Plastics.

We live in a material world and I am a material, nevermind. I have a real problem with packaging. Let me start right there. So, to ameliorate my guilt, I try to recycle. I try to recycle because, well, it makes sense, it appeals to my scot heritage (waste not, want not... President Hoover says we must all clean up our plates), it makes me feel less guilty, yes, but also because I have friends who are doctors. A doctor friend and I were talking a bunch of months ago and the subject of oil and dwindling fossil fuel resources cropped up and his comment was "It's a fucking shame. After all, we're really going to need all of that oil. For plastics." And it took a full half a minute for my jaw to drop to the floor. Only a doctor would see firsthand just how dependent (really, really dependent) we've become on plastics. Think of everything you might encounter in a hospital and imagine removing plastic. There. Pick up jaw – return to blog. So I recycle. Numbers 1 and 2. They're all my backwoods community has the means for recycling. So, I do 1s and 2s. That's milk jugs, gatorade containers, etc. Used to be, that included margarine containers. Not any more. They're number 5. And plastic bags are #1 but can't be recycled in my community. And here's the deal. It's confusing. There's PETE and HDPE (which, I think is the only one I know - High-Density Polyethlene). And there are a score of other ones. WTF? And we LANDFILL THIS STUFF? People. People. Wake up!!! I'm sick of packaging. This morning I was in the shower and was dealing with my plastic shampoo bottle which continues to dribble shampoo even after I have tilted it back to vertical. And it just pissed me the fuck right off. I don't like the fact that it's plastic to begin with. But, on top of that, it doesn't work for shit. And that's just wrong.

(Want to know a secret? In 50 years (less?) we'll be mining landfills for plastic.)

Litter

What kind of person thinks it's OK to fling their offal out of their car window? What goes through their minds when they do such a thing? I ask this as a reformed small-time litterer. To be more accurate, I am a reformed smoker, who, while he was smoking, opted to flick the offensive filter tips out of my car window rather than junk up my ashtray with the odiferous little bullets. So, I suppose I'm slightly more tolerant of butt-flickers; I figure the cotton and paper will eventually biodegrade and the tars and nicoteine trapped in the cotton will provide a nice little boost for the the little microbes that hungrily go at it. And besides - they're so small. (I will say I'm becoming less and less tolerant of even cigarette filters as I sweep up the nasty little cancer twigs from my driveway).

But, for crying out loud, why is it OK to fling the refuse from your entire McDonald's, super-sized, Big-Breakfast with extra syrup, hold the butter, extra biscuit, coffee, no cream, sweet 'n' low out of the window of your SUV? Do you, in your underformed brain, conjure the thought that somehow in the night the litter fairies will come flying out of the dumpsters where they live and clean up your mess? Do you toss that wad out of your window with no pang of conscience at all? Or are you simply so angry at the world that you feel compelled to besmirch it with the fast-food trash of your contempt? Is this a sin of pride? Do you so value your automobile that the very thought of keeping the refuse from your McDonald's, super-sized, Big-Breakfast with extra syrup, hold the butter, extra biscuit, coffee, no cream, sweet 'n' low in your precious gas-guzzler for more than a few minutes is simply intolerable? Littering is a clear indicator of bankrupt personal values and, as we say down here - bad raisin'.

Trashin' the trashers on a sunny day in Alabama.

Dum Dum de Dumb Down Down

When did it become fashionable to be stupid? At what point in our nation's history did a rich, complete vocabulary become a liability as opposed to an asset? Why are intellectually mediocre people in vogue? I remember back around 1999 when an aide to the Mayor of DC was forced to resign for using the word "niggardly" in conversation. Apparently, well-meaning folk, looking out for signs of bigotry, misinterpreted the meaning of the word. Not to be a niggler, here, but the racial epithet finds its dark beginnings in the romance languages' root word for "black," while the word "niggardly" finds its ancestry in the Scandanavian tongues and means "stingy" or "miserly." And as for niggler, it doesn't really know WHERE it comes from. In the DC case, even after the "niggardly" misunderstanding had been cleared up, the staffer was chastized for using a difficult word - one that could be misinterpreted.

But conflict around the use of "niggardly" is just an example and perhaps not a great one at that. After all, there IS a hair-trigger sensitivity surrounding the use of anything that might be considered a racial slur. That's not the problem I'm discussing here. The problem is not racial intolerance, which is still rampant and very much problematic. The problem is tolerance of mediocrity. If I tell you there is a plethora of examples and you aren't familiar with the word "plethora," is your inclination to look it up? Or think of me as some sort of intellectual snob?

There was a time when it was OK to raise your hand in class. There was a time when it wasn't such a bad thing to know words that other people didn't know and use them. There was a time when, if you DIDN'T know the word someone was using, you would take down the ol' Random House and give it a look-up. Look, people - it isn't as if I'm breaking bad with "triskaidekaphobia;" it isn't as if I'm breaking bad with "anaphora." It seems people have become afraid to learn - afraid to be perceived as intelligent - a fear, I might add, as ludicrous as fear of the number 13. But it's a real fear - a tangible reflection of the times. And it pervades everything we do.

Right down to the people we elect to public office.

A sunny, somewhat cooler day in Birmingham.

Oil

2005. It's freakin 2005 and very likely we've used as much as half of the usable oil in the Earth's crust. Put that in your pipeline and smoke it. I can already hear the energy "conservatives" clucking their teeth. "No where near it," they're saying. And, in truth, I'm not going to fall on my sword over the statistic. Because, you see - the statistic's not the deal. Here's the deal, here's the sad sobering truth of the matter - nobody knows. Nobody knows. Think about that for an instant. Nobody knows! They don't know what percentage of the retrievable oil we've used. They simply don't know. Some of those most closely aligned to the industry might have their own suspicions in the matter... but, still they don't know.

The only reliable way to determine the status of the world's oil supply requires compiling the production data of all the major oil fields on the planet, and that is something that oil folks won't – simply won't – do. So, let me see if I got this right. It's better to keep one's production figures and related oil field data secret and go on – as an industry – simply NOT KNOWING, than to join together and make an educated decision on how we should move forward with this finite resource. Finite, folks. Demand will outstrip supply. One day there will not be enough oil. We have, in the geologically microscopic period of time between our years of 1859 and 2005, used a significant portion of what's there. That's less than a century and a half for those of you who are lagging behind on the math. 1.49 centuries to use one quarter, one third, one half of a finite planetary resource? We know it's a significant percentage but we just don't know how much. My father would have asked "If you don't know, who does?' In my book, 'I don't know" is a paltry excuse to be leaving the generations that follow. About time we pulled our proverbial heads out of the Saudi sand and face this situation head first.

At work. 8.22.05