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buy clomid overnight I was so impressed I didn't get arrested for looking at the dam.

buy modafinil over the counter I woke up the next morning and headed north along the river.  I saw the Parker Dam, visually uninspiring though an important piece of American infrastructure: the dam was built by the notorious William Mulholland to supply water for Los Angeles.  I had recently read Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert and found myself generally unsympathetic; the book, written in 1986, could use a fresh look.  Reisner portrays the municipal water supply men as a bunch of Yosemite Sams hellbent on hydrologic conquest as a kind of unfortunate byproduct of penis possession.  That there might really be a value to having a city like Los Angeles, as opposed to the little adobe village it was in the 1870s, does not seem to enter into his thought process.

This is to me a strange myopia.  I see no reason for the malls of Los Angeles to have lawns when places like Tucson have legitimately made xeriscaping an art form – see the opuntia down below for an example of weird and spectacular desert blooms – but that is not to say that men like Mulholland were idlers and tyrants, or that dambuilding was the West’s tulipmania.  We need to correct the last century’s excesses: too much water is wasted on unused lawns, silly pools, and ill-advised gardening; the ecology of streams should be restored as much as possible, for example the restoration of Californian salmon; we rely far too much on irrigation farming in the desert and we should shift much of our farm production back to well-watered areas (the East Coast in particular).  These are corrections within our capacities.

These problems point to the larger problem of human nature, which is always prone to squander abundance.  In fairy tales this merely sets the young heir up for a confrontation with wisdom and scarcity.  It has only become a problem because our powers are so magnified; we squander now not just the capital of our kingdom but of all life.

I have never seen the Nile, but the combination of river and desert always suggests it.

But it is certain that men like Mulholland created abundance, and the sight of Lake Havasu in the Mojave Desert is impressive, and while it may hold no charms for men like Reisner it certainly affected me.  This was true even in Lake Havasu City, the capital of the region, a modern town built after the dam.  Despite all its flaws it was instantly my favorite city in Arizona.  This is because it had a natural draw, a coastline, which it had sagely turned into beach and park.  I could walk along the sandy beach, put my feet into the water – cold but not unbearable – take my shirt off and get some sun.  This simple interaction between man and environment of course has to take place on foot, and so it had the most developed pedestrian culture of any place I had seen so far.  This had another benefit, which is that people could drink here without having to worry about driving home.  This, coupled with the beach, makes Lake Havasu City a spring break destination for college students.  I do not know if it is a minor destination, but I am in general no fan of crassness and I saw nothing objectionable in town, despite the fact that it was indeed spring break.  It was daytime, so perhaps that made a difference.  There were large numbers of college students in beach attire idling about.  It seemed innocent to me.  In general, all pleasures seem innocent compared with the automobile, and no form of socializing so sinister as undesired solitude.

The channel in Lake Havasu City.

The city was built, like Tarentum, on a promontory, which, like Tarentum, was then cut by a canal, creating an island and a mainland section of the town.  The channel has a little marina, beach areas for swimming, and walkways on either side where people, especially the young people who still retain their vestigial capacity for ambulatory locomotion, stroll about.  It’s all quite pleasant.

Bridging this channel, utterly incomprehensibly, is London Bridge.  Apparently this was in need of repair for some reason or other at some point or other and so – naturally – it was taken down and shipped to Lake Havasu City, where it was then – naturally – used to bridge the canal.  I did not ask for further details because it was so utterly absurd that it should not be dignified with any further explanation.  All I can say is that I recommend the practice, because it is one of the nicest bridges in America.  At this stage of our history we really are better at shopping than creating, so we should play to our strength and just buy whatever stuff we need or want.

Yup, London Bridge. In Lake Havasu City.

Looking at it, I couldn’t see what in the world could have been wrong with it.  It’s made of granite.

Looks pretty solid to me.

And one more image:

Looks nicer than anything we could have made, so I approve.