By wrJones
I was driving to work early one morning this week when I spotted three young housewife types (yes I know this is stereotyping – one could be a brain surgeon, the other a garbage collector, and the third a stock broker.)
So I’m thinking the world is full, that is chock full, of completely stupid people. These three women are going to walk maybe (and his is a stretch – 10 blocks). Do they think they will dehydrate and die in that 10 blocks without a bottle of water? This really shows the power of propaganda. They think their health will be ruined and they won’t be able to have those sextuplets unless they consume the bejesus out of the water.
This, of course, set me to reminiscing about my childhood and wondering how on earth we made it all the way to school AND back without a drop of water on us. No plastic bottles, no canteens. Why didn’t they find us shriveled up like sun dried raisins by the road side? How on earth did we survive drinking out of those fountains. I wonder if I can retroactively complain about the poor water service.
I really get a kick out of the new aerobics instructors with their hard won experience of sage advice. And it is something to behold to watch the big time body builders carry around a 2 gallon jug of water from weight machine to weight machine with a water fountain 10 steps away.
I love to watch people put a $1.50 into a machine to get water. These would probably be the people with credit card debt upto their ass.
This is making me thirsty – I’ve got to go get a bottle of water out of the vending machine.
On Painting 
Bill–This doesn’t make me thirsty; it makes me wanna pee. Laughing.
Bill, i love paintings in which there are tree tops and sky and this is wonderful… i am sure there is a gentle breeze blowing.
as for the rant, i thought the following link might entertain you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia
… though you might just take it up, seriously:)
Don’t do it, Bill! Don’t fall victim to the propaganda. We don’t need that much water…we never did. Which is why we could run all day in the summer sun and grab a quick slurp out of the water hose and keep running. We made it, we didn’t die of dehydration. Hey, maybe too much water kills brain cells??
In your amazing way with words you brought up a topic I was just recently thinking about as well. When did we start needing all this water? You are 100% right (bet you don’t hear THAT often) in that this must have water wherever we go is pure propaganda. We never walked around with bottles of water when we were young and amazingly we survived!
Lovely painting Bill. I love the perspective of looking up through the trees to see the sky.
Saw this little blurb about bass in the news the other night and it relates to your discussion of water, Bill. They discussed the major source of drinking water, here, as our rivers. It may be connected to large numbers of male bass gender-changing: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/6275841.stm
The trees are beautiful and I really like the addition of the street light. I really like how you handle value.
Bill – it is subtle, in your painting Nature trumps man-made technology, gently suggested but can be so easily thus interpreted. Not a typical landscape painting!
As usual with well-chosen acerbic and humorous commentary, you provoke thinking about rather pointless current behaviours.
I remember, when back in the misty past, a group of us late teen and early tweties obsessed tennis players spent whole hot summer days challenging each other to practice games with nary a portable bottle of water in sight. The nearest source of communal water was a park water fountain we were forced to bend to in order to remain hydrated and which required a trek of some distance to access. Gosh, Gee, and we are still all here as desiccated pruny seniors to tell the tale os such unthinkable hardship. I still haven’t got into the swing of carting water around on my peregrination. Horrors! Everywhere I go I ask for a drink of free water and often people oblige. I’ve even been know to sink so low as to turn my face up to a rainy, or snowy, sky and take a sip of freely available moisture. G
I’m often amazed, like you, at the consumption of bottled water. I’ll occasionally buy the stuff if we’re on a trip, especially in places where the water tastes awful or purity might be an issue. I prefer the distilled water for about 59 cents a gallon rather than the pricier “spring water”. Taste is superior. Look at the labels on many bottled waters and notice that a common source is a metropolitan water source.
One does have to admire whatever marketing geniuses got so many people to buy the stuff for such prices, though.
Your painting is absolutely lovely, Bill. Happy Thanksgiving!
Love your cloud/sky/treetop painting Bill… REALLY nice…
Yeah… water bottles… Funny how we are, isn’t it???
Smartdog – thanks. Hope you made it to the bathroom.
RahinaQH – thanks. I did follow the link and have now stopped eating and drinking entirely. I’m only going to lay exposed to the sun for my nourishment.
Rhonda – not to worry about me buying bottled water. Rahina has pointed the way to true wisdom. Not drinking at all.
Carol – I don’t believe I have heard THAT ever.
Leslie – Now I’m REALLY not drinking any more water.
Suburbanlife – you probably died of dehydration as a kid but were so well persevered you don’t yet realize it.
Diana – thanks. Hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Marian – Thank you. We all are victims of propaganda at one time or another, or maybe all the time. I remember one fellow swearing he was not influenced by others in any way, shape, or form. He was his own man; made his own decisions unbiased by others. So then I asked him how it was he had a necktie on, and why was it tied in that particular knot. Just a whim that came to him out of the blue to keep his neck warm on a summer day I suppose.
OK Bill! I want you to know I’m typing this with two stumps.
After I published your comment and stopped laughing, I thought I’d pop over to say Happy Thanksgiving to you and Lisa. Am still alive. Promise will be back to blog rounds soon, and appreciate your stopping round.
Your landscapes are beautiful.
They’ll probably discover bottled water is behind the obesity epidemic.
Hope you had a good holiday!
Who would have thought a few years back that we would be buying water. I drink tap water and if I want bottled water I fill up a bottle with my tap water. Don’t really know where the bottled water you are buying comes from half the time anyway. Good subject for discussion. Wonderful painting, love the colors and I like view of the tree tops and sky. I have taken lots of photos of a similar view but have yet to paint it for some reason. I sure like it when you do it.
Or even better, purchase some of that $2.50 “altered” water…where someone has messed with the basic H20 formula such that it “absorbs better.”
Hey Bill,
After the Walkerton water scandal, we did a study at work of every tap source in any of the buildings I managed (over 100) to prove that the water was safe to drink. The only place where we found a problem was where some tenant had put in a water filter on the line and then neglected to change the filter. It started to foster bacteria and…. the rest is history. They’ve proved that the water in bottles is less safe than municipal water and people are buying it like they are saving themselves from sure municipal-water ruin and death.
I have to laugh when you can now get (very expensive) flavoured water and pay big bucks for it. They’ve added lots of sugar. It’s great for those of us on carb-watch.
I do want to mention, though, that you haven’t talked about walking to school uphill both ways, back in the old day when you had to walk those two or three miles to get there. Maybe that’s coming in the next installment? And I bet you didn’t have a backpack to carry your books in, either. Or maybe you never did any homework? It was a tough life, I remember.
K
Don’t be fooled. We all need a lot more water now because we work so much harder carrying around that extra water-weight. Whew. Time to eliminate those germy water fountains.
It’s not unlike the pay phones that used to be everywhere. Anyone could make a call for a quarter (or a dime, even longer ago). But now we don’t need those germy things any more because we all pay $100 a month for a phone we carry in our pocket.
Love the light pole. I think the trees will win out in the end!
Cool painting, it looks like the trees are reaching up to the sky, begging for a drink.
I kind of always thought my grandmother was right about water, it was good to wash in and not to drink. She lived in Melbourne, Fl. where the water had a lot of sulphur in it and smelled like rotten eggs. I didn’t think her water was much good to wash in either. She lived to be 98 so I figure maybe she was on to something.
Liz – I am having a good holiday. I hope you are finding time to paint in between rehab sessions for those arms.
Barbara – thanks. Pull those photos out and have at it.
lookingforbeauty – all we can do is tell the people about this water bullshit. We can’t give them the brains to understand it.
Lori – I’m drinking a gallon of water as I type; trying to plump up my skin to remove the wrinkles. Also I’m slathering on some supremely expensive anti wrinkle cream to fill in the cracks from the outside sort of like smoothing over wet concrete. I expect to look like the butt of a 3 year old by next week.
As is typical, I have to get in the last word(s).
I.) Getting to the toilet in time prevented me from commenting on your painting. Really nice clouds and breezy trees!
2.) If you look at the teeny-weeny print (as if we could see it without a microscope) on the labels of almost all purchased bottles of H2O, you’ll notice that the global megacorp, NESTLE, (the innocent past purveyors of cocoa) is buying up all the water in the world. They own most of the world’s spring water, even the Perrier spring, for God’s sake. How scary is that?! Water, the new oil.
well..at first I thought…skip the rant, just tell him how marvelous I think the painting is..
but..ya know, I am hooked..to your rants and to the replies… Samartdog won this time. Although, I, like Carol, also think you are correct…how did we ever survive?
gotta go…working on that pie painting now.
Best….
Samartdog – First things first – take care of that toilet business. I’m in awe of the marketing that can convince people to pay for a plastic bottle of water (outside of Mexico).
Cathyann – SKIP the rant? Whoa – and miss the chance to watch my mind jump the tracks? Ok, it already did I suppose some time ago.
HEY! Is that aerobics instructor crack aimed at me??? Cuz I expect to see your water bottle by the side of the pool on Thursday night. Don’t drink the pool water!
LMAO!
Just buy an eco friendly refillable container for the pool. they hurt a lot more when you throw them anyway.
Erin – I would never aim a smart Alec remark at you.
Rebecca – I get the green idea and the reusable containers but the plastic just keeps coming. I want to be a genetic engineer and design a plastic eating microbe. Then I suppose you need a microbe to digest the first microbe …. job security.
Hello Bill I am slowly getting around to every one. I looked back at all your work, and I enjoyed every piece! I think you are getting better and better!
I’ll try to get by more often in 2010. :)
Happy Holidays to you!
~g-h
Bill, Count me among the dumb housewives. And thank you, thank you! I was feeling so guilty packing the kid’s lunch box without a water bottle.
But, yes and duh, now that I consider the matter, I had no portable H2O during my childhood, yet I survived! I did. So will the kid.
Bill, you’re a genius. And the painting is brilliant. I don’t see any rain in those clouds, either. H2O that just floats by, but the trees will manage too. And beautiful trees they are.
GH – thanks and happy holidays to you as well.
Aletha – let the little tyke find his own water. Call it survival training.
Hi Bill – the painting is lovely – the trees are handled just beautifully. I really love looking at it. As for the water – I know what you mean, but I do buy them when I’m on the road. I can only imagine the reaction – way back when I was a kid – to someone actually buying a bottle of water. Funny to think about.
Funny, I was pretty sure that WAS aimed at Erin. Huh. ::shrug::
I’m a tap water girl. I just refill my Arrowhead bottles with it. ;)
Connie – thanks. I buy them sometimes as well, but keep that to yourself please :-)
Shayna – Shssssssh. I’m taking that class with Erin tonight. Let’s not upset her. It is going to be soooooo cold. I may have to do the class remotely from the jacuzzi.
I was there…but you were neither in the pool nor the jacuzzi…hmmm…maybe you were too dehydrated & shrivelled up?
I’m just askin’
Erin – I was afraid you would go for the 50 minute egg-beater and drown me. From past experience with leg cramps I’m fully aware you are capable of standing on pool deck watching me drown. I have a sore throat and earache – otherwise … NEVER … skip your class!!
OK…I’ll give you a pass. (And we didn’t do ANY egg beaters last night. I’ll do them Tuesday, so you won’t have to fear the Thursday class)
Feel better!
This -is my favorite…it makes me want to be there……they are all nice..but this is my favorite!
Erin – much better. I’m for a 55 minute deep water eggbeater for the Tuesday night class. Followed by a float and relax session for Thursday night.
Dawn – thanks. A little tranquility in this hurry up world is a break.
I love tree and sky paintings. This is a beauty!
You sense of humor is so sharp. I wish I’d been the one to sell the bottled municipal water idea ;)
Mary – thanks. Me too. I watched a show on water where they put fancy labels on tap water and sold it for $8 per glass. The buyers considered themselves very sophisticated in their appreciation of the finer points of water tasting.
Yep! I’ve always felt that the definition of “bottled water” is: “bullshit”…or: a method of hydrating one’s body while foolihly emptying ones wallet!
David – you can’t drink the stuff, you need it for your painting. Us oil painters can sip on our turps.