I ended up deleting the Miami Herald RSS feed from my subscriptions in NetNewsWire. Too much "news" I can't use, and it was just depressing. Murders, grotesque accidental deaths, lottery nonsense, celebrity sightings.

I was watching YouTube videos about photography and composition, how to "see." I'm challenged by my suburban surroundings. What is the story they tell?

And I've also been thinking about blogging and working on the marmot, getting ready for this meet-up later this month about blogging with Tinderbox. Why should anyone blog? Why should anyone read blogs?

Well, because we're social creatures and it's another way to experience that.

I struggle a little with that too, sometimes. If you look around, things are not going so well. But I guess that's subjective, right? Steven Pinker would say these are the best of times, right? I wanted to call the image above, "Crime in progress," but that wasn't what I wanted to call this blog post so I made it the caption.

But does it look like a crime?

I think most people would say it looks like a nice neighborhood where everybody recycles. What's wrong with that?

Except recycling is mostly a fraud perpetrated on the public by the plastics industry. Most of that stuff winds up in a landfill anyway, but folks think they're doing the responsible thing.

It goes deeper than that, though. All those neatly manicured lawns. That long strip of asphalt. Near the bottom left of the image, beneath the street sign and to the left of the yellow fire hydrant, there's a dark strip in the curb. That's a storm drain. We cover that grass with chemicals. Fertilizers to make it grow. Weed killers, pesticides, herbicides to make sure only "grass" grows. And we water the hell out of it, and that water runs off into the street, over to that storm drain and into the retention ponds. Which we then have to treat to make sure the fertilizers don't cause an algae bloom.

And let's not mention the cars.

"I'd like to report a crime in progress."

But there's no one to report it to. And if you try to suggest there should be, you just sound like a malcontent.

Blogging about the collapse of civilization has to be a downer. I mean, you're only going to attract a certain kind of reader, and they're probably not a lot of fun to hang around with.

On a recent walk, thinking about blogging and "what to blog about," I figured I'd just stop with the doom stuff. It's too late to really stop it; but does it help anyone to know that? And it'll make itself known eventually anyway. But here I am, blogging about it! Obliquely, maybe.

Which is the titular crime. "Disturbing the peace." Who needs it? On a Sunday, no less!

I wanted a line from Joe Versus the Volcano, and I found this page. Here's the line:

“Joe, nobody knows anything. We'll take this leap and we'll see. We'll jump and we'll see. That's life!”

(There are some other great lines there too. I should watch that movie again.)

All we ever have are moments to live. "Yesterday is history. Tomorrow's a mystery. Today is a gift, that's why it's called 'the present'." (Different movie. Kung Fu Panda)

Every moment is a leap of faith.

Thanks for dropping by.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:46 Sunday, 4 February 2024