bigger than yards needs to slow-down for sheep trimmed grass to be a thing, that becomes part of our way of life. Perhaps we need to move backward in time on a few things. My grandfather lived on the family farm after everyone else had left. He very impressively tended to the farm neatly, almost by himself (he and the neighbor’s helped each other on jobs that required more than one person). Beyond the actual farming, and his giant garden and pantry full of home canned food. He had a small herd of sheep and cows. The sheep he moved from one area to the next closer to the house. The cows were in bigger areas out by the creek. I remember asking why the sheep were in the front yard. My Mom told me that sheep bite the grass, they don’t pull it up by the roots, so Grandpa will move the sheep when they are done trimming around the house. He also used to pasture the cows to clean up the apple orchard of fruit on the ground. But, cows are another story. He didn’t want them making a mess around the house, so they were always in larger fenced-in areas, farther away from the house, like the apple orchard.

Feb. 8, 2018. #drawfool #doodle

What the heck is a “moderate”, anyways?

Seems easiest to start with what a moderate is not. A moderate is not an extremist. 

If you have any view at all on a subject, then how do you know you are not an extremist? Because moderates annoy the hell out of extremists. For example, let’s take my most persistent and therefore strongest political view. I am pro-environment. Climate change is in my opinion worth fighting against. But, even my green ideals are moderate. 

For example, Greenpeace (ironic name considering some of the unpeaceful things they have done over the years). I am not an owl-first people-second environmentalist. Yep, I said owl-first. Slash and burn clear cutting is without any question heartbreaking and in my opinion next to evil. We need to modernize past destroying the entire forest from the soil up. Then take an old battle, lumber versus endangered owls(and sadly more than a couple other species). I like wildlife but believe there are sustainable techniques to harvest trees and leave old-growth habitat. It does require hard work, surveys that require miles hiking, most of it without trails plus years of planning to best determine how much to cut where and when, but for the life of the planet, our forests are worth it. Some of the better plans for harvesting trees even help to prevent forest fires. Thusly I’m a people-first environmentalist-moderate.

Same goes for food. I’m not a vegan or even a vegetarian. I’m a flexitarian. I do eat vegan sometimes and vegetarian a lot of the time. But, I’m going to roast a turkey and enjoy it with my family, thankfully. I like a good elk burger and I think a bit of fancy bacon is a great flavoring for lentil soup. Thusly dietarily I’m also a moderate. 

Food is easy, lets move to a much more touchy subject. Yoga pants/bike shorts on public transit. Someone I love yelled at me, about how women are not sex objects, we are people, and we should be able to wear whatever we want, whenever we want. We should even be able to go around naked if we want. …. Or? Something like that. Okay. My point of view is. People are mammals, therefore any human of reproductive age male, female or other, (like it or not), is actually a sex object. The sexual focus of the human animal, polite, unintentional or not, is the entire pelvic and butt-area. My thoughts about what we should wear on public transportation when we are crammed into trains, airplanes or buses. Is to look at someone who runs and jumps around a lot, and wants the focus to be on ‘the game’, professional basketball players. I think, if we are sticking our butts or pelvises in the faces of people sitting in seats, we should at least wear a garment that covers as much and as loosely as a basketball uniform. And I apologize for stating the obvious, ladies, no side-boob or camel-toe please. If it wasn’t obvious then the phrases ‘side-boob’, 'nip-slip' and ‘camel-toe’ would not be a thing. So, again, I’m not an extremist. For me, as a moderate it’s all about respect. I respect that I have no idea how repressed or not my fellow human beings are, and I want to be respected in turn as a fellow human, not as a sex object, when on public transit, i.e. when not at home or suntanning or swimming etc... I dress how I believe to be polite and respectful as much as I am able to do so. Also, if you look at it like, it's not about you, active or not, everybody of age is a sex-object and everybody wants to be respected, well it just simples things up a bit.

More than just negating anything, or passing endless useless laws and regulations, being moderate is about balance and understanding of the pros and cons of both the left and the right. Most folks tend to be conservative about some topics and liberal about other things. I believe most people want to be somewhat moderate. I know we want to respect each other rather than bicker and fight constantly. Respect requires understanding, and understanding results in common sense, and if any two words define a moderate, it’s ‘common sense’. 

#doodle for Feb. 9, 2018

Daydream number 14/50. Organic food by default shoud be - stickerless and crude oil packaging free.

This one annoys me (and a few other millions of people). Organic food should be packaged free of plastic and stickers. A sign on the bin. A paper carton for small berries etc... or paper potato tomato bag for larger produce. The bag could read organic and maybe has a list of SKU numbers printed down one side or could be blank and there is a pen on a string. But, no stickers stuck on the organic vegetables or fruit please!

Contrarily all non-organic or GM (genetically modified) foods grown with chemical pesticides should be clearly marked. The type of genetic modification color-coded and printed on the label, the sticker is red if it’s a “Round-Up” or whatever brand of pesticide bred into the plant. Yellow if it simply has tougher skin or is a plant to plant hybrid. Orange if it’s grown in pesticides but not GM, etc… Yellow and green if it’s a hybrid grown with natural pesticide-free farming techniques etc.. Remember I’m a moderate. If they genetically modified food in a safe way to be easier to grow organically, for example, that’s okay to mark is as naturally farmed, as long as there isn’t any pesticides or crude oil fertilizer products used in that farming area.

Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are personal to me, not just a couple words. Do you recall my grandfather and his small farm? (a couple paragraphs up on this post). The family farm was part of a cancer cluster. My grandfather died years before old age in the radiation booth, being treated for a brain tumor. The friend on a neighboring farm who helped him on the farm, also died of cancer. My grandmother also had various tumors. My family has a BRCA1 deletion/mutation. I got breast cancer in my 20s. I don’t just buy organic because it’s trendy. I buy it because I think of all the people growing and harvesting our food and vote with my dollar every time I shop for groceries. So, when I say it annoys me that organic food has a sticker glued on it or is sold in a plastic bag, it’s not even close to the ire I feel about pesticides and chemical fertilizers not being clearly marked.

Feb. 10, 2018 #doodle #drawfool

Rat tale + daydream 15/50. Compost. -- Inspired by the giant rats I watched roam the streets in Portland in the 90s.

Once upon a time, there was a clever port city rat who knew the best alleys and gutters to scurry. It grew fat and large as a cat on slightly out-dated cream, aged meats, and crunchy bread. When it was too large for gutters it roamed the sidewalks, eventually lording over the alley behind a doughnut shop. There it raised three rat families almost as fat and big as himself in holes under the edges of hedges. Until one day when a plague-infected flea hopped by and bloated them all to a morbid bursting vector of death. Plague-infected obese rats are terrifying regardless of if it's people who spread the plague to the rats or rats that spread the plague to the people.   

All urban areas need to sort urban compost from urban garbage and recycling into smart bins that rotate and properly contain pestilence and if a bin is in a high traffic area like next to a dog park, send a signal for pick-up of a full bin tank.

Many urban areas and some suburban areas have composting bins in operation, right next to recycling. Some areas have been composting for years now. This is great, super, world-changing. Regularly collected bins rats can’t climb out of, need to be standard in all populated areas where garbage is collected. 

Composting should be the norm. Food waste should never be mixed with other "garbage". All food waste should be composted as locally as is safely possible, never hauled long distances. Urban compost turned into power/energy is not a pie-in-the-sky daydream, nor limited just to household garbage. For example, meat & bone meal MBM contains 2/3rds the energy of coal. They are already using MBM in Europe to generate electricity. The electric generator next door to meat processing/slaughter warehouses. Tho to be clear it's not about the energy produced replacing current sources. The energy would realistically only supplement the current system, not replace it. The real benefit is the savings of not having to haul smelly garbage mixed with plastic, glass etc... as well as a reduction of pests, rats, cockroaches, flies etc...

#doodle #drawfool Feb. 11, 2018.

It's Sunday. I'll let daydream number 16 rest until next week.

alternate reality daydreams

Jan. 29, 2018.

Idea number 6. Re-shippers

Reusable mailers for all shipping companies to eliminate cardboard boxes, tubes, and paper (SASE) envelopes. Shippers belong to and automatically return to the nearest sender location, USPS, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, Mac, whomever. "Rent" of shipper included in postage/shipping cost. Especially for high-cost goods like laptop computers, the reusable shipping containers will easily pay for themselves after a specific number of trips from warehouse to homes and businesses.

Plastic last “forever” why not use it for a durable product that could be easily cleaned of road grime etc… The chips-stickers we now use only once could be installed in the box and another reader-sticker could be placed on the address strap that seals the shipper. A record of the distance traveled by each shipper and weight at scanning could be both fun to see how many miles/kilometers and how many trips each re-shipper travels before it gets worn-in to a state that requires it to be up-cycled.

The cardboard we now use for shipping boxes could be better used for packaging of perishable goods, like milk cartons or ice-cream tubs etc… Because cardboard is compostable or burnable. Plastic is not.

If you wonder what these plastic crates might look like, the USPS and other companies that handle bulk sorting of mail/packages. Use tubs in mail centers all over the world right now. But, I bet everything I ever wanted and don’t have that there are a few hundred designers out there twiddling their thumbs that would be entertained for several lifetimes by designing the most efficient reusable shipper for all types of products, and I also bet some of them are already designed right now, just waiting for the world to realize they need them.

I'm just going down my list 6/50 posted on this blog so far this year, 2018.


I know this doodle/draw fool for, Jan. 30, 2018 is a completely unrealistic green roof urban landscape - it's my daydream, let me lose my mind and find peace there.

Idea number 7. No more toxic roof chemical runoff -- anywhere. 

Green roofs, solar panels and roofing gutters and drain pipe materials proven to have a positive interaction with stormwater (i.e. More base, less acid). Okay, before I get lost in the ph changes happening in the world’s oceans and the depletion of groundwater. I beg for forgiveness because this, replacing roofs is not cheap, this is a multi-billion dollar problem. Many banks will not finance solar panels, even on new construction, and green roof design requires structural design not just for the extra weight, but to safely get people up there and enjoy their new spot of green space. People aren’t motivated to install a cash cow they can’t enjoy. But, imagine it. Be crazy with me. Imagine all those miles and miles of flat rooftop houses in the Bay Area of California. People tending their grey-water-filtering-roof-edge-garden-boxes. A small pretty tree with a circular bench next to a rooftop greenhouse and miles and miles of solar panels slowly tilting to follow the sun.

I thought this daydream every day when I walked the streets of Inner Sunset San Francisco or rode the trains and stared out the window at all the houses and shops going by. I knew the reason people didn’t do it, couldn’t do a green roof/rooftop living area, was money. But, SF is the second densest population in the US after New Jersey. I know people wanted that green space away from the street.

The roof has three vectors of climate impact. The first is chemical runoff in water. The second is soaking up heat and radiating it back. The third is our buildings are taking up space on the planet that used to be part of the ecosystem. We can’t give our cities back unless we lived in subterranean dwellings with a forest or a prairie growing on top. But, we can reduce our impact, maybe even grow some wildflowers for everyone, including the bees.

P.s. in case you think I just make this crap up. Runoff chemical leaching from roofing materials has been studied for decades and they are working to improve what we install on top of our buildings.

Here's a couple images from a study done by Washington State Department of Ecology.

Speaking of toxic chemical run-off and pollution caused by cement kilns.

Doodle for Jan. 31, 2018.

Daydream number 8. No more asphalt or cement parking lots.

From city corners to small town strip-malls, wouldn’t it be great if all those square mile, after who know how many million square miles of parking lots and parking spots, were converted to flexible public green spaces with EV (electric vehicle) charging! Actual parks on the roofs at the top with planter boxes and benches to pause and take breaks or eat lunch outside sheltered from sun and rain under solar-panel roofs, tilted to collect both rain and sunshine.

In front of stores, no more curbs, I hate curbs. Instead bench-high planter-boxes on the expanded sidewalk where the parking spots used to line the streets, making extra room for carts and perhaps a seating area or two for people waiting.

Of course, pick-up/drop off spots near the entrances would be nice with handicap only parking. Everybody else uses public transit or parks in the towers.

Number nine continues where this daydream leaves the parking spot.

Daydream number 9/50. People and living creatures first, automobile second road design.

All paved roads for slower traffic under 35 miles per hour, could be designed to breathe. Light in color in most climate areas, dark only in extreme polar roads that are heated to keep them clear of ice. Roads made of pearled glass (i.e. big grains of sand) native gravel and recycled plastic (i.e. No tar, no asphalt, no cement). The entire road surface has tire groves, drainage and is designed to prevent road kills.

When a sidewalk runs along a road or crosses it, pedestrian and bike paths are separated from the tire grooves. The median has markers for self-driving cars to keep traffic in the grooves.

Around schools and urban shopping hubs, the entire drop off/pick-up areas could be textured brick/cobblestone-like a speed bumpity bump. Automatic photograph tickets of anybody speeding past children and school buses or shoppers. City center areas should be pedestrian first, automobile-second ergonomic designed safer for people than cars a.k.a. pedestrian-first spaces, with underground mass transit to parking structure hubs and burgs.

The fast roads are all underground. It doesn’t even have to be deep, it could be a tube with the top at the surface where the highway used to be. Or a tube under a city.

P.s. Fast highway tubes under cities is not my idea. Do a search for Elon Musk underground LA, tube highway designs.

I did doodle something today, but I decided to start mixing things up. This mutant gnome is a stand-in for today's #drawfool P.s. Yes, it has 8 limbs/tentacles 5 feet, two arms and a tail. Feb. 1, 2018.

I spent all morning and afternoon outlining a 5 book science fiction series that keeps burbling up in my dreams, again. No joke, the first book I started when I was 16, it's somewhere around draft 5 progress wise, tho only 3/4 written and printed out double-spaced for editing notes, in two boxes (one box with notes from a beta reader). Then a prequel happened, a novella or short book via various dreams I kept scribbling on in-between other projects in 2015. It's also mostly drafted. I have decided that if I'm going to embark on another novel series, this time it's going to be completely outlined with storyboards and maps before I get lost in the details.

Comically bad #drawfool doodle for Feb. 2, 2018. 

I wrote this idea out as a joke in a blog post last year, in 2016.


Here’s a link if you would like to read that post.

The next paragraph is a synopsis if you would rather skim the gist. Bellow the gist is my opinion of grass.

10. Replace monoculture mown and trimmed grass lawns with native grasses and other low maintenance ground cover plants.

Save water and end lawn mowing machine noise, weed whacking, edge trimming and mowing machine fuel/energy consumption and cease fertilizer/pesticide/weed killer related runoff pollution of surrounding water systems, i.e. lakes, creeks, rivers, oceans etc... Restore native habitat for birds, bees, frogs, toads, moles, field mice, and insects. Only, athletic areas for playing sports should be maintained by mowing: soccer/football fields, golf courses, baseball diamonds and other athletic fields used by many people.


As for me? I love grass. But, just like cut flowers. I love grass uncut, wild, gently changing color over the seasons, pale green and light purple, yellow, straw white, brown peeking out of the snow, the green tips of sprouting bulbs, the round or interesting pattern forbs, plant like clover that nitrogen fix the soil, and are the preferred diet of grazing sheep. Then the grass, all types, grows tall and blooms. There are more species of grass than any other type of plants on Earth. Each grass has its own grain or seed pattern. Some grow along the stem, some cluster at the top like wild oats or those tall fluffs of Pampas grass that grow all along the California coast, or the native bamboo grass, red and green that grow in South Carolina swamps. Bluegrass the plant is in its own life as musical as Bluegrass the music. As long as no one cuts it. Tallgrass dances in the rain and the wind. One of my childhood memories is wandering through a field in Oklahoma that once was prairie, following a turtle to a cattle watering hole. Real prairie is not as dense as the bounce of the tundra of Alaska. When we went to a wildlife refuge, real prairie is lumpy and uneven, several layers of grass and plants matted but it is beautiful. Like a painting, endless texture and patterns to follow. We can’t easily replicate prairie in the grass areas of our yards. Our yards are not vast enough, and there are too many plants all woven together. But, if we each learned to “paint” with a mix of a few native plants, starting around our own homes, we would change the world.

I continue this thought on my leisurely Saturday, Feb. 3, 2018.

Daydream 11/50. Plants, plants and more plants -- everywhere.

#doodle #drawfool for Feb. 3, 2018.

Gardening is the number one hobby worldwide, everyone should have access to fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs. From urban hydroponics and gardening field trips to rural gardening clubs. This is happening more, in recent years. We just need to step it up, get creative. Every sunny wall should be a green wall. All courtyards should be full of plants, carefully planted, for where the plants would be happy. Office plants should be succulents and non-smelly or non-blooming plants that clean the air and don’t add pollen or allergens to the air. Alternatively grow fragile or perishable salad & herb foods in rooftop greenhouses and humidity controlled window boxes. Neighborhood gardens should be available for local populations everywhere, just like city parks and playgrounds are now. You have to get your team on the schedule for little league. Or your gardening group has an area in the dirt and a shift of yearly gardening work. Not like communism but social. Are you unemployed? This gardening group could use some help harvesting or weeding or planting spouting beds etc… You put in some hours per week and earn a basic income by helping improve everyone’s quality of life. Yeah, I said, it "basic income". There is a ton of work that needs to be done and the US has a big enough GDP to spread "it" around. Work is the opposite of the stagnation of amassed hoarded profits. Technically, no one should be unemployed or homeless and gardening work and plant care is a great place to start improving the quality of life.

Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018. I am resting and meditating on "things".

The spaces between my daydreams and my reality is an abyss of depression, full of holes/bubbles bursting or defuse with half-way solutions. An answer to one problem creating 11 or 12 more complications or at least one step forward half a step back, over and over, every day. Many of the ideals I imagine and weigh are like the road to hell, paved with good intentions. But, the source of that proverb or aphorism may be a duel between two Popes in 1150. Maybe the Serenity prayer by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, 1951 is more fitting.

God, give me the grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.


It's very nice, but I'm no Evangelical either. I think my "religion" may be art and my philosophy may be fiction, so much so that to me Serenity is the name of a spacecraft in the TV show Firefly. Even the prayer copy and pasted above, came to mind from a few lines repeated in TV show we just binge-watched.

Guilt is no motivation but in the time we live in, as the artist, Douglas Coupland Quote/art "Knowing everything turns out to be slightly boring." IMO isn't ignoring everything and expecting things to change also quite tedious?