Waiting Casually

I moved to Michigan from California a little over two years ago without ever having stepped foot in the Midwest prior to that. My knowledge of Michigan encompassed various makes and models from the ‘Big 3′ auto makers (for they were actually the ‘Big 3′ at the time as opposed to the current ‘Detroit 3′ since Toyota knocked Chrysler out of that position), Motown records, the acronym H.O.M.E.S., and little else.

My first impression of Michiganders was that these people are tough. They had been through 30+ years of economic and social decline and they stuck with it. They were made fun of by either-coasters and they stuck with it. They were tough and they were here to work.

Now it seems like they, along with a whole mess of people in the rest of the country, can’t work even though they want to. Everywhere you turn, more and more data becomes available that illustrates just how dire our situation is. If there’s any confusion, allow me to clear it up: it’s really bad. We are not flattening out on the job loss curve, but still plummeting downward. Our GDP? Down 40% in Q4 last year. Businesses are doing anything and everything to stay afloat (especially in luxury markets like travel, dining, etc.), but many won’t. This is serious, duck-your-head-and-do-your-best time. There are ‘how to eat like we did in the Depression’ videos on YouTube for chrissakes!

And it’s not just us.  Europe and Asia (freaking all of Asia) are getting nailed by the fallout of this mess too. Iceland as a country went bankrupt and can’t scrape its way out since no bank will touch them.

I’m fortunate enough to have a stable job at a successful company, but I can’t help but worry about the possibility that that may end and what my family will do should that happen. My wife has asked me a dozen times in the past few weeks how we’re set and what we’ll do if we lose our jobs. We’ll be OK for a while, but we have a mortgage and live in a place where the housing market isn’t moving so well if you’re a seller.

And that’s why I have this trapped feeling. Even though I know that we’re in a much better situation than many others, it still feels like impending doom. It’s miserable to think about. We have supportive families and all of that, but that’s about all the comfort we have  with that prospect.

Ever the optimist I’m trying to think of ways to make the most of all of this and maybe invest in property or something, but rule #1 in a shit economy is ‘hold on to your cash’ and given the fact that I don’t really much cash to spend, it sure just seems like a lot of wishful thinking. But wishful thinking never solved any problems, now did it.

Yes, I’d love to return to California and live on the coast and this may be my only chance in my lifetime to afford something like that in the Bay Area. Not gonna happen I’m afraid.

You ask me, I’m just keeping my head down and doing my best.

Seems like lots of regular people and lesser people like politicians keep getting duped/payed into talking about ‘clean coal’ and how it’s better than ‘traditional’ power plants…

Talk about agnotology at its finest.

Now, I’m all for believing in scientific advances and would not be surprised that at some point in the future we devise some fairy tale-esque way to harness natural matter/natural energy and cleanly convert it into usable, gridded energy. But until such advances occur, we’re left with the reality of our current gridded systems.

Like coal power. Which is not clean. Ever–due to the fact that no matter how much emissions are capped, the process to obtain coal is intensely destructive to the environment surrounding the mine. Oh, and to the emissions created with the transport of all that coal. Oh, and to the fact that all of that carbon captured in the ‘clean coal’ process is going to go… where? again? Clean. coal.

Let’s see if I can make an equally positive view for various activities with as little as some creative word pairings:

• rollicking rape
• cute kidnapping
• happy homicide

Suuuure it was a kidnapping, but it was so cute! And happy homicide? I almost want to sign up for one of those…

Thankfully, those in the know are trying to get the word out.

Check out this anti-clean coal PSA from the brothers Coen:

Let’s hope the catchiness of This is Reality and others can match the <80 IQ simplicity of ‘Clean Coal’ and our politicians stop buying it. I don’t have much hope, but then. It is the era of hope is it not?

Yes, yes. Tis true that I’ve re-re-launched the blog. Again. Not sure if it’ll take this time, but you never know.

The site is still in progress as there are a few gadgety/widgety/plug-in-y things that I’d like to integrate into it, but at least it should look about like this for a while. One of said things is a plug-in that integrates my Twitter feed into the blog. Not sure if that’s even advisable, but as you’re all starving (starving!) for Jeffy content, I’d rather put it all here than cross post in both locations.

No guarantees about Tweet frequency either.

Rejoice.