das loft

Thiefie update! So thiefie took my reply with my phone number. And he removed his lock! He didn't call me, didn't bug me about the $20. I bet he was intimidated by me. He should be. I'm so confrontational, always eager to pick a fight. With Elyse, Cronemaster, as my sidekick, he ought to be running for the hills.

So I brought my bike into my apartment. I'm not sure what to do now. I feel just slightly bad that he replaced the chain for free and all he got out of it was a nasty note exchange. I had a closer look at the chain, and it turns out it's not brand-spanking new. It looks as if it was taken from another bike, but it's still in way better condition than my old chain. So it's not worth the cost of a new chain, which would be about $40. I'm wondering whether $20 is even reasonable, though. Or should I not worry about this and just keep my money? Should I feel guilty?

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Another friendly food event, brought to you by the everpresent Snagglings:

paul and elyse...


elyse distortie and luke...


dearest evan...


dearest woo-jun...

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Newsflash! Thiefie left a note:

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I can now understand his reluctance to reply. Poor bastard. My best guess is that I'm dealing with an adult male recently immigrated to Canada. Or someone who just never bothered to learn how to write.

So what do I do? Leave the guy $20 for the "chem" (I assume he means chain)? Or leave him my phone number? I'd prefer to just get this over with. I'm happy to leave him $20 if that's going to get him to remove his lock. But is that a stupid thing to do? There's still no guarantee he's going to remove his lock. He could just take the $20 and... well.. stay put. (Why would he run? This is his home!) If he didn't remove his lock after that, then I would still be able to raise the issue with the landlady, and she could investigate and evict as necessary.

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Every time I do pushups, I can do one more - in each set - than the last time. For instance, last you heard, I did a triple-22 (three sets of 22). The next time, I was able to do three sets of 23. Then 24. And just yesterday, 25. Not only that, but I'm also interleaving them with three sets of pull-ups (if they even have a name), which I've also been able to steadily increase. So technically, I'm now at 25-20-25-20-25-20, if that makes any sense to anyone other than Jon Pipitone.

Guess what else I did yesterday? I made ricotta. It's so easy! I should have been doing this all the time instead of making fresh cheese. All you do is heat some milk with a bit of lemon juice to just below boiling, stir it up a bit, let it sit for six hours in a warmish place, then spoon out the curds with a slotted spoon. Piece of cheesecake! (Actually, the more correct way of making ricotta is using whey instead of lemon juice, and that's what I'm going to do next time.) I'm eating some of this ricotta now on the sourdough bread I made using yeast from the air, water from the tap, and flour from Jon's manual grain grinder. I could easily make bread and cheese now with just a field of grains and a cow. Ah, the simple life.

Thiefie took my note! But they haven't replied, or left any indication that they want this matter ever resolved. So I wrote another note, politely urging them to pick a time for us to meet, or make a suggestion as to how they want to settle this. If they put it off much longer, I'll either have to take this matter to the landlady, or try my hand at snipping off their lock (but then I'll feel like a thief!).

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Alert! There's a discussion on Open Eyes about that Backster interview, if anybody's interested.

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My winter wonderwheels has returned!! Behold the beauty:

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The fact that the person who stole my bicycle returned it to the very same place they found it - and locked it up with their own lock - suggests a certain degree of bravery or stupidity, or perhaps a combination of the two. The thief seems to have made some alterations to my bike. They bought a new chain (the last one was so brown and rusted that it didn't even look like metal):

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They also adjusted the seat a bit, and seem to have cleaned up the pedals as well.

The thief would most likely have to be a neighbour of mine in this small apartment building. Otherwise why would they lock it up in this building's only bike rack? I don't know any of our neighbours yet (your typical Canadian/Ontarian/Oakvillian coldness - of which I too am guilty). That's going to change. I wrote a two-page note to this dude/dudette, telling them that they were mistaken when they thought my bike was abandoned property, and that we should arrange a time to meet face-to-face to discuss who gets what. It's a little complicated, since they've already put some work into fixing it up. Maybe I'll pay them for the new chain, or maybe I'll sell them the bike, or maybe we'll arrange some kind of sharing agreement. I put the note in a plastic bag with a pencil (so thiefie could suggest a time to meet) and wrapped it around the frame of my bike:

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Then I took my two trusty bike locks that I use for my expensive bike (one braided, one U-bar), locked one around the frame, the back wheel, the new chain, and the bike rack, and locked the other one around the frame, the front wheel, and the bike rack. So thiefie's going to have a lot of trouble making use of wonderwheels until we come to some kind of agreement!

I suspect it's a kid who lives in this building. You wouldn't think adults to be that stupid, right? So I might have to speak to his/her parents, god forbid...

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This has got to be one of the most amazing things I have ever read: The Plants Respond: An Interview with Cleve Backster by Derrick Jensen. Holy crap. Read it.

About three quarters through, Backster starts talking about electron spins and quantum physics and spirituality. Thom Hartmann wrote about all that as well in his book, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Hartmann's discussion of it had such an impact on me; it largely dispelled my scientific skepticism of religion and spirituality. I think that book could have a strong impact on any scientifically minded person.

That's why I wanted a certain friend of mine to read Hartmann's book, who never seems to follow any of my book recommendations. He's pretty scientifically minded, and he's shown me that he has an interest in spirituality. But he assumes that book is just more sustainability doctrine. It's far from just that. It's a way I think he and I could connect a bit better.

Anyway, I'm digressing. Read that interview by Jensen.

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"If we're to survive, we must recognize that we kill by inaction as surely as by action." - Derrick Jensen

"We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, affliction or infamy. We kill when, because it is easier, we countenance, or pretend to approve of atrophied social, political, educational, and religious institutions, instead of resolutely combating them." - Hermann Hesse

This is interesting: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

And here is an interview with Derrick Jensen, which I found to be rather mind-blowing. He says some pretty radical things about violently taking down civilization, and makes it hard for me to disagree with him, too. He believes that civilization will come down, either through oil-based collapse or helped along by people who understand that it must, within the next 10 years. Gee, that's even sooner than I thought.

I haven't even read any of his books, but I intend to as soon as the library complies with my requests to order copies of them. His books include A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make-Believe, among others. I've read a bit about him so I think I have a rough idea of why he's got this thing for force and violence (or so it seems). He does seem to make an energizing case for it, though.

Jensen was largely inspired by Daniel Quinn's Ishmael as well.

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I have just rediscovered the pleasures of cooking with a sharp knife! I finally got around to buying a knife sharpener at Canadian Tire ($12) because I couldn't bear having those onions slip away any longer! And lo. What a glorious experience it is to chop onions, tomatoes, carrots, and a variety of other frightened vegetables with such a smooth slicer. The blade is so sharp that it now catches on everything I graze it against, from the cutting board to my fingertips. This is very good thing.

So anyone who's a cook, take this advice: Sharpen every one of your knives every other time you use it by simply sliding each side of the blade against a sharpening rod five or so times at a 20-degree angle. Bliss awaits.

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Yesterday, as I was about to get groceries, I went to jump on my winter bike - but it had disappeared! Somebody stole my old, ugly, rusted up winter wonderwheels! Alas. I was expecting this day to come. I didn't even bother locking it up anymore, partly because I figured nobody would want such a sad piece of junk anyway, and partly because I couldn't turn the key in the lock anymore. Good thing I didn't get around to spending that money on a new chain for it. I still expect to find it lying in a ditch somewhere nearby, or maybe on the riverbank. I mean, after a few minutes riding it, who would actually want to keep such a junky thing? Hopefully it's gone to someone who'd have more use for it than I did.

Now I'll just have to take more care with my good bike, cleaning it down every time I take a trip through the salty slush of the city streets. What a pain...

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Some more funny dreams. Pretty exciting actually. I think the first one was a result of watching the Firefly pilot episode yesterday (seems to be popular among geeks, so I thought I'd check it out). I think I was inadvertantly pulled into some gang of thieves in England, but relatively good thieves. I don't really know much about them because I was thinking mostly of the bad thieves I had to deal with. This one bad thief dude was asking me for 10,000 £ or he'd kill me or something. I suppose I just had that amount from selling some stolen merchandise, so I handed it over, and he ran away. Then I think (and I may be wrong) my friend thief and I came across one of those armoured bank cars, and the driver must have been in some kind of trouble. All I remember is that it was super-easy for the two of us to steal 10,000 £ from this guy without his even noticing, and he continued on his way, thanking us for our help (?). So I had all this money again. Later that day I passed the Queen of England on the street; she was handing out freshly minted 100 £ bills to passers-by, to promote the latest design on the bill. She handed me one and I was very happy. But I felt really guilty too, about that and about the 10,000 £. Then the rest is a blur.

The other dream I had was very simple: my friend Derek e-mailed me a one-liner, after having cut off contact with all of his friends for months. I was so excited to get an e-mail from him, even though it was just a one-liner (that's just his style). I don't remember what he said, but it was clearly written in a good mood, as if he'd finally finished whatever it was that had required such isolation. But how excited that made me... it's quite funny that. So I woke up hoping it wasn't a dream, but alas.

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Hm. That film, The End of Suburbia, seems to have really affected the way I think about things. That is, that film on top of all the books and articles I've read about our dependence on oil and the end of oil. It's made me think about everything in a "What really matters now?" kind of way.

I've been thinking about my Computer Science degree, how useless it's going to be in a few years. This amazing information age, and how short-lived it's going to be. I can't help seeing these things from a "looking back" perspective; that film makes it really hard to imagine how we could possibly afford to continue producing and powering all that technology once oil prices have risen sufficiently.

I think about activists battling to stop "harmful" technologies like genetic engineering, pesticide use, nuclear weapons - yet all that battling will become obsolete once oil prices rise sufficiently. In a few years the economy will do the job for them (unless people somehow figure out how to continue those technologies without oil). I see a world limited to organic farming out of economic necessity rather than environmental, health, or moral reasons.

But I doubt that many could possibly understand where I'm coming from. Hardly anyone seems to have a clue that we're in any real imminent danger of oil shortages. People still plan for the next ten or twenty years as if no significant changes are going to happen by then, as if no cataclysmic crash is going to happen in even a hundred years. But I think few people must realize the extent to which our population is dependent on abundant fossil fuels, and the point we're at in consuming them. There's no way we could come close to our current population level so quickly without readily available fossil fuels - and no conceivable way to maintain it, either. (In case this isn't quite clear to you, as it wasn't to me for most of my life, this is all well explained in the film, as well as in The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight and probably any decent book on oil depletion, such as The Party's Over.) Fossil fuels have rocketed our population to incredible heights this past century, but when the tank starts running out (and it's just about to), I think we're going to start feeling the fall the pretty quickly.

So I'm beginning to wonder what I'll be able to do to make a living in ten or so years. What will a post-oil world still need that I can offer? I think music will always be in demand, although electronic music may have become too expensive due to the high cost of electricity. But I already own a piano and my family has a good selection of other acoustic goods, so I think I'm set to pursue that. Of course, farm hands will probably be in immense demand. So I'm definitely going to spend some time up at Everdale this summer to get a head start on that. Maybe bicycle couriers will be useful then, too, what with all the trucks and planes out of commission. I may have to get a trailer for my bike then, or make one. Anyway, you get the idea.

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Whoa. I just barely did at triple-22 of pushups. Not bad...

Hey everybody, I highly, highly recommend this documentary, called The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream. I was bad again and downloaded it from the Internet, but I've already gone to their website and ordered a copy for a relative, and I'll likely be ordering more.

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I have a film for you all. Videos from my trip. Featuring: myself, Meta, my dad, the ship, Jamaica, Cozumel, and Labadabadee...

(You need RealPlayer to watch it.)

• High-quality version (for high-speed connections - highly recommended!!)
  
• Very, very low-quality version (for dial-up users - almost pointless because you'll see and understand almost nothing in it due to choppiness and muffled voices)

If you have dial-up, you can still watch the high-quality version by right-clicking the first link and saving the file to your computer, and then watching it from your hard drive. But it will take a while for you dial-up doodles to download it because it's 33.6 MB.

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A panorama from the top of the ship when it was parked at Labadee, Haiti:

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I'm back from my trip! Here are some photos to keep you entertained while I get my videos organized:

• Jon's farewell dinner from Jan. 28
  
• Paul and Meta's Caribbean Cruise
  

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