We Should Worry About the Big Things

Mans inhumanity to man is our subject this week. This is a tiny capsule of why there are wars later on, there is a direct link, indirectly.

January and her husband live in a suburb in the City Without A Soul. Some guy in the cul-de-sac had a truck that was kind of a mess, admittedly, parked in front of their house on the street. Someone called the Parking Nosy Parkers (they are probably really some sort of cops, but as they are shooting fish in a barrel here, they aren't going to get actual cop respect) and the truck disappeared.

In the meantime the whole "Oh my god, someone's work truck is in VIEW of my eyes mentality took over and apparently the Parking Nosy Parkers got all fired up and kept on patrolling and now January and her husband who is probably dying of the flu and therefore didn't take his car to work got a goddammit $40 parking ticket in front of their own house.

Here is the mans inhumanity to mans part. The reason they got a ticket in the first place is because the neighborhood has one of those deals where you have to have a permit slapped on your windshield to park on the street where you live. Because, WHAT IF AN OUTSIDER PARKED ON MY STREET?! Well really, who gives a shit. In this neighborhood it's not going to be drug dealers, worst case (pretty bad case) Jehovah's Witnesses. In a neighborhood where it likely will be drug dealers there are no window permits. Where did this weird territorial street thing come from? If there are cars lining the street, so what? In this case the neighborhood is close to Bellevue Square, (Owned by Kemper Freeman, the wealthy non recycler). The potential problem in this case is that people who work at Bellevue Square would park their cars in the neighborhood during the day and walk to work so they don't have to pay to park, which is total bullshit, those people make a ton of money at Orange Julius.

Lets examine. Most houses have garages or carports, so the homeowners cars are taken care of. There are households who have kids so there will be the occasional teenager cars parked on the street. Then perhaps a birthday party once in awhile in the neighborhood so there may be cars parked for a block solid sometimes.The lesson is cars come and cars go and how exactly does that actually impact your life.

It doesn't unless you can't get out of your driveway.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course. One of the characters in this drama, owned, a car 40 years ago so ugly that I am still traumatized. It was a red and white Rambler, and the space it took up and turned ugly is still to this day indescribable. Rust is our friend sometimes.

And furthermore I am personally driving a car so old and raggedy assed that it could be a modern art instillation but I don't think I should have to pay $40 because it's no longer beautiful. It's reducing reusing and recycling, and bonus the radio works so I'm happy.

MY SERIOUS SACRIFICE FOR THE GOOD OF HUMANITY

Next on the agenda is the plastic situation that I wrote about last week concerning the month without plastic. I would just like to point out that I got ONE vote, and that was in person. The cry goes 'round What the Hell is Wrong With You People For God's sake? I am not slaving over this for you all to not participate, you call yourselves the 20. Shame on you.

The decision is thus, I am going to go for a month without using or buying any new plastic. January (the mean one) has put in her two cents worth with the rules. I'm not allowed to have the Comma Editor buy something to get around it, and I have to tell Roselator "No" if it comes to that. That has the potential to be difficult. For example, we can't make cupcakes out of a mix because the powdery part comes in plastic. I will start on May 1st, if I had my shit together I would have done it today, because it's Earth Day, however my shit is asunder.

Another rule, I'm not supposed to devote a whole blog to it. The Mean One doesn't like bad news environmentally. Nobody does so it would seem. The Gray whale that died in West Seattle last week that has all the plastic in it's stomach kind of spurs me on. I think it's a good idea to know what's going on with the place we have to live, but that's just me. I'm learning that most people keep their heads down, and go out of the way to not know whats up. Alright.

WORDS

I have been meaning to point out that the word Blog is just foul. It's a bone lazy contraction of web log. I'm just saying. Captain Kirk would never have stooped to this level. The Star Date never became State, the Ships Log didn't become the Slog. Lazy asses.

Also orientate? When did orient get to be too blah? Talk about a slippery slope.

ENVIRONMENTAL GENIUS IDEA

This isn't my idea, we were on Lopez Island last summer and the person in charge had a stack of fabric napkins or some sort of squares of fabric in her kitchen to use where I would grab a paper towel. It took about 8 months for the concept to trickle into my brain, but I finally figured out that that is the way to go. For being such a pain in the ass about environmental issues in the home I have to admit that paper towels are my favorite thing. I wish they weren't made out of trees that have been bleached with Dioxin which is about the most toxic chemical on Earth (I'm not kidding), but they are, and I know better. I really think we all need to just think about it as our days go along and throw things away, so I am happy to report that now we have a basket full of cloth towels that we can use to wipe up the black granite counter top,(which is like having a piece of mirror for your counter, I don't recommend it) and all the other kitchen things that come up. Then they go in the washer and come out and then we reuse them and I haven't used a whole roll of paper towels in a month. We will not discuss now how unusual that is. We are all a work in progress.


So what have we learned? 1.Take your own container for leftover at the restaurant

2. Have a bunch of cloths instead of paper towels.

We make progress.