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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
The other day, I was asked a seemingly simple (if rather pointed) question:
“What are you doing to save the environment?”
I was not ready for this question. I certainly had not thought about this question. And it’s quite possible I was eating a megafarm beef burrito from a big-chain restaurant out of a styrofoam container at the time I was asked this question.
I don’t remember doing that. But the way the question was asked, it sure as hell felt like that’s what I was doing. That, or strip-mining the Amazon rainforest with chlorofluorocarbons, somehow. Something very enviro-dickish.
My answer was, of course, inadequate, mumbled and incomplete. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing for the environment — I wasn’t thinking about what to do for the environment, just at that particular moment.
“The environment is a little like your left armpit. It’s always there, and you’d miss it if it went away, but you never give it a lot of thought.”
Or at many others. Let’s be honest. The environment is a little like your left armpit. It’s always there, and you’d miss it if it went away, but you never give it a lot of thought.
Not until something weird grows in it, anyway, or it starts to smell like an overripe mushroom with halitosis. Then you call the EPA. Or the people at Mennen.
My point is, I do some things to help the environment — and, for the record, my left armpit. I just don’t keep a running tally of each and every one of those helpful little deeds I do.
Or rather, I didn’t, until some jackhole came by and asked the question, and made me feel like Baron Acidrain von Oilspill when I didn’t have an answer ready. So now I know what I do to save the environment. In fact, I’ve come up with a whole five things. And I’m going to tell you what they are.
In digital form, thereby saving an innocent tree.
That’s the first one. Point, me. I can feel the ozone layer’s sphincter relaxing already.
Here’s the rest:
2. I recycle.
Which is to say, I have a blue bin at home into which I cram stuff that isn’t styrofoam or factory-cow burritos or spent plutonium waste, and another bin into which I do cram that stuff. If I have it. To be fair, I don’t keep a lot of styrofoam around.
Now, I don’t further sort the stuff in the recycle bin. My understanding is that there are machines or hobos or small indentured children whose job it is to keep the plastic side plastic and the glass side glass, so to speak. I mean, I put things into the blue bin, and not the not-blue bin. Responsibility has to be handed off somewhere; there’s only so much I can do. I’m just one man.
(I have it on good authority, by the way, that at my office, the blue bins and not-blue bins all get dumped together into unspecified-color bags and hauled off to the dump. I have no input or sway over this practice, so short of dragging my trash home to recycle it myself — and I’m not doing that; my car already smells like stale burritos — I’m really doing the environment no good with any personal waste management strategy I choose to employ at work.
Of course, I still throw my recyclables into the blue bin, anyway. I call this “recycling in spirit”. And goddammit, I’m counting it.)
3. Though I still run the water in the sink while I brush my teeth, I don’t run as heavy a stream as I used to.
My wife, little miss conservationist showoff, doesn’t run the water at all. She wets the toothbrush, then brushes over a completely dry sink like some kind of ascetic hermit.
I can’t even.
Look, I’m all for the environment. And she’s convinced me to run just a trickle of water, for the sake of the whales or farm-raised salmon or slip ‘n’ slides in the middle of the Mojave. Something or other. But good lord, woman — this isn’t feudal Europe. You might as well bathe in last night’s filthwater and get your humors bled out at Supercuts. We won the Cold War, already.
Fine. The first Cold War. Anyway, I don’t care. I’ll save the planet a little. But I’m running water while I brush. Next.
4. I only drive to work five days a week.
Because the planet can use a petroleum holiday for those other two, while I’m sleeping and drinking. You’re welcome, Ms. Nature.
5. I give to Greenpeace.
Frankly, I don’t know whether Greenpeace saves the environment or not. I’ve never actually read any of their literature or website or anything. So far as I know, their agenda consists of making PETA seem reasonable, mooning horny Japanese whalers and strapping friendship bracelets onto endangered penguins.
(Are there endangered penguins, even?
Probably the ones near the Japanese whalers. I’ll stand by that.)
But “Green” is in the name, so probably somewhere in there is verbiage about protecting all life and swaddling nature’s creatures and making out with potted ferns or something. I just assume. So why donate to Greenpeace in the first place?
Because my doorbell rang one Saturday afternoon between my sleeping and drinking time, and outside I found two painfully sincere college chicks with their hemp socks and their suburban dreads and their reverent plans to go (back? I didn’t catch that part) to the slums of San Povertina to nurse clubfooted chickens back to health. Something like that. Noble gesture. Poor country. Gimpy poultry. Something.
Anyway, I was so moved by their enthusiasm and their passion and their dedication that I signed up right there to help their cause. Because I am a person who firmly believes in contributing to the betterment of our environment.
(And totally not because I am a person who thought that they were maybe going to kiss if I made a donation.
Totally not that. At all.)
So, there you go, smartypants enviro-question asker. Five whole things that I do to help the environment, which is four-and-a-half more than you’re doing by going around asking pointy questions to unprepared burrito-eaters.
Why don’t you stick that in your pipe and… then carefully take it out, fold it into your compost heap, break your pipe down into components, reuse what you can’t recycle and give your nearest white elm — or reformed Japanese whaler — a big fat smooch for me. Because environment.
Permalink | No CommentsI don’t want to give the impression that while I was on my *ahem* “holiday” break, I was just sitting around doing nothing
Yes, I was sitting around doing mostly nothing. But I did find time to carve out a different site, and start writing over there. So, “yaaaaay“.
Or “someone burn the internet; it’s finally tainted beyond repair“. Depending on your point of view.
Anyway, in my real life, I’m a scientist. Sort of a scientist, at least. I was trained in science, and then left to pursue a different, more rewarding career.
Which mostly involves being told by scientists — actual real scientists, this time — where to put numbers in giant spreadsheets and databases and intranet web pages, and how many digits in each are significant, and which particular ones should be colored in which way.
Because we all have different definitions for the word “rewarding”. Apparently.
The point is, I’m pretty well soaking in science at the office, which is great. Biology, chemistry, genetics — it’s all wildly interesting, and I’ve got at least a few years of too-long-ago classes to help me understand it.
“Or rather, what I know about science, which is mostly hand-waving and questionable analogies and some curse words I read in the margins of an Intro to Physics textbook.”
And to display it on internet pages. In rainbow colors. Apparently.
At the same time, I’ve always been fascinated with other sorts of science. I used to read books — gentle, friendly books, with the big words broken down and lots of pop-up pictures — about cosmology and quantum physics and the the nature of consciousness. I never took any classes on those things, so there’s no guarantee I understand any of it. But I’m interested. I must have picked up something.
I just hope it’s not the thing Stephen Hawking came down with.
All of this is to say that I’ve started a new site, and it’s about science. Or rather, what I know about science, which is mostly hand-waving and questionable analogies and some curse words I read in the margins of an Intro to Physics textbook.
The site is called Secondhand SCIENCE, and there are a few topics live already. To give you an idea of the tremendous quality of discourse I’m fostering there, I’ll just share the first sentence of the very first post, on the sobering topic of black holes. I hope it’s not too technical for the curious layperson:
“In science, “black hole” means something very specific; it’s not just a catch-all term for scary, life-sucking things like Congressional speeches or a trip to the DMV or Lindsay Lohan’s vagina.”
Yeah. It’s pretty much all downhill from there.
So feel free to stop by for a visit. Every Sunday — including tomorrow! — I’ll pick a new bit of science, carefully dissect it under a microscope, and then do it absolutely zero justice. In 600 words or less.
But only one color. Because this might be science. But it’s not my day job. Word.
Permalink | No CommentsThere’s something really great about political correctness.
I mean, sure, the “not alienating people” is nice. Fostering inclusivity, making the world a better place, pissing off bigots and traditionalists — these are all just super and fun and peachy.
But what’s really great about political correctness is how vague you can be about it.
Take, for instance, my last post here, back in December. I promised then that I’d be back “after the holidays”.
(Probably, I said that.
Oh, look, don’t go back and look, for crissakes. Let’s just assume I said that, all right? Give me this one.)
In some ways, that was a very PC thing to say. I’m all sensitive and shit in that way. I don’t want to “Christmas!!!” someone who celebrates Hanukkah, or drop Kwanzaa greetings in the lap of a solemn Festivus observer, or wish a happy new year to some dude stubbornly observing the Julian calendar, for some reason.
Also, some people are Wiccans. I don’t know what they celebrate, exactly, but I’m sure to say it wrong, dress up wrong for the party, and then put on the wrong shade of black eyeliner before we go out to ritually cut ourselves with pine needles in the forest or whatever.
“May the spirit, spirits, ghosts, deities or complete lack of unprovable metaphysical entities fill you during this possibly-but-not-necessarily blessed season.”
Much better — and waaaaay less offensive, as you can imagine — to simply call them “holidays”. As in: happy holidays. Enjoy your holidays. May the spirit, spirits, ghosts, deities or complete lack of unprovable metaphysical entities fill you during this possibly-but-not-necessarily blessed season. Of holidays.
Maybe it seems complicated. But it keeps me from getting punched at winter parties.
Well, except the Wiccan ones. Obviously.
My point is, for all the good and PC-itude of my “holiday” sentiments, that’s not really the beauty of the statement. The true magic of saying here that I’ll be back “after the holidays” is that I didn’t really, technically, specifically say which holidays in particular that I meant.
It just so happens that in this case, “holidays” included Martin Luther King Day, Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, Presidents’ Day, Ash Wednesday, Purim and St. Patrick’s Day.
Also, Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony Day, Pi Day and Steak and a Blowjob Day, but who’s counting? And why in hell did we only celebrate one of those in my household?
(Hint: It’s the one with curling.)
(I’ve said too much.)
Anyway, the holidays — or “holidays”, for the purposes of this long-winded excuse — are over now, and I’m back. At least until the next round of winter holidays. Or until the Wiccans tie me to a stake and roast me for Halloween. Ho ho ho, homies.
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