even though I’ve read Steinbeck, the idyllic life-lived-on-land is still a carrion clarion call.

Recently sprung up is this harvest moon video snes game. addictive in its repetitive fulfillment, but oh what 2-d purpose it pretends, its progress more available than real life, and requiring less patience. By most accounts, the game should not be very enjoyable, it is not exciting or adventurous or intriguing or action-packed or any of the things that usually make a media experience enjoyable. I think it speaks to our natures; anyone who likes to play this game has a secret longing to do real good work.

A longing to see Spring upon them and grow up the ground with their hands.

Or–if we are too far divorced from labor–a purpose for our minds will suffice; something that produces noticeable difference, improvement.
What is a better feeling than a job well done?

That time I hauled the lumber and lit the sauna just right.
That time I deciphered ages of poems and found a purpose to it all.

Thanks to Harvest Moon for helping me recall these important motives.

in the big economy, what does our comfort cost in the lives of others?

“At the district’s vote-counting center in Murombedzi, electoral presiding officer George Bandure claimed that election officers faced a shortage of paper and were therefore unable to post results. Yet this is one of the more prosperous rural areas of Zimbabwe thanks to Mugabe’s patronage.”

i suggest everyone visit my flickr site (the link is on the right side of this page) for new photos from christmas time and the family vacation in bradenton.

beauty and cuteness galore! 

hypothesis:

what if all of the time spent on the enabling and participating of screen-watching (TVshows, vidGames, NETbrowsing, etc.) was spent on actively positive pursuits: growing food, cleaning the neighborhood, friendly relationships, exercise, peace, learning, teaching, building, etc.

The average person watches 4.5 hours of television per day. That is about 70 days out of 365 spent watching television.

70 Days is enough time to

- Earn $5600 at $10/hour
- Train for a Marathon
- Gain elementary knowledge of a foreign language
- Fall in Love
- Build a house

multiply that, of course, over a life time:
70 days x 84 years = 5,880 days

That is nearly 6000 days. This does not include other screen time, like this here computer, or video games (portable and stationary)

16 years is spent, on average, in our lives watching television when many people in the world do not even live that long because they lack food.
maybe we just don’t have anything better to do.

these are the sorts of things i think about in the shower.

and this is only measuring the economic opportunity cost of excess screenage