I didn't follow the recent symbolic "lights out" episode of the endless international program we call "Let's See if We Can Get our Shit Together." I had one discussion with friends about it's usefulness or lack thereof.

Then yesterday I read This, an article by the ever-perceptive Monbiot (.com). The one thing he didn't mention, which I think is worth noting, are the various schemes of carbon capturing, which might mitigate his forecasts of doom.

So, here are with a no longer "seemingly" impossible agenda becoming downright impossible. So, here is a feeble attempt to throw down some ideas as to what life in the future could or should look like.

1. The internet is an essential and necessary evil.
I know about the resource-hog that is the computer and of the toxins it spews, but until we can learn how to have the internet with sticks and stones, I think it is a source of potential that is too good to pass up. The fact that you, reader, are reading this thousands of miles away is proof of the fact that if we are to survive as a species, the internet might be the handiest tool we've got. Other pluses is it's network design and it's non-hierarchical dimension. The other point is that it allows us to both live local and be global without much fuss. More on that later.

2. On the other hand, the car is dead.
Prepare for a life on a bicycle, or better, on foot. Just watch the change from Mad Max 1 to Mad Max 2. Peak oil forces them to siphon gasoline, due to the global shortage. The world walks or sits near their home. Period. If that sounds boring, I'm sorry for you. Better to be bored than extinct. Basically, it comes down to the fact that liberty does not equal industrialized mobility.

3. The time of symbolic environmentalism is OVER.
Maybe it was worth considering in the 70's, when the earth still had a chance. Now it's time to confront the facts and stop deluding ourselves that things will only get better if I change the right lightbulb. We need massive cuts right where it hurts, in industrial production and agriculture, even though it's not very fashionable to say so. Individualism is the problem, not the solution, and it hits the wrong target. Aim for the source.

4. Carbon Capturing
I need to research this more, but we need major carbon capturing to clean up the atmosphere. That in no way gives us an excuse to continue pumping carbon into the air, but it's more of a short-term solution that we need to survive.

5. Merrily, Merrily, to Mad Max's house we go...
We can arrive there painfully or with a little grace. If you should so choose to live in a hut today, you can increase your chances for survival and you grandchildren will be better suited to apocalyptic living. The other key is to live locally. Try your best to get everything locally, and if you have to do without, okay. But that doesn't mean you can't be global, fire up the computer and get ideas from half a world away.

6. 'Tis the Season for Picking and Choosing.
Now is the time that we are going to begin making decisions on what we can sustainably keep and what must go. What lifestyles are sustainable (none that you can see on TV), what economic system is sustainable (none that are currently practiced on a global scale), what industries will we allow to continue for human needs in the short term (the necessary evils of internet and a carbon capturing industry come to mind) and which we need to throw away altogether (did you buy the new Hanna Montana album yet? It's dreamy). So, like, is a widget factory socially useful? If not, why is it permitted to pollute our rivers, streams, prairies, bodies, minds?????

Hope this is useful to somebody. Take care.

The elections ended this time not with a coin toss and declarations of fraud like last time. Most people, left, right, and center, are breathing an apathetic sigh of relief that the commercial break is finally over and Italy can finally continue with the tragi-comedy that is Italian Politics. The news that Berlusconi won was, for most, not news. He was favored ever since the last government fell. The big news, of course, was how he won.

His right wing party, the Popolo della Liberta' (almost comically translated into english as "Freedom Folk" which doesn't quite capture the populist tendency Berluska was trying to create out of thin air) did only slightly better than last time around when his party Forza Italia (likewise comically translated as "Forward Italy" as in "fast forward") scored 4% less than this time.

The extreme right wing (La Destra, Forza Nuova, MSI) who consistently fashion themselves moderates did quite poorly with only 1-2% of the vote. The center-left party, like Berlusconi, didn't gain or lose a significant number of votes. It only gained around 6%. What determined the election was the amazingly poor showing of the Left. Called the Rainbow Left (not so bad translation here) takes it's cue from the Rainbow flag that signifies peace here, not having anything to do with sexual orientation (although they did have a transvestite in parliament (major props to her). Anyway, they lost Big-Time. They lost so bad they are out of parliament. Actually, this is a good place for any self-respecting leftist in Italy, but they're pretty upset about not being part of the party. While the Italian parliament continues to be contaminated by all sorts of suspicious-acting criminal elements (worrying by itself), this election marked a major win for Umberto Bossi's Northern Alliance (oops, sorry, Northern League) who was able to receive 8% of the national vote.

But looks should be a little deceiving. They were not even on the ballot in the south. A crafty strategy that was a condition of the Berluska-Bossi alliance this time. The south, as you might imagine, is not a natural ally of Bossi's susessionist Lega Nord. They scored 18-20% in the north, which is important since the north is basically where are of Italy's industry (and decisions) resides. The north also had a higher turnout for the election.

So, basically with the big loss of the left party and the great leap forward for the anti-immigrant (or pro-italian, depending if you're an with them or not) program of the Lega Nord, Italy finds itself with Berlusconi as Prime Minister. One headline even mocked "Bossi and Berlusconi win the election" just to underscore who actually did the winning.

The events surrounding this interesting change of direction is the switching of the airline from Milan to Rome with it's contemporary buyout either by Air France or by Italy's one-and-only-capitalist, Berlusconi & Sons. The other obvious situation is the Trash in Naples, which is a 14 year disaster that reared it's ulgy head recently, making world news and calling the European Union into action. A disaster, no doubt, helped by the Mafia of Campania, the Camorra, northern Industry that use Campania as an unreported and uncontrolled toxic waste dump, and the politicians that help get things rollin' for both of them.

Where are we. The Northern League didn't exactly mount an impressive campaign. Their posters that linked American Indians and Northern Italians who, as the thinking goes, will end up living on the reservations once the immigrants gain a foothold, are so ignorant as to inspire laughter, if only it wasn't so convincing to 18% of Italians living in the north.

It's important to remember, and as much as the Right would like to deny it, the Vote for Lega Nord is one of the last valid "protest votes" that still exist here. With a narrowing political spectrum (talk freely here about Licio Gelli's massonic Propaganda 2 (P2) club, Berlusconi's involvement therein, and their "Plan for Democratic Rebirth" which is almost a documentary of the last 10 years of politics), to vote for the Lega is to send a clear message to both Veltroni (center left) and Berlusconi (center right) that their politics suck and that things need to change. Even former center-left voters might be tempted to vote for them just to lodge their complaint. Be that as it may, the anti-immigration policies that both Bossi and his friends on the extreme Right want implemented (another synonym for this policy is "security" from the poor people who rob or from nomadic villages that spring up to eek out an existence) might have a chance in Berlusconi's government. A fascist party won in a fascist-leaning Italy, and for Berluska to deny policies to the person who handed him the election would be tantamount to political suicide; a long, slow, and torturous suicide to be sure (some people give them a year and a half to go belly-up), but a suicide none the less.

On the bright side, the International Monetary Fund came for a month-long vacation in Italy and walked away with 1 percent of the Gross National Product, which stands now at 0.3. With an economy like this, it's hard-going for any government. Time to break out the champagne.

I was worrying about my method today, or was it my lack of any conception of what my method might be? At this point, I could be Bruce Lee or the next idiot you meet on the sidewalk. You might not know the difference, neither do I.

I started reading the Tao Te Ching, for the nth time (some lessons you never learn enough). Luckily there's always something new.

**note to self: deep books like the Tao Te Ching don't do well on a commuter train!

I got to the line which basically says what's important in work, and what's really at the root of it, is skill. Of course you can gain skill in something you generally wouldn't be doing in the best of all possible worlds, but anyway, attention to method/skill is important and can determine your joy/suck-cess in any job.

I probably need to spend some time thinking about ways to make the lessons more effective..or maybe not.

I have been preparing some sheets to explain the rudiments of basic grammar concepts...with drawings.

Let me explain how teaching english in foreign businesses works. Confession time, and calling out time. It's basically amounts to The Great English Swindle. There are essentially four actors in this crime.

The HR Department:

They need to justify their existence as well as unloading their huge budget on employee training.

The "School"

Only happy to take as much of that HR budget as they can, they try to do as much work as they can with an ever-dwindling staff (caused no doubt by the wonderful working conditions)

The Student

The student is happy that their company is finally giving them something for free, and it lets them out of work for a few hours for a little conversation, some exercises, and whatnot. They might have other horizons like changing jobs and gaining experience at someone else's expense, starting their own businesses (b+b's are popular dreams to follow here) or for taking trips for which some amount of survival english is required.

The Teacher

Fundamentally, the teacher just wants that crust of bread at the end of the month and is willing to participate in the swindle as long as the paycheck remains within an acceptable range.

Now, this is not to say that genuine teaching and learning doesn't take place. I've done my fair share of poor lessons, but I've also taught and learned a lot in the process. For students, and teachers, it really depends who you have in front of you...

...on the new exciting career in "obitologia," or, the moving around of dead people. That word doesn't exist, so don't try and look it up. Obitorio is morgue. This was a job watching dead people get shipped around the morgue on computers and then going and resetting the old rigs if they jumped the magnetic strip.

Anyway,
The money wasn't too exciting to make me want to leave living students to look at corpses all day.
I did get to see a guy who was run over by a train, which was an interesting experience.

I think they did it to see if I would vomit.

I don't know if I should have vomited then, or when my possible future racist colleague said something to the tune of "I wish they would get rid of more immigrants so we could have more work".

back to the drawing board.