Camping During the Week

When you camp during the week you avoid all those people that can’t help but bring their obnoxious modern life to the wilderness.

We went to Oscar Scherer State Park last Wednesday for 3 days, 2 nights, just before a different crowd flooded in for the weekend. It’s a good thing, too, because our last trip to Wekiva Springs overlapped a Friday night, where we noticed a big change in the campers. The main point of contention is the need some mid-30s people have to play their radios at their campsites. You know, the type that opens up their car doors to do so. I don’t want to hear your bad radio rock, nor your good indie post-folk alt-country. I’m here to get away from it all, especially you talking on your cell phone.

So don’t be an asshole. Don’t play music at your campsite.

Ok, now more about our trip. Scrub and sugar sand, be damned! That’s a joke. I’m not advocating the leveling of the scrub and the planting of housing communities in it’s stead. Some people find the scrub beautiful. Apparently it’s a good place to bird-watch. Instead, give me tall trees, greenery, and rich, dark soil. I’ve seen scrub all my life. It’s no fun to walk in. You feel like you’re in a palmetto desert. And though burrowing wolf spiders are cool, they’re creepy as hell.

Regardless, many of the trails at Oscar Scherer were beautiful. Our camp site was small, cozy, and right by the river. We heard plenty of raccoons and other animals crunching leaves and sniffing around during the night (1am and later). Apparently, they don’t eat fish scales.

Some squirrels, cardinals, doves and other birds tried to be our friends but we told them to go away by not giving them any food. The most important thing is that I didn’t think about my day job at all. But there was one time I thought about Greaterscope for about an hour in the middle of the night. Sometimes I can’t help myself.

Converging Currents

The PBS Nature episode Superfish was enlightening on how much overfishing of billfish has occurred. We’ve mapped out the points in the ocean where currents converge. These places are normally feeding and breeding grounds, but they’re also the perfect places to fish and haul in the biggest possible catch. Problem is, this makes it so much easier to overfish. When hundreds of boats haul up tons of fish every day, it’s easy to see this heading in a bad direction.

Any solution to this will be criticized, but hmmm… Should we be eating fish that we didn’t catch? Problem with this is you can extrapolate it to all food. It’s just not possible to require everyone to grow/kill/catch their own food. Should we be eating things that aren’t present in our immediate vicinity? Should places more than 2 miles from coastlines be allowed to import seafood? Where do we draw the line? I don’t know, I’m just asking questions.

For Ears

Listen to this on one of the few weekends you’ve actually reserved for leisure: Charles Mingus’ “Epitaph”

Check the web extras for the real deal, parts 1 and 2.

Charles Mingus is a great composer, and I never knew it. I don’t remember learning much more about him than the fact that he was a bass player.

And now, some related thoughts:

Too few musicians are capable of writing good lyrics without letting the musicality of their work suffer. Music of all styles can be half-assed into poppiness; jazz included. This is not good. Catchy does not equal worthwhile. Though it might set off sparks of pleasure in your head as you listen to it, spare yourself from being duped on more time by well-crafted hooks. Those hooks are for stealing money. I’m amazed all the people with minced meat mouths still swallow them. If only originality could be measured.

For the Holidays: BreatheRight Nasal Plugs

1. Gwen Stefani
2. Antonio Banderas
3. Hillary Duff
4. Mariah Carey
5. Usher
6. Britney Spears

Each has a new fabulous fragrance for Christmas. As Kristen says, “it’s going to be a smelly Christmas.”

Discovery

The shuttle Discovery landed successfully today. While watching it on local news and CNN I couldn’t help feeling proud to be part of a species that’s capable of such things. One day I hope to contribute something towards that effort even though it’s too late for me to become an astronaut. That job wouldn’t fit well with where I am in life, but I’d love be involved somehow. Maybe it’ll be through embedded software development for robotic devices … who knows.

Qualifications aside, if I had no surviving family or loved ones I’d go into space in a heartbeat.

Doing One’s Job

“I was just doing my job” is a cop-out, used by weak and worthless individuals. Side-stepping blame under the guise of duty/dedication is disgusting. The guards that dealt with Martin Lee Anderson were adhering to their training, but doing so to the point that one ignores the chance to second-guess the appropriateness of an action is a frightening thing. The world is not so black-and-white. Full dedication to duty should never have become an honorable trait.

The Purpose of Elections

The purpose of having elections is for individuals to specify who they want to win a given race, not who they think will win.

Voting for a candidate you think will win does absolutely no good. Nor does it make sense. (If you’ve a desire to do that, there is something called a Poll that you should look into.) It also gives an incorrect view of how much support a candidate/party really has. So don’t follow the herd. Use the voice you’ve been given to chose the best person for the job.

In Reality

No election is so dire that you shouldn’t vote with your heart (Heart? Did I just say that?). The country won’t fall apart in 4 or 8 years. It’ll just get mildly flubbed. So don’t get caught on an emotional wave. Keep your head and be rational yet realistic.