The Hippie Survivalist - A Wannabe Green Man

*Below right, my new keyhole garden.  Needs more soil on top, sloped up and inward towards the central compost tube, but then it is good to go.  What to plant in it?  Greens.  Peppers.  Not sure what else.  Actually, I'd really like to grow the Three Sisters - corn, beans and squash - but the corn would grow so high as to block sunlight to the rest of the garden, and its roots would probably stretch way down into the water table...which is toxic.  There's a thousand-acre SuperFund site a few hundred yards away.  So...yeah.  Gotta keep them roots from growing down into the soil.

Bought 3 more tree collards yesterday!  Now there are 4 of them planted in the same 1/2 wine barrel.  Am hoping that 4 of these puppies is enough to keep me from ever having to buy kale again.  No more spending money on lemons and kale.

Am told that cherry tomatoes grow well in the local climate, so this year I will devote all 3 earth boxes (6 plants total) to cherry tomatoes.  Yum yum.

* Gallon Smashing - the new rage.  I like the slipping-and-sliding part most of all!

The Hippie Survivalist - The Future Is Now

* In NorCal a baddie gets busted for having 111 illicit weapons - some full-auto, many or all stolen - stashed in a camouflaged cave.  PRESS HERE

* God do I love meat pies.  Even the bad ones are good.

* A private Navy goes to work protecting flotillas of freighters off the Barbary Coast of Somalia.  PRESS HERE

* In economically-strapped Spain, the unemployed learn to create - and thrive in - a cashless, bottom-up economy.  PRESS HERE

* Cool documentary about Ram Bahadur Bomjan ("Buddha Boy"), who went for several years without eating, drinking water or seeking shelter from the elements in Nepal last decade.  PRESS HERE 

IMHO: I thought this story was popular fantasy until I saw this documentary.  Am told that the types of yogic powers displayed by Ram - surviving without eating or drinking water, generating internal heat to counteract cold weather, etc. - are the result of concentration meditation.  This type of meditation leads to yogic powers, but not to enlightenment.  Awareness meditation is what leads to enlightenment.  Too bad, because I think yogic powers are super cool.  Seriously - Jesus had them and he was as cool as cool can be!

* FINALLY bought a freaking couch, after 11 months in my new/first home (an 840 sf cottage).  Got rid of the unusable freebie love seat that sat in my living room for half a year.  The cat has not yet claimed the new couch...which perplexes me.

* Almost done building a keyhole garden, which I will use to grow food in during the Spring/Summer months when the high sun should give it full light all day every day.  Don't know how effective it will be in my windy and cool backyard - these gardens are designed for a hot, dry African climate.  Will post a photo shortly.

FYI: PLAN MAJOR PROJECTS BEFORE EMBARKING ON THEM.  FFS I didn't.  First I bought 2 truckloads of scrap bricks and cinder blocks and ceramic pipes, then I patched all that heavy, ugly crap together to form a 3-foot-high wall around a 6-foot diameter circle.  Then I realized it looked godawful, tore it apart, bought new cinder blocks for less than I paid for the used ones, re-built the garden and have now half-filled it with dirt.  Should be done tomorrow.  The end result of not planning this escapade is that I spent an entire week (my week off!) building it, wasted $100 on it, am left with several piles of used bricks and large ceramic pipes that I don't want and probably can't sell, and I got the best full-body workout I've had in years.

The Hippie Survivalist - Artifacts from the Zombie Wars

*Below: REVISED - An artifact from the Zombie Wars. This shield, made from a bread board and scrap metal, was used at the Battle for Webster Tube in 20__.  From the private collection of Linus Kwong (Fortress Mendocino).

*Below: An artifact from the Zombie Wars. This shield, made from a wine crate lid, license plates, and scrap metal, was used by a 9-year-old member of the famed and dreaded Commando Base (CB) Squad on Alameda Island during 20__, the Year of Darkness.  From the Smithsonian Collection (Capitol City, Nevada).

*Below: An artifact from the Zombie Wars. This shield, built from a cabinet door and a street sign, was wielded by 23-year-old Sergeant Git Cruz on Alcatraz Island during the Flotilla Action of 20__.  From the Burf Collection (Alameda Island).

*Below: An artifact from the Zombie Wars. This weapon, fashioned from a claw hammer handle, a roofing hammer head and strips of inner tube, was wielded by 11-year-old Cecilia Decker at the Battle for Webster Tube in 20__.  It is credited with 53 confirmed zombie kills.  From the private collection of Linus Kwong (Fortress Mendocino).

The Hippie Survivalist - It's the Little Things

*Happy mid-February, Saints and Sinners!  Well, unless you've been hiding under a board in the barn for the last ten days, you've probably heard all about Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker, who saved a few lives in Fresno a week or so ago.  Here is the original interview.  Here is a follow-up interview.  And here is Kai on Jimmy Kimmel.  These interviews are all worth watching, and present a portrait of a young man who has become a modern hero overnight.  Sorry for any advertisements - but nothing is truly free on the interweb.

Except for Kai.

I hesitate to talk too much about Kai, yet I feel compelled to.  Modern America is in so many ways a culturally degraded society, with little to offer that is of real value.  I cannot remember the last time it produced someone that struck me as being a hero.  And then along comes Kai.  A hippie, a hitchhiker, a homeless person, a foreigner, a surfer, a skater, a musician, a Buddhist, a man who speaks his mind and heart and does what is necessary without thought to his own well-being, a victim of severe neglect and abuse, a man who gives away what he has to make others happy, a man who somehow got his shit together at a very young age and knows who he is and what is REALLY right and what is REALLY wrong, a man who smokes and drinks, who steals beer and gives it away to others.  A MAN WHO IS HAPPY WITH NOTHING.  Here we were all looking for a Christ-like figure who would descend from above and tell us what to do, and Kai arose unexpectedly from the heart of the shit-pile under our feet and just did what had to be done.  Wow.  Truly, I never thought I'd say it - but he passes the authenticity test and I consider him a Boddhisatva who is doing God's work on Earth.  It makes me happy to know he is out there, caring for others in a way that is almost universally endearing.

Thank you, Kai!  Don't let the World destroy you, Brother!  Keep it real.

*And Kai is not the only person on Earth doing God's work - there is at least one more!  Narayanan Krishnan spends his days feeding and bathing the poor in India, just as Meher Baba did.  Watch this video if you would like a little inspiration to be a better person.

Thank you for making the World a better place, Narayan!  We need more people - MANY more people - like you to make this planet worth living on.

*I can't finish this blog entry without mentioning the awesome meteor which blew like a nuke over a Russian city in the Urals last Friday.  Check out videos HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.  Holy FUCK!  What awesome shit!  OMFG.  Those lucky Russians.  Dang, that is the SHIT, right there.  Can you imagine?  You'd think, OMG it's a nuke, but then you'd still be able to see after the flash, and you'd see the continuing steam trail and think, WTF, are those unexploded warheads or what???  Then the fucking concussion would hit and you'd damn near shit yourself again.  Then you'd find out it was a meteor and you'd know you were OK and had witnessed one of the most amazing celestial events in modern history, and you'd be flying high for days afterward.  I don't mean any disrespect for anyone who was injured in the incident, I'm simply blown away by the awesomeness of the event and the luck that prevented it from being a Hiroshima x 30 nuclear blast on the ground.

DAMN.