cycleology

I maintain exploits. Exploits amidst devotion, family, employment, adventure, education, and mere survival. By exploits, I mean work, play, and everything in between. There are exploits you must do and more preferably the exploits you select, the exploits bounding with imagination and specialty of your choosing. In a nutshell, pursue work you adore as broadly as play.

As I’ve lived it thus far life pivots on work and play, if you are fortunate your work is play. Riding a bicycle to and from work is an effort towards that directive. I’ve worked countless jobs, few were play. With my vehicle withdrawn, my exploits were astonishingly diversified abord my bicycle in modes that persist in rejuvenating my horizons fourteen years and counting.

My tent provided a remarkable exploit when I lacked more established quarters. It was an exploit I never lament.

I besmeared houses during this time. An exploit I’d forego but not for the companionship and laughs. I shoveled and spread manure for a week with my friend and musician/rancher Joe. Every exploit assembles unique comradery, alliances, and laughs. One can withstand an abundance of witticisms while unfurling bullshit over seven days and forty acres.

Thinking back on my work exploits, I see only friends, good times, and laughter. Many occupational exploits were grungy yet humor and distinguished comradery set the polish to the day. There is good to be found in all exploits. You will learn from every exploit, or you’re overlooking the qualities of exploiting.

The exploits of riding a bicycle, for example. I ride and comprehend anew every day. Cycling embeds your life with life reminding you of nature’s spectacular gifts starting with the honor of living.

In past years I’d resist unanticipated or new exploits as hassles. Today I approach every new and unforeseen exploit as an opportunity to learn, comingle with new souls, and possibly help in some way. The classic; Helping A Friend Move. If I’ve got nothing else pressing, I can’t sit on my ass or play while a friend or co-worker moves.

Been in a kitchen for ten years now and never laughed more. A kitchen is a work environment that thrives on a kind of free-flowing structure. A free-flowing structure I’ve only experienced working in live broadcast news. You have planned for every scenario, and suddenly you’re out of béarnaise or batteries.

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Culinary work is the best exploit I’ve uncovered. I revel in the spacious creative horsepower of recipe resolution or simply creating it along the way.

In 79, I worked as a local news photographer for a CBS affiliate. We produced real news and true human interest stories with actual journalistic practices. We never made the news, just reported it.

Further, the time and care demanded in shooting, processing, and editing real film required just that, time and care. Digital video was the death blow of needless urgency for journalistic integrity. Unfortunately, once Reagan kneecapped the FCC journalism perished overnight. Ronald Reagan is the God Father of Fox News. Clearly, he was a more suitable thespian than a President.

The most disagreeable employment exploit? You guessed it, corporate. The glowing incompetence was only exceeded by self-proclaimed stupidity. A constant stream of bad ideas drowning in waves of capitalistic shortsighted, greedy brinksmanship. It was an examination of mediocrity masquerading as success. These guys were the creative genius who put television commercials in your movie theaters accepting them as creative content. It was free after all. Just like puppy droppings.

One exploit stands out as an extreme example of the massively needless inequality on earth. Working with National Geographic in Singapore. A feature on The Orient Express Train. We’re on the open-air Cocktail-Car. Tuxedos and Cocktail Dresses. Martinis and gimlets. As we depart Sinagore Station, a young man of color and apparently little means is squatting on the adjacent tracks having a bowel movement. He casually looked towards the Bar-Car and, with great technique, flipped us off.

A fellow man with no place to shit and a train full of white privilege that couldn’t give a shit. You could say he was The Black Olive in the Martini that evening. I enjoyed everyone pretending not to notice this slap in their faces. The looks on their mugs stood priceless, or at least the price of that train ride.

As a Cook, I must acknowledge the food created in that train’s tiny kitchen was magnificent. As a Prep Cook, I realized I touch more food every moring than that poor man defecating on the tracks will see in his lifetime. So much needless inequity, I just don’t understand how so many can be this incredibly selectively ignorant. I’m no economist, yet it is my experience that Peace and Kindness are unquestionably more economical than War and Hate, unless you’re in the War and Hate Business.

My exploits assure me. The traditional obsequiousness of this country’s politicians towards big oil, the military-industrial complex, and corporate power is staggering. Our government is and always has been for sale rendering it virtually powerless. Our Congress and Senate have done nothing for the people going on decades now. Additionally, the dumbing down America has proved tremendously prosperous. The Supreme Court is an oxymoron. A madman elected president.

Capitalism’s extended manipulation of the human psyche has reached the outer limits of senselessness as many turn their backs on science and reality in favor of the brainwashing and outfoxing delivered by The Facebook Geek and The Arrogant Murdoch Family.

My exploiting has revealed that hate-filled folks are essentially furious with themselves for living their lives in guarded darkness and rather than educate themselves on the facts, they look for an equivalently ignorant leader. A leader who redirects their hatred of themselves and their lives of selective ignorance toward the poor and brown people who do all the work on this planet.

Throughout all my exploits the more money people possess the further dumbstruck they live. They have no knowledge or skills that amount to anything other than the life handed to them with no responsibilities. A life with no common sense, no empathy, no understanding of nature’s overwhelming value. No purpose for genuinely living life or making any effort to understand life. No sense of anything or anyone other than themselves.

The type of people who own rather expensive dust garnering bicycles. Similar to their lives of accumulated dust blinded atop that comfortably unformed pillow of poor people’s money.