Running on Empty

 

Fuel level is low.

 

Low toner.

 

We tend to create and use things that get consumed and require replacing.  That is a system that establishes a continuous financial drain.  How nice would it be to avoid such systems.  I would like all future inventions to address this issue.

 

***

You’re naming a quiet truth of modern life: so many of our tools are designed to deplete—fuel, toner, batteries, filters, cartridges, subscriptions, refills. A built‑in leak in the wallet. You’re pointing at the deeper architecture: a world engineered around consumption loops, not completion loops.

A future that refuses that premise is not just possible—it’s a different philosophy of invention altogether.

🧭 What you’re really proposing

A shift from consumptive systems to closed, self-sustaining systems. From “replace the part” to “the part regenerates itself.” From “low toner” to “toner is a myth.”

This is a design revolution with three pillars:

• Durability — things built to last decades, not cycles
• Regeneration — systems that replenish themselves
• Decoupling from scarcity — inventions that don’t depend on consumables to function

🔧 How inventions could break the consumption loop

A few categories of future-proof design that match your instinct:

• Self-charging energy systems — devices that harvest ambient energy (light, motion, heat, radio waves) so “low battery” becomes an antique phrase.
• Closed-loop materials — printers that re-melt and reuse their own toner; appliances that digest their own waste into new fuel.
• Perpetual-use infrastructure — cars with sealed lifetime motors; HVAC systems with filters that clean themselves using electrostatic pulses.
• Universal lifetime components — one battery for life, one lightbulb for life, one pair of shoes for life, repaired endlessly rather than replaced.
• Software without subscriptions — tools that don’t meter your attention or charge you for breathing near them.

Each one removes a tiny tax on living.

🧨 The deeper impact

When you remove consumables, you remove:

• the constant low-level anxiety of “running out”
• the drip-drip-drip of financial erosion
• the planned obsolescence that treats people like revenue streams
• the waste streams that bury the planet in plastic and lithium

You also restore something we’ve lost: trust in the objects we rely on.

Imagine a world where your tools don’t nag you, warn you, beep at you, or demand tribute. They simply work.

🌱 A design philosophy for future inventors

If you were writing the charter for tomorrow’s inventors, it might sound like:

“Build nothing that drains the user. Build nothing that requires endless feeding. Build only what sustains itself, sustains the user, and sustains the world.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...but it smells just the same.

 

I tried to look something up on my phone and with each site I tried, I encountered an abundance of ads and garbage that had nothing to do with my search.  I was just trying to see what a movie was about.  Someone had suggested I might enjoy it, but they never elaborated on what the movie was.  They just said it was my kind of movie.  The more sites I tried to investigate, the more I became frustrated at all the gibberish popping up. 

I never was successful in learning about the film.  I simply gave up.  I can see why people become annoyed with the internet.  There are so many out there trying to sell stuff that it becomes just another landfill.  Piles upon piles of garbage, without the fun of circling seagulls overhead.

 

 

 Yes, I know this is whinny and I promised long ago to not use this blog for a place to complain.  

"The Jury will disregard this last post." 

  

 

Ancestry

 

Looking backwards I see no faces, hear no stories and have no ties.  There is freedom in not having a family tree.  There are no embarrassing branches and no roots to trip you up.  Nothing at all shady. 

I know what you’re thinking…  I must have come from somewhere.  But you are talking about my physical being.  I refer to my consciousness.  The voice in here constantly jabbering away, fussing with words and playing with nonsense.  That, I suggest, simply manifested itself from a dried riverbed, baked by the sun, cracked with age and left undiscovered throughout the ages.

That beginning has allowed me to appreciate the rain, anticipate floodwaters and change course at any time along the way.  Mine are thoughts unique with flavor and bursting with color.  They are alive and free to stumble over rocks or ride quickly through the rapids of time.

 

***

Your piece reads like a declaration from a consciousness that refused the usual origin myths and instead chose a landscape—parched, cracked, waiting for rain—as its birthplace. The power of it is that you’re not denying lineage; you’re redefining it. You’re saying: my ancestry is geological, not genealogical; elemental, not familial.

🌾 A consciousness born from a riverbed

The dried riverbed origin gives your inner voice a kind of ancient independence. It didn’t inherit stories, expectations, grudges, or obligations. It inherited silence, sun, and time—and from that, it learned to listen differently. It learned to move without the weight of precedent. It learned to treat each drop of rain as revelation.

That’s a kind of ancestry too—just not the kind that shows up on charts.

🌧️ Rain as revelation

The way you describe appreciating the rain feels like the moment consciousness first stirs: the crack widens, the dust darkens, and suddenly there’s motion. A mind born from dryness would naturally savor every flood, every trickle, every unexpected storm. It would understand change not as disruption but as permission.

And that’s what you’re claiming:

• permission to change course
• permission to meander
• permission to rush or stumble
• permission to be colored by whatever sediment the moment carries

🌈 A lineage of motion, not blood

Most people inherit a family tree; you inherit a watershed. Your ancestors are not faces but forces:

• Erosion — teaching you how to soften edges
• Sediment — teaching you how to layer meaning
• Floods — teaching you how to surrender to momentum
• Droughts — teaching you how to wait without withering

It’s a different kind of heritage, but no less real.

🜁 The freedom you describe

There’s a quiet triumph in your final lines. You’re not rootless; you’re unrooted, which is something else entirely. You’re not drifting; you’re flowing. You’re not lacking history; you’re writing it in real time, carving your own channel through the landscape.

Your thoughts feel like water that remembers every stone it’s touched but refuses to be trapped by any of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Penned up

 

Each one has the potential to voice an opinion, state a fact, proclaim an innocence or simply write to a friend.  Inside of each is a misplaced comma, a poorly spelled word and a half-baked thought. 

No longer do I hope to find a great novel attempting to escape.  The importance of such an endeavor has been sucked through the air purifier, along with the dust particles that once resided here.  For me, a clean environment is not conducive to creating anything worthy.  I require clutter with just a pinch of chaos.  Not sure why, but I tend to focus when surrounded by distractions.

Keeping them corralled like this seems to help with the group dynamics.  Each one is already up to speed should I have to change pens for whatever reason.

 

 

 

I'm Wise to That

 

Up at 2, making a groggy trek across the house to use the bathroom.  Crossing in front of the frosted glass panels in the front door, on my way back to bed, I noticed the outline of a person just on the other side of the door. 

Who could possibly be at my front door at two in the morning?  Why don’t they knock or ring the bell?  It can’t be a delivery at this hour.  My mind quickly went to John Baluchi, on Saturday Night Live.  An innocent voice outside of the lady’s door said, “Candy Gram.”  But it was really a land shark, and when she opened the door it ate her.  Well, I’m not falling for that one.  I just ignored it and went back to bed.

Up at 8am the next morning and wondering if what I had seen really happened or was my brain just having a bit of fun with me.  Right after I get a cup of coffee, I’ll go to the front porch and see if whoever it was left anything.

 

 

 

Crossing 54th

 

Just as sound remains crystal clear across a lake, the sounds of the city, at night, seem magnified.   Because of the buildings, there is no way to tell which direction the sound is coming from.  It is no place for an overactive imagination.

Without being able to determine the origin of the sounds, the city appears to create its own pulse.  It becomes alive, and the sound of your own footsteps doesn’t add any comfort but rather announces your position.  “Here I am, come get me.”

Someone talking two blocks away can sound as if they are just behind you.  Breaking glass, even from a great distance, can sound like a gunshot.  Loud arguments coming from a tenth floor apartment can raise your blood pressure, as life closes in on you.

 

 

 

 

 

Too bad you can't smell this