Sustainable Living Archives - Page 2 of 15

Your Personal Anthem

February 27, 2012February 27, 2012 by David Mark Brown

Serenity, Firefly class vessel If nations have anthems, why shouldn’t you? I mean, what’s the difference between a large united aggregate of people organized around something in common and all the united aggregate stuff of you? Very little, if you ask me.

So what’s holding you back? Today is the day, my loyal readers. Focus on that deep internal pool of self-centeredness and pull out your personal anthem. If you’re the type to create something from nothing with musical instruments then take that route.

But for the rest of us, luckily there are plenty of previously created songs for us to ~~steal~~ choose from. (You’re dying to know mine, aren’t you?) First, there are several things to consider when co-opting a musician’s creative endeavor for your own self-indentification. Let’s begin.

Occupy This! Wall Street & Reality TV

October 20, 2011 by David Mark Brown

Tis the season for occupation. And why not? I’m occupying my chair as I type. From Wall Street to Walmart, I say it’s time for hardworking and hard-complaining American citizens to get to occupying.

The only problem I keep running into is that I don’t know how to occupy an ideal or a concept. I’d love to occupy greed or corruption in order to break it’s will, bust it down to mere covetousness, slap it around a little and toss it to the curb. But it’s not exactly like occupying a Honey Bucket. There’s no latch on the door that switches from ‘vacant’ to ‘occupied’ (as far as I can tell).

But then again, it’s not like Wall Street or corporate greed or whatever entity we’re invading was actually vacant to begin with. So I guess what we’re talking about here is a relocation program of some sort–removing half of the venture capitalists and day traders to replace them with what? Dissidents? Hippies? That hardly seems any better. We can’t have the trading floor resounding with “Sell! Sell! Kill! Kill! while the rest of the group gets the munchies, now can we?

The Need for Irregular “Regulars”

October 17, 2011 by David Mark Brown

Such a funny word, regular, stemming from the Latin root, regula or ‘rule.’

regular |ˈregyələr; ˈreg(ə)lər|adjective (of a person): doing the same thing or going to the same place with the same time between individual instances.

All I know is that my trip to the donut shop this past Sunday morning (to celebrate donut month) became a significantly richer experience because of two “colorful characters” bantering with the the lady behind the counter as well as my son and I. While the experience emphasized my own lack of ‘regularness’ (being newly transplanted to Nampa, Idaho), it also illustrated the critical need American society has for such irregular regulars.

Stemming from my high school addiction to late-night reruns of Cheers (“Where everybody knows your name”), I’ve always longed for regular status (even while I ‘raged against the machine’). Not necessarily a Cliff or Norm, but someone who could simply nod to the establishment for a quick cup or bowl of ‘the regular.’ Who hasn’t craved such status? (only asocial loners, I assure you.)