“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others–the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.”
~ Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone’s heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone’s hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don’t really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn’t have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.”
~ Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York is in heavy boots.”
~ Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: “Do you like me?”
~ Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

My motto for this year, is inspired by the legendary 80′s icon Agent Mulder from the Xfiles…”Trust no one”. Yes the ’80s teen in me re-emerges once in a while, or perhaps its all the ’80s music that I’ve been playing over the last week.

Anyway the good news is, that there are some gifted individuals out there who have used their creative talents to make things easy to understand for the masses. This video featured below, captures in a nutshell a major problem that is occurring all over the world and could potentially be happening in our very own backyard..literally..well at least if you live in the Sydney area. Scary, sad and actually incomprehensible! I just don’t understand why monetary value is always put ahead of our health, our standards of living and the precious lives of all animals (and yes that also includes humans, even though most of us don’t acknowledge that we are classified as a type of animal).

I’m talking about ‘fracking’ other wise known as ‘Coal Seam Gas Mining’ if any of you have watched the documentary ‘Gasland’ you’ll already know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t I recommend that you walk (yes not drive) to your local video store, or if you prefer purchase it online through iTunes and be enlightened by the greed that infests the gas mining industry.

In the meantime, click below to view this animation created by EarthJustice.

Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo.

subprime from beeple on Vimeo.

Rendezvous – The Murf from Scott Benson on Vimeo.

The Alphabet 2 from n9ve on Vimeo.