Phil Houtz

Apocalypse Now as told by Winnie the Pooh.

I found the ashtray above in a Motel 6 in Big Bear, California–similar to the double message Spanish ashtray posted by BoingBoing’s Mark Frauenfelder. I have to point out that we found our ashtray in a nonsmoking room. The sticker was stuck to the outside of the bottom, where I supposed someone thought it would…

Lynn from NatureShutterbug kindly suggested fish oil for my aching knees. At my friendly local grocer I found a product that advertised “NO FISH BURPS.” Solving a problem I never knew I had. What they don’t tell you on the label is that the gelcaps are tough as footballs and each one is roughly the…

Here it is, a week after my Extreme Gardening adventure with Habitat Works, and my knees are swollen to the size of watermelons, screaming with pain. What’s up with that? It could be that my seatpost is too low on my Comfort Bike, wreaking howling havoc in my hinges. I’ll have to check that out…

When I started this bike-to-work thing I imagined I might have problems with the usual suspects: logging trucks, Winnebagos, throttle-happy tuners. I had no idea that those damned flesh-eating plants would be the first to attack. Bush, I’m giving you fair warning. I’ve got loppers and I’m not afraid to use them.

Today is Intergalactic Talk Like Bob Dylan Day.

I stumbled on this blog by Googling the words “camp stove.” Go figure. But kirby cracks me up.

Love my Jeep, hate the gas mileage. That’s why I was thrilled to find this Giant Sedona DX on Craigslist for just $225. (Thanks Mark, if you happen to read this, I’m stoked about this bike!) One thing that’s always kept me from bike commuting and saving the environment single-handed is the fact that I…

Every now and then an idea comes along that is so bad that you are powerless to do anything besides see it through to the end. For me one such idea came when my friend John and I wondered if we could go rafting on the Santa Ana River after the spring rains, when the…

Drew Simmons of Wicked Outdoorsy makes an interesting point about Bike-to-Work week. Many of our urban bikeways are so poorly designed that people will feel lucky they survived the trek at all. I live in Ventura, a slow-growth community with a population of 106,000 some-odd people (some odder than others) but I fear cycling here.…

Al Gore’s media critique, Assault on Reason, excerpted in Time, lays a healthy dose of blame for our society’s apparent inability to exercise reason at the foot of television. Clearly, at least to some degree, the “consent of the governed” was becoming a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder. To the extent that…

Now here is something to listen to while you’re camping in your yurt.

Sharon Labchuck provides some anecdotal evidence that organic bees are not suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder. This news goes along with reports that wild Africanized “killer bees” are also avoiding the syndrome.

Treehugger notes that just up the coast at UC Santa Barbara will be the 6th Annual UC, CSU, CCC Sustainability Conference, bringing together representatives from ten University of California campuses, twenty Cal State campuses and another ten community colleges. The program is designed ways to implement environmentally sustainable pracitices in large institutions, looking at things…