Earth Day 2009

Today is Earth Day, according to all the signs in the streets and on the Google home page. As a user and abuser of the Earth as opposed to a conserver and preserver, I really don’t know what that means. I guess it has to do with trying to ‘save the planet’ or something, but in all honesty I never paid it much mind. Just as my ancestors never did as they burned ton after ton of coal, blackening sky and lung alike. Hey, they’re long dead and buried, what do they care, right?

I took the train in to work today (yes, I know the name if this blog is “Unemployed, So I’ll Blog,” but I can’t very well change it to read “Employed for the Next Seven Weeks, So I’ll Blog Sporadically”), so that is better than traveling alone in my SUV, idling in traffic as my exhaust pipe spews invisible toxins into the otherwise pristine New York air. Yeah, good and all, but I prefer aiding to the demise of the ozone layer over sharing a smelly metal tube with strangers. Sorry. At least I am honest. (And, it actually costs more to take the train than to drive. But that’s okay, because when I am homeless down the road because no one will hire an over-the-hill TV producer who has no savings after spending it all on expensive LIRR train rides, at least my environment will be clean and fresh!)

The office building where I am working pretends to care about Earth Day. I am not so sure if they do, of if they are just paying it lip service to get the environmentalists off their backs. For instance, yesterday they put up a little sign in the kitchens near the coffee machines announcing the “Ugly Mug Contest” in an effort to use fewer Styrofoam cups. I guess buying paper cups instead of Styrofoam cups was not an option. They want you to bring your ugly mug to the lunch area on the bigwig floor, where the owner of the ugliest mug will “win a prize.” They don’t even make it enticing by telling you what the prize is. Maybe it’s a recycled banana peel made into an iPhone cozy. Now there’s something worth entering the contest for!

Okay, I guess I do care a little. I try not to let the water run when I brush my teeth, I am trying as best I can to avoid beverages in plastic bottles, and I hardly ever over-use hair spray anymore. And I am writing a blog instead of publishing a book in an ongoing effort to save some trees. Of course, if anyone wanted to publish my essays in book form I would be the first one at the edge of the forest with a chain saw, felling virgin trees in anticipation of a giant run. But until then, I will write for the ether of the Internet whilst sipping organic coffee from my ugly mug.




Copyright (c) Leslie R Becker