NOTEFLIX’s update on its Binge-Look Thriller “Troubles In The Garden”: Our hero, The Multicolored Bluebird of Happiness, is still lost and finds himself enveloped by nightfall and tangled-up in the bizarre Tree of Questionable Knowledge. His is a tricky path to follow and the light is dim. Each step could take him closer to home – or to somewhere else. (To be continued)
AND YOU DON’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU NEED
So, in keeping with the above title, we submit the following: (The content for the bullets below come from notes I’ve taken during the week and notes which have been festering for my desk for over five years. I have shuffled them twice and hereby deal them out.)
- According to Darwin’s last work, 35,000 worms live on any given acre of land. English soil must be different than ours. I count very few worms out in my back yard. Maybe Darwin went way down deep. He also noticed worms like carrots. His worm book sold Bigly and would have made him rich; but he died soon after publication. This is the man who propounded the Theory of Evolution, mind you. Sometimes I think I should be more disciplined about what I spend my time reading.
- I read that today’s carbon tax is about $2 a ton. The IMF says that if we put the tax to $75 a ton in 30 years, we could limit the planet’s warming to only 2 degrees Celsius (which means we will be near boiling – and unlike the frogs – we would know it.) All this is not for happy-making. Nobody likes to pay taxes and nobody like to enact taxes. So what are we gonna do? Buy solar powered air-conditioning stocks.
- The average yearly commute time has reached 9 calendar days – 17 hours more than 10 years ago…and one million more people are doing it than were doing it ten years ago…and gas costs more and some roads have congestion pricing…and the D.O.T. says traffic is getting worse and there are going to be 70 million more of us and that Omaha’s traffic is going to match L.A.’s in 30 years (But remember: That is when the carbon tax is going to be $75 a ton – so nobody will be driving anywhere and the problem is solved.)
- If cows were a nation, it would be the 3rd largest emitter of greenhouse gasses; behind the U.S. and China.
- I read where they have done studies to see if lobsters feel pain in the boiling hot water. – and if crabs suffer when the crab people take the claws off the crabs. Is there pain? We wonder. Is there suffering? We wonder? Will the results of these studies change our eating habits? I wonder. I also wonder how you get money to do these studies.
- 16% of Americans say they have seen at least one U.F.O. I think I saw one of those 16%ers the other day.
- The richest 10% of American households own 84% of all listed stocks. They probably already own all the solar powered air-conditioning shares and I’m just going to have to either pay more or boil to death.
- 3-D printers are now making airplane parts. They’ve made over 1,000 different parts that are flying around right now. It has taken me decades to get over my fear of flying; but it just came back in a wink – I’m in the air, being tossed about by rising air turbulence – caused by global warming – and the flying machine I am sitting in is held together by cartridges of hardening printers ink and you expect me not to panic and not pray to the good god above that if He brings me home to safety I will never do anything bad again. I’m going to travel in a self-driving, man-made vehicle with real old fashioned parts – if I can.
- I have noticed – over the years, that there are a lot of songs about the miserable work conditions of the worker: ‘”Nine-Pound Hammer”, “16 Tons”, “Take This Job and Shove It”, “Day-O” …and so on…But not too many about the trials and tribulations of the C.E.O. Where is the Woody Guthrie, the Pete Seeger of the 1% era? Think about that. Maybe there is a song, or a buck there.
- One thing I think I’m learning is that nobody, ever again, is going to get ‘discovered’ after they die. Those days are over. No pictures in the attic. No manuscript found in the old roll-top desk. No original music folios simmering under the piano seat. Things are moving too fast to go to the past – everything is just tossed out – even if it were stored. Can’t afford to pay the storage. The point is: if you are going to make it; make it now. Otherwise sit back and relax.
Regarding all the above, I have come up with a personal paradox: I know no more today than I knew the first day I entered Kindergarten – though I’ve learned a lot since then.
So, if you don’t always get what you want – and you don’t always get what you need – what do you get? Here’s what you get: You get what you get – and the trick is to enjoy it.
Some quotations:
- “Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material” -Leviticus 19.19
Maybe I’ll leave it at that – for you don’t always get what you want!
Best,
