My best friend of 10 years asked if he could use my car to go to Ohio. “Not unless you return it with a full tank asshole,” I replied sharply. Back in the day, when gas was barely over a dollar a gallon, I would have hardly cared if he came back with only a half-full tank of gas. If he did that now, I would sue him, and probably look into a way to have him arrested for grand theft auto. It’s a shame high gas prices have turned me into a shell of the person I was before.

My friend Tosha also had a recent quarrel with her best friend and roommate Stacy over the use of her car. As the argument escalated, Tosha punched Stacy in the mouth, because “that bitch didn’t need the car.”

“She was just going to use the car to see some random guy she met on the internet,” Tosha said.
“I told her to just walk, and when she told me it was 50 miles, I told her that it was my car and I didn’t give a shit how far it was.”

After the fight, Stacy was going to go to the hospital for stitches, but upon calling the hospital, they also told her to walk because the ambulance wasn’t running that day due to high gas prices.

According to psychology tests completed at Western Tumbleweed University in New Mexico, this type of behavior mirrors the often-times selfish behavioral patterns expressed in players of the game Monopoly.

“We are noticing the first stages of economic tension between lower and middle class subjects,” says Dr. Ziggy Freud, the head behavioral psychology researcher at the university. “If gas prices continue to rise, eventually these subjects will begin murdering each other for food.”

Dr. Freud was quick to point out that while he didn’t know of any particular case where Monopoly players cannibalized each other, he says if participants were playing with real money they would “most definitely slay each other.”

Harvey “Bones” Smith, janitor at the famed Tumbleweed Psychology Facility, admits gas prices have made him a little less friendly this past year.

“I didn’t used to mind it much when students and co-workers asked for a ride home,” Bones says. “But now I tell them that my wife is in the hospital and I need to leave right away.”

Bones acknowledges that people probably don’t believe his story, but says it keeps them from asking for a ride a second time.

According to a poll sponsored by Kibbles ‘n Bits, 85 percent of those polled say they would commit murder in exchange for a tank of gas. The other 15 percent were either doctors or lawyers who made their money by stealing from the other 85 percent.

Kibbles ‘n Bits gave participants of the poll a coupon for $1 off their new product, Puppy Chow Vanilla Wafers.

Asked when this behavioral experiment would conclude, Dr. Freud says there is no end in sight

Back in 1994, Lotus Fest had its first event in downtown Bloomington. Around 900 people came to see the inaugural event that consisted of one night of world folk music. These days the festival draws closer to 10,000 people with a total of four days and nights of music, workshops and Lotus in the Park.

The event was primarily launched by three people in the local music scene: James Combs, a local rock musician, Shahyar Daneshgar, a classical musician from Teheran who lived in Bloomington and Lee Williams, a booking agent and current director of the festival.

Renowned Indiana folk musician Lotus Dickey has been a big inspiration for the festival.

Each year the Lotus World Music and Arts Festival honors Lotus Dickey’s memory with various styles of music and workshops to help new generations of listeners hear his music.

Dickey was born in 1911 in Muncie. He later moved to southern Indiana on an Orange County farm outside of Paoli. Dickey was raised in a musical household which allowed him to flourish as a musician. The Indiana legend was a prolific performer and songwriter until his death in 1989.

The festival is partly named after him. It was also named Lotus because of the flower of the same name that grows all over the world and expresses beauty and universality.

This year’s event will have more than 25 international artists performing at eight downtown venues. On Friday and Saturday there will be festival processions led by marching bands. The Lotus Festival is created and produced by the nonprofit Lotus Education and Arts Foundation, with help from hundreds of volunteers.

This four-day festival requires a massive amount of planning and work.

No one knows that better than Lee Williams. One of the major players in getting Lotus started, he has been the director since 1996. He is practically the festival producer, overseeing everything to make sure all components are in place.

“There are thousands of things I have to do,” Williams said. “There are many things thought out to make the festival the best experience for our audience.”

Williams also said the Saturday night portion of the event is the largest part of the festival, with a much larger audience than at any other time during the four days.

“Friday is like a quiet opening night,” he said. “People who don’t want that crazy environment on Saturday can come on Friday.”

With the event now in its 15th year, traditions are starting to appear. Thursday has been the kickoff of the event for many years, and the World Spirit concert is close to becoming a tradition. The parades and Lotus in the Park have run in consecutive years for some time as well.

With over a dozen events under his belt as director, Williams has had a front row seat to watch the festival grow. He has seen people from various walks of life enjoy the 15-year tradition.

“There has always been a wide audience demographic,” he said. “But in the last several years it’s gotten a lot younger.”

The things Williams enjoys most about his job are the music and people.

“I get to book great artists, and I get to work with wonderful people,” he said.

Michael Valliant, co-chair of the Venues committee for Lotus is in his eight year as an employee. For the past seven years he worked as a volunteer to build the festival by setting up tents and building stages.

This year he will help design and manage the set up of the festival, focusing primarily on the performance venue. He enjoys the design work that goes into building up an event like this.

“I love the background work that is transparent to most festival attendees,” he said. “And that we get the palette of downtown on which to build. We get to close streets and build a temporary celebratory community in those streets and public spaces.”

Building up the tents, and stages will take Valliant and his co-workers close to two days to complete. The planning for Lotus began months before, and Valliant said he has attended weekly meetings since sometime in June.

Despite this high level of work, he’s proud to be a part of Lotus Fest.

“As important as the music and transforming the downtown is, the festival has a positive reputation around the country and world,” he said. “I love that a small southern Indiana community creates this event.”

Valliant has lived in Bloomington nearly all his life and he is currently in a master’s program for sustainable tourism in the School of HPER.

As a Bloomingtonian, he enjoys the camaraderie that descends on downtown Bloomington once a year.

“The closeness and intimacy of the festival has not changed,” he said. “However, we still transform down town Bloomington into an incredible site of celebration. It always goes too quickly for me.”

Artist: Oneida

Album:  Preteen Weaponry

Rating: 4/10

Brooklyn, New York band Oneida has been classified as everything from psychedelic rock to noise-rock. The band has been releasing albums since 1997, and has remained an indie act throughout that tenure.  Preteen Weaponry, due out Aug. 5, is the first in a three-part series of albums the band is releasing. The series as a whole is called “Thank Your Parents.” The next album in the series, Rated O, is set to be released in January 2009.

The first song on the release, the 14-minute title track, starts out with a steady drum beat with layers of synthesized and looped sounds played over it. The lengthy song mostly sounds like some kind of tribal music mixed with electronic tones. This could perhaps be the purpose, considering the band’s name is taken from the Oneida tribe, a group of Native Americans from the New York area. The seemingly never-ending drone song would be perfect for a tribal celebration around a bonfire. The overall purpose of this release seems to be inducing a hypnotic feel through the use of droning repetitiveness. Though able to induce hypnosis if you let it, really the epically long instrumental serves no other purpose. According to the band’s press release, they tried to recapture the powerful feel of their live performance. Musically, there is little variation present, but one of the highlights is the assiduous but captivating drumming.

The second song, “Preteen Weaponry Part 2,” is an 11-minute song that is pretty much a continuation of the first song. The drum beat on this song is considerably slower, though the beat remains incessant. “Part 2” is even more drone-like than the first song, and is likewise more hypnotic. Six minutes into the song vocals can finally be heard, but they are full of echo and hard to understand. After the short vocal stint, the song continues with its normal repetition until fading right into the next song.

The third and final song on “Weaponry,” is the almost 14-minute “Part 3.” There exists considerably more electronic sound here, and it even sounds as though the band is using a theremin or synthesized sounds that imitate one. The space-like electronic sounds give “Part 3” a psychedelic feel.

Preteen Weaponry as a whole leaves you scratching your head as to just what they were trying to accomplish, other than creating random sounds that drone on for nearly 40 minutes. Perhaps it would be slightly more understandable under the influence of psychedelic drugs, but even then, it’s still little more than drone music.

In the band’s press release it said they had worked on this album (or song, if you will) for three years. It’s somewhat hard to understand why the material on this disc would take three years to make, considering it consists of various electronic sounds over one steady beat.

Preteen Weaponry is not for the average listener, and would most likely not be enjoyed by anyone who has never done any kind of psychedelic drug.

Oneida is coming to the Bluebird on August 17. They are currently on tour to promote the new album.

While gas prices haven’t hurt convicted arsonist Tim Harris’ mobility, he has been affected in other ways.

“Sadly, I just can’t afford to burn shit up anymore,” the 48-year-old Harris said. “I can’t afford to buy the gas I need for fires.”

Harris has been arrested five times for arson-related charges. In 1992, he doused his ex-wife’s home with gasoline and burned it to the ground. Harris wouldn’t even think about doing something like that now.

“There’s no way in hell I could afford to use that much gas now,” the convicted felon said, gazing down at the charred ground of a place he’d once torched. “I reckon they figure they can put a stop to people like me if they knock the gas prices up real high.”

The biggest concern for the lifelong fire-starter will be learning to live in a world with no fire. He started his first fire by burning down his aunt’s garage when he was five. An electrical short was blamed for the fire. No one suspected little Timmy because he was considered a sweet kid incapable of such acts.

That consensus changed when at age 14 Harris burned down a church, restaurant and fire station in the same night. Because he set fire to the town’s fire station, there was no one to extinguish the heinous fires.  He was found hours later leafing through the ashes with a nefarious grin on his face.

Due to his young age, he didn’t serve jail time, but at 18, just three months after leaving a juvenile facility, he was arrested for burning down his step-mothers house just days after a dispute. This would be the last fire he would set for a number of years.

“I remember paying for the gas with some change I had saved up in a Mason jar,” he said. “Gas was only $.58/gallon that day, so I filled my gas can to the top.”

Harris regrets that gas prices are now too high for him to seek his incendiary vengeance.

“I just don’t know how I’m going to teach people lessons now,” he said, frowning and shrugging his shoulders. “They’ve just priced me right out of business.”

He said he only uses gasoline to start his fires because it’s the best way to “make em’ pay.”

Harris, who once torched a friend’s house “just to watch it burn” said that since he’s retired from the arson business, he will have more time to do simple things, such as take his dog “Inferno” out for a walk.

While “Inferno” doesn’t seem to have the same penchant for fire as his owner, the playful Bull Terrier seems to keep Harris company. He said if he ever got another dog, he would name it “Firebug.”

Although gas prices are not likely to go down any time soon, Harris still has his dreams.

“I’m studying for the bar now,” he says, absently flicking a BIC lighter at the edges of his texbook about torts.  “Now, I’ll get paid to roast assholes.”

While much of the information on green living may be true, there are a few myths that exist:

1. Driving a hybrid vehicle automatically helps the environment.

Although many hybrid cars do get better gas mileage, some of the hybrid technology is being applied to SUVs and trucks, and in some cases the mileage is not much better than the non-hybrid version of the same vehicle. You should also consider that if you’re thinking of buying a new hybrid to replace an older model car, that it requires a lot of energy to manufacture a car — even a hybrid.

“People think it’s good to drive hybrid vehicles because they get less gas mileage,” said Chad Roeder, owner of Bloomington Pedal Power. “But sometimes there are issues with the production of the batteries and the amount of energy used to create those cars.”

Roeder’s business provides delivery and recycling services to local businesses in the community. All deliveries made by Pedal Power are done via bicycle. He admits that even the production of bicycles takes energy, but says the expenditure of that energy is justified in the long run.

“My favorite solution is just to ride your bike or walk more,” he said. “In the city of the size of Bloomington it’s easier to ride your bike and you can cut down on a lot of traveling expenses.”

If a person is looking for a new car, they should consider how often they drive. Given the amount of energy it takes to buy a new car, it will likely take a long time to save the amount of energy used in the car’s production, so someone who doesn’t drive that often could look for other ways to help the environment.

2. Assuming that there is only one alternative to the problem.

You’re not sure whether to use paper or plastic at the grocery store. Some say paper is better, while others say plastic is the better solution. While people spend time debating over which is better, you can decide to take a more sensible approach and bring your own cloth bags to the store. This way you can reuse them over and over again and save a ton of plastic and/or paper. If for some reason you have a problem with cloth, or an obsession with paper and plastic, you could keep the bags from the store, and take them with you on your next trip and put your new groceries in them. It’s better than just throwing them away, but they won’t likely last as long as a cloth bag.

3. When electrical appliances are turned off, they’re not using any power.

Up to 10 percent of your power bill goes to run appliances that you’ve already turned off. Dubbed “vampire power,” it’s the energy a machine keeps using so that it can turn on quickly when you flip the switch. If you don’t like the idea of unplugging an appliance every time you’re done using it, you can plug it into a power strip. Then when you’re not using the item, flip the switch on the strip to truly save energy.

Ways to save the earth and increase your cash flow:

If everyone drank tap instead of bottled water in the United States, it would save about $8 billion — about as much as the Unites States spends each year in drought response. It also would help prevent plastic waste: 60 million water bottles are tossed each day in the United States. (Arizona State University).

For someone who is just starting or trying to start being green, Roeder offers some ideas:

“See what your city provides in terms of resources. Bloomington provides curbside recycling for family units. Little things like switching to compact florescent bulbs can help, but you need to dispose of those bulbs properly because they contain mercury. In Bloomington there are all kinds of classes offered to educate you on those things.”

He also suggests stimulating the local economy.

“Buy locally and organically produced food when you can to help the local economy and your health. One of the greenest things you can do is to help support local economies. It’s the long-term way to keep a sustainable culture.”