#and I have zero faith in the Amazon live action being any good‚ as I do of most live action adaptions

[fullscoreshenanigans]

Hi, I haven’t said anything about this fandom for so long but... If we had to give Yuugo and Lucas realistic faces, I see Yuugo having the face and being played by a younger Hugh Jackman and Lucas by a Younger Jake Gyllenhaal or Charlie Hunnam. What do you think?

Heyyo welcome back 👋

I can kind of see Yuugo Jackman and Lucas Gyllenhaal!

Maybe Lucas Pine

Also while searching for pictures I stumbled across this one of Hugh Jackman and imagine Yuugo with this cut:

[nancypullen]

Searching for Home (Warning: long post about nothing)

That blog title may seem odd since I’ve been in this house since 1999.  Mt. Juliet has been home because this is (mostly) where my kids grew up.  Sure, they remember Barrow and Fairbanks and living the Alaskan life, but they were little guys when we moved here.  Matt was 3rd grade and Tyler was just getting ready for kindergarten.  As for me, prior to moving here I’d spent the bulk of my life in Alaska, some of it on Ft. Wainwright, some of it in North Pole, some of it in Barrow, and much of it in Fairbanks. 

During my childhood we bounced from post to post as a military family (no complaints, I loved it), and didn’t really settle until Dad retired and I was entering high school in North Pole.  We spent a period going back and forth between Ft. Wainwright , Alaska (4th,5th,6th grade, then 9-12th) and Ft. Bragg, North Carolina (K 1,2,3 then 7th and 8th grade). But when you return to a post you don’t return to the friends you once had, they’ve all moved on.  You go into different housing, different schools, and make new friends.  I was born in Georgia, but have no memory of the state. We lived in Louisiana and I have vague memories of it, none very good.  I was more, or maybe less, fortunate than some depending on how you look at it.  More fortunate because I sometimes returned to familiar areas, and as the youngest in my family I was the only one who was able to start and finish high school in one place.  Less fortunate because my dad had an aversion to putting in for posts overseas - so many of my friends had the opportunity to live in Germany, Italy, Spain, and other exciting spots.  When my family was military Alaska was considered comparable to overseas posts, so that’s where we went.  My sister was born just as Alaska became a state in 1959.  My brother was born there as well, and two years after his arrival I was born 4,284 miles away at Ft. Benning, Georgia.  Our family made many trips up and down the Al-Can Highway (through Canada to Alaska)  and it wasn’t paved.   Three kids crammed into a station wagon that’s pulling a U-Haul (or a camper) on a washboard gravel road for 2200 miles with very little to see...someone give my mother a medal.   No doubt that road and its amenities have improved, but at that time it was sparse. I spent seventeen years of my life in Alaska, I stayed well after the rest of my family had fled.  By the time I was eighteen I was without parents or siblings in the state but I had Mickey.  I was young and in love.  My parents had moved to Florida, my sister had followed love to Rochester,New York, and my brother had joined the Army and was in Germany.  Alaska is where I started married life, became a mother, and experienced so many of life’s firsts.  But I don’t miss it.  Fairbanks is kind of a gritty town.  Not the Fairbanks that tourists see, but the town that’s there after the snow flies.  Perhaps if my roots were in Sitka or Juneau or even somewhere in the Matanuska Valley I’d feel a longing to go back.  Maybe not. Everything is harder there.  As a mother of two little boys just the logistics of getting to the grocery store and back were a pain.  Unplug and start the car (if you don’t have a garage) to warm it up.  While the car is thawing, get everyone decked out in arctic gear from head to toe.  Load up and slide to the store. Debate whether to leave car running and risk theft, or turn it off and do your shopping as a mad dash. Get everyone inside and unzipped so they don’t sweat to death while shopping.  Rush around buying ridiculously priced food and so-so produce and check out.  Dress kids again, then give them whiplash trying to pull the grocery cart across the frozen, rutted, bumpy parking lot. Unload into trunk, then sit down on hard as a rock car seat because you turned the car off and everything is frozen. Slide home on icy roads.  You see where this is going. The dressing and undressing so that no one gets frostbite.  The elements constantly working against you.  Did I mention that it’s also midnight dark almost all day and night? Don’t get me wrong, I love winter. I love snow.  But I do not love constant darkness and fifty below zero and trying to accomplish every day tasks in weather not meant for humans. Obviously, that wasn’t all winter. Lots of days hovered in the twenty to thirty below zero range. I remember my in-laws coming for a Christmas visit and my father-in-law delighting in tossing a hot cup of coffee into the air to watch it come back down in frozen crystals. Even in the brief but beautiful summers the conveniences that we take for granted here in the lower 48 weren’t available and if they were there was sticker shock.  My friends in Fairbanks still complain about prices, conveniences, lack of goods,etc.   They take great pride in the moose, aurora, and bone-chilling cold.  I don’t want to burst their bubbles and tell them that you can get all of that in Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, and other northern states AND get Amazon Prime and affordable household goods.  You don’t have to prove anything. So where am I going with this rambling blog? I’m looking for home.  Most people feel a pull toward home, a place or a state.  I don’t. Well, I kind of do...but it’s more for a time and a people.  I miss Weiser, Idaho where we lived for a year with my grandparents while my dad was in Korea.  We also visited every chance we got, mostly when we were transferring between bases.  Those were the safest, happiest, most wonderful times in my life. Grandma and Grandpa’s place was paradise.   But that’s all gone now.  their house and land was sold long ago and it’s now run down and the big shade trees are gone, so are Grandma’s magical gardens.  If I returned to Weiser it wouldn’t be to that cinnamon scented house of love where I slept in an attic bedroom with lace curtains.  I do like Idaho a lot, but it wouldn’t feel like home. I’ve mentioned before that I have a real affection for the town of Wamego in Kansas.  It’s just right.  Situated between Manhattan(about 15 minutes) and Topeka (about 30 minutes) and with Kansas City a bit further east (a bit over an hour) it’s a Norman Rockwell town that takes pride in a charming downtown, a good school system, and being neighborly.  It’s the heartland.  We’ve visited three times and Wamego always comes up when we talk about where we’d like to be. I confess, I love the prairie. Always have.  The politics of Kansas are a hot mess.  I don’t mean that they’re red and I’m blue, I mean that the Kansas GOP has basically bankrupted the state.  I can live in a red state, though I’d love to live in a blue one, but I can’t live in a state devoid of services, money for schools, roads,etc.  I’m keeping a watchful eye on their governor’s race - will they elect Laura Kelly, a woman and democrat who has been a four term state senator and fought Brownback’s destructive policies...or Kobach, Brownback’s right hand man?  I met Brownback at a Wamego 4th of July parade before I knew who he was and every cell in my body screamed DANGER.  You know how sometimes your gut tells you before your brain has a chance to figure things out?  That.  If Kansas votes Kelly, my faith will be restored.  But it’s not home.  We also love Keene, the town in New Hampshire that hosts the fabulous pumpkin festival.  We always walk the towns we like, checking out libraries and other spots, and we always go into grocery stores and compare prices. Keene ticks all of my boxes for a sweet, interesting, walkable, smart city.  Their library was beautiful!  That tells you a lot about a population.  If the library is active it speaks highly of a town.  Property taxes were a little high in Keene, and it’s really not close to any decent airports for Mickey.  Manchester’s small airport is about an hour and twenty minutes away and Boston is almost 2 hours (probably more with traffic).   Granted, we’d probably be retired so maybe that’s not as big of an issue.  Still, we’ll want to see family and that makes it harder for everyone involved.  Keene is beautiful, and it is surrounded by New England’s best - sugar maple farms and covered bridges, and has four beautiful seasons.  Keene is Mickey’s number one choice, but.....you guessed it, it’s not home. I like so many of the small towns outside of Minneapolis (and it’s a blue state!),  and the state of Minnesota ranks sky high in just about every way that matters - great health care, great education system, great economy, and so on.  They’re smart cookies up there.  Admittedly, the biggest draw is that Matt lives up there, but there’s no guarantee he’ll stay.  He’ll be off wherever the scariest diseases live.  Minnesota is at the top of my list though, I really like the people there.  I like coastal Maine, not so much inland Maine.  Sadly their economy is in such a downward spiral that the state is in a depression with no end in sight.  I think they’re ranked 47th in the nation for economic growth and their numbers are stagnant.   It’s weird, Maine’s neighboring states are thriving while their governor sticks to his guns and guts the coffers.   I’ve read article after article showing that the Portland area of southeast Maine is recovering and growing but rural Maine is being left behind.  Businesses are closing, services are being cut, there’s no job creation,  and no one seems to be taking action. Towns are shrinking and doctors, dentists, teachers, and other important services are lost. So...we could probably pick up real estate for a song, but living there might be hard for a retired person. I think I’ll just visit and eat their lobster.    We could just stay put.  Life in Tennessee is certainly affordable.  No state income tax, though we do have a hefty sales tax (here in Wilson County we pay ten cents on a dollar).  Real estate is still affordable - though again, here in Wilson County it has skyrocketed.  If you don’t mine living deep, I mean deep, in Trump country where the religious hypocrisy runs high and tolerance is low - this might be your place.  I didn’t pick it, but I’ve made the best of it for over twenty-five years.  I reached my limit years ago, but the mister has recently started complaining about the heat so maybe we’ll get out after all.  Nashville is twenty minutes and a whole world away.  Maybe if we were young people living downtown we’d see a different Tennessee - Davidson County usually goes blue, a small dot in a deeply red state. Here in Mt. Juliet one of the first things people ask you is where you go to church.  Two weeks ago I went to get my mammogram and the woman who took my information was very chatty.  I engaged and we were yukking it up. As I left her desk to sit down and wait to be called, she said, “You are just precious, where do you go to church?”  When I answered that I don’t belong to a particular church her face fell and that was the end of her friendliness.  No doubt she needed to know which part of the hierarchy I belonged to...the large population of Baptists and Church of Christ followers seem to have a running battle to see who can out holy the other and who can recruit the most new members.  Methodists are pretty cool and there’s even a handful of Lutherans here who won’t bother you at all.   Tennessee is growing by leaps and bounds and has one of the hottest real estate markets in the country thanks to it being a retirement haven.  Low prices, low taxes, low standards.   Ahahahaha!  We have all the services we need at our fingertips, and we can be at the beach or in the mountains in just a few hours.  Definite positives.  We don’t have four nice seasons though - we have an excruciating summer, a beautiful but quick fall, a gray,wet,ugly winter, and a soggy, tornado-ridden spring.  Actually, I’m not complaining about spring - I love big thunderstorms and severe weather.  As long as the power stays on it can thunder and lightning for days and I’m okay. So what do we do? Stay? Go?  Keep looking? We both liked what we saw in a week in South Dakota. Do we look until we’re too old to move?  If we could snap our fingers and just live where we’d like, we’d both go to The Netherlands.  We feel at home there, pretty sad when I feel like a visitor in so many places in the U.S.  My soul feels at home in Salem.  I feel at home when I stand on the prairie and look at the huge sky and rolling hills.  I guess it all comes back to not being FROM anywhere.  In Maine, there are Mainers and outsiders.  It’s very clear.  In Minnesota they’re warm and welcoming, but there are customs, foods, traditions, and basic traits that make one a Minnesotan - I don’t possess any of them, though I don’t think they’d care. I’d just always feel like a visitor.  I didn’t feel that in Kansas, they’re good salt of the earth people, not nosy enough to ask where you’re from or where you go to church.  New Hampshire was the same way.  There didn’t seem to be a divide between born here and moved here folks. I’ve been in Tennessee since ‘93 and I’m still not considered a local.  I’m okay with that.  Not having picked up the customs and quirks of a state or even a region, I can’t really claim a “home”.  If pressed I’d probably say Alaska because that’s where I experienced everything from childhood skinned knees to birthing a baby.  But I can’t say that if I stepped off a plane there tomorrow I’d take a deep breath and say, “Ahhh, home!”  Moving to a new home every two to three years during my formative years made me resilient, it made me friendly.  I make friends easily, but I don’t get too attached - and getting me to really open up, well...

It also gave me a good attitude toward not-so-good places.  Even if you can’t find something positive, hey - you’ll only have to endure it for a couple years, right? (twenty-five years later...)  It gave me the gift of curiosity and of emotional self-sufficiency.  It just didn’t give me a hometown.    So I’m looking, always looking.  I spend hours scouring real estate and then looking up information on citydata.com and other sites.  If I ever move I’ll know more about the place than the folks who already live there.   

Thanks for listening to my scatter-brained ramblings today.  There’s no point to any of this, really.  I yearn for a place that doesn’t exist.  I long for home, but I suppose it’s all in my mind - some magical place that fits and feels right.   I wonder how many people actually have that.  I wonder how many need it?  I’ve spent a lifetime blooming where planted, and I think that’s a crucial skill.  I’m certainly not knocking it.  I just wonder what it feels like to be the plant who gets placed in the perfect environment for growth and health.  Please don’t mistake this post for sorrow or a cry for help - it’s not.  It’s really more of a thinking out loud sort of thing.   Just pondering, trying to work out whether it’s safer to stay put or make a leap.  Will any place be better than the last?  Who knows?  I do know that there are places where being authentic is easier than others.   Guess I’ll just keep looking...any hints?

[chantalkrcmar]

Moving Over To The Dark Side

A new experience for me: participating in India’s shadow economy.

We Mumbaikers have been in severe lockdown for almost nine weeks now, and this morning we were greeted with the headline: “Mumbai Headed Toward Another Lockdown.” It’s pretty hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when the tunnel keeps getting extended under your feet. Mumbai is a complete mess. Some western news outlets have reported that India is relaxing lockdown restrictions, but that is not true in Mumbai (and some other cities). India is a big country, so any reporting on India as a monolith is typically inaccurate. (Oh, and because friends in the US have been asking: No, there are still no international flights yet.)

For those of you in the US, this might paint the picture of COVID-19 in Mumbai a bit more clearly... Mumbai is India’s Ground Zero, NYC on steroids. Like NYC, we have a gigantic bulk of India’s COVID-19 cases -- and growing. Like NYC, we have a beleaguered healthcare system, only way more so. India is a developing country, after all, and this pandemic lays that extremely bare. Our extreme population density, and horrendous state of healthcare, makes Mumbai the mess that it is. Our friends who live in Manhattan told us that even at the height of the COVID crisis in NYC, they could still go out for long walks. We don’t even have that option — partly because we are the world’s most densely populated city (honestly, sections of Mumbai make Times Square look deserted), so letting people out of their homes makes social distancing very hard, and partly because politicians here just have a serious lack of imagination and can’t think of ways to manage letting us out of our buildings (like certain addresses at certain times of the day, for instance). Perhaps they just don’t know if they could control us once we’re out.

So about that shadow economy… Still only essential shops (groceries and medicines) are supposed to be open. And still only adults are allowed out of their buildings — and only to buy essentials. No frivolous walks — even if your mental health depends on it…Yet I got a message from a friend of mine about some shop selling some toys and art supplies. Just send a WhatsApp message, and you’ll be told what to do…Without thinking much about the possible illegality of our actions, Rahul and I messaged, and put in an order for pick-up. Rahul then walked to the designated location, cash in hand, and picked up the parcel before scurrying home.

We finally got new paint for Anamika, a desperately-needed item! We also got a kids cricket set (which may be more for Rahul and me than for her). We have been playing cricket in our cramped  living room — much to the chagrin of my father-in-law who is terrified we are going to shear off one of the heads of one of the gods immortalized in statues all over our apartment with one of our wicked fast balls! I love my father-in-law but the thrill of wondering if today may be the day that one of my fast balls beheads Ganesha (who was already beheaded once by his own father, no less) keeps me at it.

Anamika’s been obsessed with making magic potions lately. And one she’s been very keen on actually using is a potion to make all the statues of the gods and goddesses in our apartment  disappear. I have had to stop her from smearing mixtures of water, sugar, small ground up erasers, glitter, and other disgusting items, on Shiva. My in-laws are extremely patient with Anamika, but I am afraid that kind of desecration might be the limit. I don’t want us to be thrown out on the street.

[Apparently, googly eyes are especially effective in magic potions. Ah, the things I learn from my daughter...]

So after our illicit purchase, we pretended it was Christmas. Anything to break up the monotony! And anything to forget that Rahul had just participated in what felt like a drug deal. Lockdown is getting to my head so ethical standards may be slipping.

[One of the benefits to having a plastic christmas tree: It’s ready whenever we need it in a lockdown pinch!]

[Anamika even decorated her bedroom door for Christmas in May.]

As if finally getting Anamika some paint was not excitement enough, Amazon has now started delivering some things other than random and occasional food items. This is a huge relief for one reason: underwear. Right after lockdown happened, Anamika went through a huge growth spurt. And of course we could not accommodate her new sized body with new sized clothing. So the poor child has been soldiering through these long locked-in days while picking wedgies all the time. Dealing with this COVID-19 crisis is a lot to expect of any child — even without the constant wedgies. New undies are way better than any cricket set!

An update on our access to the Great Outdoors (otherwise known as Poop Parking Lot):

Yes, it is filled with more and more poop. And, yes, Anamika becomes more and more adept at avoiding it on her scooter.

(Sorry if that is distasteful to read, but this is our reality, and this is my blog. So there. :-) )

But our parking lot is also experiencing an uptick of wildlife — mostly fat rats lumbering about as if they own the place. Well, since humans aren’t around, why would they not feel like they own the place?!

But we have seen a snail…

And we have seen wild parakeets through Anamika’s bedroom window. Now that was an amazing moment! (Sorry about the poor quality of the pics, but I have an old phone with a terrible camera.)

A less fun fact about the wildlife in Poop Parking Lot is that Anamika has had to scooter around a few pigeons and crows that were smooshed by vehicles. A couple remarkable things about this: 1) Anamika seems completely unfazed by these dead birds; honestly, she’s seen it all in India so her take-it-all-in-stride attitude should not surprise me, I guess; and 2) there are so few cars and motorcycles moving in our parking lot since folks are barely going out, so how the birds got run over baffles me. I can only guess that the pigeons and crows have become so dazed by lockdown (like us humans) that they have lost the reflex to move when the rare vehicle does come their way.

On other wildlife notes: Swarms of locusts are hitting parts of India. This is actually no laughing matter since locusts can totally destroy crops. Farmers are reportedly staying awake all night to keep locusts away from their fields. Honestly, if I believed in such things, I would say that the end of time is nigh. In India alone we are facing a pandemic, swarms of locusts in some states, floods in other states, and cyclones in others. It’s of biblical proportions.

And yet another note about wildlife…Monkeys are reported to have run off with some COVID-19 test samples in Uttar Pradesh. As Rahul said, “Only in India…”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timesnownews.com/amp/mirror-now/in-focus/article/meerut-monkeys-run-away-with-covid-19-test-samples-locals-fear-spread-of-infection/598669

And one final note about wildlife: this time, human children. You faithful blog readers might be wondering these past couple months if there are no other children that live in our apartment complex since I never mention Anamika interacting with any other kids — even from a distance. Indeed, there are many other children. However, kids under 10 years of age, and adults over 65 years of age, are not supposed to leave their apartments. Ever. And all other parents in our compound are actually abiding by it. Truly, they are keeping their kids locked in CONSTANTLY. They must be much better rule-followers than Rahul and me — which is amazing to me given that Indians in general tend to be born rules-breakers.

Knowing that absolutely no time outside the walls of our apartment would spell our demise, we said to hell with that ridiculous lockdown law early on. There is no one in our parking lot or on our roof, so why can’t Anamika at least get some time to run around and be a kid? We never dare venture outside of our building gates. We all have acute cabin fever even with her at least getting out for 30-40 minutes every morning (longer than that and we are asking for dehydration trouble). By the way, Rahul and I are dreading the coming monsoon. There will be days when we just cannot go down to Poop Parking Lot for even a few minutes. The rains can be very heavy, and can last for days at a stretch. The bright side is that, of course, the parking lot will be cleaner.

At this point, I have to give a big shout-out to Rahul. He is one of the most persistent people I have ever met, and that quality is standing us in good stead right now. He really is the reason that Anamika continues to agree to go out every morning. Given the heat, the condition of the parking lot, and the fact that no other kids are ever there to even wave at, she is reluctant. But Rahul will not give up, and Anamika is better off for her daily forays (as am I since that is when I can do some yoga or run the stairs in our building…doing this lockdown is hard; doing this lockdown without me getting any exercise to blow steam would be untenable).

Besides being persistent, my guy is also darn clever. He found Anamika’s soft spot: music from Frozen 1 and 2. And he’s using that to his advantage. She mostly goes outside now because of the promise of hearing her favorite music. Like the Pied Piper, Rahul runs ahead of Anamika while blasting the music on his phone; she chases him (and the music) around the parking lot. All the while both of them get an excellent cardio workout from running, scootering, and singing at the top of their lungs as they do so. Anamika sings “loud and proud” (as some of her teachers used to say), and now knows almost every word to every song in both Frozen 1 and 2.

True confessions: Anamika is not the only one in our family who is captivated by Frozen 1 and 2 music. Rahul and I, too, are really into it. One of our favorite pastimes now is to ask each other at random moments: “Which Frozen song is stuck in your head right now?” or “Which Frozen song was in your head when you woke up this morning?” Never one for pretensions, I have even fewer now. I’ll admit that I like a healthy dose of Brain Candy (especially during a crisis) and music from Frozen 1 and 2 certainly are that. I proudly own the fact that I know almost all the words to “Wanna Build a Snowman” now.

A completely random point:

Anamika just announced to me this morning: “I am not returning to ASB [her school].” When I asked her why, fully expecting her to tell me something about all the uncertainties around school and COVID-19, she answered: “Because I am going to life-guarding school. So I can become a lifeguard at Tej Uncle’s beach [the one in Goa where we went on our winter break].” Last week, she was planning on going to rocket-flying school. Thank god for her sense of humor — which is not humor to her. She is damn serious about going to life-guarding school. Regardless, her pluck and wackiness go a long way in this awful, and awfully long, lockdown.

[toshootforthestars]

Hey so...

I have very little faith in the future right now.  Honestly I have reason to suspect that this new decade, the 2020′s, will be a total shitshow.  A shitshow of human suffering and misery unlike anything anyone alive has experienced.

I speak in regards to how things will pan out in the good ol’ USA, although I suspect things will turn to further shit across the globe. 

I just don’t see anything good on the horizon.  Politically, socially, environmentally, financially, nor spiritually.  The 2020′s will be a calamitous era without any analogue to any previous decade in our kids’ textbooks. 

Over 100 years of hard-fought social progress absolutely will be undone by the leadership in Washington, but precious little else will even be addressed.  Take-home wages will continue to stagnate or even fall. Environmental degradation will continue at an exponential rate.  Public infrastructure will largely collapse if is isn’t fully abandoned.  Democratic governance will be largely abandoned. Human rights, already a concept on the decline, might not exist in 10 years time. Pandemics and resistant disease may both flourish this decade, unabated.  Plus: the pension crisis, social security insolvency, predatory capitalism, increasing barriers to internet access, the insecure IoT, election hacking, the health care crisis, and microplastics.  And more!

There are so many urgent problems that affect everyone, and there’s absolutely no will to solve them.  It’s a crisis of leadership seldom seen.  Too few people in a position to create change even cares.  No shitty action has any consequence of merit.  It’s the “fuck you” society.  A teenager from Sweden pleas for action on the world stage and she’s roundly mocked, debased and ignored.

Each individual is on their own... and as it should be, most will say!  Social darwinism, the “rugged individualist” ideals far too many people are returning to, combines with the horrific transformation of our society from one of ideas, virtues and progress to this insular, post-truth, anti-science dogmatic and authoritarian sandbox game.  Perhaps this was the way society used to be like, if not for the apathy of our parents and grandparents to fully impart this to us.

If the world is full of people whose only motivation is self-interest, people with no compassion, no capacity to understand, no capacity to think critically, will society even stand in the face of crisis?

The future feels like a hellscape almost beyond imagination.

I think back to all the times that I’ve heard, first-hand or second-hand, an individual claim that “there’s far too many people in this world” or that “we need to thin the herd,” clutching vainly to this merit-based existence where everyone’s life is a privilege that must be earned, that must be proven to others, day in and day out.  This argument wins the day.  It grows more adherents.  People are in cages on the U.S./Mex border and the false assumption that “it can’t happen to me” wins the day.  The planet is on fire, but “fuck you--got mine.”  It’s great. It’s fantastic.  I need to watch what I say now because the silent majority is fed up with our shit.

So much will be radically different by 2029.  The internet will still be around, with facebook and instagram, Apple and Amazon, plus a handful of general interest websites. NewsMax too, I suspect.  But no tumblr. No Wordpress. No AO3. No blogs. No twitter. No tiktok. No more....  many things.  But the ones still standing by 2030, they’ll still have Walmart, DuPont, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Verizon, Disney and pickup trucks. 

You know, I very strongly doubt there will be free and abundant potable water, anywhere, by 2029.  Tap water will become a thing of the past, just like the landline phone.

Hell by 2060 I wouldn’t be surprised if 75% of the world’s population to have perished, while planetary-scale geoengineering will have begun in earnest by then, by a largely robotic work force.

I very much want to be wrong about this and more.

I won’t get my hopes up.  At my apartment, I no longer separate the recyclables from the trash.  I’ve been told in confidence by people I know, from work and from the community, that everything in the town I live in is being landfilled now, for reasons, and has been for many years now.  All the surrounding towns too.  Among the reasons: near-zero public compliance with the recycling rules, plus no interest in hiring people to hose out all the crusted & moldy remains from those recyclables.  Largely, it’s the long-standing, steadfast opposition to recycling from the get-go.  Recycling is and always has been some liberal bullshit, like Earth Day, and plastics actually do biodegrade in landfills (they don’t but fuck science and evidence), and asking at all about what happens to the trash to begin with is stupid and I shouldn’t do it.  Facilities to melt down plastics for reuse, well, there’s none near where I live. That’s why some recyclables not landfilled here are sent dumped overseas. No one can tell me if there is any such reuse industry at all for plastics and glass like there sorta is for paperboard. If I trash all my garbage, it’ll be landfilled locally instead of being dumped across the world. It’s the least bad option.  I hate it.  I hate it all.  I hate the total lack of any regard for other people, for the planet, nor for the future.  I hate that there’s so little I can do except complain.  But only to the right people.

(Rethink the supply chain? Rethink consumer goods?  Reusable container for everything?  I get dirty looks just for using a reusable Whirley mug for gas station coffee, instead of the polystyrene cups provided because I’m “cheap.”.  The state I live in has a partial ban on plastic bags that *may* go into effect in a few months if the law isn’t struck down in court.  It’s great.)

No one cares and I shouldn’t either.  That’s the answer I get. That’s the solution I read is being agreed upon.  Just as long as the dump doesn’t smell too bad. 

This is world I live in today. 

Happy 2020.