WorldWithoutOil.Org

It's late and maybe like me you can't sleep.
lead_tag has just the thing. NIghty-nite.

As you can imagine, the last couple of weeks around here have been pretty rough. Dad and I had prepared for the possibility of a diesel shortage so we'd stored some up, but since we don't know how long this will go on, we've got to ration it out real strictly, especially considering the farm equipment. I've been doing a lot of fishing, just to get out of the house. We're going to have some serious cabin fever if we let our worries run unchecked and all sit at home, brooding.

I noticed that hero prudentrver was sitting pretty high on the hog a couple of weeks ago and was in for a rude awakening when the diesel crisis hit. Stinks, huh? Good luck to you, sir.

Well, I got so down thinking about the future and the present and how good the past seemed in comparison that I started looking at some of the stories far away from me to take my mind off things. Cid Yama reported that North Korea opened its border and wants to reunify, which is pretty wild. I'm not sure if that's for real or whether it's yet another of the massive rumors flying around these days, but it's nice to think it might really be happening. And just to keep me from feeling too sorry for myself, I ran across ironmonkey's speculation about Hawaii's situation. I think a farm in rural Texas is isolated, but imagine being on an island in the middle of thousands of miles of ocean.

So as if to perk up my spirits even further, I read electric-car-girl's post about her own difficulties but how, in spite of them, she was by-golly going to have a party. Now, that's the spirit!

Thanks for helping me stop worrying about my own sorry self and realize that I'm not the only one having problems, y'all.

Congratulations to </a></b></a>copystar_wwo, winner of the first Carboneer Award - by virtue of having coined the term carboneer, of course. Excellent work. Copystar, email me (my name here @ gmail.com) with your mailing address if you want a hard copy of your One-Ton Carbon Offset ! (I think it comes with a cool sticker or bumper sticker too.) Otherwise, I'll email you a virtual copy.

So what's next for the rest of us Carboneers?

Here's your next challenge. It's called Whatever Without Oil.

It's really simple. Do whatever -- anything, really -- in a way that consumes less oil.

My Band Rehearsal Without Oil.

World of Warcraft Without Oil.

Cleaning the House Without Oil.

Shoe Shopping Without Oil.

Surfing Without Oil.

My Dog Without Oil.

You get the idea.

The sillier, or weirder, or more offbeat, or just plain different, the better.

If this works, hopefully we'll get a whole A - Z list of doing things without oil. (So, yes, we need an X-something Without Oil and a Z-something Without Oil!) Yes, that's the goal. The A - Z of Living Without Oil. So what can YOU add to it? (Special consideration to the first person to submit for each letter of the alphabet.)

Need an example? How about Renting DVDs Without Oil? Last week I cancelled my Netflix account. Just didn't make sense to me anymore in terms of carbon impact. Those discs get flown movies hundreds of miles, instead of me walking five blocks to a DVD/video store. Well I'd rather use my human power to walk the movie than fuel to drive/fly it. So for my  Whatever Without Oil story, I'm going to film my next trip to the store and see if I can find other folks like me who cancelled their DVD-by-mail subscriptions for environmental reasons.

Go ahead and submit your story the usual way. Just be sure to tag it "mission" and "whateverwithoutoil" so we can find it. And really show us your whatever: photos, maps, drawings, charts, videos. Anything that lets us really see it.

Go Carboneers Go!