Monday, May 30, 2016

Darn the Holy!



 
Holy socks with “flip-flops” will never be “in fashion.” But Used Crap Stores don’t sell “pre-owned” socks, and we are all too poor for new.


Cheap solution: gather thy holy socks, even thy holiest of holies. From Grandma, Great Uncle, or anyone old and wise, beg a steel “needle” and a roll of tiny rope (“thread”), of any color. Darn them! Like this: http://www.lonelysock.com/Mending.html


Not new, but not none. The surgically enhanced may mix with the unholy—no sock need be ashamed. Stand fashionably thrifty and proud, even in flip-flops.


%$#@!



Humans, being fallible, should never be quite certain of anything.






%$#@!



Don’t shop until you must.






%$#@!



Whoever dies with the most toys has lost the game.






%$#@!


In nothing trust.



 
“…we have after all within ourselves what we need.”
                                 Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966), Essays in Zen Buddhism, p. 73

%$#@!


To honor the war dead,
including the women, children, and babies: 
bring all soldiers home, and dismantle the killing machines.


 “Let’s face it; what we call the “war on terror” is really just another oil war…. The only winners have been the military contractors and oil companies that have pocketed historic profits, the intelligence agencies that have grown exponentially in power and influence to the detriment of our freedoms, and the jihadists who invariably used our interventions as their most effective recruiting tool. We have compromised our values, butchered our own youth, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, subverted our idealism, and squandered our national treasures, in fruitless and costly adventures abroad. In the process, we have helped our worst enemies and turned America, once the world’s beacon of freedom, into a national security surveillance state and an international moral pariah.”

Robert F, Kennedy Jr. 

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Holy Daze!

Defunct "entertainment" venue, west Sedona, AZ


1. Reality Quiz:

Are you having fun--


 as you work, eat, and sleep?


Blowout Creek, Cottonwood AZ. The proper use of the automobile.

 Are we missing some thing?


Are we dancing in streets? 


2. No worries:

Real men are kind.

"Where'd ya say the show wuz, Granmaw?"


You are not less if you have less.

South of Doe Mountain, AZ


Everything eventually falls apart.



Keep trying and you might "get somewhere", or not.

"Bull Pen" area of West Clear Creek, Coconino Forest Road 215

No person or "authority" may tell you how to live without your consent.


West Clear Creek Trail #17



3. Proper-ganda:


In honor of all warriors:

“War is disgusting and horrific….It never leaves the people who were involved in it. The damage is far greater than the lists of casualties or costs in dollars. It permeates lifestyles. It infects cultures and people and worldviews. The war is never over for us. The fighting stops. The troops get called back. But the war goes on for those damaged by war.”

Former mortuary unit Marine Jess Goodell




"Thou shalt not kill." 
Exodus 20:13, from an old English king's version of a book that Jews, Muslims, and Christians pretend to believe.



Winning isn't anything. 

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Rez Treasure!

 


Most of us don't get rich no matter how hard we work. Boo hoo. So here is a place us overworked poor folk can play Cheap Tourist, thanks to descendants of North American Holocaust survivors.

 

This non-sign marks the way to "Grand Falls" on the Little Colorado River, in the southwest corner of the Navajo Nation. There are no toll booths, user fees, park rangers, welcome wagons, or doo-doo rooms. Perfect impecunious "sight-seeing" if you can find it.


The muddy trickle becomes Grand whenever enough water drops from the heavens onto the Colorado Plateau.





Taller than Niagara Falls (though I did not measure it), it also lacks the hyper-satiated baboons who prefer the world paved over and lined with buildings full of cute junk and delicious poisons. It's not "developed"--as if these owners don't want many visitors. Hmm.


Of course the place is not magically free of human waste. A good storm scours every gutter, "wash", and irrigation ditch, from Holbrook to Leupp, and here it swirls.


Aspiring Rez hoop stars: after practice, don't leave the ball out, or the gods may snatch it away.  


Aspiring Rez entrepreneurs: when the water stops, start a business, dealing in used basketballs, reclaimed tires, firewood, and ten million plastic bottles. Surely this treasure is worth something to someone, though you won't get rich no matter how hard you work at it.


A bonus: on the way back to "civilization", this monument, also free. Our final stop.


Happily, and unhappily, an afterlife would not guarantee anyone what they deserve.

http://navajonationparks.org/htm/grandfalls.htm 


%$#@!

   "...the one truly revolutionary revolution perhaps in the history of the human race, the Industrial Revolution...has proceeded from the beginning with only two purposes: to replace human workers with machines, and to market its products, regardless of their usefulness or their effects, to generate the highest possible profit--and so to concentrate wealth into ever fewer hands.
   "This revolution has, so far, fulfilled its purposes with remarkably few checks or thwarts. I say "so far" because its great weakness is obviously its dependence on what it calls "natural resources," which it has used ignorantly and foolishly, and which it has progressively destroyed. Its weakness, in short, is that its days are numbered."
Wendell Berry, from Our Only World

Sunday, November 2, 2014

The Hundredth Dude



Red sky at morning...



Lords and ladies, hot dogs and hand bags, earth people around the circle: welcome to the 100th episode of Cheap Dude. No, I didn’t count them; Goggle listed the last one at 99 and I did the math.



If you thought those first 99 were bad, be grateful you didn’t struggle through the forest of logorrhea that got the axe. Let us honor the occasion by returning to the basic premise, which is something like “Be Happy With Nothing.” More fun, less crap.




Verde Valley, AZ




As always, for immediate revenge on a monstrous consumer culture, stop spending money on shiny objects. Improvise. Here’s my cheap but true breakfast/lunch routine for guidance:



First off, honor your body and available cash, skip the high-speed food and pack your own grub.



Lunch pail: one dollar at a “garage sale” 19 years ago. Repair knots in the handle add class and character. Do not wash, it’ll only get dirty again.









Water bottles are free in lots of places. Or dig an empty out of public trash and clean it. Fill and freeze to keep lunch cold and drink later. By obeying the unbreakable laws of physics, you can reuse the same bottle indefinitely.






Our culture is addicted to plastic packaging, which directly supports financial terrorism by oil Owners. A simple daily payback is to reuse plastic bags. This flower-seed bag has carried a daily home-made “energy-bar” for weeks now, and the clear bags, “chips” from gigantoeconomy size sacks.



(Secret plans for energy-bar development, where art, science, and healthy intestines meet, courtesy of culinary artist/scientist/editor Dudine.)



My tea is loose leaf from the “hippie store” brewed solar in a pickle jar. (Nineteen sixty-sevenths of the cost of bubbly poison “pop”.)





Free plastic bottles, backpacking tested, formerly “medical waste”.











Today’s “sandwich,” classic peanut butter and jelly, on the last two beat-up, slightly moldy, bread slices. (Wasting food is one of the few acts considered deeply sinful at Cheap Half-Acre.) With chips and tea (how British!), deep cheap lunch satisfaction.



With lunch ready for workplace transport, it’s time to gag down some morning food. A banana, about 37 cents. Have another if you actually work for a living. Ex-smokers, think of the savings when you skip those wake-up drags you still wish for. (*cough*)



Boil eggs eight minutes, less’n 25 cents each. Or, boil a cup of water, add a half cup oatmeal, and boil some more--about 14 cents. Add a few cents’ worth of sugar, too--if we quit eating everything that’s bad for us life might not be worth living.



Not recommended are my several cups of dirt-flavor coffee, like Stardbucks but dirt cheap. Finally, you can do what I sadly do after food’s in belly and lunch-box: get to work!



Total price for two meals? I ain’t doing that math, brothers and sisters, let’s just say: Not Much. And if today’s lucky winners can save three bucks a day, that’s $90 a month for electricity, frivolity, or charity—pick your prize!

Free: silver lining!




%$#@!



Off the Road Again

Sometimes when people die in car accidents, surviving relatives and friends erect roadside memorials.



SR89A, milepost 365




Every day cars kill more people than “terrorists” do. Common sense thus dictates a war on cars.



Beaverhead Flat Road, west side




Instead, like most cultures, we gawk at wrecks, breathe waste, and let the gods sort it out.







What does this mean?



SR191 (formerly SR666), across from FR506

 Cheer up, it wasn’t you or I.



SR89A, west Sedona city limit




But, clearly, the automobilists are winning.



SR89A, south of Flagstaff




%$#@!


Part I, Essay IV

OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT



NOTHING appears more surprizing to those,

who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye,

than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few;

 and the implicit submission,

 with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find,

that as FORCE is always on the side of the governed,

the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.

It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded;

 and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments,

 as well as to the most free and most popular.



David Hume, 1711-1776



SR87 north of Strawberry, AZ