Category Archives: Issues

Life as a Spring, or Housecleaning.

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It’s not so much a post about the vagaries of housecleaning, which are rather dull, but instead the nature of the beast, which I envision as a shell-within-a-shell sisyphisian trudge. I have a plan, this plan goes hand-in-hand with my personal will towards simplification and forcing my house to bend to my designs. It is made of steps that have to be dealt with in a certain order for everything to make sense. You have to start somewhere and you need to cut out before you can reorganize.

Step 1: The Grace of Goodwill and/or the Salvation Army – This step is one of the biggest, but not the absolute biggest hurdles to my year-long plan for home order. The plan is to separate Fall/Winter wardrobes from Spring/Summer wardrobes and while selecting for that, also pitching clothes that no longer fit or are so surplus that I haven’t even thought of them in a year or more. This involves the purgation of all of our closets, which for a pair of gay men is as legendary as you imagine. There are 4 closet areas, the Walkin, Hobbiton, Hallway and Guest. All four have to be emptied and sorted, a pile heading to the charities and then the sorting of their seasonal appropriateness. The not-seasonal-now clothes will all eventually be stored in Hobbiton, as it is the largest closet I have ever seen in my life. Once the clothing is ordered properly we’ll have a clear bead on how much of Hobbiton was consumed and how much remains for secondary storage. Hobbiton is THAT BIG, and frankly speaking, I’ve never really looked very closely inside Hobbiton, so I imagine there are surprises lurking within, mayhap, even Hobbits.

Step 2: Organizing the Man Cave – Two gay men, a fully finished basement, and more electronics and gadgets than you can shake a stick at. This zone must be organized. DVD’s have to be sorted into alphabetical order and music has to be sorted into alphabetical order. The only variance to the sorting is the special thematic category of Horror/Thriller/Halloween movies, they will be on their own, sorted but segregated since they are the gory delight of every Samhain/Halloween celebration. The splatter must stand alone. 🙂 The music really ought to be digitized and the physical media obliterated, but that would be more trouble than it’s worth in the end.

Step 3: Organizing THE LIBRARY – I use all caps because the old master bedroom became THE LIBRARY. It’s where all our books are stored. Anyone who even is partially aware of Scott knows that his affection for books is beyond epic, beyond legend, it’s incredible. We don’t honor our Library nearly enough as we ought to and for this plan I can address some of it by alpha-sorting the entire structure. I need to dig deep into that room and purge off very old castaway technology and pitch much of what is my personal storage in that room. I haven’t seen it in a year, almost all of it, so keeping it is doing nothing for me, it has to go. The only thing that stays are the books, but for me personally, there are some books that will be landfill bound. Before we can address the Library we have to get our current lodger up and flying, so he can get his independence. Once that is done, the work on this room can commence.

In the end, of all these steps, our house will be more orderly and pleasant and I won’t have to feel awkward and bent about all these little nipping irritants, not being able to find the right clothes, the right movies, the right music or the right books to suit me. Also it would be nice to have a home again where I can sit where I please and do what I wish without having to contend with piles of drift-stuff that ended up malingering in corners. UP AND OUT. That’s the theme.

When will this grand plan be achieved? Maybe a year from now, maybe two. This simplification is vital and I can’t resist it any longer. All of this STUFF is stifling. When people mention this stuff, they sometimes use the word ‘trappings’ and that’s exactly what it is, stuff-based traps. I’m done with traps. Time to be simple.

Preservation of Constant Inconvenience

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Yesterday I was musing to myself over an idea that I’ve been mulling over ever since I bought my Apple iPad. My thoughts centered around the concepts of content, specifically content itself, the price, cost, and format of the content and what ethical or moral obligations are present on content. There is so much content to speak about, but yesterday it was centered on books, but it could also arguably also be about any sort of content, music, photography, sculpture, anything created by people for other people to consume and/or enjoy.

It came to the question of books. In our world we have books and they cost money to write, print, publish, distribute, catalog, and manage. We also have public libraries, where these books are purchased and then shared amongst the people for ‘free’. Technically it’s tax money that pays for the books, but the libraries lend those books to people for no money charge and since there are so many people the burden of the cost of the libraries isn’t readily visible. I imagined what a regular person who doesn’t pay taxes (say a young person or someone who is unemployed) who also happens to be a voracious reader could do, value-wise. They could chew through the libraries collection of books and without having to spend one single dime of their own money consume the content without actually paying for it. This person effectively is cheating all the previous people out of money by the fact that we have libraries that lend for ‘free’. So instead of this person paying their fair share for the book, giving the bookseller, the distributor, the printer, the author and all the others money for the consumption/enjoyment of the content, they essentially steal it right from under the nose of all these people. In our society using a library is not a moral or ethical problem for anyone, we all accept that it’s perfectly fine for anyone at all to do when the library is running and open and lending. What is the limit of a library? Contention for content, libraries don’t have an endless supply of books either in-author or even in-title, so while someone has Widget Book A, another person can’t have Widget Book A.

When I started thinking about all of this, I wanted to concentrate on the ethical and moral ramifications of downloading books from the Internet. Specifically books that I could obtain from the library (KPL or Waldo or LoC) or books that were already present in my house. To me, it really wasn’t a matter of money, because the content creators were paid by (the platonic form of) “The Library” or they were paid by my household, in that the physical paper book was in my actual house and I can grab it and show it to people that I own it. What I wanted to explore was what was really at the core of things, what did people really care about. I discovered that my actual question was, what do people covet? I also distilled this argument down to the core question of content format. If I have a physical book, or I can freely acquire a physical book, is it ethically or morally wrong for me to download the book from the Internet and upload it to my eBook reading device because reading it in that format is more convenient and pleasurable than any other format? After discussing it at length with Scott, I have learned that content creators hold a kind of format tyranny over their content. They sell a book, they sell a paper book that weighs five pounds and THAT and ONLY THAT is how they have licensed you to enjoy their content…

It isn’t about money, it isn’t about ethics or morality, it is all about the preservation of a certain constant of inconvenience. Library supply contention is an inconvenience, format tyranny is an inconvenience, and even while arguing the idea that I could buy my own scanner and disassemble a book in the privacy of my own home to make my own e-book files, this is in itself also an inconvenience. So what in the end is the moral and ethical implications of downloading an e-book from the Internet when you either own a physical representation of the book in your home or can arguably acquire it for ‘free’ at any (platonic form of) “The Library”? It is apparently ethically and/or morally reprehensible to break the law of the preservation of constant inconvenience. That inconvenience must be paid, must be respected, that everyone in the supply chain must be satisfied that you are somehow inconveniently thwarted. You pay for books by suffering inconvenience.

As I wrote above, this is expandable to other kinds of content, such as Music. Oddly enough the realm of Music apparently has abandoned the fighting arena that books enjoy, that being format tyranny. But the existence of Library also plays out here; I could walk down to the KPL and borrow a CD and rip it onto my device? If I own a CD, Music isn’t really concerned anymore that I rip it to my iPod, so if I borrow a CD from the library and rip that, it is wrong because there is a late-binding violation of the law of preservation of inconvenience? I sense some erosion.

What about Comic Books? Now this is an interesting field. If I own longboxes of comic books and I happen to have their digital representations as well, this is wrong, because I have broken the format tyranny and violated the law of the preservation of inconvenience.

What is the future for this law of inconvenience? Since Music has given up their domain of format tyranny, does that mean that one failure in content can eventually expand to other kinds of content? Does Music’s failure to remain vigilant mean that books and comics will eventually face the same erosion of ethics when it comes to the contention of format tyranny? I think that time will tell, that people when faced with technology will change their definitions and concepts of what is ethical and/or moral. Just as the ethical violation of the existence of Libraries has dwindled to nothing, may format freedom eventually attain this same dwindling? Again, time will have to pass and when everyone no longer really cares, then I think the definition of ethical and/or moral upset will fade away.

Privacy is Stupid

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The echo chamber of Twitter, the Blogosphere, and Facebook are reverberating with journalists and pundits going on at length, with intense fretting and dry-handwashing regarding the respect of privacy in social networks. I have two problems with the complaint over privacy in the 21st Century.

My first problem with privacy in the 21st Century is that privacy is the antithesis of socialization. The rage now is social networking, joining sites, finding others, connecting with people deep in your past and right around the corner. There is a kind of magic when you put a whole bunch of people in a social web, from the dissemination of news, information, to the most recent demonstration of altruism regarding the fellow on Metafilter who had people coming out of the woodwork to prevent a possible instance of human trafficking in New York City. We have tasted the candy of socialization and we like it, we have expanded into Facebook, Twitter, even WordPress in order to share ourselves with the outside world. Each of us consumes vast amounts of information now, instead of hunting for it at a Library we now wade through information online, and the places where we engage this social network are vast and varied, the bedroom, the bathroom, the boardroom. We have seen something shiny and the herd has put its head down and begun a social stampede. How does privacy last in this situation? It simply cannot! Privacy is DEAD. If you want to share, then how can you be private? “I want to be found, but I don’t want any of my information to be found.” This is utterly irrational.

The second problem with privacy in the 21st Century is this odd predilection for being utterly truthful to a fault. Lets say you would like to preserve some small shred of privacy online, why would you be utterly 100% honest to social networking sites? There is nothing absolutely binding you to only one email address, and you can elect to not include information you don’t want to provide! Even if you are pressed for information, what prevents anyone from stuffing the box with bogus details? What is my address? 1313 Mockingbird Lane. Obviously. Why are we so driven to be utterly honest online and then pitch a fit when that information is misused? I cannot understand why people who are driven to privacy haven’t yet constructed an alias, a completely fake persona, or even bogus contact information!

These two problems I have just bounce around in my head and I get more and more agitated and irritated when I see people whining at length about their precious privacy. Declaring that they will abandon Facebook because their privacy policies don’t fit in with their utopian ideals. It’s a free service, you aren’t held to be 100% truthful, so why all the bitching, moaning, and above all else impotent whining? If you haven’t poisoned the well when it comes to personal information in order to preserve your privacy, then your privacy is dead. Utterly DEAD. Get over it! Stop complaining about Facebook and Twitter and how you don’t want to share information. You are in a social stampede, all you can do really is stop running with the rest of us and allow yourself to be trampled.

It’s lonely being all by yourself. But at least you’ll have your precious privacy to keep you company.

The Liminality of the Moulin Rouge

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I have been for the past year observing surreptitiously a particularly seamy segment of the homosexual population. This segment are classified under many names, the most common are ‘barebackers’, who just don’t care about risk and consequence to ‘bug catchers’ who actively seek out risk and consequence.

I’ve watched these people, and I continue to do so. It’s prurience is unwavering, these people are tired of the 1990’s and early 2000’s efforts to get the entire gay male population to stop having sex, or at least engage in safe sex with proper protection and have made bids to behave in a wholly retrograde fashion against best common sense. Driven into a madness by their libidos.

I began to ponder why this phenomena has grown up recently. I suspect people are growing weary of constantly having to be vigilant when it comes to sex, they no longer fear the most common consequences and for many people, this has become a manner of managed risk with a blasé attitude regarding the consequences for themselves. What alarms me the most is that this population exists and it’s members wander about carrying their bio-hazardous passengers  into the lives of people who are hormonally addled to the point where they either don’t care or are not aware enough to take proper precautions. I’ve read many stories where firmly closeted homosexuals, pressurized with a buildup of hormonal chemicals raging in their bloodstream have willfully suppressed their authentic cognition and allowed these people to enter their lives and infect them. The mode for this infection is not as simple as plain exposure, there is a group within the barebacking community that engage in a practice they gloat about, called ‘Stealth’. When faced with the pressure of their sex drives they seek out partners to satisfy their urges, and if those partners are determined to ‘play it safe’ then these individuals will sabotage the protection rendering it merely an affectation and not a true form of consequence protection and then engage in the act of infection to someone who is not fully aware of their situation and the risk they face.

While stealthing is practiced and is an outrage unto itself, these people willfully seek out other infected partners to engage in unprotected sexual relations and many engage in acts of profound exposure, with multiple partners, random partners, and stranger-partners. What concerns me most of all isn’t so much cross-infection, but because these people are engaged in orgiastic sexual pursuits, hyperinfection. HIV is only a single player on the stage, a terminal player but not the most damaging or hazardous – what really concerns me is the hyperinfection of Hepatitis C, which is incurable, leaves you with 10 to 20 year life expectancy and full liver failure at the end. HIV is as hazardous, but it doesn’t cause organ damage like Hepatitis C can.

Through my personal experience and what I have seen in other gay men, there is a duality building in our culture that I call the Moulin Rouge problem. We are on the public surface a ‘polite society’ and this ‘polite society’ doesn’t accept the existence of sexual depravity and amoral conduct, but along side this ‘polite society’ is a darkness in many of our cohort group that sits just beyond and has no problem engaging in such activities and in many ways, revels in it. I see the strictness and moral uprightness deepening the darkness that balances it. You then have a new liminality, on the front of the Moulin Rouge, it’s all quite innocent fun, but behind the Moulin Rouge is failed risk, disease, and the ramifications of uncontrolled consequence. You have men who carry a public image of spotlessness and a private image of orgiastic incorrigibility.

Linked together with my previous post what concerns me the most are the men who exist so far and so deep into the closet that they end up in a perpetual state of sexual frenzy, they have a raw hunger to engage in explosive exercises of homosexual intercourse, they lay there and will agree to anything so that they can achieve satisfaction, and some of them spend not a single moment considering the consequences of their actions. They then take this failure with them, as a new dark passenger, to their wives or girlfriends, where they continue the cycle of ignored risk and unfortunate consequences. I find these men, trapped in the closet, driven mad with sexual frenzy to be almost as bad as the men who willfully spread their infections to others through indolence or malicious design.

The way to avoid this is sexual education and to relax our moral indignation over sex in general. I would argue that we’ve helped create this monster by leaving men too uneducated and too tightly trussed with morality, that if we as a culture relax in regards to morality perhaps we’ll be able to shoehorn some of these men out of the closet, get them educated about their bodies and their feelings and once we get to that point, they should be well armed enough to avoid making life-altering mistakes.

As always, I welcome all comments – I can only hope this gets to a healthy boy in the closet, gets him to come out, gets him to wake up, to think, to not make mistakes – to learn ahead of making these mistakes… to save themselves. Coming out is not only good for you, it’s good for us all.

Openly Gay

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If there is one singular phrase that can corral a huge batch of anger it’s reading about how someone is ‘Openly Gay’. It’s the context that gets me most of all. Context is a theme I will be exploring in the next few blog entries, so you might as well get comfortable now with my ranting and raving.

What angers me most is that there is some fundamental difference between “Gay” and “Openly Gay” – a kind of paper-based room-divider-esque closet for people to hide in while trying to appeal to the masses. The difference between “Gay” so and so and “Openly Gay” so and so makes every part of me tremble with rage. I see the phrase “Openly Gay” in headlines and it just turns in my gut like a knife – that being public and sharing your sexual orientation is in itself a newsworthy event. It is not a newsworthy event, if someone is gay, they are gay. What is the shock and awe associated with this?

Centrally this touches on a huge pet peeve of mine. People who hide in the closet, thinking they are protecting themselves when they are doing nothing more than dodging the truth and avoiding unpleasant feelings. The longer you dwell in the closet the harder it is to open the door, and if you spend too much time there, you run the risk of losing the seam where the door really is and thinking you are in a jail cell for the rest of your life.

The rest of this touches on the number of homosexuals in our world. Everyone is under the impression that there are just a really limited number of homosexuals and that we can be gleefully written off because we aren’t important enough to consider as being worth it to regard and respect. If everyone who was gay in the closet came out spontaneously, our world would change. The truth would not only set you free, it would set us all free. The truth is like light, it cleans what it touches and from my recent experiences (more on those later) that light is more needful than ever to come out and illuminate every little nook and cranny. If you don’t think it’s important for your social health, it’s vital for your biological and spiritual health as well!

I recently had the pleasure to watch this blog-entry from a fellow by the moniker of Davey Wavey. He’s quite wise for someone so young and instead of replicating his words I can just point to him and have everyone watch what he has to say on this subject. It is time for people to stop using the phrase “Openly Gay” because all Gays should be “Open” already. Hiding is bad for you, it’s bad for me, it’s bad for us all!

Health Care Reform

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Today, near the end of my workday I ran into a Healthcare Reform troll on Twitter. He replied to one of my twitter posts and it wasn’t conciliatory or an invitation to a fair and balanced argument. It did however get me thinking about healthcare reform.

As far as I can see, the idea of healthcare reform has been beaten around the bush so many times as to be a bill-in-name-only, most of the really profound reforms were jettisoned in committee. True, there are some reforms present but whenever the meat of the matter comes up it instantly polarizes everyone who comes into contact with it. The meat that I consider to be a central pillar of true healthcare reform is the establishment of a National Health Service, NHS, which is universal socialized government-run taxpayer-funded health insurance for every citizen of the United States of America. I am a huge proponent of NHS, and while it would be expensive to run in the short-term, there are things that can be done to help control the costs and get it started. Of course, it wouldn’t be an idea of mine unless it was draconian, sweeping, and world-altering. One thing I’ve noticed about all the arguments is that they lack a plan, actual concrete suggestions that could easily be turned into law. I’ve got some ideas, not a complete package, but some things that could help.

First, the government nationalizes and socializes all the current health insurance companies. If you have any clients in the USA, your ass is grass and we own it – consumption by fiat, call it whatever you like – the will of the people, a socialist revolution, or even eminent domain. We establish in it’s place the NHS, we insure every man woman and child, your health card is your Social Security Insurance Card – a nine digit number that is your password to access NHS. If you are a citizen of the United States, you will be covered. The shareholders in big health insurance companies will be told that their sacrifice for the good of us all is greatly appreciated and we can engrave their names on the bricks that make up the home office of the NHS.

You can’t just expect lazy greedy Americans to take charge of their health on their own, they need an enticement. I suggest a $2000 income tax credit that anyone who is working can claim on their 1040A form. This credit is a sliding scale, from zero to $2000. Your credit is calculated based on your proximity to your ideal height and weight ratio. If you are 6’3” and male, your ideal weight is 200 pounds. If you are that tall and weigh that much, and have a doctor or nurse notarize the fact, you can claim your credit. Keeping your weight under control prevents heart disease, obesity, and a host of other long-term illnesses. If you can’t reach that full credit, you can get a $400 tax credit if you are in good standing at any kind of exercise venue, whether at work or in private. If you can prove that you are exercising, you’ll get a small credit.

Once everyone can take part in the NHS, anyone who abuses emergency rooms or claims that it is prohibitively expensive to be screened for any health-related issues simply loses their basis of complaint. Because everyone will have insurance there will be no risk to citizens going bankrupt, losing their homes, their jobs, or their credit. For everyone there will be coverage, irrespective of their current health conditions and while it may be rather expensive at first, once people who would have otherwise been unable to have basic medical services rendered now will know if they have to quit smoking or lose weight or stop drinking. If you make a small change in the beginning, it leads to massive changes later on.

What would we do if we did not enact these sweeping reforms that lead to an NHS? We’ll have a further spreading of class distinctions in our country, the high class never even pays any thought to health care, the middle class will continue to eke out whatever they can get from their employers or spouses, and the poor and homeless and otherwise disabled citizens will be left at the mercy of our current social medical programs which demand that you live an impoverished life in order to qualify for public assistance. The rich will pay no attention to anything, the middle class will care and fret, but will do nothing because they are afraid of losing what little they already have and the poor, they’ll continue to do as they do now, flood into free clinics and hit the ER when something bad happens.

It’s my fervent belief that some things are best done socially. The cost of keeping ourselves healthy is immense and cannot be shouldered by just a select few, say, the middle class, but it should be shouldered by everyone. A huge expense can be rendered manageable if you have enough people sharing the burden. In order for any one  of us to not fall through the cracks, we must all agree to work together. If we work together in this fashion, we can rest easy knowing that children will get whatever immunizations they need, that they’ll always be able to see a general practitioner, and that with a relief of stress from the bleakness and fear of falling through the cracks, a newly developing seed of hope can be planted.

This is not only good for The People, it’s good for Corporate America as well. Large companies, like General Motors can simply purge their need for private health insurance since NHS sweeps in and gathers every employee. Not only will it help current employees but also the retired. General Motors can stop having to pay health insurance premiums on their retired workers, they’ll rely instead on NHS. With this relief, all our companies, even the small ones and new ones can better compete when they no longer have to concentrate some of their attention on the health and well-being of their employees.

The only people who will be unhappy with this plan are people who run the big health insurance companies now, and Big Pharma. Their time came and went, they can’t provide for us all, and they can’t do it as well as the government can. Their time will come to an end and we can move on knowing that we have secured our fellow citizens against the bleakness.

This isn’t a fully fleshed out plan, but these are some great ideas to get started with. If we don’t take healthcare reform seriously then we’re going to have a lot of blood on our collective hands. It is inhuman to allow your fellow man fall into the dirt and do nothing about it when you clearly can. Everything demands that we act sooner rather than later – basic human decency, even many popular religions all support an idea like this one, that even the lowliest member of our society does not go without care. Anything less and we do not deserve to look at ourselves in the mirror.

The Hazards of Equality

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There is a problem with the world. Lack of Equality. In many places I see it, from thoughts raised by friends and coworkers mostly raising the topic of gay marriage is the classic entryway to begin a dialogue regarding equality, to outright questions about what I think about the entire issue.

I believe in human equality.

It’s not a country thing, it’s not a state thing, it’s a species thing. What makes me different from my female peers who earn less than I do because of their gender? What makes my relationship with my partner different than my straight peers relationships?  Why can they apply for a marriage contract while I cannot? Is it a matter of dedication and monogamy? Both my partner and I have been building a life for 13 years, we’ve outlasted many marriages just based on our togetherness. I think it’s a power thing.

Those who have power, or any of it’s analogues, such as rights, control, ability, or benefits obviously understand that being special, being gifted, having power is far better than being downtrodden and left without power, or even worse, having power taken away from you. Those that have power in our culture are determined to maintain their grip on such power for as long as they can. There is a central question that they cannot rationally answer – “What is it to you?” when posed with the concept of homosexual union. These people aren’t really interested in what is right or wrong, they are simply greedy for power. This greed blinds them and makes them hypocrites, and they earn my pity.

It is true that I cannot marry my partner of 13 years, at least here in Michigan and I accept that. There are a majority of people in my state who do not like all of me, just the part of me that works and pays taxes in a timely fashion. To offer someone like me equality requires that they relinquish some power. This is the core stumbling block to the progress of equality in our culture. Those that have power wish to retain it and deny others access. When you realize this, you stop feeling so put upon by others and discover that they are the simplest of monsters, greedy trolls collecting their tolls and regarding their squalor under the bridge as kingdoms of infinite space.

It then falls to other routes for my kind to tear power out of the hands of the greedy trolls. We approach the courts for a redress of grievances, citing phrases such as “All men are created equal” and “Equal protection under the law” and then the response is “Activist Judges”. We try popular appeal via referenda and end up in the same place by the opposition, wether it be lawsuits to stop us or Governors devoted to veto our rights each time they come up. This isn’t a war that will be won with one single decisive battle, this is guerilla attrition. We win by endurance.

Endurance. We outlive the elements in our culture, the trolls, that spend an inordinate time having serious problems with my kind and apparently have answers for “What is it to you?” when it comes to letting my kind marry. The solution is to simply outlive the pigheaded. The children of today will eventually grow up in a world more equal, and they’ll be more accepting. It won’t happen for about 20 years, it won’t really have any forward momentum until the Baby Boomers begin to die. When the young rush in to replace them in the voting booths, then we’ll see a reduction in bullshit and people shaking their heads when asked “What is it to you?”

This is all very well and good, but Equality just for homosexuals is one aspect of the larger societal problem. Real equality would help all the treaded-upon, not just the gays – but also gender inequality, race inequality, and even citizen’ly inequality. Women should earn the same as men, for example. It’s not just our group we should be fighting for, but for everyone who finds themselves on the short end of the stick when it comes to power.

Funny that the spirit of a lot of what we all seek is already in the founding texts of our great country. It’s just going to take some generational turnover before everyone gets to be equal.

Frozen Oranges

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I smile when I see reports of 36 degrees in Miami Florida. My pleasure is manifold, first hit is on the smug southerners who pridefully proclaim that “It never gets that cold here! Nyah Nyah!”, well, now it does. The second pleasure is for the snowbirds, you seriously thought you could outrun it?

The main pleasure comes in a kind of satisfaction regarding climate change. Sure, global warming is definitely a chapter title in this book we’re currently reading out of, but this is just a mild little precursor, a microscopic fluctuation, the prologue so to speak. As the climate changes, the weather patterns will change. Global warming is coming and it’s making some places warmer and other places colder. This year is an El Nino year, with the North American weather pattern being dictated by the blotch of warm Pacific Ocean water and I believe it to be the principal driving factor behind this years minty-fresh winter. Even with El Nino, you can’t easily dismiss a low-temperature record that was broken since 1927. It may be El Nino, but you can almost catch a whiff of something else out there, a little something extra riding on top of the natural variation. Only time will tell what global warming will do to the North American weather pattern. Maybe it will make everything stronger – hotter summers and colder winters, or maybe instead it will muck about with the seasons, Spring and Fall starting and stopping at different times.

On Facebook I mused that our planet is in a constant state of trying to find the perfect balance. I don’t see anything that disproves that idea. There is something deeply satisfying however in the notion that humanity, through it’s own shortsightedness and resistance to change forced our own planet to seek out a new balance, one that doesn’t have our desires in mind. A kind of species schadenfreude, and the joke is only now starting to unfold. True hilarity will take another hundred years to suss out, to quote a favorite movie, “This is all far from over…”