this site is a place to write about all the crazy things in my head.  it is here for no particular purpose, and to satisfy nothing but my own craving for self-promotion.  if you like... feel free to stick around.. if you can't stand foraging for the snippets of travelogue amongst the otherwise obnoxiously over-politicized pages you encounter here... then get the heck out... who asked ya anyway.

people ask me "but why canary in a coal mine"?  i guess it came from a feeling i had about a week after we attacked iraq.  i remember a news report saying that the president was enjoying 80% support for the war.  i thought for a minute.... "80%?  that means 4 out of every 5 people walking past me on the street support what we're doing .. "    what about those gosh darned weapons of mass destruction?    ahh yes, silly me, i remember now... we went to iraq to liberate the iraqi people.    (i wonder if they'll build us a statue of liberty, just like those nice french people did!?) 

and the feeling of isolation, of being out of touch with people around me, has been accelerating rather than waning as of late.  this next century will either completely transform human life as we know it--to a better, brighter future-- or be the sad epilogue to the demise of a wonderful and terrible race of beings.  our first challenge this century?  peak oil.  read about it.  hmmm... you probably fall in one of three camps.. 1) you're already a believer and you're scared as hell, or 2) you know all about it, and you think it's all environmentalist, leftist hype, or the most worrisome  and probably the biggest category 3) you've never heard about it, and who gives a fuck anyway?  unfortunately, this first, largest crisis is only one of many that we are already mired in... fresh water, global climate change, resources depletion, etc. ...  the list is rather long.

but, ah yes... the original question.  well, in coal mines, where poisonous coal gas released from the earth during the mining operation is a risk to the workers, they used to use canaries to warn the miners of impending danger.  since canaries are more sensitive to the noxious vapor, and will die of exposure before a human, the miners would take them in little cages down into the mine shaft.  if the canary died, it was time to get the heck out.  poor little canaries. 

i think i'm smelling something foul in america, what about you?

[dec 6.  just saw this article on use of chickens in iraq for the same purpose!  how ironic...  hmm... maybe i should change the website to achickeniniraq.com  ]

dan

ps... of course the full irony is that jesse consumes large amounts of petroleum products.  i suppose in many ways... this trip which has been a voyage of discovery--externally and internally, and which has given me the time and luxury to pursue interests away from the distractions of life at home--is the swan song of a kind of luxury and a kind of exploration which will become increasingly difficult, and probably eventually either impossible for reasons of cost, technology or personal safety.  god help us.

jesse and i, for the cover of rolling stone...