Let Them Drink Pee.

I hear it's a way you can stay alive in the desert.

No, seriously, it sounds like a great plan. All it takes is a billion dollars and enough time for the "purer-than-tap" ex-pee-and-poo water to make its way to the ground table -- which may or may not happen before you die of thirst.

Then again maybe y'all should just move:

Sun Belters, you have a choice: get used to the droughts, or move to Detroit -- or Cleveland, or Syracuse, or Chicago, or Duluth -- and get used to the winters. They're not as tough as they used to be. As you may have noticed, the climate is changing.

Hey, you'll like it here, Hollywood. Really. Promise.

P.S.: When it starts getting hotter, maybe our almost-near-constant cloud-cover will move it on over from the minus to the plus column, thus restoring our former cinematic glory. And everybody knows how lovely a big silk in the sky makes your pictures look...

P.P.S.: Did I mention that the whole damn thing started here? I mean, film? As in, the stuff that goes through the camera?

The story begins with George Eastman tinkering in his mother's kitchen. Do we need to come full circle? As in, home-made motion picture stock? Sustainable film production? Movies after oil? I'm on it.

Irony, Man

Apparently some parents are worried that this $100,000,000+ film may be too intense for kids. (What, even for Generation Zed?) Well, phooey on PG-13; I just treated my kids to O Brother, Where Art Thou to make up to my birthday girl that her Mommy was out of town this weekend. ("Gee, Daddy, is it OK if I talk like that?" "Sure, sweetie. Though some folks might look at you a little funny. You see, that's a Southern accent.")

Oh, hell...what's a little moral corruption when you have a chance to treat your kids to irony as rich and subtle as this:

EVERETT

Yessir, the South is gonna change. Everything's gonna be put on electricity and run on a payin' basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbo-jumbo, the superstitions and the backward ways. We're gonna see a brave new world where they run everyone a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yessir, a veritable age of reason - like the one they had in France - and not a moment too soon...

The Matrix and Madame Guillotine. Sounds like somebody's pop-culture studies dissertation. It also sounds like another reason to look forward to the end of oil: No oil, no grid! Unless the machines adapt. In which case we blot out the sun. Which we might end up doing anyway. (Part Four: Feed Me Your World.)

UPDATE: Then again, maybe not.

Seeds

Remember South Central Farm? (Here's the printable version, in case you are not now, nor will ever be, a member of nytimes.com.)

This, as you may recall, was the end of that.

This is the latest update.

Choicest "you-just-don't-get-it" moment from NYT's Randal C. Archibold in June 2006 (first link):

Schools in Los Angeles are deteriorating. Gang warfare has increased in some areas. Many people can scarcely afford homes. But for a certain set of celebrity environmental activists, it is the farm, and the threat of a developer's bulldozer clearing away the cactuses, corn, squash, medicinal herbs and other plantings of mostly Latino squatters on a nearly 14-acre verdant area surrounded by a patchwork of warehouses, that commands their intervention.

Ms. Hannah's seemingly anticipatory response:

Ms. Hannah said the cause has drawn so much star power because more is at stake than the fate of what organizers call "the largest urban farm in the country." The farm, she said, has come to symbolize a lost way of life, a joining of community against the urban tide. "It's great for community," Ms. Hannah said, the howl and clanging of nearby trains breaking the idyllic air. "And one thing responsible for the breakdown of society is a lack of community."

Ms. Hannah may be a bit flaky, but this only makes her simple rightness here all the more embarrassing for all the "socially-conscious" Randal C.'s out there.

Would it help the farmers change the world if they won in court? Probably not. Law is not attractive. Health and beauty are.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, back east...

The Other Side of the Pond

Anybody know to whom can I pitch the American re-make of this ?

P.S.: Even if that show wasn't edited here, of course it should have been. See, that's where I should have ended up working. If I had been born somewhere else. Or maybe gone to school here. (I went here.) And of course England is where this "ex"-celebrity's new farm is. See how it all fits together?

P.P.S.: There must be a sniglet for "a random collection of favored links which must then be forcibly related by means of several ham-handed segues to conceal their randomness." Because just like "a child's kiss-ass announcement that he/she is not at this moment engaged in the behavior another child is currently being scolded for," this sort of thing happens all the time.

Do You Want To Know...

...what...it...is?
You should.

The All-Consuming Car

Part One: Feed Me Your Treasure.

"This is not about downsizing. It's about needing gas money," said Nancy Baughman, founder of eBizAuctions.

(Wipe that smile off your face, honey. A semblance of humility is what's called for when you're making money off the desperate. It's just good manners.)

Part Two: Feed Me Your Food.

Rapid economic growth in China and India has increased demand for meat there, and exports of U.S. products, such as corn, have set records as the weak dollar has made them cheaper. That's lowered the supply of corn available for sale in the U.S., raising prices here. Ethanol production has also diverted corn from dinner tables and into fuel tanks. Soybean prices have gone up as farmers switched more of their acreage to corn.

Part Three: Feed Me Your Life.

BREAKING NEWS: Guess someone figured out that it's hazardous to drive while starving. Not that we need to keep up our national consumption of Doritos...but maybe it's a sign that we as a nation are actually aware of non-automotive entities. Of course, if you can't drive to the job where you earn the money to buy what little food you can afford...do you still get a choice of hand-basket?

BONUS DOOM: Move over, hormones.