I Can't Believe I Ate The Whole Thing!

This was one of those rare weekends that felt longer than it was. In a good way.

Friday saw me heading out of the office as quickly as possible. I got home with JUST enough time to finish a slab pie I'd started a couple days before. The filling and dough was done, it just had to be rolled out, combined, and baked. Oh, and the filling involved 2 cups of sour cherries, 2 cups of bing cherries, and two cups (total) of wild Nova Scotia blueberries and frozen Ontario strawberries that I'd picked earlier in the summer.

It's pretty delicious.

Why the time limit? I had a movie to go see - GI Joe.

Yup, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, on opening night. Why? Well, if you have to ask, you didn't sit 3ft in front of your TV after school waiting for that theme song in your youth.

I went in properly prepared. My brain was sitting in a jar back home. I wanted two things - red and blue lasers, and someone to say "Yo Joe!". Both wishes were fulfilled.

I suggested to my friends at dinner beforehand that the movie would be awesome. It wouldn't be a GOOD movie by any stretch, but it would be awesome.

And it was. I ignored anything like dialogue, editing, physics, or reality, and enjoyed two hours of straight up action and ass-kicking. It was an EXCELLENT GI Joe movie. Any critic who calls it crap was already old when the cartoons were on. Their GI Joe memories are of 9" tall solider dolls, not 5" action figures whose torsos you twisted until they popped off. Sommers did exactly what was needed - he made a popcorn flick that was nothing but FUN. Plot getting in the way of the movie? Throw in a ninja fight. Just had a ninja fight? More cleavage. The ninjas were fighting in front of cleavage? Time to blow some shit up. Ninjas were fighting in front of cleavage during an explosion? Blow up a polar ice cap, or melt a landmark.

And there is no doubt a sequel is being made.

I tire of those who hold their 80's television memories as sacrosanct - go and find some video of those shows. They were, almost universally, TERRIBLE. To expect a movie based on them to be a work of art is ridiculous.

Early to bed (3am-ish) and early to rise (3pm-ish) makes a man... well, very well-rested. 3pm was about as late as I COULD stay in bed, as a buddy was coming over at 6 to grab some dinner and catch another movie. This time? The Hangover. Yah, I'm late to the game on this one, but... DAMN is that one funny movie.

I fired off the e-mail on Friday to my usual December Vegas posse (or entourage, or what have you) about getting this year's trip ready. Seeing the start of Vegas in The Hangover had me turn to my friend and say "I want to go NOW." By the end of the movie, E was a bit afraid I'd developed a few new ideas for this year's trip. He's so ending up in the hands of Asian gangsters.

Another early night (3am) led to another early day (12:45pm due to a phone call). Sunday was chill. Hung out, played poker, watched TV, made dinner.

And watched one hell of a lightning storm.

I had originally been awaken around 10:30am by room-shaking bursts of thunder. I fell back asleep, and when I was up for real, the day looked fine. By the time I was making dinner, the skies were alight again. Flashes in the periphery followed by the sound of the sky cracking open. Another truly monumental summer storm was upon us. Regular breaks from pizza assembly were taken to try and catch a fork in the distance between the surrounding buildings. It started to die down, and dinner was completed and consumed.

Then it started up again. To the roof! In my bare feet! Why? Well, I figured the wet roof of a 15 storey building with no insulator between me and ground had to be the safest method of watching lightning. An umbrella was brought too, for extra safety.

None of that is a lie, except for the part where I actually thought ANY of that was remotely safe.

As soon as I set foot on the roof, a bolt shot off in the distance, sparking a series of other streaks spiderwebbing across the sky above. It was possibly the coolest lightning display I'd ever seen.

And it happened half a dozen more times over the next 20 minutes.

The sky didn't stop lighting up. It was as if the country surrounding my city was being bombed while a war with electricity was being fought overhead. The nearly complete lack of rain only added to this effect. To witness such a violent storm without getting wet was an oddity to me.

Convinced the storm was too far to take advantage of the world's tallest free-standing lightning rod, I kept following where the flashes were.

Then the tree of electricity opened up over south end of the city, with a branch deciding it needed to arc down and nail the beloved tower. For seconds afterwards, the sky was scattered with the after-image of lightning forks as my eyes adjusted to the blinding white that had just taken place less than a mile away, and less than a mile up. The fact this was also the first clap of thunder that had been made during the roof foray drove home the point that the storm wasn't quite gone yet.

The sky continued to sputter and spark silently, and I continued to be captivated. After the Tower bolt, I was also constantly checking the hairs on my arms to make sure I wasn't about to be struck myself. In the distance, likely the steel mills of Hamilton, bolts were raining down as if Zeus had decided that he was on the side of the NHL owners and was going to destroy the city himself. Streaks yellowed by the smog and clouds would strike and remain for what seemed like seconds before disappearing. To the south, St. Catherine's, Niagara Falls, and Buffalo looked like they were getting bombarded with white fire.

Eventually, it started to fade. The streaks and forks became fewer, replaced only with flashes and sheets of brightness in the distance. It was time to return to the far less exciting world of my living room, and call it a weekend.

May I suggest you visit here for an idea of the view. He's a little bit east of me, so it's not a dissimilar view. And this was a regular occurence during my time on the roof. I only wish I'd have grabbed my tripod and camera too.

It's Earth Day. Possibly the worst-named theme day in existence.

The Earth is fine. No problem with it at all. None. It's in ZERO danger for the next few billion years or first Vogon visit.

The life on it? That's a different story.

The Earth is a big ball of rock with some liquid on it, some more liquid in the middle, and a bunch of gas and particles stuck behind a shield. Stuff sticks to it largely due to gravity. It's not going anywhere it hasn't gone before.

If we pollute the fuck out it, melt the ice caps, poison the waters, burn off the atmosphere, and nuke the shit out of its landmasses, Earth will still be here.

We won't. Maybe the cockroaches will stick around, and a few of the heartier lichens.

Calls to save the Earth are poorly aimed. The planet, as a mass of matter orbiting a star, will continue until something far more powerful than us destroys it. The calls should be to save ourselves and the other forms of life on the planet. Sadly, these don't fit on a button as well, and tend to give an impression of hippiedom and radicalism. I find that very strange, since one would think the arrogance of asking people to save an entire planet would seem more outrageous.

Are we fucking up the environment? Yup. Are we messing with the "natural" balance of things? For sure. Are we endangering our own health, if not our lives? Sure thing. Are we putting countless other forms of life, which regardless of one's view on extra-terrestrial life, are unique in the universe? You betcha. Are we endangering the planet as a whole? Nope. Worst case? It looks like Venus.

The National Geographic has some photos up from the first Earth Day from 1970. A small budget, a couple people, and a lot of effort got hundreds of thousands of people to rally for environmental change. That initial effort has become a global day of attention to how shitty we are as caretakers. I suggest looking at all the photos, but this one sums up the mentality most people have. We want to do better, but actually practicing what we preach is far more difficult.

So I suggest this for today, and every day. Don't think about the Earth. Think about yourself. Think about the children in your life. Try and stretch your thought process seven generations down the road and envision the legacy we'll leave behind. Be selfish and wonder why the hell you'd try to accomplish anything if people won't be around to appreciate for all eternity. Don't think about the rock we're standing on, think about what's standing on it.

Just a thought I had.

Obama at one point was going to put the "buy American" rider in the budget, which is a moronic idea. Protectionist measures are bad for an economy. They provide a façade of job security, but cause stagnation in growth and similar sanctions to be put in place by former trading partners. This causes a rise in prices, a decrease in consumption, and furthers economic problems. On top of that, with the globalized manufacturing industry, chances are pretty good that even something "made in the USA" has parts that were made elsewhere.

But what if that policy was altered? What if instead of a company simply being American as the criteria, a company had to be green?

No border concerns on the policy, just environmental ones. The government sets some sort of pollution/carbon footprint/whatever limit on companies that can enjoy doing business with the massive US consumer market. At the same time, they offer subsidies and incentives to American factories, companies, etc., to go green. More than cap and trade policies, but actual redevelopment of manufacturing processes to be more environmentally friendly. They've spend over a trillion on banks, why not on an area that actually makes a real product and provides real money instead of paper wealth?

This would have a few benefits. It keeps with Obama's "green jobs" platform by employing thousands of people in rebuilding, redeveloping, and rebranding of existing companies to a green policy. It creates permanent positions of serious environment control and services. It reduces waste, improves the local ecology, and generally makes people feel better. It creates training opportunities and opens the door for secondary green industries. ie.- If a company transports largely by truck or diesel train, then there's an incentive for the government to build more direct high speed electric lines, which creates more jobs. It pushes green cars, green housing, local factories (better ecologogically to have people live close than far), telecommuting (which leads to technology infrastructure development), and other concepts that have yet to reach their full potential.

Other developed nations would be pressured to implement similar methods, which shouldn't be that hard. In fact, the US could just enforce its current EPA standards as a starting point, which most developed countries already fall in line with. The less-developed, manufacturing-heavy countries that rely on the US for business would be forced to finally update their policies and technology to be cleaner. China's factory towns are some of the most polluted places on Earth right now; a policy like this could force them to clean up to keep the business.

The incentive? The first ones to get there reap the most rewards, because they'll have the head start on rebuilding economic ties with the US market. The fallout in these countries would be similar.

In the end, it results in a better quality of life for everyone, reinvigorated local manufacturing, job creation, and it would be politically untouchable from a foreign standpoint (who would cry out, "Your policy of making this a better place to live is protectionist! We'll implement our OWN environmental policies to keep YOU out!").

Just a thought.