on freedom's price

Ask most any motorcyclist sporting a leather vest, jacket, or chaps, and he'll say that “The freedom of it” is one of the primary reasons that he rides. Ah yes, seductive and elusive Liberty, she who beckons from near and far, always around us but forever just out of reach, always tantalizingly close yet frustratingly far away, how we love her! We think about freedom, yearn for it, love it, enjoy it, abuse it, and harp on it, speaking of it in hushed tones and genuflecting before that giant copper-clad statue of goddess Liberty standing in New York's harbor to welcome the poor and the huddled masses to these our bountiful shores. Some people among us – the aforementioned bikers first and foremost – seem to be trying to actively execute their right to freedom by riding around on big, motorized machines that pollute the air we all breathe and shatter the quiet we all enjoy.

Everything comes at a price, even Liberty, and the price we citizens pay for the bikers' freedom is higher than most: we arm our young men and women and fly them to sovereign nations in the Middle East and Central Asia where they kill and maim and bomb in order to secure a steady supply of gasoline for all of those in-line flathead v-twin noisemakers; we give Arabian oil sheiks American dollars to pay for gasoline to run all those hogs, perfectly content in the knowledge that some of our money will be used to fund terrorist organizations such as Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and Hamas; we maintain diplomatic missions, puzzle over foreign trade policy, and arrange trade treaties so that bikers might wear t-shirts and vests made by foreign manufacturers emblazoned with the symbols of these United States, Old Glory printed on Bangladeshi cotton, the Stars and Stripes stitched into Vietnamese cowhide; we inhale the fumes of their idling engines and wince with every revving of their obnoxiously-loud tailpipes while wishing they would just all go home, read a book, and think about how downright lame their little scooters are.

Motorcyclists actively decrease their own amount of personal Liberty by relying on complicated machines to move them around; to maintain their little slices of freedom they are beholden to mechanics, parts manufacturers, tassel twisters, carburetors, regulators, and tow truck drivers. If motorcyclists would take a moment to examine the roots of the craze for two-wheelers, they would find the lowly wire donkey, the velocipede, the muscle-powered bicycle. Oh, if only these fools would throw off the chains of slavery to oil-pumping Arabs and wrench-chucking mechanics and return en mass to the device that grants its user nearly unbridled freedom, the crank-powered bicycle. Just think how quiet our world would be, how greatly motorcyclists could improved their health and fitness, and how much less gasoline we would have to kill and maim and bomb for if we could but free Liberty from the demands of endless warfare and disassociate her from mundane pettiness and wasteful sloth. When someone wears a vest upon which is printed a picture of a bald eagle wrapped in the American flag floating above a chopper-style motorbike while riding on a chopper-style motorbike, that person proves only his disrespect for the stars and stripes and his love for redundancy; when he relies on a combustion engine to move him across the face of the earth rather than letting his thigh and calf muscles drag him across that selfsame phaltscape, he puts nothing on display but his laziness and lack of vigor. Please, dear reader, if you love Liberty, value human health, and respect the lungs and eardrums of other people, sell your hog, buy a velocipede, and be free. Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

routine – its power

Following a daily routine for the first time in many years, this poor, worthless whorphan has noticed his life improving. At the baseline of my routine are yoga exercises at dawn, noon, and sunset, three sessions of ten minutes each that have changed my life by bridging the gaps in the mind-body-interface, a deficiency common to Westerners. Then, I am losing weight and getting into shape by bicycling and by performing roughly four hours of yard or garden duty daily, including the hand-watering of three separate gardens. Thirdly but by no means less importantly, I am, even now, abiding by what I call EBOS, which stands for Entire Battery Operating Session, which means that every day after breaking my fast I use this netbook to write, to process pictures, and to edit graphics until its battery drains to about 15% capacity, at which time I turn it off because it starts to complain about needing juice. Fourth, I maintain and monitor a 45-watt, three panel battery array that charges a 12-volt, deep-cycle marine battery, from which I can charge headlamp and netbook and cellphone batteries and watch DVD movies occasionally, thus avoiding high electricity bills. Fifth, I allot a certain period of time each day to reading, to learning languages (I am currently learning Netherlandish), and to perusing various periodical, spiritual, and educational texts, so as to store in my brains as much as I possibly can of the information they contain (in order to know how to do many different things during the upcoming complete societal collapse commonly referred to as the Zombie Apocalypse).

I have not always followed routines – in fact, I avoided them for most of my life, preferring to shoot from the hip and to frustrate my potential by not exploring it or employing it effectively. One of the main reasons that I have begun to follow them now is that I discovered that a daily yoga routine helps me control my attention-deficit-disorder and its associated lesser maladies such as depression, binge-eating, and sloth. Another reason that I now follow routines is that I read somewhere that doctors who follow routines and maintain checklists are less likely to make mistakes when treating patients and more likely to operate efficiently and with less undue stress. While I am not a doctor, I try to emulate those fine and intelligent people when possible, trusting them to puzzle out the most effective methods and poaching their most effective and simple methods for success.

Please understand that I am not trying to boast about all the things that I am getting done, merely that I am exploring how I came to act instead of thinking and what methods I have used to bring my life back under my control and to deal with my illness, which is also called minor brain dysfunction. In routine, dear friend, I have found some salvation from the jumbled stew that is my mind; in yoga, dear friend, I have found an effective means of getting back in touch with the deep and subtle feelings, with the foul and the blessed urges, and with the abiding glory that is my inner animal. Thanks for reading, and mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

one small thing

It was but one small thing, one simple step not taken, that caused the big battery to drain. It started with d-cell batteries, themselves a few decades old, that I was trying to charge for the first time in their lives, so as to use them in a lamp, for reading; the d-cells, even after sitting in the charger for nine hours, had not retained any charge, providing not even trace illumination. Conceding defeat, I had dutifully unplugged the charger from the extension cord that runs to the 750-watt inverter in the basement, which is connected via alligator clamps to the big battery, a 12 volt deep-cycle marine type.

The reason that the marine deep-cycle exhibited a diminished charge compared to if it had simply sat there not providing power to anything was that I had forgotten to turn off the inverter when done using it; therefore, the little green LED light that burns when the inverter is turned on had slowly whittled away at the big battery's charge, over twelve hours chewing up a couple of amperes. One small thing overlooked, one simple step not taken, had impacted demonstrably, using up less electricity than I had originally feared, however, for after turning off the DC-to-AC inverter, the big battery's charge jumped back up almost all the way back to where it would have been had I not been such a fool. Had it not been for the post-booze haze which moved in Saturday morning and hung on tenaciously all day, I might have remembered to depress that one small button, thus saving myself a bit of consternation, but, ah well, the past cannot be changed, while the future is pregnant with smarter decisions, better made. Huzzah.

And so, I shall hazard to declare, it goes with many things in life – the small and easily-overlooked, if they are indeed viewed as small, if indeed they are overlooked, quickly turn into things of tremendous import, wreaking havoc if allowed to grow from tiny saplings into towering trees. It is for me, then, to remember to attend to the small beginnings of things, and to stay with them, patiently, until they have reached their natural end. In this fashion, then, I might actually make something of this pathetic life of mine. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit