WildernessPunk – Page 4 – WildernessPunk

WildernessPunk Positivity/Negativity

Hello and welcome to this week’s WildernessPunk. I’m going to endeavor to get a new one of these out every weekend this summer. Aren’t you excited? Is doing this a positive accomplishment, or do you dread what sort of depressing negativity I might scrape off the crusted, overused bong our planet is becoming?

I’m not writing today to go into the positives and negatives affecting you and your world. Instead, I seek to discuss the opposing methods which could be used to improve our planet’s current declining condition.

If you are reading this, I assume you care about the health of our world and wish for things to improve, yet what’s the best path for us to pursue to make this happen? I’ve read many articles and books (I’m reading one currently) where the author runs off a laundry list of all the horrible things humans have done to our earth and the reasons why things are just going to get worse in the future.

Is painting the grim picture the best thing we can do to affect a positive change within ourselves and our culture? Sort of a drug rehab philosophy; You must hit rock bottom before you realize you have no further to go and only then can the true healing begin. I’ve worked in drug rehabilitation units, and I can say by personal experience I think this concept is bullshit. The idea that things must get worse before they can get better is false.

Let me give you an addiction analogy. Joe drinks too much. He just lost his job and things are going downhill for him. By AA logic it will somehow help him to lose his housing too and only when he becomes homeless will he be ready for change.

I disagree. Following this AA scenario through, Joe will go to recovery for 28 days and then walk out sober and homeless. He will have to get a job, hold it for three months (at least) while crashing in his car/friend’s sofa/park bench to have a chance to rent a new place. Hmmm, do you think this will be easy? Will Joe feel like a loser and become depressed? Maybe he’ll need a way to relax or just get bored sleeping in his car. Just a sip and he could forget for one night though…

But what if Joe decided to get his act together, or his friends and family helped him, before he reached rock bottom.

Joe doesn’t lose all his things and waste his money starting all over.
Joe will have other methods to entertain himself instead of drinking such as a television, computer, music, books etc.
Joe will have a much easier time finding a new job and keeping it if he has clean clothes and can take a shower each day.
Joe will feel more relaxed and have a better sense of self worth than if he was sleeping outside and this sense of self worth will help give him the strength to know his life just might be worth the effort he’s putting into it.

This is less true when it comes to our environment. Do we need to hit rock bottom before we struggle to improve? Perhaps people will be more interested in making a change by then, but will cutting down all the rain forests before we wake up help us in any way? I’m going to say no. Our goal should be to keep as much alive as possible before we enact change, so we’ll have more left worth saving. If all we have left are cities, corporate farms, and animal factories, personally I’d be inclined to say why bother.

So do we get there with scare tactics (negativity) or with the hope that our motivations and innovations will win the day eventually (positivity).

Let’s break it down.

Negativity: +

Proving the severity of the situation could force people to act.
Scientists can show us what we shouldn’t be doing to our planet.

Negativity: –

When a problem seems insurmountable some might wonder if there is any reason to try.
Depression can lead to stagnation and apathy instead of action.

Positivity: +

Believing we can create a better world leads people to discover how we can make this better world occur.
Having the confidence that we can make a difference helps motivate us to do so and create new innovations which can help save our globe.

Positivity: –

If people think scientists will discover some new tech which will save us all in the end, why worry about our behaviors now?
People could get false virtue flags while they are driving 50 miles a day, eating more meat, and killing all the native plants in their yard but they have earned it because they recycle 15% of their waste.

In the end it will probably be a mix of both camps which will save us. I, however, would prefer to stand with the positivity camp. The more we change, adapt, and innovate the better our chances of survival are. I hate to stand on the shoulders of the myth technology will save us, but still, other than a human ending plague, I think technology and new innovations are this globe’s only chance.

Here are some new ideas on the horizon and in some places some of these have already started to happen.

Biodegradable machines, such as cars can be made from plant fibers.
Meat can be grown/cloned in huge vats and then distributed to grocery stores. (Side note: I did write a novel about this in my Skinjumper series, I guess I should get the William Gibson award for 2013)
We could design a bacterium which could eat all the extra carbon in the oceans.
Governments could use tax money to help fund science instead of making billionaires richer and supporting the military industrial war machine.

So let’s get positive people. Remember, worst case scenario, we die off and in a 100 million years from now our house cats will have evolved into bipedal hominids and can give civilization another go. Wait, cats? Maybe we should try mice instead.

You can grab a little of my fiction here

WildernessPunk- Is Overpopulation a Racist Concept?

Hello, welcome back if this isn’t your first time, and let me quickly state, I’m not usually like most writers. During the pandemic lock down, some took time to finish novels and brought their writing to a new level. Pah, why be so predictable. Me, I wrote less and spent more time with my kids, but since the pandemic is over(ish) I guess it is time to pick up my pen and laptop and dive into the meat of these seriously messed up times we are living in. Where to start right? But instead of reviewing subjects which have been reviewed a thousand times before, I will endeavor to focus on one concept at a time and here goes.

Recently, I was having a conversation with a gentleman, and I causally brought up the issue of overpopulation. He told me there is no overpopulation and bringing it up was racist. Let’s break this down to his two points 1. There is no overpopulation of humans. 2, To mention there is overpopulation is a racist thing to do.

Overpopulation

What would too many humans on the planet look like?

Resources are being used more quickly than they can be replenished.
Animals are being overharvested for food and going extinct due to the destruction of their environment.
Humans are occupying more than their fair share of the planet we share with millions of animals and a multitude of plant life.
The quality of human life is decreasing.

There are obviously more issues which could be discussed but this isn’t a term paper.

Resources:

Humans began to irreversibly change our environment long before the current era. Before the raise of Rome, much of what we now consider the Middle East was overgrazed by human’s nomadic herd animals and turned grasslands, which once sported a wide variety of animals, into near lifeless deserts which have only grown over the past four thousand years. While traveling through Tunisia in North Africa, I was told by a local guide that the country had killed off almost all the non-domesticated animals which once lived there three thousand years in the past.

Between 2002 and 2012 the Earth lost 880,000 square miles of forest (High Resolution Maps of the 21^st Century Forest Cover Change. Science 15 November 2013) Our planet’s wilderness areas have dropped from covering 100% percent of the Earth to merely 22% percent. Also, only 11% of our photosynthesis takes place in these wild areas. (Erle Ellis and Navin Ramankutty, “Putting people in the map: anthropogenic biomes of the world.” 2009)

Lastly the amount of land required to exclusively feed all of humanity, which remember was once zero, had grown from nothing to – in our lifetimes.

In my opinion, does humanities growing use of resources indicate our species has an overpopulation problem?

Yes

Overharvesting

It is clear the oceans are being overharvested. The number of fishing vessels increased from less than a million to 4,000,000 since 1970 yet even with this increase the yield of fish has dropped two thirds. (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Rome 2012) One might argue if we plant crops how can we be overharvesting them? However, human crops are now covering over 40% of the Earth’s surface (James Owen, Farming Claims Almost Half Earth’s Land,” Published December 8, 2005). How many resources are being using for just one species and the animals we’ve domesticated for our uses? 200 years ago humans and our animals were 1 percent of the biomass of mammals on this planet, but currently we are over 90% (Christian Schwagerl “The Anthropocene,” 2014). Personally, I think if we must clear cut forests and destroy hundreds of animals and their homes forever, this counts as overharvesting. If you don’t think ruining the planet for other life forms so you can have a cheeseburger is not a system of overharvesting, I think we should have a long talk.

Are Humans overharvesting the Earth?

Yes

Human Occupation

10,000 years ago 100% of the Earth remained in its natural environment, today only 22% of the Earth’s land has retained its natural environment. We are approaching having over 50% of this planet’s lands covered in human farms. I think this sums it up, moving on.

Is the increase in the lands humans occupy a sign over Overpopulation?

Yes

Quality of Human Life

This is a tougher one because look, we have a computer in our pocket now and door dash and… five roommates. Yes, in many ways the quality of human life has improved. There is less poverty than ever before and over all human’s life expectancy is increasing, (except in the USA).

However, is living in a city better than the country? This is hard to gauge, but as rent and real estate costs roars through the roof, for many, the dream of having their own place is just that… a dream. For others, they can only afford to live in tiny apartments with extra roommates and family. They are the lucky ones compared to the growing numbers of homeless and with rentals the way they are, coming up with 3000$ to move into a new place while you are living in a car or park might be one level below impossible. Some people, myself included, have been ‘blacklisted’ (if this term has its roots in some racist BS please forgive me) by the corporations which own most of the rentals currently and will refuse to rent to people who might not have settled some old debt with a landlord who evicted them years ago. These people, myself included, remain unable to rent a place no matter how much cash they have in their wallet.

I guess it comes down what improves the quality of a person’s life. Are younger folks spending time on their phones because it is better than hiking, or because the hiking trail was paved over, and they can’t afford a car to drive to a different one? Would a couple like to observe animals in the wild, but they can now only see them on YouTube, so they stay home and relax on the sofa. Another couple dreamed of moving into the country, but they are required to stay in the city because their whole family lives with them.

In the end, quality of life is more ambiguous. Who had it better, a settler who had forty acres to spread over but dies at 51, or the dude who works at JiffyLube but enjoys his cable package up into his 80s?

Out of the 4 measures I used to determine whether overpopulation was real, 3 were a strong yes and the last might be considered a tie at best. So given this, I’m going to conclude overpopulation is a real issue and it certainly wouldn’t be out of hand to state we are in an overpopulation crisis. However, we still have another claim to investigate.

Is Claiming there is an Overpopulation Problem Racist?

I see where this concept is probably coming from. “Oh no, the brown people are overpopulating their countries, using up all their resources, and now trying to come here and take ours.” Yep, that would be racist. Or if we take more of a fascist view, “Those other type of people are having too many babies.”

Part of me wonders if this is some shield, used by the left, to help them avoid the root causes of almost all our troubles we currently face on this planet. “Wow, overpopulation, that’s a problem almost impossible to solve, but if I just think racists are concerned with it, I can just ignore it, because to admit it is an issue would make me a racist.”

Many on the Right tend to ignore any problem which would decrease their cash flow and profit remains more important than nature, so we shouldn’t expect much help from them on this issue. They may complain about it and perhaps it can dip into racist rhetoric, but is the Left going to do any better steering their policies away from confronting the negative effects of overpopulation and shying away from this reality by categorizing overpopulation discussions as a boogie man which will associate themselves with a racist paradigm?

Is being concerned about our oceans being overfished racist? Is demanding lumbering companies attempt to replant the forests they cut down racist? Is trying to eat a healthy diet and create less waste racist? Is trying our best to think of ways plants, animals, and humans can continue to live on this planet safely racist?

Neither the Left or the Right has any excuse not to do everything in their power to make this planet better for their grandchildren and preserve every form of life we can. And I wish to end on a positive note for people who have made it this far. I’m not trying to be a gloomer/doomer, I want things to improve and if you want to help here are the 3 top things you can do without too much effort to help our planet.

Attempt to limit your food waste as much as possible. Discarded food is the leading cause of unnecessary pollution in the USA.
Create a compost, grow a garden as big as possible, and recycle water as much as you can.
Consume less.

Thanks again for making it this far and welcome back to WildernessPunk. You’ll be seeing more of me.

Grab a little of my fiction here

Dusk to Dusk

Here’s a piece of flash fiction I entered into a contest. Warning it is a little Woo, but is something which I experienced around August 5 2016.

Placing down his pack with a sigh, Danial looked at his deflated tent with little enthusiasm. His hurried flight from his former home left him missing many of the supplies which would have helped him survive in the autumn forest. Tent poles proved to be the foremost on this list.

Opening a can of ale, Danial gazed to the west. The sun had already dropped behind the swaying juniper and darkness ebbed over the forest surrounding Walnut Canyon.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and tried to stop reliving his day.

Then he moved back with an unexpected jerk.

Ahead of him a grey haze formed. Starting small, it stretched into an undulating circle wider than he stood tall. This remained strange enough, but a feeling of dread built within him unbidden. Fear crept into Danial with icy hooks, like a physical wave, it hit. It left him almost unable to move but he did force his hand toward the slip knife which hung from his belt.

He felt his eyes grow wide when a moving, handless, arm began to form and attach itself to a torso. It appeared humanoid if you didn’t count it missing a head and most of a body.

It thrashed its one arm like a punker in a mosh pit. Whatever it could be, it appeared aggressive and continued to solidify. A cold terror owned him, and Danial prepared himself.

And then it left.

Like a flipped coin, the image loomed before him, and a second later it vanished. His building dread also melted into an unexpected wave of acceptance.

Looking west there remained no sign or hint the event had occurred.

Running his fingers through his hair, he thought about all his stress and wondered if it could have brought on his experience. Then his mind went in a different direction.

Where he prepared to camp lay only a couple of miles from the Walnut Canyon cliff dwellings, and it stayed illegal to be where he was year-round. No evidence of camping occurred anywhere near his tent.

Camping here remained rare, yet here he stood, and despite his horrid day at least something had accepted him.

If you’d like to explore one of my novels, you can do so here.

The Headless Hessian or the 13th Best Superstition Mountains Documentary

Hi folks, I know I haven’t posted on here for a while. Here is just another example of what one can do in the wilderness which doesn’t involve using extra gas or killing animals. Enjoy and have fun…

Alright, how do I put this. I think Les Moore started it. We’d always had trouble with funding. I mean we can’t even afford a donate button and we’ll never make enough money to fund a Start Me Up program. So, since we live all over Arizona the obviously answer was to met in the center of the state, enter the most hostile lands in the lower 48, and find the Legendary Lost Dutchmen mine. No more hitting up Winslow, Stu, and even Zano for funding. This ship would sail itself.

Or so we thought.

Instead Zano had his own ideas. He took is into the heart of the Superstition’s paranormal vortex. A vortex not all of us would escape from. Some just lost their sanity. Others paid a heavier price.

So look on, if you dare, and gaze into the minds of men as we struggle for gold only to have it slip through our fingers almost as fast as our sanity.

Thanks for your support and you can visit some of us at the Discord wing of the Winkleman Pych Ward.

More of our fun can be found here.

The Mime Versus Alien Chronicles

Yes, dear friends, this may not be in the same vein of some of my survivalist, Wildernesspunking. Nor is it psychological rant delving into political or environmental insanity. No this is just for fun and smiles.

Many experts on aging and mental health say as one grows older they should try new projects/hobbies. A few years ago I started gardening in earnest. We’ve been doing these vids for almost a decade now, but when changes in my life started me down the WildernessPunk road, the Video projects were sidelined. We lost a couple of team members and all moved further away from each other, but most of us are still in AZ, so Tony Ballz and I picked up the Mantel. After editing our last video, Tiny Hands, which took place with the majority of the original team, we got most of the original team back together, and despite geographic challenges, we have jump-started the Daily Discord/Search Truth Quest project.

With two of our four person team both living in Tucson, Ballz and I took a greater role with the tech and production side of the fence. Although, in line with Covid high fashion, all four of us try to Zoom once a week. So with all this being said, please give yourself a break and take a few minutes to enjoy our newest creation.

(There is even a science fiction fight scene at the end!)

You can Grab More of our Videos Here

Also Like, Share, and please please Subscribe, we only need 928 more followers to be a real boy.

I would happily trade some PR through my Sharestorm Promotion company if you’re interested.

7 Ways to Shoot Comedy Videos with Sparse Money and Talent

Author’s Note:

I know this isn’t WildernessPunk in the Classic sense. But These videos were a fun part of my existence before my life crashed into WildernessPunk in 2016. It took 3 years for us to shoot one again, but now things are better. My life is about a 100 times better. My kids live with me full time and yes, we have started up our videos again, much to the disappointment of You Tube and the general public, so sit back and enjoy…

Before you and I start down this road, let me state I am certainly not the most qualified or popular guy working with a team to shoot comedy videos for the web. However, if you aren’t either, this discussion could be more useful to you than to some internet celeb who has already quit his day job. Also, a lot of the technics my team and I will discuss would help in any sort of smaller video project such as a book promotion video or a ‘How To’ piece.

7. Focus more on Ideas than Dialog

Face it, we aren’t working with Brad Pitt and Meryl Streep here. Most of your crew might have a hard time remembering a long series of lines, and even if they can, they could have a hard time saying them naturally. Sure if you found some good one liners keep those in your head, but if you focus on the outline of the joke and go through it with your own words and voice it will come out better than forcing yourself through 6 takes to get some cardboard line out which might not have fit your character anyway.

6. Let your Props Create a Joke Instead of the Other Way Around.

We may need to acquire and make props, but instead of thinking about what you don’t have and then using time and money to bring it to a shoot, look around at your house, the local area, and your team’s homes. Most of us have odd items laying around. How can they be used to spark your creativity and make their way into a video? Can a Viking drinking horn become an 1830s hearing aid? Perhaps the hair you just brushed off your dog could be a fake mustache.

5. Be Creative with Scenery

Instead of filming a bunch of scenes in your living room try to never shoot in the same place twice. The world is full of chaotic and interesting places and most of them are free. Don’t worry about getting the A+ places into your videos either, since they are more likely places some people may have seen. I also say a B- place no one has found beats an A+ place everyone knows about which is full of people when you arrive.

4. Give Your Friends and Allies Small Roles

People will either want to be part of your team or be camera shy, but we are shooting for something in the middle. Get a pal or two to fill in a brief role. Maybe a non-speaking part works for some folks. Others might like the idea of speaking off camera better. They don’t need to have a reoccurring character, but an extra…er, extra in every video is going to help more than many would think. Also, you could use our trick and put them behind a mask or in a costume and just run after you growling.

3. Keep the Same Characters

Of course, you can always do what you wish, but this isn’t Saturday Night Live and many of us don’t have a wide span of acting skills. Also, with the glut of millions of videos and people competing with you, it might be better to focus on a certain theme or thread. Since getting well known is beyond difficult, in my opinion, you increase the chance to have a following by having running characters and some sort concept. With the pure chaos of the internet already in effect, creating more yourself could just get you completely lost in the entropy.

2. Use Voice Overs

Voice overs are a lot easier to get right than remembering a paragraph of dialog and nailing it. They can be great for adding extra jokes or connecting the plot to the footage. Voice overs also tie in odd ideas and help them make sense within your tale.

1. Write to People’s Strengths

Face it, if ‘acting’, and I use the term loosely, is someone’s 5^th most important project, they probably have more on screen weaknesses than strengths. Common issues could include not remembering lines, stiff acting, not talking loud enough, and the list continues.

Focusing on their weaknesses isn’t going to help things, so focus on what they can do whenever possible. Could the guy who can’t remember lines be good with expressions? Is the soft talker great with voice overs? What about the guy who falls down a lot but can’t pronounce things? Use what you have going for you and try to ignore the rest. If this isn’t someone’s career or life passion, they aren’t going to be good at everything.

The Takeaway

We find ourselves living in a time where more people than ever can be in videos, bands, write novels, and other creative pursuits. This means there is more competition than ever before. If you are going into making comedies or really any other creative project, it might be better to look at it as a hobby with perks more than a profession or a revenue earner. If you are just going at it to have fun, then you will be happy when you achieve such a goal. If you are trying to compete against the endless masses, become famous, or turn a buck, well, good luck, but don’t come around me to spill your sour grapes, because my friends and I just made some wine.

Here are a couple of our Videos. Like, Subscribe, and Share but only if your love Freedom!

We just re-released this one. Please help it get some love.

WildernessPunk: Self Control or The Next Time I See Them I’m Gonna…

There are times in everyone’s life when one is tempted to allow oneself to become overloaded with frustrations. There are many people who don’t cling to positive values, but instead embrace negative paradigms such as racism, narcissism, hate, and greed and I’m not just talking about our president. In 2017 I wrote a WildernessPunk article which reviews this situation entitled 1 in 3 which outlines how reasonable people can expect their logic and goodwill to be thwarted by, on average, every third person they encounter. ( http://bit.ly/2PQolKq ) But this article is not focused on others. Together we’re going to look inward and review how sane people attempt to progress within an insane world.

1 in 3

First off, if you believe everything you experience is normal and reasonable, you are dead wrong. Our current lifestyle is the result of billions of random occurrences which have floated together to create our current understanding of reality so we should be careful before we choose to get on some big high horse fighting to prove what we think is right. Just a simple example to set the stage: Cars. We all think of them as A+ normal even though we have only enjoyed being able to work more than two miles from where we live, get ambulance drives, and allow the elderly to have a chance to meet their needs independently for about .000025% of our existence. I’m not trying to go off on a tangent, I only seek to remind people the things we take for granted are here only through random chaos and our current normal will be almost unimaginable by your children’s grandchildren. I bring this up to point out most arguments we engage in couldn’t have happened a hundred years ago and probably won’t be applicable a hundred years from now, so it probably isn’t too important, and despite what people try to tell you, their opinion will most likely be proved wrong.

Back to the idea of self-control. I think we’ve all gotten so frustrated we feel like we might lose our cool and let anger take over the discourse. Most of us have lost this control, some more than others. While a smaller percentage let their own anger and self-righteousness rule their lives. Only they are right and everyone else is wrong.

The above is obvious, let’s look deeper. What about all those times you have felt the anger, perhaps quite justified, rise up, but you still kept yourself under control and behaved civilly. You might have verbally gutted someone like a fish or let your actions do so, but you did it all without a snarl or raising your voice. Where does this ability come from and why do we, or at least some of us, possess it?

Looking back to more basic times we could see the advantage of a hunter and gatherer becoming quick to anger. It would protect them and theirs. Still, if you are part of a tribe which needed to be strong to insure everyone remained fed and another tribe doesn’t steal your daughters, becoming quick to anger with your own tribal members could have dire consequences.

Lillies 8.19.jpg

We could theorize having self-control is an advanced social and evolutionary trait. It helps humans live side by side and keeps things from being an explosion of violent chaos on every street corner. In the USA violent crime has lessened in direct relationship to our improving technology and more people receiving a higher education. There could be a correlation to this or maybe there’s simply less human interaction because a greater percentage of people just malinger at home allowing Netflix and video games to steal their health and lives one sedentary evening at a time.

On a personal level, I do feel more advanced when I let logic, dignity, and facts fight my battles instead of violence, screaming, and curses. I view people who jump to anger and violence as more primitive. They don’t have the intelligence to rise above the base animal state of fight, flight, or freeze. In other words, they use the reptile part of their brain to solve conflicts. Yeah, let’s not be like them.

King Kong

Others could argue that turning our backs on our aggression is what allows us to become sheep for the state, but this does appear to be true currently for the under educated rural workers who are easily brainwashed into being foot soldiers by the ultra-rich, while the cities tend to focus on more equitable goals and strive to live in greater fairness and harmony.

Could it be higher population centers foster the need for greater control? If you lived in New York City and had to fight everyone who pissed you off, you’d never make it to work. While in smaller ponds, people are more likely to share more values, so an outside idea will be looked at with hostility and they would try to wipe it off the map before it could contaminate their homogeneity.

Some of these questions might remain unanswered and are up to you to decide for yourself. In the real world we have choices to make. Are you going to risk a huge fine or maybe jail time yelling at some Police Officer and cursing about how unfair the system is? Or will you suck it up for ten minutes and have the best possible long term outcome? Who really wins—the cop who thinks he’s dominated you with his power or you who proved smart enough to manipulate him and the outcome? This is the old Loki/Thor debate.

loki-red

Having self-control is obviously the better end game because it gives you options. Hell, you can always choose to throw a punch if you like. Sometimes it is also appropriate to meet violence with violence when we have no choice. Letting some meat head kick your ass isn’t helping your day get better. However being the one starting with anger usually means you’re the loser who is in the wrong and can’t come up with anything reasonable to say.

Yes anger is energy and a tool we all possess, but we need to control it and not let it control us. A modern individual should have more options than fight, flight, or freeze and as we move into a more crowded world we need to continue to evolve our ability to use self-control or soon we might not have a world to call our own.

Thanks for Listening

You can check out my own grim vision of a future where we lose control here!

banosword

WildernessPunk: End game

Sunday August 11, 2:50pm

As I sit here, with whirling daggers twirling through my stomach, I wait for the arrival of a Police Officer to try to assist me in getting my children. After 3 years and 124 Days, I’m finally been awarded custody of my children despite being falsely accused of a crime I didn’t commit and having them taken from me for almost two years and only getting limited visitation later.

W Pirates

I’ve felt a building apprehension since the Judge came to the understanding the boys will be better off with me. It is a hard choice to take the children from their community, school, and mother, but rough situations require rough choices and the Judge made the right one. I have no option in the matter. If I want my boys to have a good and normal chance at life, they need to be with me. Letting them remain where they are, and not caring, would be an act of neglect on my part bordering on evil.

Will I get my children today at 3pm as court ordered? Will there be a scene? Will I be stuck in Flagstaff like the last time I was up here doing this? Will she even answer the door? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I’m going to go back to wringing my hands and trying to read my book.

w. Lizard

Three Hours Later…

Well hmm, that was much easier than I thought it would be. Still, I’m more than willing to trade adventurous trips to the wilderness to do the delicate dance of riding the legal system in order to have things safe and simple for my boys.

Yet, despite my triumph, I will remain in Flagtown for a while longer so I can do a different dance, the paperwork shuffle. Groan. Oh boy can’t wait.

Um…er 14 hours 26 minutes and 8 seconds later

What might be the only thing more annoying than being forced to call the police in order to enforce your rights? Gee, I don’t know, going to a bunch government and other agencies in one day. At least I managed to complete 100% of my assorted buecratic and oh so manic tasks.

W Tombstone

August 13^th

My eldest gets a much needed haircut and his first, which for an 8 year old is pretty sad. I’m wasn’t able to legally get him one before and perhaps not now, but I don’t give a damn. Somethings decent people just have to do.

August 14^th

My eldest son starts school in Tucson.

August 22^nd

I get the boys locked in for preschool and/or daycare whenever the need arises.

w art

August 25^th

While I get the kids, she gets cuffs on her hands and goes to jail. Can we say Karma?

So yes, good people. Sorry to be so ecocentric this time around, but since having falsehoods torpedo my life and create the situation where WildernessPunk was born I’ve been reporting on this journey/quest. Sometimes tearing everything away is what gives one a fresher look at the world and in this case, being homeless, broke, and lonely for my children did stir a passion, a passion to rebuild, but in a different way than before. Do things right, not only for me and my radiant lady, but so I can have a strong foundation for my boys.

And now, things has come full curcle in multiple ways and most importantly, I’ll be guiding and protecting my boys as best I can while they grow. It just took 40 months, but like most good things in life, you need to battle for what you want and feel is right.

Thanks for listening and I’ll get back to the usual ranting next time.

W Mud

You can check out some of my fiction here, where Detective Dak is placed in charge of the anti-clone task force. His main problem… He’s dating one.

W Shark

WildernessPunk: Three Years

As the third year anniversary of WildernessPunk draws near, I’ve already communicated my thoughts on how both the country and myself have changed over the last three years. So instead of reiterating myself, I’m going to look back in a different manner.

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This will be my 70^th WildernessPunk post. This comes to roughly a new post every two weeks or so. It would have been a better ratio if I haven’t hit that dry spell the second half of 2018. Why did that happen anyway? Oh yeah, I think I was too happy or something.

Along the way, I invented numerous new terms and definitions. Some of them were even used in more than one article. So to aid me in having them all in one place and perhaps have them easier to reference for archaeologists wondering how our generation destroyed the planet despite having all the knowledge to avoid doing so… I give you the WildernessPunk terms, the First Three Years.

Oh yeah, and they are in roughly chronological order, with the various WP defs in front. Enjoy, laugh, contemplate, or throw something at me the next time we meet, as you see fit.

Wilderness Punk. This is the concept one could embrace nature, enter it, live off the land or at least with it, but somehow maintain a cyber presence, a writing presence, and perhaps thrive while doing so.

WildernessPunk II: The idea one can survive without most of the mundane expectations of the day. It focuses on helping the environment by using less processes and items which destroys the land and instead living closer to it. Getting more involved with nature, while using less of what kills it.

WildernessPunk III is not something just meant to be mine, but rather an exploration of the topic of how nature meshes or could integrate into the lives of people so involved in a world controlled by technology.

WildernessPunk IV is the concept of moving past accepted norms in the pursuit of engineering a life which minimizes our environmental impact on our planet.

True Environment is a place existing the way it would whether humans lived on our planet or not. It is an area where humans have not altered the environment away from its natural state.

Animal state: Includes, sex drive, violence, selfishness, but also some of the better things in life like nurturing your offspring, mating, enjoying a good meal.

Cultural World View. CWV is, in as few words as possible, the way a person puts together their world. They create a framework of what is normal, right and wrong, fun and boring. It is a belief system. Opinions can be shared, many of us agree on certain issues, but like the whirling ball of chaos we all are, rare will we find a person who agrees on all our beliefs. Hell, if I get over 50% I know I’ve found a friend.

Humanocentric: Whether for good or for ill, our lives circle around the importance of our own species.

Earth Balance: The balance between the positive impact and the negative damage one commits against the True Environment.

825 Job: The normal office grind employment.

Negative Environmental Impact: The amount you tip your Earth Balance into the negative.

ShitIdoit: When evil combines with dumb.

Self-actualize. We can step back and analyze our life and experiences. With luck and knowledge, we make new and stronger choices.

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This is why getting stricter with what food we allow to go to waste is the Number One Thing we can all do in this country to combat Climate Change.

Smart Travel: Whether it is on foot, rolling with the bicycle, or to a lesser degree, public transportation, there are many ways we can leave the car parked and perform tasks, both fun and obligatory, without turning the key in our automobiles.

The Strive: Whether personal or natural, the search to find the techniques and methods which will allow us to complete our goals.

Oh you made it this far, wow. Here’s a band new one.

Americaned: A person taught to accept the USA’s reality and the manner it teaches a person how they are expected to live.

And here is a short list of dysfunctional Environmentalists just for fun.

End Game Recyclers: These are the folks who separate their trash, bring it to the curb, and then hop in their car to go buy a new set of lawn furniture.

Privileged Purchasers: These people feel they are ahead of the pack because their new custom made home has an energy efficient dishwasher and since they have solar power, the average person could never hope to be as cool to the environment as they are.

Cherry Picker: These are the people who pick an item or two, usually something easier for them or what they want to do anyway, then elevate themselves above anyone who falls short in this category. Sure, every positive thing you do helps, but helping the environment does not stop because you bike commute or have become a vegetarian.

Power Shoppers: Folks who might do some of the above, but then consume and consume. They buy new things while the old items get tossed into the landfill. They recycle their plastic, but purchase so many groceries they produce five time more trash than they can recycle.

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Thanks for you time and let me know what you think, if you can.

You can grab some of my fiction here, and I can promise you these people are on the Hero’s path.

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WildernessPunk: June

June 3^rd, My Son’s Birthday

Those eight or so of you who have followed WildernessPunk since it’s inception almost three years ago will remember it started as more of a journal of my adventures mixing wilderness and technology. This involved making enough capital with the latter to live within the former. Although my intentions were close to noble, I hadn’t exactly volunteered for this assignment. It had been forced upon me when evil actions caused me to lose my job, my residence, and my ability to see my young sons.

After recently tackling the truth behind environmentalism, which proved to be an unpleasant subject, I thought I’d return to a more relaxed exploration of nature, because hell, it’s June. Yet, there are other reasons I’ve fallen into this introspection.

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The first several episodes of WildernessPunk were all written within the wilds of Walnut Canyon, which is located ten miles east of Flagstaff. While writing these words, I find myself, almost three years later, back within the embracing lands of Walnut Canyon once more. Also, with a bit of a strange, but not unexpected twist, I am spending the night due to further inappropriate acts by the previously mentioned evil. But it’s a beautiful day and a large cloud just plunged me into shade, so like a good WildernessPunker, I’m going to turn my turds into ale.

It does feel odd to be back where this all started. How have I changed? How has this country changed? Three years ago, I would have had a hard time imagining my life would be so much better. Yet, I also would never had imagined the disaster our government has become. On the upside, Trump has proved every nihilistic punk rock song correct.

And damn, I hate to say it, but it is a lot easier to camp with a car than a mountain bike.

Looking out over this rich forest, it seems hard to believe we have humans actively fighting for the destruction of our globe. But we have to remember there have always been humans willing to put greed before all else. They just have greater abilities to annihilate now.

10,000 years ago, Blak might have been able to convince a few members of his tribe to go attack another village while they’re sleeping, but he could do little damage to the environment itself. A 1,000 years ago, a king might be able to slaughter thousands and destroy crops, but besides overgrazing, he could do little to hurt the planet before time ended him.

During our current times, there has been an increase in the ease and damage a person can inflict on our world. A man can sit in an air conditioned office and order a 100,000 acres destroyed with the click of a mouse. Whoa, hey Boneman, I thought this was supposed to be the light hearted June romp?

June 3rd

zzzz Right right, happy happy, summer summer, June June. I feel I’ve reached a moment of reflection. Here I am halfway between when my avalanche of crap started and the beginning of WildernessPunk three years ago. Strange to think where I was three summers ago. I had only a few backpacks worth of stuff, was sober and on probation. Ha, and now I’m the one who’s sent cops over to the nasty one’s house twice today.

Yet here I sit, in Dark Skies (My favorite bar this side of the Rockies). I was supposed to have had my children yesterday and should already be relaxing by the pool in Tucson. Instead I’m supposed to suffer these mild 70 degree days, camp out, and see my old buddies. Are there sixteen new beers of tap? I guess she showed me.

June 4th

A day, six cops, and one Judge injunction later and I’m still here in Flagstaff. Is this the end game of my three year struggle? Will the evil one flip the whole situation with my boys by denying me the time I’m due with them this summer? A cliffhanger feeling mixes with supreme annoyances. Will unforgiving narcissism win out over justice, goodness, and hell unexpected bells, I even have the forces of law on my side.

I’ve hatched plans and organized a few plots. Self-centered villains with no regard for anyone but themselves, might have their strengths, but we’ll see where the last Ace falls.

June 5^th

Flagstaff Police Department and I found no leads and after a three days search. On the third day of trying, grandma let the boys in blues into her home. But the inner door to the attic was locked. Ms. Gaslight hadn’t answered the door when the cops knocked on it for five minutes. Once the Officer left, I found the fortitude to talk to my former mother-in-law for an hour (Yuck) and the evil one appeared behind us in a dark hallway. It felt like something out of a horror movie to just have someone show up within a police searched house. I called the cops and got my kids. We’re currently safe in Tucson and I’m going to court next Tuesday.

Thanks for letting me indulge in my own voice for a while, because in the end, isn’t our own voice all we really have? I feel this recent development brings the beginning of WildernessPunk full circle and solves what lay in the center of my life being torpedoed three years ago. A new chapter, or in this case, a new book, is about to begin. The first page beckons…

Life always remains a battle, we fight against the ills, so we have a chance to enjoy our rewards. More often than not, life’s bounty is best enjoyed with others. Family, friends, animals, and nature. As many before me, I have persevered, obtained my goals, and learned more than a little along the way.

May the joy find you and let your battles be true

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You can check out some of my fiction here, where Detective Dak is placed in charge of the anti-clone task force. His main problem… He’s dating one.