Awareness

It is Monday and Oprah and Eckhart Tolle will have their "class" tonight on the book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose.  I was listening to last week's today because I haven't had a chance up until now.  It really does re-ignite the sparks one generates from the initial reading, going over and over the meanings and interpretations of things until all of a sudden it fans into flames and you go OUCH.  Well, you know, it "burns" into your brain!

Chapter two is about ego -- and its content and structure.  While I have a general understanding of ego and its role in basically ruining our lives, I have been questioning it the past few weeks.  Like is any type of want bad?  Are there any situations where one can think something or someone is bad or wrong or right even?  It made me angry to think that here I was controlled by this ego-maniac (me) and yet, if I removed this ego-maniac (me) then who the hell am I?

And then again, have I not been asking this question since I was a child?  Why didn't someone just hand me this book then?  Why did I have to spend years in egoic delusion?  And no one thinks everything isn't a conspiracy.  HA!

One thing we know for sure is that the ego is never satisfied.  And the basis of our world economy relies on ego -- the more one wants, the more one spends, the more one spends, the more stuff can be generated to meet the never-ending demands of the ego.  Yikes!

And that I can see clearly.  For example, I walked into the store one day to accompany my father and sister who were both looking for laptops.  I had already ordered myself a new desktop and had no wants or needs -- I'd custom-designed the perfect system for myself.  But then I went by the biggest, honking, most beautiful screen I'd ever seen and I stopped and said ... "I must have that."

Well, I know when I utter those words it's a done deal, as do my sister and father, and they both looked at me in confusion.  Were we not in this very store to buy THEM computers?  Sure, yeah, fine, but it was clear to me that I could not live another day on this planet without being in possession of that iMac.  With its 24" screen and the fact that it was comprised solely of the monitor itself -- no big box to kick on the floor -- well, we both knew we were in love.  I helped them look at laptops, but I kept drifting back to the iMac to run my hand lovingly across its sleek, white smoothness.  Ahhhhhhhhh.

My sister knew I was distracted and she looked at the computer, but she didn't want a desktop.  She wanted a laptop.  So I pointed out the Mac laptops -- just the clarity in the images were to die for.  But they were ... more expensive.  Unlike me, who would never let a price tag make a decision about something that I will spend more time with than anyone or anything else on this planet ... my sister is quite taken by cost.  She bought a cheaper PC laptop and I made sure I could cancel the PC I'd already ordered and paid for and then welcomed my new family member with loving arms.

And it was perfect.  Is perfect ... except that it's not new anymore.  And the new ones have really necessary improvements like different colors and sleeker software that everyone complains doesn't really work but still ... they have it and I don't.

It's RIDICULOUS!  There is nothing wrong with this iMac -- it is as fast and beautiful as the day I brought it home ... but the marketplace is geared toward making me feel bad -- making me feel as though others have something I should probably have.  Because ... I deserve.  Right?  The ego is NEVER satisfied.  It identifies with the past and the future -- the past was when I had the best darn iMac on the market, and the future is when I realize I can't live without the more bestest darn IMac on the market.

What the ego does not engage in is the here and now.  The ego overlooks the now, and the secret to all is that ... there is no life apart from now.

Wow!  Got it?  So if I don't go into the past and recall the salad days of new computer ownership, and I don't look into the future and wonder if life will be much better if I have a pink computer, but instead just say RIGHT NOW I have this computer and it is perfect and it does EVERYTHING I need it to do, and more ... then I am one hundred percent enlightened.

Hot damn!

Ahhh, but here is the rub.  If I think that I am superior, then that is my ego talking.  So do I believe that I am superior because right this very second I am wallowing in the fact that I am being present and enjoying my computer for what it is, not what it was or will be?  

Guilty as charged.  I do!  I am sitting here with a little grin on my face and hopping up and down in my chair and thinking I AM BETTER THAN YOU ARE!  I swear to God.  (And quite frankly, it is actually even possible that **I** am better than you are.  I mean, it's possible, right?)

So ultimately I will reach my inner peace (I will be awakened, though obviously it is apparent to all reading this that I am WIDE awake!) before you all, and then I will have to dissolve the egoic rantings that I am better than everyone (we are talking about a person who referred to herself as Lisa The Great into the 80's) and move into a space where I am forever in the present -- which will then in turn be the foundation for the rest of my life.

The ultimate goal is internal alignment with the present moment.

Accepting is ness.

Have I mentioned we're only on Chapter two?

I am officially NOT NICE

You know, all this talk about being a better person, becoming enlightened -- destroying ego, etc. is all well and good, but I think the bottom line is, I am NOT a nice person.

Now, theoretically, my recognizing that I am NOT a nice person should somehow mean that since I am conscious of it, I am somehow less not nice. At least that is my best interpretation of it, but it is obviously silly. How can you be NOT nice, know it, and then be nice? Doesn't make sense, because the NOT nice acts that you have committed have still taken place.

Anyway, I do try to be nice, I try to be friendly, not over-critical, judgemental and overall kind. I am not saying I reach these goals on a daily basis, but ultimately that is my intent. But what I did yesterday and what I've done in the past in the same situation makes me realize, nope, I am NOT nice.

When you go skiing you use a chairlift to get to the top of the mountain. They came in all sizes, but primarily a chair will fit between two and four people -- doubles, triples and quads. I ski in groups of all sizes and when there are say five of us going up on the triple, two people will go together and then three, or if there are seven people going up on a quad we will split up, four and three -- basic math equations that we figure out before we get on the chair.

But there is one variable that always comes into play that I HATE! Yes, I hate it. It shouldn't bug me so, but it does. It's the damn singles line!

When I ski alone, which I don't prefer to do, but I have many times, I will go up on the chair alone, by choice. I like to go up alone, it is a time to be reflective, to meditate or just be. I experience the alone time for what it is, both on the chair and off, and I don't expect anyone else to be there for me.

What does that mean? Well, "those" people in the singles line I believe have ulterior motives! I know this sounds ridiculous, but I truly think they choose to ski this way just to bug me! HAHAHAHA. Yes, I know, the whole world wants to ride the chair with Lisa. Sounds crazy, but unless you are out there skiing with me, you have no idea. It is true. Because how else would you explain the way people will go to all sorts of extremes to get on a chair with me?

Well, maybe not all sorts of extremes, but it sounds good! Often when Peter and I are skiing, some person will get on the chair with us because they want to talk. And that is what they will do. Blab blab blab blab blab. Because I am seriously a wench and am thoroughly disgusted that they have hijacked my chair, I won't participate, but Peter is always more than willing to chat them up. Not that you have to, they just want to talk, so it's more a listening role, but I won't do that either. I just sit there and fume that I have to share my space with a perfect stranger who won't ride a chair alone. I think they are selfish. (Heavens yes, I get that I am too, but this is my blog!)

Let me also explain that this does not pertain to crowded days when there are lift lines and it makes perfect sense that each chair should go up with as many people as it can hold. I am talking about when it is not crowded and that person could easily catch an empty chair, but makes a concerted effort to get into your party and they are CRASHING it. For when you go up with another person pressed up against your person, it is more difficult to have the conversations that you normally do. They are listening, or they will interject, whatever they case, it's not a whole heck of a lot different than if you were sitting in a booth in a restaurant and someone came and sat down next to you.

It's obnoxious.

My friend Cheryl and I will have no part of it. And when you ski as two women, it seems the creepy men come out of the woodwork, holding off in the singles lines, counting down the people so that they can coincidentally be standing there ready to go up when you are. Forget about the dozens of other chairs they could have taken beforehand, or the millions of empty ones behind you. No, they target. And we fight back.

We stand there, seeming as though we are going to ski out and get the chair, and at the last moment one of us has a little episode, oops, my boot is undone, oh no, my goggles are falling off ... and the person who thinks he is scoring a ride with the LADIES turns around to discover to his dismay he's on a SOLO ride. Thank you very much.

We get as much pleasure from this as he probably does trying to get on the chair with us! I know, I am incorrigible. Or really, just horrible?

So yesterday, Lisa, a friend that I have never skied with before (and so therefore does not know the leave 'em behind protocol that Cheryl and I practice) and I had two episodes. TWO. There was hardly anyone at the mountain, and we have to deal with it twice on a triple chair.

The first time a guy pushes his way into our lives and Lisa doesn't notice him and so he kind of gets more pushier and explains to her that that is what the singles line is for, so she has to move over and let him in. She was a little taken aback and sidestepped to give him more room, while I gave him the evil/evil eye and nodded towards the two boarders that were in line ahead of us (and why doesn't he go up with them?) He got the message and says to me "I'd rather go up with skiers than boarders." No you pushy prick, you want to go up with two LADIES. I know your kind, believe me. BUT ... I didn't know how to impart to Lisa that we have to do the ole trick him thing. So my choices were to leave her to go up with him, or jam all three of us on to the chair and be disgusted.

I chose the latter and of course ignored him, leaving Lisa to answer his questions. When we got off I explained to her what Cheryl and I do, and she was like, okay. And she said she was too nice, she couldn't NOT talk to him! LOL Obviously so not my problem.

So then, much later, we are getting on a chair, there is no sign of anyone trying to push into our party, and it was a triple, and I was on the left hand side, Lisa was on the right, and we skied out, and when I turned around to catch the chair, I see some doofus adult male boarder struggling to smush himself into the middle spot. And because he was so slow and oafish, he didn't catch up to us, so he ended up sitting on the chair first, which meant that Lisa and I get a chair crashing into us. And I was pissed. He could have caused both of us to get hurt and to what end? Because he wanted to go up with the LADIES.

This guy was a piece of work. I was so mad I turned to him and yelled "why didn't you just go up on your own chair?" This was a reaction to having a chair slam into me, and the obvious fact that we had no idea he was going up with us because what two women split apart and let a guy come between them? Ummm, no one. He knew what he was doing and he thought he was so cool. Bet he didn't bank on Angry Woman!

He was taken aback and he said "Well, I guess I could have," and I said "Yeah, you could have." And then followed a rather uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. But he quickly got over it and he was yelling down to his buddies, Hey Joe, as in "Hey Joe, look at me, I am between two LADIES." What a putz. I of course ignored him and seethed that this had happened to me TWICE in one day, and he completely ignored me and talked to Lisa. Who of course engaged in conversation with him, because she is so nice!

The bottom line is, these are not thoughts or actions that a nice person engages in! A nice person would welcome another human being onto their chair with open arms and participate willingly in conversation. I do want to point out that I **do** do this, but only when it is crowded and therefore necessary to share my life with strangers. I have had many conversations with people doing this, but it is an expectation that I will do this because that is what the situation calls for.

But when it is not crowded, it is NOT NECESSARY! And I do believe that I have every right to enjoy my day in the company of my own choosing and to sit pressed against people I know and enjoy!

I will know that I am in hell if I end up spending eternity on a beautiful mountain with perfect conditions, blazing sunshine, perfectly tuned skis and one chairlift ride after another with a pushy stranger!

:O I am Lisa and I am NOT a nice person.

Frustration and refocusalization (my word!)

Oh!  I am so frustrated.  There are so many things that I want to do and I can't seem to concentrate on any one thing and just DO it.  

I am taking my self-portrait everyday, and the people in there spend a lot of time coming up with new ways to use various scripts and photo techniques and I am getting jealous!  So this morning I spent some time trying to work out what they were doing ... and discovered that I need to use the Firefox browser as opposed to my Safari browser in order to use certain scripts that people have come up with so that you can do certain things easily.  (Like when you respond to someone's comment, via use of this script a small picture of their icon will appear so that they know you are responding to them.)  It's very cool, seems easy, and I can't figure it out!  But that is mostly because I have never used Firefox so I have to get accustomed to that, and this being a Mac and all, I don't know how to apply extensions to applications!  AAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

So that is frustration number one.  Then my book ... it is not at a standstill, it is going all over the map!  I just re-wrote a pivotal scene and this morning I woke up thinking, no, that isn't going to work.  So do I return to the original scene?  I DON'T KNOW.

That is frustration number two.  Then today it is sunny and nice out.  My plan is to hike, but then again, should I be skiing?  But if I skied, then I wouldn't be able to tackle all these things that I want to do.  But ski season is on its way out (though it might last a few more months since we have all this snow!) and that makes me think, oh no!  I should ski.

And then there are piles of things I need to read everywhere.   

P I L E S!  Not to mention get back to work on my enlightenment.

Which by the way has all but ruined my life.  I know I said it before, but all this living in the moment is slowing me down!  I have way too much to do everyday to just stop and smell the damn flowers.  See, it's so much fun to be bitchy and pick on things, but nooooooooooooooooo, somehow I am supposed to be calm and all-knowing.  I find it irritating.  So, in retaliation I have been hpyer-critical and wallowing in the fact that I haven't felt all that good (a touch of the flu, perhaps?) and instead of smelling anything I have been curling up in the living room come 3:00 every afternoon and watching the tube. 

Has anyone seen Clockwork Orange before?  It's an old, old movie, 1971 vintage, and I had read (heaven only knows when I read it!) that it was a must-see film, and is still pertinent today.  I didn't hate it, I found it extremely disturbing and the thing that made me laugh was their interpretation of the future.  It was just sex and wild colors.  A high tech holder of music was a mini-cassette tape!  HAHAHA.  Not much imagination in the 70's if you ask me! 

CHILL OUT!

So I went on that hike with friends and it was lovely, and when we were walking by the river, I noticed this fabulous ice sculpture that I hadn't noticed yesterday.  And I had forgotten my camera!  On the drive home I couldn't get the picture of the ice formation out of my mind, so I ran home, grabbed my camera and drove back to the trail.  The dogs were beside themselves, so much so they kept coming up to me and gazing at me with their loving eyes!  (I'm not kidding!)

It was beautiful, but by the time I reached the ice, the sun had moved and it was no longer as spectacular.  Which is a huge lesson:  Enjoy the things in front of you, because you might not be able to capture them later.   I actually pondered this (and gave myself a little atta girl for taking pictures on the walk in where the sun had actually created more magic instead of being in a hurry to take this particular picture) and started to look around and enjoy my surroundings instead of being focused on one thing.  The dogs didn't know what to make of the whole deal -- they kept running ahead, but nope, I wouldn't follow.  They'd return, stare at me, I'd re-position myself for another picture, and they'd think, oh good!  She's coming.  But nope.   

Here are some of the pictures -- and when we first saw it, we identified the ice as looking as one thing, but now that I look at it more closely, I've decided it looks like teeth -- X-rays of teeth that is.

It is a little dull without the sun shining but you can see it's pretty awesome

 

The ice was actually fanned across a log across the river -- almost like a curtain.  It was sooooo coool.  

                               

                                                                                                                       

Anyway, while in the woods I tried the excercise where you are supposed to experience nature without any labels.  So you're supposed to be among the trees, but not think of them as trees.  Well .... my little thought machine kept saying, "well, if it's not a tree, then what is it?  Is the snow on the path, well, there is no snow or path therefore what is it?"  I could NOT abandon the thought process -- despite really trying.  I stared up at the sky and thought SKY!  I said to myself, NO, that is not a sky!  Then what is it?  It is nothing?  Well how can it be nothing?  GRRRRRRR.

  The only time I felt even a hint of a moment of grace was when I looked around to see what the woods held with no expectations.  So, you can't really consciously become unconscious of your surroundings -- it just has to happen.

So you can see how all these things are a little frustrating to an ultimate control freak!  But the walk itself chilled me out and I no longer feel as though I am a top spinning about unable to focus on any one thing.

Got this blog done, didn't I?  Whose counting that it's taken days since the last one and all day to do this one!

Ahhh, chill out.

A Walk Through The Woods on a Sunny Morning

I am no Robert Frost ... but a walk in the woods does scream poetry, does it not?

 

  

The sun reaches through the trees and seeks

the Earth ... shadows abound

The snow twinkles, the tree branches stir

it is so quiet and yet everywhere there is sound

The dogs rush ahead, free to chart their own pace

And yet they happily return at the very first call

The footing is tricky, hard packed snow and ice

there is some slipping, wrenching but ultimately no fall

I stop to gaze at how the water has contoured the ice

sculpts it, moves it, you have to look twice

Ahhh, the river it calls my name

it speaks to me in a soothing voice

It beckons me with its siren song

I seek it out -- I have no choice

The puppies find a stick and the battle starts to mount

Who can get the most in their mouth -- it's very hard to measure

Yet they tug and chomp and hold on tight

One stick can provide a doggie trove of pleasure

Rush to the rescue

Apparently to the rescue of Hillary Clinton?  I was querying various people I know who reside in the states who were voting yesterday as to whom they were voting for, and stumbled across a new phrase "party raiding."

Apparently in Texas, Republicans were taking the advice of that lovely fellow Rush Limbaugh to not worry about their in the bag candidate John McCain, but to instead mess up the results of the Democratic race by voting for Hilary (who was not the front-runner and probably on her way out for good).

When I first heard the term I was a little taken aback.  And I asked myself, would I do the same thing?  No, I would not.  And it only goes to show the integrity of the people who did do it -- that their reasons for voting were not to get this country on the right track, but to watch "the soap opera continue."

This is an excerpt of an interview Rush had with Laura Ingraham on The O'Reilly Factor:

“… INGRAHAM: Rush, I understand that the Rush Limbaugh audience is mobilizing in Texas for Hillary. Am I hearing that right?

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: I don’t know if the audience is mobilizing or not. I am urging people — I am using a phrase — the Republicans — our nominee is chosen. It’s John McCain.

Texas is open. And I want Hillary to stay in this, Laura. This is too good a soap opera. We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically, and it’s obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it and don’t have the stomach for it.

As you probably know, we’re getting all kinds of memos from the RNC saying not to be critical there. Mark MacKinnon of McCain’s campaign says he’ll quit if they get critical over Obama.

This is the presidency of the United States you’re talking about. I want our party to win. I want the Democrats to lose. They’re in the midst of tearing themselves apart right now. It is fascinating to watch, and it’s all going to stop if Hillary loses.

This is such a sucky time to have to relinquish (alas remove) the hatred from my own being, because I could have some fun picking on this ... (blankety blank) but no, it's not that I won't go there, it's that I have to recognize that this man is full of himself (ego) and the sad (ooops, a label) people who follow him are lost beings

How exactly are the Democrats tearing themselves apart, I ask?  And if that is what politics are, then it surely explains why George W. Bush is in office, does it not?  Just so that we Americans can experience the demise of our country in soap opera style!  Hail to Rush!  What a guy.  We have Oprah on one end of the spectrum gathering hundreds of thousands of people together in order to make a better world, and then we have Rush -- thinking how funny it would be to mess up the election.

“We need Hillary,” Limbaugh declared on his show on February 26. “We need the soap opera. Hillary Clinton is J. R. Ewing, and her husband, Bill, is Sue Ellen. We need to keep this soap opera going, but we also need the chaos,” Limbaugh added.

In a segment entitled, “We Started Mrs. Clinton’s Slide, But Now We Need Her to Stay Alive,” Limbaugh argued that Hillary was now the Republicans’ best hope for victory in November.

“We need somebody roughing up Obama before it’s our turn to get there, because, as it’s been demonstrated, the Republicans have a reticence in doing so,” he told his huge listening audience, apparently referring to John McCain and the Republican National Committee. “They are sending out memos, we can’t attack Obama, we’ll be accused of racism,” Limbaugh continued, referring to a recent memo from the RNC warning Republicans not to use language that could be interpreted as racist or sexist.

“Somebody’s gotta criticize him; somebody’s gotta bloody the guy up,” enjoined the self-crowned king of right-wing talk radio. “He’s shown he’s sensitive to it here, and the Clintons are the one to do this,” Limbaugh added, speaking of Obama. “If they can pull out one of these two states, Texas or Ohio, then she will go on. We need chaos in this party.”

Well, it worked. But will it ultimately succeed?  Rusho doesn't want Hillary to win, he just wants to watch her dig up dirt on Obama (one must assume that if she hasn't done so by now, it just might not exist!  Not everyone has led a life like the Clinton's, with their hands in everyone else's cookie jars and their cigars gawd knows where.)

John McCain, who is meeting with George Bush in the Rose Garden today (isn't that nice!) commented that Americans no longer have patience for an "uncivil brawl over the spoils of power."

Apparently he hasn't met the pals of Rush -- who not only have patience for it, but encourage it.  There is no such thing as a group "Americans," who think with one collective mind.  So to say Americans are anything is just plain ignorant.  Yes, it's ignorant!   And I'll tell you why.  He makes that comment in regards to the election -- but he doesn't take the time to think that it might just mean something else, to say an American, who has no patience for an "uncivil brawl over the spoils of power," otherwise known as the War in Iraq. 

Which John McCain supports.

Cutting Edge

Last night I participated in the worldwide "online classroom" that Oprah and Eckhart Tolle (author of the book I keep talking about!) created in order to further discuss the book A New Earth.

Oprah kept referring to it as "cutting edge," and it was a pretty cool thing -- to think that more than 500,000 people logged in at the same time to watch a live event.  You could send emails and access the "class" via Skype (which allows you to see the person if they have a camera) and phone.  Hence, it was completely interactive and unscripted as questions were addressed as they were asked.

But after 20 minutes my feed crashed and I couldn't get back in.  I received an email this morning apologizing and explaining that it was one of the largest single online events in the history of the Internet.  I could feel it -- the energy of it, the excitement of breaking new ground or pushing the bytes as it were.  I was not the least bit surprised when it crashed -- it was an experiment, and only Oprah could harness that many people and convince them to be online, no matter where they were in the world.  One woman was in Germany, and it was the end of the night for her (it was on 9:00 p.m. my time).  

It resulted in 242 gigabytes per second of information moving through the Internet -- which is one of those big numbers hard to imagine.  Eight bits make a byte.  A byte ... you know, I started to explain this in "layman" terms and then realized that no one would read it!  So let's just say that it was a SHITLOAD of information pouring through the Internet -- which is really just a bunch of cables all attached to people's computers at home which send their information through servers (where your email is stored for example) but ultimately 500,000 different computers were accessing the SAME information at the same time and it was too much.  Not a big surprise.

What does this mean?  Well, for one, it means that technology has to meet the demand, and if Oprah is saying that for the next ten weeks she needs enough bandwidth available to remain stable for 90 minutes and feed into the homes of 500,000 people across the WORLD, then I am thinking it has to get done.  And that's pretty wild.  I know I seem to have an Oprah thing going, but I am beginning to understand it.  I am beginning to see that she is something greater than herself, and for a long time she knew it, but now she is starting to smack herself upside the head and say stop buying shoes girl and get on with your life's purpose.

She is removing ego from the picture, and I am removing labels from mine and we're finding each other again!  :::::::::::::::sniff:::::::::::::::::  I'm having a moment.

I predict it's all going to be Internet ... I believe there will no longer be network television or printed newspapers in the not-to-far future.   

And I'll get to write about how I saw it all happen!

 

Freegan -- Strategies for Sustainable Living Beyond Capitalism

 
It's a new movement -- and it's sweeping across the country.  Honestly, I rarely see these sweeping movements, and believe me, I look.  And I don't see this one catching on anytime soon in this area because I think it could only support a small group, and that's no sweep.

What is it?  Freegan.info

Well, it's really dumpster diving, which is a term I came across when I worked at Moms Online.  Those women were really the pioneer Freegans -- and their goal was to stay at home at all costs (or at a big time reduction of cost) to raise their little angels.   They would go to dumpsters outside of department stores, or anywhere, really, and paw through and take out the "good" stuff, and either take it home to use it or sell it.

Freegan is just the yuppiefied word for dumpster diving -- sounds far more chic, don't you think? 

Now these are intelligent people (hence the new name, those mom's just didn't give a damn!) and I just don't understand why they don't come up with another system.  Right now they comb the streets of New York City (this particular faction of Freegans) and paw through garbage outside of markets and bakeries and take home the food.  Yes, the food is packaged and in perfectly good shape, but why don't they create an underground food system?  Why don't they pay off someone who works at the store to package the food in say a cardboard box and leave it at a set time so they don't have to deal with the other garbage?

The reason that the stores throw out the food (as opposed to say feeding the poor) is because it is easier and then there are so many rules and regulations to donating food and it's all on you (like you would have to transport it to the shelters, etc.) so in pure American wasteism, the food is tossed.  And it's not gross, ruined or even expired.  Some of it is often days away from expiration -- one has to assume that they just got in fresher food and had to toss the other stuff for shelf space.

IT'S INSANE.

So these Freegans don't spend their hard-earned money on food, they search for it in the trash.  And they furnish their homes with the stuff they find in dumpsters, etc.  It doesn't gross me out, particularly, I just don't see why they don't look a little deeper.  Now they know what kind of food is thrown away -- and they themselves can't use it all either, it's that much.  So why aren't they coming up with a way to distribute it to those that aren't savvy enough to dumpster dive, ahem, I mean become a Freegan?

That is the part I found most disturbing.  But then again, they've obviously contacted reporters so they are trying I suppose.  And when you check out the freegan.info website, apparently they don't keep their spots secret, they tell anyone who wants to know where they are obtaining their free food, and run tours and groups to show people where to go.  Also on the website is a dumpster directory!  

I wonder if I have the nerve to go check out the dumpster behind the local supermarket!  The idea fills me with pure disgust mingled with sheer curiosity with a smidgen of excitement!

Now I am beginning to see why my mother wanted to know if the FBI could track my blog!!! HAHAHAHA.

No, seriously!  :)