Thanks for All the Cake

Yes, I had a lovely birthday. Thanks for asking. On Thursday, I spent the day at work, where one of my colleagues gave me a book he'd received for free in the mail. It was about Social Security. Another colleague bought me tea and two doughnuts. At home, I shoveled mulch. A lot of mulch. From the mountain of mulch on the front sidewalk. A toddler, walking with her mother, said, "Look Mommy. They're finally moving that big pile of poop." Later, I made Daughter eat too much cake. She threw it up. The next day, I was whipped (verbally) on various occasions by Wife, to teach me lessons I've already forgotten. Tonight, we're going to dinner. I hope to see Hitchhiker's Guide afterward. However, Wife has just informed me that she has no idea where it's playing. Interestingly, I've just turned 42.

Earth Day 2005

PlastiCity
from the Brain Spoon Archives


We use 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture our annual glut of plastic shopping bags. Most plastic bags are made from polyethylene, which is made from crude oil and natural gas. Five of the top six chemicals that the EPA reports generate the most hazardous waste are necessary for plastic production. Plastic bags can take five to ten years to decompose.

Wake up, citizens of PlastiCity! You can do your part, and I don't mean by choosing paper bags either. The answer is so simple: use a sturdy, reusable bag.

I brought a couple of big cloth bags to the grocery store yesterday, and before I could take them out, the cashier was already cramming my stuff into a paper bag inside a plastic bag. "No!" I shouted. "I don't need that!" I turned to get my cloth bags, and turned back to find that he'd removed the paper bag, and had reordered my groceries inside the plastic bag. We've been trained to use plastic bags. It's going to take some readjustment, but we can change for the better! Don't wait for the government to tax or ban plastic bags. Find some big, reusable bags and keep them in your pantry or in the trunk of your Hummer.

For more about recycling and reducing waste, check out these sites:
Consumer Handbook for Reducing Solid Waste
Recycling in Flagstaff

Some News from Siberia

The Krasnoyarsk region may be reunified with the Evenki and Taimyr districts! Who would have thought?

Indemnification of the Species

In an attempt to advance the stereotype of the greater sex, I call to your attention a typical journey on the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, or on any roadway in America, which involves a display of unnecessary and life-threatening aggression. Try this: while traveling at a steady seventy miles per hour (use your cruise control if you have to), avoid rear-ending the slower car in front of you by glancing in your rear-view mirrors and maneuvering into the passing lane. Inevitably, a large pickup truck or SUV will appear as if from nowhere. The driver, most likely a teeth-gnashing, belligerent homo sapiens male, will mark his territory, accelerating until his teeth-gnashing grille hovers just inches above your sloped rear end, until you return to the slow lane. Next, he’ll move a few car lengths ahead of you, before returning to his previous speed, on the lookout for anyone else who might show any sign of invading his turf, the fast lane. Thus, our warring species spirals on its way to extinction. I imagine our defense department has its best boys working on a nanotech robot virus designed to temper testosterone levels, i.e., when the homo sapiens enemy male feels aggressive, say, after the homo sapiens American male has initiated an illegal war or whatever, the robot virus would gobble up testosterone in the enemy until he returns to the slow lane. Naturally, the robot virus would eventually spread to all homo sapiens, and the planet would be at peace. And maybe a little dull.

Train Tract No. 721: Middle Age Cliché…and Writing Anyway

I hold out as long as I can. According to train etiquette, I will be required to remove my coat and bag from the adjacent seat in due time. Honest passengers fill the seats. Sprinkled here and there are (what I perceive to be) the criminally insane. They populate my periphery as well. When I see their hoods, I turn away. Before the train lurches forward, I am joined by the young fellow with the Vulcan hair. His frequent companion, suitably pale and smiling, sits in front. Through the space between the seats, I see her black hair dangling above the open book in her lap. I breathe the air, perfumed with sweat, drained of its bacterial offense. I fetch another look, absorbing her, through the seats, and him, at my shoulder. They are young, protected from decay by the dewy shield of unblemished birth, fresh and pink. For a moment, I swim in my own ventricles as the world spins through my feet, and I long to read, to know, to understand what they read. She turns the page of the novel on her lap, he bends toward a textbook. My aging eyes fail to harvest the words in any logical order. Resisting a burning temptation to linger, I turn away, ignoring my desire for their words, the texture of their faces, the scent of their hair. In meditation I hear a cry. I awaken with a start. The seat next to the young woman had been vacated, allowing the couple to rejoin. She is at the window, and I touch my knees to the back of her seat. I watch him through the seats as the train moves away from my stop. The cry had been mine.

A Boa Constrictor Digesting An Elephant

Prince Rainier has died.
A great artist, I have all his albums.

I'm sorry. I don't know why I wrote that.
I don't have any of his albums.

Train Tract No. 720

My work day is over. The rain has stopped and I am feeling the strain of daylight savings time. Walking to the station, I pass the remains of an umbrella, splayed out like a pterodactyl on the sidewalk, black wings stripped from its silver bones, the collapsible spine dislocated and bent violently toward the retreating storm. This once-proud instrument, created to shelter us from the very substance which dominates our cells, has been flattened, as if all rain had coagulated and dropped at once on this spot. I wonder if the owner of the drowned umbrella had been lifted up like gum on the bottom of a shoe, as the last rain cloud roiled out to sea.

I board the train and close my eyes. When I awake, we are moving. Absent are the usual clacking noises of wheels on tracks. Outside, I see the flood. The river has crossed the tracks and, to my surprise, we are skimming over the water. A shadow, cast by the setting sun, traces the shape of the train car, and I believe that I can detect an upright mast and a billowing sail. As we glide along the Delaware River, a fellow passenger marvels, “We didn’t even have to pay extra for this ride!”