No excuses for plastic garbage

idea simpled down to main points.

Design-out the production of all plastic garbage, no excuses.

#drawfool #doodle for Feb. 28, 2018.

Daydream number 22/50. End plastic packaging. Stop all plastic use-once-throw-away-trash by designing it out of production. 

Making sure zero plastic garbage gets distributed is the main way the world will have a fighting chance of cleaning up all the plastic trash currently floating around. Plastic should only be used for durable goods.

This daydream happens all the time. Like a constant OCD nag making my skin crawl. It’s bad enough to force me to repress or sublimate it, (i.e. Make art or something useful out of collected plastic garbage). Also, unlike daydream 21. bike-trails/walking paths, since the 80s it seems that plastic packaging is getting worse, not better. When I shop I can avoid some plastic packaging, but only a small percentage of the time. Bringing my own bags to stores, not buying beverages in plastic, keeping a clean stainless steel coffee mug in my car, using bar shampoo wrapped in paper, owning a set of camping dishes and cutlery for outings etc... these are all itsy bitsy steps, that do little to making them stop producing the evil triple-wrapped plastic-bottle, in a plastic-bag, sealed with plastic-shrink-wrap crap.

In my imagination, many of my daydreams are tangled together, like the inverse of a several ton blob of plastic a friend of a friend, who is serving in the Coast Guard, got in trouble for dragging to shore off hours, after their shift end. True story, the trash blob was so big a work crew with chainsaws had to cut the mostly plastic tangle up so it could be hauled off.

So, to untangle that mess. Take daydream number 4. Sease sending tons of junk-mail, flyers, catalogs, political mailers etc.. And number 3. Solve the digital divide. And number  6.(Reusable mailers for all shipping companies to eliminate cardboard boxes. All those tons of unused pulp and factories currently making boxes, printing the grocery store flyers and flashy cards with ads printed on them, could instead be up-cycled to produce food-grade plant-based waxed-paper-packages for everything. Wax-paper chip and snack bags, paper wrappers from butcher paper to fancy candy wrappers and all shape and sizes of cartons like milk cartons to replace plastic tubs that everything from applesauce to yogurt is currently sold in.

To really design plastic out of production, we need to do this for every product in all stores, not just food. Toys and dry things like electronics are easy to package in a box of course. Removing water from products like soap or shampoo. People could purchase a refill kit and have nice dispensers in their bathroom or kitchen that match their decor.

I’ll try to stop now, post is getting too long. Most of my how-to-save-the-world daydreams are contingent on one another. When talking with friends I recognize many, many people wish for a less polluted more ergonomic world. Millions of people are all thinking parts of the same sad, things-could-be-better thought. Some daydreams like about clean water and air for everyone, actual billions of people are all sharing the same wish in the same way we all share this little blue planet. They laugh or shake their heads agreeing, we are all doing what we can, but… Truth isn’t easy, for example, there are no excuses in life. You either made it out of the fire unscathed or you didn’t. One solution could generate twelve more problems because there isn’t one answer. Together, that’s the most uneasy truth. We have to save-the-world together, and it’s going to take a lot of work, maybe for a thousand years. No excuses.

#drawfool Feb. 29, 2018.

#drawfool #doodle for March 1, 2018.

23. Standardised refillables. For all types of products currently sold in throw-away plastic. 

The last paragraph above of how-to-save-the-world daydream 22. I mention that every solution creates 12 more problems. This 1:12/solution:problem ratio is I hope an exaggeration, tho more likely an average based on a range of problems that need solving. More complex problems result in iterations of solutions that fragment like a fractile. Like for example refrigeration and perishable goods. Less complicated problems are usually simply idiotic. Like plastic toys, babies or pets chew on. It’s idiotic because chew-toys for mammals should never have been made out of plastic. I will leave the correct/best materials for babies/pets chewing up to the responsible caretakers. The topic is standardized refillable packaging.

Every product line has its own design solution. We currently seal everything in plastic to protect the product from moisture, damage, and pests. 

For example chips, it doesn’t matter what kind, potato, corn, baked, fried, we seal them in plastic bags with a pocket of “air”. The dried air keeps the chips crisp and crunchy and the pocket of air in the bag helps to keep the chips from getting crushed to dust. The bag needs to be airtight in order to do both of these things. Waxed paper chip bags will work, but wax will crack and the paper will defuse, both moisture and air deflation can ruin the chips. Currently, these bags of chips are shipped to stores in cardboard boxes. Tho some shipping trucks, use plastic or wire racks, like the type American sandwich bread is shipped on to keep the bread loaves from getting smashed. So, the reusable standardized refillable would be a stackable shelf display sized airtight tub. The tubs get opened when people buy the product and the refillable container stays in the store to be returned to the chip factory. Bakery goods, cereal and all sorts of dry goods too fragile to be sold in bulk bins, could go from shipping to end user eliminating plastic bags via resealable tubs with lids.

Next example; pharmaceutical drugs, over the counter medications and vitamins. We have a series of problem-related to pharmaceuticals, contamination of water and addiction or misuse. Packaging from many pharmaceuticals can’t even be recycled because plastic can’t be cleaned of some drug residue and reuse may result in cross-contamination. 

Something needs to change, and safer distribution and packaging for less drug contaminated garbage is a good place to start. Doctor prescribed medications should be issued with a refillable container that belongs to that patient, especially if that drug is going to be taken for years. If this is done wrong it could be terrible for pharmacists. But, if it’s a smart system, with two appropriately designed containers, where the patient turns in the empty and picks up the refill there is the potential do good. Prescribed refillables could help make sure patients are taking their meds or not overtaking them. It could even make certain problem drugs harder to steal because inventories could be more precise. If a patient is being prescribed too many drugs or the medications are very time sensitive, certain medication conflict, etc… fractals. 

Over the counter medications and vitamins, refillables could be coded returnables, designed to return to factories, be sterilized and refilled. Smelly valerin, oils, bitter uncoated aspirin like meds. Most of these items are sold in somewhat standardized packaging now. But, not to the degree where they don’t get thrown from the recycling tub to the garbage because the container has the potential to contaminate the mixed recycling.

Stop dwelling in the negative, in this case how badly the attempt to recycle plastic is cost ineffective and failing. Asia to US shipping of plastic across the Pacific or other world oceans is a too well-known nightmare. 

Instead, let’s look anew at what renewable resources we have. Steel production is a giant US industry that needs to be stepped up to compete. Canada has surpassed the technology of US lumber processing, and in the US we can grow bamboo and other useful fiber plants, like hemp etc...

Colorful enameled steel stackable reusable containers with high-temperature silicone seals or lids. (Expensive yes, but after a number of uses, especially protecting any costly food item, they will pay for themselves. Steel “Tins” shipped on wood pallets. 

Glass is one of the most readily recyclable material and can be returned to the bottler to be sterilized and reused. Glass won’t leach chemicals into food as plastic can. Plastic has replaced glass because cheap processed food and drink is being shipped farther distances. Small local production of food and drink with bottle returns and more freshly prepared foods in small batches can increase quality and food safeness. (Search for wide-scale food distribution as it relates to the spread of diseases like E-coli or Mad-cow). For safe handling and local distribution, wood crates, for bottles and jars, both used over and over, many times. 

Packaging design and a shift away from distribution dependant on crude oil to renewable reusable and recyclable last of the three R’s has a giant potential to shift away from the plastic chemical garbage we invented in the 40s, to make that type of garbage extinct instead of life on our planet, i.e. save-the-world. 

Feels like I need some sort of twist or joke to end this post... but, I haven't got one. If you read this far and have a joke or a happy thought, that would be super. ☮+💚 everybody, sincerely, Uva "Be".

Hey, it's Friday! 😁 March 2, 2018. So, I'll continue down my list of 50 daydreams to-save-the world.

24. Water efficient redesign of all toilet and bathroom plumbing. Flush grey-water or better yet, don't poop and pee in water at all. 

the toilet I want :(

second choice grey water flush system.

Across the US this could conserve millions of gallons of fresh water daily. In urban buildings, 1-2 toilets to flush just a little sometimes and a bigger flush other times to prevent people from flushing low flush toilets three times. In private bathrooms in homes, the 1-2 low flush toilet plus a system to use washing water twice, bath/shower and washing machine water, filtered greywater for flushing toilets. In bathrooms with access to yard waste and non-food gardening compost space. Modern composting toilet systems instead of flush toilets. Tho, I don’t advocate composted human waste being used in gardens. Human waste compost needs to be wintered over at least a year and used on non-food plants or trees in the correct season when there's no fruit or nuts ripening. (Search for pharmaceutical contamination as relates to human effluent). Alternatively, a better plan is idea number 1. modern energy toilet systems, some currently in use around the world for toilets that use human waste to generate energy. Poop energy I joke about being the ‘cold-fusion’ energy source the world has been looking for. Today's daydream is about water, toilets and greywater systems, one part of daydream number 1., -- the entire building design, passive energy, renewable energy used locally and energy efficiency.

Snowball in hell, March 3, 2018. 

Do I really hate 45? -- Are there snowballs in hell? Maybe all this bad energy will just melt away.

Third confession attempt

I’ve seen several video clips of that man acting presidential. He parrots, flapping his hands, squawking on and on incessantly repeating parts of arguments he doesn’t seem to understand because he will often contradict himself. It’s like he absorbs catchphrases that he likes the sound of but the meaning of what people are trying to communicate is only a rapid fire of squeaks and clicks in his mind, like a bird.

As an American, the worst, most nauseating bits to watch are when the people who I can only assume are the ones actually doing all the work, (any work that happens to get done by this understaffed administration). When these people gather around and praise him, for what? This sublimation as if bowing before a ruler who has declared himself a demi-god and demanded each take a turn at praise or lose their heads? Seats? This horrid display is blasphemy, not against God with a capital ‘G’ but the principals this nation was founded on and holds dear.

This man who exemplifies everything that is most wrong with the United States -- racism, misogyny, the suffering of the masses caused by the greed of the oligarchy, eating fast food, over watching TV and refusing to read anything longer than a tweet that doesn’t have his name in it. This man is in the White House.

I was raised to never hate anyone. Hate was a worse word in our house than the f-bomb. To persist in anger takes too much energy away from your own life. Forgive and forget, do no go to bed angry. Hatred is worse, to hate is to wish murder upon someone. The act of hatred steals the life energy of the person doing the hating or in this case the many people in our nation ranting hatred in waves of social media vitriol. I confess to give in to, laugh at and sometimes even retweet some of these heinous memes.

As a Nation we are suffering. We are embarrassed and fearful he will insult other world leaders into attacking us. Sometimes we might even project slight hopes on the people around him in those videos. But, any glimmers of optimism are dashed against their stone cold poker faces and folded arms. He is blatantly seeking approval and those in the room don't want to show any hint of emotion because he might see it, and latch onto them. They who should hold power are fearful that he will go-off on whatever made them grimace trying not to laugh or frown because they are weary of his narcissism. The current administration swear to each other, if you are fired we all are fired, because they are afraid 45’s idiocracy will mortally damage the country without them. Worse, sometimes the administration has actively hated directly, calling him a fucking moron etc... and are therefore are disloyal to him personally, as if this was the point of being POTUS. ”Because when it comes down to it, I’m all that matters… just me. I’m the leader of the free world. Can you believe it?”

Meanwhile, this fool that I am, blogging to myself and a handful of folks who are keeping an eye on me. I confess to my ears are pricked, listening for any whisper of impeachment. Bring on the trail with an orange jumpsuit. Lock him up, but do not dress him in a white straightjacket under private house arrest. Lock him up in solitary, for his own protection, to whine sadly to himself suffering many days of loneliness until he goes mad and dies alone pondering just what he did wrong.

The truth is, there hasn't been a trial yet, so I will presume him innocent, try my best to forget and wish I could post this, laugh and just magically feel better -- then go make art and write fiction. Philip K. Dick, he had the FBI’s ear, I understand he was friendly with a few of them. Me? I add my words to the collective social digital consciousness and then search for the next topic to catch my attention.

onwards - forwards - discover your own scenery

#drawfool #doodle for Feb. 26, 2018.

21. People power paths, walking, bicycle, wheelchair and skate etc.. - as alternative transportation to roads. 

This daydream is halfway done in reality right now. But, started for me on walking paths that stretch for miles across Washington State, and continued with the much needed ‘Belt-line’ path that bisects the city of Atlanta. These well run trails safely separated from motor vehicle traffic are wonderful. It’s such a good feeling to get away from the noise and fear of people behind the wheel. “On your left!” called out by someone, a voice on a bicycle, skateboard, roller skates. Is so much nicer than a horn. I felt happy for young people getting to learn how to ride bicycles on these trails. I know that 90% of bicycle accident fatalities are automobile meets bike crashes.

For me, I like to walk, a lot. I had a grocery cart, I tried to wear the wheels off of, and I felt great, getting my exercise and a load of food, art supplies or materials for some project on my own power, --- not using crude oil. Getting outside for a bit of fresh air and stretching one's legs it great for the brain. I often felt pity for people who would glower in their vehicles having to stop at crosswalks because pedestrians have the right-of-way or worse we had pushed the button on the traffic signal. Speaking of drivers, I had many good conversations walking home from pubs with no worries about how many strong beers I had enjoyed that evening.

As I walked along, my reoccurring daydream was that a system of these trail connected from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic. State to State, National Park system and city to city. I imagined groups of kids going cross-country walking, or on skateboards with backpacks, maybe as a coming-of-age journey with former classmates the summer after they graduated. Little shops at restroom stops selling fruit, nuts, and beverages. In Atlanta, one shop on the belt-line sent out a popsicle cart and had a dog watering station. On the East Coast there is the Greenway. Urban walking trails are not only green space, they are large areas to display art. While the US hasn't got a Coast to Coast trail yet. In Canada, there is The Great Trail. This is one of my favorite daydreams because it is well on it’s way to becoming a reality and a super idea to upcycle our roads and old rail lines when we get that underground system of EV tubes built. ☮😀

East Coast Greenway https://www.greenway.org/

Atlanta Georgia https://beltline.org/visit/trails/

The Great Trail Coast to Coast in Canada https://thegreattrail.ca/

https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/bike/bike_plan.htm
The Washington Trails or https://www.wta.org/

https://www.traillink.com/activity/bike-trails/

#doodle for Feb. 27, 2018.

nothing but scribbles

#drawfool #doodle for Feb. 23, 2018.

Yeah, I made it to 20/50 or 2/5th of my goal to free myself from these persistent megalomaniacal daydreams, soon I may be free to languish in frivolous art making and fiction writing.

20. Plug-in electric vehicles connected to smart microgrids that run on solar & wind power to replace our crude-oil dependant system. 

Yep, and everybody who owns a plug-in vehicle right now knows how not close we are to that daydream. :(

Doodle for Feb. 24, 2018.

tiny doodle Feb. 25, 2018.

It's an ant on a gray rainbow, in the rain. What else to say? It is what it is. Ink on paper on the corner of a page in a 'tb' (thought book).

Read the Second Amendment, Bill of Rights 1789 -- ALL THE WORDS!!!

#drawfool #doodle for Feb. 22, 2018.

Thomas Jefferson was not one for keeping extra flowery words. He cut many words out of his own Bible. He also kept The Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights, cut down to one sentence. 

Dear American politicians currently serving in the US Congress, can you even comprehend the meaning of one full line in the US Constitution?!

The Second Amendment, Bill of Rights 1789.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Freedom is upheld with balance, just like the scales of Justice. The actual problem threatening lives in the US isn’t the rights of the people to keep and bear arms, the problem is in the first three words of The Second Amendment, the militia is unregulated.

I fear taking guns away from people would be like Waco Texas times 1,000. Many civilians, police, and FBI could be wounded or killed. Everyone needs to keep their wits and their guns safely and work together if we are going to solve America’s current humanitarian crisis.

The primary problem in focus right now is school shootings, so let's start with what the young man from Florida said. “Why is it easier for a 19-year-old to get a gun than buy alcohol?!” 

No child under 21 will be permitted to own a gun or buy ammunition. Just like a beer or wine or a toast shared with a young adult 18-to-20 at a private or family event. Gun lessons at a shooting range, military training at a military school or hunting lessons with a responsible adult should be perfectly normal.

If those kids were not able to walk into K-mart and buy ammunition before the Columbine shooting would our reality with school shootings be different? I bet at least some of the copycat-crimes spreading the violence to other schools would never have happened.

A learner’s permit for learning to hunt, with a responsible adult with a valid hunting license, should be just like getting a learners permit to learn how to drive.

This first law, that should, in my opinion, be a federal law, upheld by the states, just like driver licenses for automobiles. Should be, under 21 = no guns.

I recognize under 21 = no guns, doesn’t ensure that our militias are well regulated. That is where it gets a lot more complicated. But, I will try to simple things up a bit.

First step = sort the types of guns by purpose. 1. Is it a weapon designed for war?  2. Is it a handgun? 3. Is it a hunting rifle?

4. Other, if it doesn’t fit in one of these three categories. Then it’s a toy gun or gun for some occupation or industry like a medical gun, or a gun for slaughtering cows/pigs etc...

As for the toy guns, Like squirt guns, pop-cap guns, b-b guns or a video game gun controllers. I consider these all to be training tools, like training wheels for a bicycle. Regardless of if it's a nail gun for building construction or a toy, if a gun can be mistaken for a weapon we should never wave them around in any public place.

Example: Squirt guns being allowed or not in a public swimming pool/lake in a State or Federal park, it's totally up to the people responsible for that swimming pool or park. P.s. I'm pretty damn sure the majority of city pools don't allow water guns.

I went down this “rat-hole” of a topic because I care more about children than I care about these ‘toys’.  If it was up to me, toy-guns and gun-tools would never look like weapons, they would be crazy bright colors with flashing lights (indicator lights) etc... Sorry, off-topic.

Back to adults over 21 with guns types 1. 2. and 3.

2. Handguns. It has been proven that gun accidents happen when a loaded weapon is not stored properly. So, all handguns should have a minimum required lock-box and safety.

3. All hunting rifles should also have childsafe cases and proper storage of shells and tools to make the bullets suited to the type of hunting the rifle is registered for.

1. War weapons. Esp. automatic weapons and bomb shooting guns. The militia who keeps these types of guns should claim 100% responsibility for these weapons as a requirement for them being owned by civilians.

A war gun permit requirement is like the difference between a drivers license for an automobile and a commercial trucking license. Or a pilot's license to fly an airplane or an engineer for a train. The train conductor being like the gun in question is a tank, the airplane like a rocket launcher etc… Parallel responsibility and as obvious as the meme.

Guns should be as well regulated as cars. America needs common sense gun licensing if we are going to uphold The Second Amendment. We can’t keep doing what we are doing, crime syndicate style NRA payouts for lives.

Literally means we pay attention to all the words, not just the half of the sentence we like the best. Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior have mercy America!, forgive us for all the blood spilled, suffering and lives lost because we are such complete macho-idiots, the first three fucking words written in The Bill of Rights, are -- “A well regulated….”

Trade-in discouraged for angry and do something

#drawfool doodle for Feb. 21, 2018.

I had just finished this cartoon about how I imagine these scary liberal trolls, um... sort of like young fat Yoda with more eyebrows... When this really scary liberal troll started "yelling" at me and this other lady, apparently it was about his own traumatic childhood? But, to sum up the last line of his rant --- "that we could take our empathy and shove it up our asses,... along with 'hopes and prayers'". .... So? I think the word that set him off was empathy and the line that I feel stupid for adding was 'How do we care?' It was part of a pun about healthcare. As a cancer survivor since my 20s, Obama-care is a big deal at our house... anyhooo.

I was going to write something about how I am sometimes afraid that I behave like a 'liberal troll' and then this guy made me realize I'm not one. Once again, I'm a moderate. So the cartoon above, of the smiling troll who sincerely wants people to read more? Peace, love, justice and the pen is mightier than the sword. Facts, truth and 'The Golden Rule'. Well, these are also tools of the moderate, along with laws, amendments, and constitutions. All created for moderating and upheld via moderation. I'm a moderate troll! ... (that made me chuckle to myself) with a bit of a relief. That liberal troll couldn't have picked a better moment in time to go-off, and wake me up. "Thanks, troll," I say feeling empathy for him.

P.s. To the troll's point, about doing something. Yes. I agree -- The point is to do something and there are a lot of people just sitting on a cushion of empathy, if we don't move our lazy asses, it is inevitable that some of it will get shoved up there.

#drawfool doodle for Feb. 20, 2018.

House plants = carbon sequestration... even spider plants.

Pep talks and pleas for donations abound, I'm not very interested in either of those. Positive energy as ignorance for bliss, and throwing money as a solution for guilt absolution. Not too keen on those lies either. Recognising people all around me are taking action and figuring out how I can join in, even in little ways, day to day, is the best placement of my anger I've found so far.

In case you wondered, I don't have a spider plant. I have a few pots of aloe, and a tropical pine tree in a bucket as a year-round houseplant and stand-in for a cut Christmas tree. I also have some test patches of miniature clover. It turns out this far North in Washington state our climate is too harsh for mini-clover. Regular clover is dwarfed by the weather around my house. Interestingly my test patch of chamomile did better than the clover. So, I traded my bag of clover with someone further South, for a bigger hardier seed and plan to plant that as soon as the ground stops being crunchy. It's below freezing in February today. I also have collected quite a few wildflower seeds, they also get dwarfed around my house, but the plants are beautiful even when less than 1/4 of the size of the same plants in the garden the seeds came from. I write this not to brag, but to cheer myself up. Feb. cold is getting to me. The increased sunshine on clear sunny days is very helpful, but not a single flower sprout tells me it's not spring yet. I'll go take a walk, get some fresh air and look again. More than gardening, I am looking forward to my art studio thawing out.

Profound conclusions? Nope. ... well okay if you read this far I should give up something. I woke up and searched for evidence to indicate if people are interested in climate change. I didn't look at surveys. Only 12 to 13% of people feel compelled to fill out surveys. I didn't look at polls or worse, data collected by the lamestream news media. The statistics on polls are in, and scientists calculated that big money has tainted public opinion on the topic of climate change by 21 to 37% percent against believing humans and the GHG (greenhouse gases) we generate are contributing to global warming. Yes, dear brainwashed masses, on average it's a fact, world temperatures measured all year, all and around the world and then totaled together into an average, it is global warming, not climate change. Even in the lower 48, USA.

Thanks, Obama era EPA to 2016, for the data.

Okay, where was I? Oh yeah. Don't get discouraged, get angry and do something. We all did this together, and it's gonna take all of us, in every wedge of possibility. Each person, doing little things, here and there, every day to keep the planet survivable for all living things, including humans of course. ...yep. I said, yep because I bore myself. Don't even know how many times I've had this cycle of recursive thought. Okay, enough expulsion for today, back to doing stuff I go.

doodes_tuff --

Doodle Sunday, Feb. 18, 2018.

Doodle Monday, Feb. 19, 2018.

I took a three day weekend. Today is Monday, President's day.

Didn't post anything on Saturday, Feb. 17th. 

Maybe this post will be for keeping track of days I miss. 364 and counting.
...don't know yet.

April 15th, 2018 was the second day this year I didn't post. I also didn't doodle anything. 

Apathy versus Monsters

#drawfool Feb. 16, 2018.

Yesterday's doodle 365 was a red triangle devil, today it's a blue kitty of doom. I was pondering happiness for no particular reason like depression or chronic grumpiness, these chemical states, don't just "happen" and no pill is gonna fix them. It's true on the grander scale of things life is suffering, but while it's also true that if you smile at someone, you may make them feel a smile, and "making someone smile" may be superficially reason enough to smile. Smiling while suffering miserably is not the purpose of smiling.

These are the types of ponderings the blue kitty of doom is all about. Kitty knows everything is not fine. Kitty is judging you all. Doom, doom, doom, relentless purrs it's fuzzy blue heart. No questions = no answers. No conflict = no story. No contrast = no art. A soft blue-gray hum, droning on and on, like a mysterious machine noise, electric-metallic-whirring in-the-background, slowly driving you batty.

Drawfool doodle for Feb. 15, 2018. What will I do when I get to the end of my list? I imagine I'll be "free" to daydream about more frivolous less functional stuff.

So, to that end, I keep going. Weighing-in with the collective digital consciousness of the information age, one more vote to save-the-world survival of our planet valued over profit for the few.

Daydream number 18/50. Modernize our entire cargo transportation system. US transportation infrastructure is in dire need of a complete upgrade away from crude oil. 

Daydream 9. Has to do with roads. Daydream 8 parking lots. This daydream is focussed on hauling goods and people long distances. US railroads with fast-rail or “tubes” to replace commuter jets, and safer more efficient tracks and rail systems for cargo trains to meet up with teamsters and drivers of local hauling trucks and public transit vehicles. Why have people involved in this work? I believe we will always need ears and eyes on the ground to keep the machines running especially where the goods and people meet.

Yep, I know I'm not doodling trucks and trains. Why? I can't stand them. Truck brakes and trains honking and screeching in the night, always wake me up. Always, I seem to never get used to them, I just don't sleep well when those things are running nearby. That's the other reason I want our transportation system upgraded. I imagine it might be quieter for residential areas.

Doodle/#drawfool for 2/14/2018.

The next daydream on my list, number 17/50, about how-to-save-the-world -- sustainable harvesting of fish and shellfish in tandem with habitat restoration. 

There are lists of what seafood is best to eat, what is endangered and what kind of fish are most toxic, i.e. if you are a cancer survivor, or pregnant. Once again, I'm a moderate, but many folks would mistake me for a liberal. I want very much to clean up the oceans, rivers, and streams. Restore and protect habitat. This is happening here and there, but... it's a problem as big as our Earth's oceans. Water and all the creatures that thrive in water, fresh or salty need our help and we need them. 

One way to do this is with careful management of fish runs, and shellfish farms, and this is happening, in some places. While we give nature a break we eat other seafood farmed in isolated tanks, but not salmon or species that can or want to escape. I don't assume we can raise a school of giant tuna in any tank. We have to eat the species that don't mind being raised in a pond or tank kept far away from mixing with rivers or oceans. Why not have canned tilapia replace canned tuna? No, it doesn't taste the same. It's probably better prepared with salsa instead of pickles and mayonnaise. Also, we can learn to eat problem species for a while, until they become less of a problem and restore whatever ecosystem they were chewing their way through. I say this, knowing it's complicated. Fish are perishable, I don't think tilapia sushi or catfish sushi is a good idea at all. So if you are going to market something, you need a good distribution plan.  And to top it all the Earths oceans are rising and we have a trash plastic problem. With the ratio of fish decreasing and the ratio of plastic in the ocean increasing. ... big sigh. Okay, this isn't a lecture by a Ph.D. in marine biology you are reading here, this is 'expulsion-of-the-fool'. I enjoy seafood, and would love to see native trout, rockfish, and other populations of everything that lives in our plant's water from frogs to catfish thrive. Therefore I daydream about how to save these creatures, and I assume I am one of many millions of people sharing very similar daydreams. It's Valentine's day, the fish is a metaphor symbol of the soul, not the heart, but -- from one heart and soul to the many daydreamers out there. Happy Valentine's day. 

#drawfool #doodle for Feb. 13, 2018.

hunting robot inspired by these

Yeah, I know, this is a terrible daydream that could go wrong in so many ways, I wasn't going to keep going down my list. But, then I drempt up some hunting robots.

Daydream number 16/50. Is about eating meat with lower cost to the planet than factory farmed pork or beef. 

Animals that are not grain fed create less methane because farts are all about sugar and those macrobiotic critters in guts having a party via sugar are the fart makers.

Grass-fed beef is leaner than corn-fed beef. Bison is leaner than cows. Deer and goats are better for the planet than bison. Most birds are lighter and easier on the planet than deer. Less water, less land used. Tho, how the animal is fed, where it lives. I'll leave the number crunching to folks actually doing the numbers.

Lately, I've been craving peanut butter cookies. Meat, often totally grosses me out. Disembodied chunks of flesh on "those" trays, wrapped in saran-wrap, often set on a little 'pad' to soak up the blood.... mmmm yummy.

I wasn't going to write out this idea at all, but some part of my brain thought it was funny to daydream about a hunting robot. It parks itself near where the birds or bunnies hang out. It opens up like a flower with a little dish of food. It lets the animals eat the food. You get a video message and tell the robot what critter you want. It would be really bad to get the neighbor's pet in the trap. You pull the trigger. The robot grabs the animal and cuts it's head off. Tipping up so the animal is in a cone and drains as the robot returns home to you with its catch.

Does the robot also gut it, protect it from pests as it treks home, skin it or boil and pluck feathers too? What a lot of work! More cookies for me, please.

Feb. 12, 2018. #drawfool #doodle

What is clown-paint/makeup anyways? Not what is the sticky stuff monsters are made out of, but what does it mean?

Monsters trend. Around the Bush W. era and inspired after he lost the popular vote to Al Gore, we were plagued with zombies. Bush W. would inspire wave after wave of zombies, popular en masse for twice as long as his presidency. Before W, Bill Clinton's monster problem was the werewolf. The animal side of himself that he couldn’t control only a mute part of his presidency, a benevolent monster able to work on both sides of the aisle like the dual personality of howling at the moon lycanthropy. He may be the only living president to ever balance the budget, but, Bill Clinton couldn’t stop the vampires. He made some very bad deals to get out of that pit we call government. Bush Sr. was the Vampire era, heaven only knows why he called it trickle down economics. Everybody seemed to imply it was pee, but I am afraid it was blood. The life-blood of the working class, sacrificed by Regan’s monster, a sweet-talking lying devil, a trickster whispering in his ear that he was doing ‘good’ while he shut down mental institutions and other social services. Plastic as cash was new as cassette tapes paired with the greedy interest collectors feeding off of the working class as old as stone tablets. Regan’s ‘small-business miracle’ was people pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, working 70+ hours a week on their own sweat and tears without compensation. All while paying wages to other working folks against a rip-tide with a very high small-business fail rate. Bubble crunching corporate feeding frenzy, Wall Street like sharks, the big fish eating the little ones. The ‘War on Drugs’ filled prisons with incarcerated slaves and banking deregulation tossed the middle class into debt, usury slavery. The American dream drowned in record-breaking storms, several waves of monsters later during the heartache when we elected Obama. Obama’s monsters were actual men. Police shooting unarmed children. The ghost-like costumes of the KKK. The statistics of insanity in white people, from the top 1%, -to- 1 in 5 CEOs being psychopaths and depending on the study, 18 to 25% of mass shooters had a history of mental illness. Bringing us to our current evil-clown-baby. What the heck is clown paint? What is treason? Why do so many folks fear clowns? Do we laugh at clowns because they are scary? I.e. we laugh because we are frightened and we need to laugh? What are all those spooky clowns up to? The clown mocks civilized man like the Trump mocks truth, the free press, civil liberties and our constitution. It’s too soon to tell if this monster is an old man that acts like a baby or a terrible-toddler-clown trapped in an old man. What is clown paint? Really? Think about it. Where are we now? What direction do we run, and what actions do we need to take to survive this?

Carter. Yes, I am old enough to not be able to forget about him. Star Wars, E.T. to X-files. A several decade-old government conspiracy of space aliens attacked after we (my parent’s generation) scoffed at Carter when he asked people to conserve energy for our grandchildren, turn down the thermostat, wear a sweater. Trump is not the first time we have elected a celebrity to play the role of Commander in Chief. The movie star who ripped the solar panels off the White House, is slight compared to what the current reality TV star is doing to the EPA. Carter may be the history we need to learn from. He was the first president to leave office and continue work by serving people. Building homes for the poor. We have learned building habitat for humanity is a group effort. We have learned he was correct about the impending consequences of our energy dependence. Past time to clean off the clown paint of misogyny. Time for the victims to heal and for unsung heroes to put-down the monsters. Together, we the meek could rule the world, like Mothers. Kind, vigilante mothers, and fathers, big sisters, brothers and friends, the people who make a house a home and keep all the scary things away.

The apathy part? I dunno…. You go vote, not just by 'how you "feel", actually bother to read past the lies to be able to pay attention to who or whatever is on the ballot.

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.