Florida

is cool.

visited my friend Ann that i met while at school in switzerland. she was back for the holidays and i had some time off.



woke up somewhere on my way to houston and saw several sights that looked like layouts for cities. they went on for a while, no development around.


Anne and some friends picked me up at the airport around 11:30 pm. drove across the bridge and headed for some party time at the house.





the moss was awesome. its everywhere and gorgeous



a canal behind anne's house. i would assume it's full of gnarly man-eating alligators but im told there aren't a ton just floating around everywhere in this area.


the screen / cage thing on the back of the house covers the pool area. i saw some other pools that were also enclosed in a similar way. gotta keep out the gators and other pests.





if you don't drive your boat slowly you might run over a manatee in manatee county.

Toured the Venus project, which claims to "offer a comprehensive plan for social reclamation in which human beings, technology and nature will be able to coexist in a long term, sustainable state of dynamic equilibrium." This could really be a post in itself but the short is Jacque Fresco, creator of  the Venus Project, occasionally offers tours of the Venus Project facilities and part of his home, both created in ways Fresco suggests many of the future's buildings will or should resemble- sustainable, environmentally friendly, practical, and easily mass produced at small costs with environmentally sustainable materials.)

 

First we had to drive to Venus, Florida, an unincorporated community in southeastern Highlands County, where workers and visitors at a gas station within 30 minutes drive were unaware of its location. 

The tour was awesome. Ann and i went. it was about 6 hours with jacque and his partner. lectures, demonstrations, examples, etc.


http://www.thevenusproject.com/













he's 94 years old. he's awesome.

stacking books on a piece of paper with one piece of tape. strength in curves.

most of the time consisted of lectures in his living room with the 8 or so other people at the tour.




an armadillo! i should have run up on it to see if it would curl into a ball but it was my first encounter so i was still just digging the sighting.

baby alligator




we were trying to find a hot spring but could only come up with a warm spring. thinking it was a spa type place we found ourselves in a luke-warm murky pond with a mushy bottom. it was cool. it turns out that it was some weird sink hole cave thing. it didn't always used to be so full of water and early native americans used a cave (now submerged) as a type of burial ground. all this was discovered when divers first explored the place in the 50's. they also found at the bottom mammoth and sabertooth tiger bones and other crazy ancient shit.





about 10 feet from the shore it goes from being chest high to 200 feet deep.







i just pulled this pic off a "florida beach" google image search to give an example since i didnt have my camera. i do that sometimes, but its usually pretty clear when i do. i hope there's no copyright infringement or anything. sources for all media on this blog are available upon request- scott barrett

it looked just like this but a little less sunny. very fine white sand and clear water.


drove back to the airport during the day and got to see some of the city.

ciao




it's always sunny in philadelphia (my layover)

I think that a large majority of security is theatrical. just for looks to make us feel safe and scare off idiots who do not have serious enough intentions to consider the obvious ways around whatever nonsense is in place to stop them. I think these theatrics also scare people where they should not be scared and this unnecessary fear presents an opportunity for an unnecessary amount of control, so you gotta look. every ten minutes at houston they announced that the threat level was orange. but all this begs the question of why would our government have an interest in keeping its citizens distractedly fearful so i'll let this hanger go...
i've seen this set up at a ton of airports since they started using the full body scanners years ago. so many of them are the same as in the picture. on the left: a high-tech, full body scanner, hotly debated regarding a potential violation of the 4th, and on the right: old fashioned metal detector

your choice to walk through one or the other. Half of the people with no preference use the old metal detectors and all of the people refusing the full body scan pass through the through the old kind as well plus a full body pat down. It is common knowledge that the old fashioned kind can only detect metal weapons. Since weapons can be made from anything why is there still an option? I'm guessing at first they were introducing them slowly to test them, and now when someone refuses a full body scan, they need the old kind to have check the person in the old way, but the line is still open to everyone. The pat down was a great opportunity to ask each other interesting questions (some about carrying other people's luggage today, and some about logic and 1984).
another American life saver is the limitations placed on liquids. 3.4 onces (100 ml) -of course, you are allowed to have several bottles of liquid as long as they're under 3.4 ounces. and maybe the tsa just think terrorists dont have friends because otherwise they might come up with some really unimaginable ways of getting around that stone wall.

( http://www.pixiq.com/article/tsa-confiscates-nail-clippers-from-heavily-armed-soldiers ----------- http://www.gadling.com/2010/01/14/tsa-fails-to-detect-gun-at-montana-airport-may-be-replaced-by/ --------- http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2010/11/tsa-fails-to-spot-two-12-inch-long.html )


a good place when its good



landed in sf just in time to take the subway and see my friends punk band


crashed that night in sf with a bunch of friends that all grew up in grass valley.





woke up to everything sf- overcast weather, nice architecture, and some graffiti.
a few of us walked to a diner for some breakfast. while going through the tenderloin we were offered to buy drugs 9 times in one city block. meth addicts can receive some drug with milder effects than meth as part of some recovery program to help ween the addicts. of the nine offers, almost all were those pills of a name i can't recall, of which i would assume is done to earn money toward a purchase of actual meth.




in a couple of days im heading out on a little tour with my same friends band. van, skateboards, punk shows, friends. can't wait. http://www.myspace.com/indesperationca

northwest US and southern ca.

hopefully coming back to a new job as an ambulance worker in sacramento. the new semester is around the corner along with the new major. 94.5 units. i'll transfer soon... next xhance to travel after that is the two week gap between the end of the semester and the start of fire season. i'm trying to get wild.