Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

So I'm not surprised that yet another Republican sex scandal is in the news. Nor am I surprised that the White House says he's just “naughty” and that Clinton had done worse. Nor am I surprised that the Republicans have blocked investigation, or that pages were warning each other about Foley since 1995 and that the Republican staff has known about him for at least five years — after all, that's what a giant bribe buys you. I'm not surprised that Newt Gingrich is saying that the Republicans didn't take action because they thought it would look like it was “gay bashing, or that Rush Limbaugh says this is all a fraudulent “Democrat setup” and that Democrats in general support pedophiles, nor am I surprised that the Religious Right has said this should be blamed on “tolerance and diversity“.

I'm not even particularly surprised that Foley is a Scientologist or that the Repubicans are exploiting children to avoid “adult” questions. I'm not surprised that FOX News and other agencies knew about the story a year ago and chose to cover it up… But I have to admit that I was a little surprised that FOX would have the balls to spend a while actually calling Foley a Democrat.

Well, ignorance is strength, right?

I guess it distracts from tensions with a real nuclear nation (and I don't mean the most likely fake one), or that European airlines are potentially being banned from entering the US, or that the US recently slipped through a bill that includes text making it punishable by torture and permanent imprisonment without trial if you write negatively about the US government… Or even of the fact that the majority of Americans now believe that Bush is one of the most prolific mass murderers of his countrymen in US history (and he vows not to stop killing Americans).

That said, it's all a distraction from the upcoming environmental collapse. Good thing everyone knows about that. In my opinion, that's the only issue that people should be basing their votes on these days. As if the votes count…

Or does that only apply to reptiles?

So I've been doing a not-entirely-on-purpose experiment with my “garden” (a bunch of planters on the porch)… Because I'm pretty terrible at reliably watering or otherwise caring for the plants, I've been learning which plants are bullet proof and which aren't… Celery and strawberries for example appear to be unkillable, heh.

I don't really know where I'm going to be next summer. Part of me wants to go live on the West Coast, part of me thinks about PEI, Nova Scotia, and the rest of the maritimes, and part of me thinks about northern Ontario and Quebec. There are a lot of really beautiful and sustainable places to go.

I feel like when I comment on this, I'm either preaching to the choir, or talking to people who won't see it until it's far too late, but I think we could be within twenty years — maybe less, maybe more… but not much more — of a complete environmental collapse. I would be very, very shocked if within the next hundred years we don't see the world's population drop (without our “consent”) to ten percent of what it is now through a combination of megaplague and environmental changes that make much of the planet both unlivable and incapable of continuing to produce resources for humans.

That's a picture of the property that I own out in New Brunswick, assuming it hasn't been repossessed by the government due to my non-attendance of it. For those of you interested in properties like that, you can buy logged properties (so basically a property that's been clearcut, with a border of forest) for about $100 an acre in Canada… So that 50 acre property cost $5000.

Other than that, I've been asked to be on a gameshow where different groups of people are pitted against each other in various IQ-related tests. I want to do it, but at the same time, I'm terrified of looking stupid on TV. I don't mind looking weird on TV (been there, done that), but I definitely don't want to look dumb.

Because of school, I don't actually get to spend a ton of time with Nefarious during the week (an hour or two in the morning and the same in the evening), so I like trying to do things on the weekend. Today we went out to Taylor Creek Park… On the way there, there was a giant accident (luckily in oncoming traffic, not on our side) and traffic had crawled to a halt due to the flipped over car in the middle of the highway. When we were walking through the park, we could actually see cars with blown radiators, they'd been sitting in stop-and-go for so long (look at the rightmost car on the bridge).

Taylor Creek is the park that you see just south of Eglington on the DVP (access via Don Mills) that has those big elephant or polar bear or whatever they are sculptures. They're actually pretty cool functional art, done by artist Noel Harding (“The Elevated Wetlands”). They're made of recycled plastic, with local plants growing up on top of them. Using power from solar cells, water is pulled up from the [polluted] Don River, and is pumped through the structures, going through a natural water filtration system (almost like a greywater system in an earthship) before they re-enter the water table.

I really think Toronto has some of the nicest parkland (and tons of it) of any city I know, but I have to admit that every time I visit the park I miss living in the country a lot. It had it's problems, but I really think Tweed was one of my favorite places ever to live… I hope that after the winter I'll be able to look for a permanent property somewhere rural enough that I can have more space to play.

Other than that, I'm taking it easy today, and tomorrow a fun new project starts.