Yeah. and much like “green” is trust corporate greed and lowest bidder quality control about as far as I could throw it. I like the idea to try and make plants that grow fake animal carcasses. It’s like willy wonka meets house of a thousand corpses or something. I could see vegan hunters, nerf guns in hand, looking to bag that perfect 6 point tofudabeast fresh off the vines with their own 2 hands. Really impress Jessica down at the Whole Foods next time- and maybe make up for that time they started crying in front of her when they got cut in line. Yeah. I like it.

Lol. Don’t think that would be too much?

I’ve never been so tempted to agree with insane nonscientific rhetoric but yeah- there’s some part of my soul that screams at fake meat. I mean- I respect people’s right to choose but I don’t want to in this case. Lol. It takes some fighting to be better than my instincts tell me to be.

Wow. Felt good to finally tell someone. Thank you.

She told me that if I ever wanted to live like a man again, ever wanted to love, I only had two choices. Find the werethesis what bit me and drive an ereader through its spine, or exercise my verbose instincts on the internet so as to purge myself of them in life. I’ve tried to find that damn devil book and failed. Spent more lookin than most men will ever see. I’ll never give up until the day I die, but until then I offer my thanks and sorrows to you who must share in my pain. It may be selfish- but with what it costs to hunt this demon and keep anyone else from this curse I need to be functional to work. So that- that is the story of why I must write these essays.

Things were bad for awhile. I found myself on a long haul freighter going wherever the job took me. It wasn’t so bad at sea. Those freighters are HUGE and no one seemed to mind that I’d write up the hulk with long diatribes in sharpie. Some time into it we made port in Thailand. While ashore at a local crossword parlor I was kicked out because my answers didn’t fit in the grid. I went to a nearby bar and there I overheard tell of a local legend. It sounded much like the creature that bit me. I spent 6 months trekking the jungle following leads until I reached a small shack in the middle of the deepest oldest jungle where an old witch woman lived.

But that night- as she spoke to me, as usual, about the situation in the Congo, instead of “yes,” “uh huh,” “that’s terrible,” I... I don’t know. I blacked out. When I came to there were hot dog bits all over the walls and my sweetheart was buried under a jumble of words. When I looked closer, even in my confused state I could tell that they were MY words. I had done this. I spent the next decade and a half on the run from her vengeful father- but that’s a story for another day. Mostly I moved town to town, lives off the land, never stayed in one place too long. I found myself out west and got a job writing fortune cookies- but while my transformations were no longer so violent- the effects seemed to linger longer and longer. I was fired after a couple of months because my fortunes wouldn’t fit in the cookies. I suggested bigger cookies, they suggested I leave.

I was bitten by a werethesis while traveling through a local college campus to visit friends in my 20’s. At first I didn’t notice anything except a mark from where it’s cover had closed around my arm. As days went into weeks I started to notice an odd rash appear, that, and an appetite for verbosity. The radio would physically hurt to listen to unless it was NPR or other talk shows. Then- after about a month, under the full moon, I turned for the first time. I was at home with my at the time sweetheart. She’d made ball park franks cut and arranged into little hearts, she was loving like that. She wanted to raise mongeese together and was almost finished with her doctorate in custodial arts. We were going to move away from that blasted town and her father- the overweight sheriff who didn’t approve of our love, as soon as she finished.

For 99% of people 99% of the time, I’d stay away from this and instead focus on something more practical and hopefully some training.

Distance is your friend. If you go out of your way to maintain it, doing things like changing pace or making 4 left turns- and they follow suit to close in- that’s a good sign right there. So you want to warn them off. Unless they are armed as well- most people won’t want to deal with a fight if they know there will be one. You know what doesn’t convey- “ready to defend myself”? A phone. An obvious pepper spray, taser, gun, knife, club, these things say “I have teeth.” You know what a phone says? It’s like a calling card to attackers. “I’m distracted and you could easily overcome my defenses by surprise.”

Your best option if it’s an option is to avoid the danger to start. Vigilance and awareness best plastic novelties. Your next best option is to be prepared. Any weapon can easily become a liability if you aren’t prepared and trained to use it- especially if your attacker turns it against you or has their own weapon and now sees you as a threat instead of a mark.

“Gee mr. Crack head/rapist/mugger/psycho ex, whatever- let me collect myself enough to rifle around for my fake phone taser and hope I don’t accidentally grab my real phone (unlikely? It seems enough cops have trouble between a gun and taser as is and they are trained...) so I can try and zap you before you tackle me or tear this out of my hands..” If you are lucky enough this saves your bacon but not so lucky to never need it- good for you. But as far as self defense tools go an umbrella, key sap, even a rolled up newspaper are 6 notches above this unless you’re old or handicapped in which case there’s still likely better options.

I mean, if “phone based weapon” is for some reason a must for you- at least a phone CASE taser gives you a chance you might actually be holding the weapon if you were unexpectedly attacked. You aren’t likely to walk down the street holding a fake phone just in case the unexpected happens are you?

So I guess- the UN or green leave or someone has to go around and just flatten any country that doesn’t play it “green” while governments regulate and tax the living crap out of everything that contributes to pollution. Or... we can ban plastic straws. That one seems like it might work just as well. Who knows. All I know is governments tell corporations how they can make money and how they can’t- so that’s likely where the earth could get saved.

Game theory. We are trapped on a life raft with a bunch of other people and nowhere to go. Limited food, and if you don’t take it now the other guy might right? If you only eat a tiny ration a day and they eat more- they’ll be stronger eventually and can take all the food that’s left right? “But if they do that they die too!” Yeah. But we all die. And you might be hopeful or mindful of the future and trying to hold out but they might not be, or would rather die sooner and happier than later and more miserable. So if you don’t eat more than them they’ll beat you up and everyone dies. That’s modern global politics in a nutshell.

Except with the planet- it doesn’t matter who destroys it. Anyone can. One guy, one country- unchecked and motivated can do it. So the question becomes- do you want to eat big based protein bars and walk from your tiny house to your job at the farm and end up just as dead when someone 3,000+ miles away has choked the water and air by enjoying a big house and fast comfy car and good food- or do you want to enjoy that crap yourself since there’s no sign he’s giving it up?

So picture the olympics. Everyone wants to win gold. Everyone is on drugs. How do you win the gold medal- AND quit drugs and start training lightly? Not likely you can unless everyone else does too right? Unless they pass hard rules and enforce them to stop the destructive behavior right? It’s hard enough to do that yourself though- what do you do with the guy who would rather fight you than go along? And if he’s juiced up and you’re just “in good shape” his odds of beating you and getting his way are pretty good no? So you still lose the gold, he wins, and you get beat down so you still end up hurt.

Think of it like this- if you’re playing sports the “healthiest” way is to not over train. Not use drugs. But- if one person doesn’t care about consequences and just wants to win- they will overtrain. Now if you don’t- you won’t likely be able to compete. But game theory- everyone else knows this too. So if one guy starts- others who don’t want to get left behind join in. Before long you’re the only one training light and holistic and it may be smarter long term for health- but you’re losing. So you join and now everyone is training hard so no one has an advantage... until one guy uses drugs....

The problem with that being.... that drastically slows economics even if everyone is full and happy and has a home. That causes potential GLOBAL disadvantage. As progress slows and industry slows- you run the risk that less “green” neighbors will catch up or eclipse you in technology and or wealth. That was the problem Soviet Russia faced amongst others and a real driver in the Cold War. Communism doesn’t work- but it can’t work independently and on a large scale unless EVERYONE or most everyone is communist too.

Industry is motivated by profit not consumers. Kim K and others have made brands out of hate. Being liked or wanted doesn’t factor in. If it makes money and they can- they do. So it isn’t a consumer demand that can or will drive “green” industry in any real sense because of forced to choose between an imperative abstract and a trivial present reality- most people will address the present and real to them. Corporations in China make money- have made money. In the USSR they made money. A business will find ways to make profit regardless of what the rules or the stakes are. So regulate em.

Put simply- businesses can ALWAYS make profit. They find a way to turn anything into a way to make profit. The law is usually slow to keep up with technology and industry practices as we have seen with companies like Uber or door dash which circumvent existing laws for their industries by claiming to be a “new” industry not bound by such regulations. It’s no coincidence that going through the deregulation boom of the 80’s etc that we saw increasing income disparity and economic troubles for “joe Everyman” as well as ever worsening environmental issues. The recent shift to “velocity model” in business compounds this. Businesses are supposed to make profit within the law- the law isn’t supposed to be so that politicians with business interests can make profit.