Walmart lies.

Just for the record, Walmart totally lied to me and knew they were lying and did it anyway. 

One day I went into the store, as one does, and forgot to bring my reusable bags. The People's Republic of New York has outlawed the complementary plastic bags that have been used for forty-odd years, but grocery stores all have paper bags that the consumer can buy for a nickel. That's the law, and they all comply. 

Except that this time, with a cart full of Walmart crap, I pulled up to the checkout to find that the paper bags were no longer available. I had forgotten my stupid and probably germ-laden reusables, but figured I could blow forty cents like a Rockefeller on paper bags. But no -- no paper bags anymore. 

I guess I could have just taken everything out of the store loose, but that would be hard to deal with in the car, and that's if the Greeter Patrol didn't stop me because it looked like I hadn't checked out. This is not some lawless horror show like Portland or Chicago, where one just takes what one wants and leaves. So I bought some more stupid reusable bags. 

When I got home, I wrote to Walmart, asking what was up with no paper bags. Sadly, I did not retain the conversation, but the poor schlub (probably on the other side of the world) explained to me that this was Walmart's latest effort to save the environment in which we live, by doing away with paper bags. 

Uh-huh. Okay. I thanked the person with the phony name and said I knew he/she/it was lying, but had to repeat the company line. 

Proof came a couple of months later, when I was in Pennsylvania, and stopped into get a couple of things from their Walmart. And what was at all the checkouts? 

Plastic bags. 

So clearly, Walmart -- a company that sells more cheap and easily broken plastic garbage than any other on Earth -- doesn't give a damn about the sainted environment. (I know, you're heading for the fainting couch as you read those words.) 

I still don't know why the New York Walmart decided to make life even more annoying for its customers than the law requires. I doubt they think that New York's environment must be preserved but Pennsylvania's can go to hell. But, yeah, Walmart lies, just like every other damn institution these days. You literally cannot trust any institution to tell the truth about the slightest thing. 

Shame on you, Walmart. You can't even be honest when it would cost you nothing. I shall be making a greater effort to avoid Sam Walton's misbegotten beast in the future.

Pie R expensive.

Here's a handy chart to help with voting issues tomorrow. Bear in mind that this is 100% accurate, or at least as accurate as the graphs and charts shown to feed us panic and outrage by those who profit from them.

Take New York's ballot proposition #1 -- thank God, the only statewide ballot issue this year. It sounds very useful on the surface: "CLEAN WATER, CLEAN AIR, AND GREEN JOBS Environmental Bond Act of 2022". Well, yay! Even evil Republicans like clean water and clean air. And we know that, due to the various raids on the state treasury over the years, there never seems to be enough dough to fix the ancient water systems that feed clean water to populated areas. I have a friend who works in the sewers in New York City -- we'll call him Norton. Norton says they still occasionally dig up wooden pipes that were laid down in starting in the early 1800s. (You can see some of the sort here.) His crew dries them out and slices them, mounts the slices on plaque boards, and awards them to guys who are retiring. So even in death those old pipes serve a useful purpose, unlike most live politicians.

So sure, let's borrow some dough to get that clean water and -- clean air? What's that for, giant dehumidifiers with dust filters? There are only two ways government can clean the air: regulate factories out of existence, as has been done in New York State*, and replace coal power plants with nukes, and New York State is shutting down nuclear plants. So, what is this ballot proposal supposed to fund? And what's this "green jobs" stuff? And what's it all supposed to cost? 

"To address and combat the impact of climate change and damage to the environment..." it starts, and here we go.

The purpose of this proposal is to authorize the creation of state debt and the sale of state bonds in the amount of up to four billion two hundred million dollars ($4,200,000,000) for certain capital projects for the purpose of making environmental improvements that preserve, enhance, and restore New York's natural resources and reduce the impact of climate change.... 

I remember when $4.2 billion was a lot of money.

How do they plan to blow spend the money? 

restoration and flood risk reduction not less than one billion one hundred million dollars ($1,100,000,000); open space land conservation and recreation up to six hundred fifty million dollars ($650,000,000); climate change mitigation up to one billion five hundred million dollars ($1,500,000,000); and, water quality improvement and resilient infrastructure not less than six hundred fifty million dollars ($650,000,000).

How much for herding unicorns to get their magical farts to run turbines? Because there will be mandates to kill fossil fuel power generation, which is working so brilliantly in Europe. Why is "climate change mitigation" the #1 most expensive item? What the hell is that supposed to mean? 

I love how they slip "jobs" into the name of the bill, to get people to think "I might find work from this!" rather than "The government is taking my money to pay some other slob to show up!" Does no one recall how Obama's "shovel-ready jobs" boondoggle went down? There was something to shovel, all right, but it had nothing to do with infrastructure. 

Not one voter in a hundred will read the text of this ballot proposal beyond the title, so how do you think they will vote? I've seen signs around town promoting this ballot initiative, no doubt by the grifters who stand to make a fortune from it. I have not seen one sign saying "This will cost more than five billion bucks (including interest) for less than $100 million of value," which would be more accurate. No one will even know about it until election day, except for pests like me. So there goes a few more billion down the old wooden wastepipes.** We get broker and our energy supply gets more expensive and less reliable. The fat pigs at the trough get fatter. Sounds great.

I know this kind of crap goes on everywhere, but I have to get out of this state. New York in a more advanced state of stupidity, cynicism, greed, and decay. 

——

*Governor by accident Hochul has been obliged to try to bribe memory-chip company Micron with $5.5 billion of our money to try to get 9,000 jobs (maybe) upstate (eventually). Maybe if the state hadn’t done such a great job of screwing natural-born powerhouses like Kodak and General Electric, we wouldn’t be so desperate. (The companies themselves deserve a lot of blame, but manufacturing in New York is like running a triathlon with an anchor on your back.)

**I was not aware myself that of the last big environmental boondoggle, Pataki’s 1996 $1.75 billion proposition, about $182 million still has not been spent. So… they can’t figure out who needs those bribes before they authorize more? The environmental crisis is so acute that we can wait 26 years to do something? As Instapundit says, I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.

Ban all the things!

I got a little taste of what it would be like to be Rip Van Winkle, Buck Rogers, or some other person who wakes up to find things have changed in strange and unexpected ways. 

It happened at a group down at the church, which had been meeting again in person following the Chinese Death Virus Lockdowns. The meetings had resumed for some time, but someone (not me) said, "Hey, instead of everyone bringing his own coffee, why don't we make coffee again like we used to?" It was decided to do a trial balloon by getting a Box o' Joe from Dunkin' (nee Dunkin' Donuts) and some bagels. 

I had nothing to do with any of this except that I had a big wholesale-club carton of Styrofoam coffee cups at home, a remnant of the pre-COVID era, so I figured I'd bring some to the meeting in case we needed some extras. 

That's how I found out I was a strange visitor from the past.

"You must have had these hidden in your basement or something," a friend of mine said.

"Well... yeah, why?"

"Because they're illegal now."

Yes, although New York State has been busy chasing its grotesque governors around, inviting illegal aliens to move in, and watching its wealthy people and businesses flee, it still had time to ban Styrofoam last year. They slipped it in last year when we were all celebrating Christmas, and now I know why I can't find the really good 16-oz. Dart travel cups anymore. Like the plastic bag ban of a few years earlier, this is another way to make life less convenient, less hygienic, more expensive, and more annoying, all in the name of the environment. And now we're using paper and cardboard, which means cutting down more trees. 

I'm a rebel and I'll never
ever be any good

You can't recycle Styrofoam, it's true, but guess what? All our other legally mandated recycling goes in the landfill as well, because nobody wants our garbage. 

But if you've been a reader of this blog, you knew that. 

As an experiment I put some Styrofoam cups in my Amazon basket, because of course you can buy polystyrene cups on Amazon, and got no red flags saying they cannot ship to New York. I'm going to try to smuggle in some of those Dart cups. I think this could be the next great smuggling opportunity in this state, after cigarettes and plastic bags. 

I'll also keep an eye out for the next big ban. The more they make illegal, the more we all become criminals anyway. 

I want my DDT.

Just before bedtime the other evening, I noticed something flittering around the kitchen light. At first I thought it was a moth, because that's what moths do. Then I realized it had those skinny legs, like a marionette flying about with its strings cut. 

GAH! Mosquito! 

Just what you want as you're about to go to sleep -- the knowledge that a bloodsucking freak is lurking.

First I tried to slap it silly by smashing my hands together, but it kept getting away and probably thought I was applauding. Fortunately it was staying near the light over the table, so I took a moment to bring in the big guns -- the flyswatter. 

I stalked my prey, my nerves as taut as a divorcee's underwire, as I neared it and -- zing! Slapped it out of the sky. 

"Where did it go?" I said. 

"I think you injured it," my wife said. "It's done for."

"Don't be silly! They're at their most dangerous when they're wounded."

It would be very satisfying if, when you wing one, a mosquito went down in a spiral of smoke and gave off a little explosion when it hit the ground, but that's not the way they work. Instead I had to deal with the uncertainty. Did it survive? Would I get stung in the night? 

The answers appear to be no. Maybe one of the dogs ate it. They'll go after anything on the floor.

All of this leaves one question in my mind: Those who hate DDT and similar bug-killers and buy completely the Rachel Carson schtick always say that in countries where malaria is a deadly menace, mosquito netting is the answer. Do African mosquitos only bite at night? They certainly bite in the daytime here. 

Dogs are not frogs.

My wife drew my attention to something she came across while shopping for stuff for the dogs. 

Jiminy's is a brand of dog products that makes its food out of crickets. "Cricket Crave" is not a joke. It is made from crickets, as well as oats and sweet potatoes and the inevitable quinoa. But the main protein is good ol' bugs.

I have a few thoughts on this, which I would like to share with you today.

1) Yuck.

2) This crap is expensive as hell: $21.95 for a three-pound bag. Double that price and you can get a 33-pound bag of dog food from most decent brands. You know, ones made out of meat.

3) Why do these kind of people always want us to eat bugs? This is the thin end of the wedge; if they can get us thinking the dogs like it, maybe we'll want to eat some bugs, too. 

4) And they really do want us to eat bugs, you know. CRIC, the Costa Rica Insect Company, gives us five reasons why insects are the food of the future, which I dispute thusly:

    Insects can be used for different purposes -- To which I note they already are, like food coloring, and I don't need to eat them to help them be used other ways.

    Insects have great nutritional qualities -- So does Soylent Green.

    Insects taste great -- Ask any toad.
    Insects are sustainable -- Even Vox had doubts about that; maybe if you just go around and eat whatever is in your yard, it would be sustainable. But factory-raising bugs may not be.  

    The consumption of insects is growing -- So is the number of Cardi B fans; don't try to bandwagon me, child.

5) The left-wing Guardian newspaper tells us, "If we want to save the planet, the future of food is insects." Are there any things so disgusting that we would be allowed to not do if the planet itself is at stake? "If we want to save the planet, we need to kill the feeble and everyone over 70." "If we want to save the planet, we must destroy Western civilization." "If we want to save the planet, we must all kill ourselves." Well, if it means saving the planet, then...

6) I am not feeding my dogs bugs. Dogs are not frogs. When little Nipper was a very young puppy he ate an ant out of curiosity and did not like it. I'm not doing this to them. I wouldn't if they were giving Jiminy's food away.

7) I was not the kind of kid that would eat a bug for a dollar in school, and I'm not going to pay to eat them now. Let Andrew Zimmern go eat all the bugs he wants; he gets paid a lot more than a dollar to do it. Even the kid from How to Eat Fried Worms was doing it to win a $50 bet, which was a good amount of dough when the book was published in 1973. Equivalent to $327 today.

8) Back to the dogs: You may remember a show called The Goode Family by Mike Judge of King of the Hill. On the animated show, the Goodes were such a painfully perfect liberal family that they only fed their dog Che a vegan diet, which results in other pets and woodland creatures disappearing from the neighborhood. Dogs are carnivores and they want meat.

9) When we had one of our dogs in training class, there was a couple that was trying to train their dog using... Cheerios. Now, dogs like Cheerios, and Cheerios are not bad for them, but training a dog means getting it to go against its own intentions and even instincts, and you have to come through with something better than dry cereal, especially if every other dog in the class is getting meat. That poor pup couldn't concentrate for beans. It's possible that the dog had some kind of chicken allergy or something else that made typical training treats no good for him, but I've always thought that his owners might be vegans and were intending to raise a vegan dog. Maybe it could be done--but not around other dogs eating meat. They had to leave the class. 

10) Anyway, vegans can't eat bugs, either--they won't even eat honey. Like the bees get the sads when we steal their loot. Bees are morons. Eat the honey.

11) Naming the company Jiminy's is kind of cannibalistic, isn't it? Jiminy, the well-known Disney pest, is a cricket himself, so by using his name the company is acting sort of ad litem for the bug, making him a quisling character at best. I'm surprised Disney hasn't sued. 

So there are my thoughts. If you don't like them, well, go eat a bug, I guess. I ain't doing it.

End the recycling madness.

I keep going on about this, not because it's a waste of tax money -- God knows there are plenty and more wasteful projects -- but because it is a Big Lie and we're all complicit in it. Recycling garbage is a waste and should be stopped immediately. 

Why am I on this soapbox once again? After all, my investigative reporting revealed that not one single house in the neighborhood was compliant with the government mandated recycling program, and clearly the supply is contaminated. Well, last week I lurched out of the house on recycling day with my paper, glass, and plastic trash just as the truck came down the block. I stood there as the gentleman with the truck threw my stuff inside, then mashed it down, as such trucks do. And I'm telling you, that truck was just as disgusting as any truck in the fleet. Not only was there no difference between this "recycling" truck and a garbage truck, but it's the same truck. The business that contracts with our town for waste removal isn't even pretending to recycle anything anymore; why should we?

It started small in New York, with a five-cent deposit on soda bottles in the early 80's. This annoyed a lot of people, but others were glad that it got a bunch of broken glass off the street. By the end of the decade we were sorting things into bags for pickup. The Solid Waste Management Act of 1988 required municipalities to recycle various post-consumer materials. And now, because there's no market for the crap, it's all going into landfills. But the state loves it, because every deposit bottle that isn't redeemed is a nickel that goes into the state coffers. Then the "reclaimed" materials goes in the garbage.

Lies, damned lies, and recycling.

And we have to pretend to recycle, and they pretend to do it, and this is a Big Lie that we all conform to. Honestly, has there every been as big a lie in this country, with complicity on every level from the top of the government to the merest citizen? Recycling is an expensive and stupid failure, its fake observation enforced by power of law, and no one at any level of government will admit it and demand we stop it. 

For environmentalists, it's all about wishful thinking, control, and money. The wishful thinking is of a piece with the idea that windmills and solar panels can give us all the energy we need with no drawbacks. The control is getting a supine public into the habit of paying tributes to keep Gaia from destroying us, maybe in the hope that one day there will be a market for this contaminated crap. And money speaks for itself. So real solutions go into the landfill along with the precious bottles and cans and waste paper.

Here in the Hudson Valley, the town of New Windsor contracted in 2017 for a waste-to-energy plant with BioHighTech Global, a plant that would take something we hate (garbage) and turn it into something we love (energy). Two years later the town board got its panties in a twist and said it would impact the environment poorly, so BioHighTech pulled out of the agreement. Good job, town board; now 150,000 tons of garbage a year goes in the landfill, and your energy costs remain sky high. 

Another such project by Taylor Biomass is in the works in Montgomery, a project that has been planned for well over a decade, but it will probably have the cord yanked if Montgomery falls into the hands of Nervous Nellies who genuflect at the altar of environmentalism as well. Or if the environmentalists go after it again with lawfare. 

But they need to remember that getting rid of the project doesn't get rid of the garbage, nor does it make recycling effective. 

Murder them all!

I sprayed tick killer around the edges of the yard again yesterday, out where the high grass grows. Murder them all! Mwah ah ah!

But keep it under your hat. I have a friend whom I think is the bees' knees; she has a science background, she's funny and thoughtful, and she is completely upside-down bass-ackwards on this topic. For example, last fall she posted something like this:

It wasn't this exact bit of propaganda, as hers was more butterfly-centric, but the message was the same. Leave the leaves! More leaves now = more butterflies tomorrow!

Yeah, and you notice how the poster above just trails off ("beetles, bees, moths, and more")? Guess what the "more" is. That's right! Our old friend the tick, and in this neck of the woods, the Lyme-bearing deer tick is everywhere.

Don't take it from me; watch the Consumer Reports video at this page and note the expert advice (spoiler alert: "ticks like to live in leaf piles"). They are not alone in this assessment.

Hey, I like butterflies as much as the average guy, but if it means no ticks, au revoir, Monsieur Papillon. I've known too many people whose lives have been derailed by the disease from those bloodsucking freaks, including a police detective who had a brilliant career thrown into chaos and a mother of four who's been suffering the effects of Lyme for years. And that's just one disease the little arachnid bastards spread. Here's a CDC list of fun things you can get from your friendly neighborhood tick.

The Law of Unintended Consequences is always around to ruin everyone's fun. The thing is, most of the time the consequences are unintended because they are not foreseeable. In this case, the potential danger is 100% visible and being ignored anyway.

Well, I doubt I can ever change my friend's mind on this, but we can always focus on the things about which we agree. Like ice cream. I just hope she doesn't go vegan.

Tooth dismay.

I find mint to be a little harsh in my mouth, at least in the concentrated forms found in toothpaste. Maybe it makes my breath better, but hey, it's not like I have to reel back from my own bad breath. I have to do that from everyone else's.

A combination of harshness and boredom occasionally sends me looking for non-mint toothpastes (my wife is very brand-loyal and uses her own tube). The thing is, most adult toothpastes are minty and there's little variety. So I've been known to swipe the kids' brands at the store, at least as long as they have the same amount of fluoride as the adult versions.

So yes, I may be seen sometimes brushing my teeth with a toothpaste that has Captain America or the Minions on the tube. Bubblegum! Mmm.

Recently I got this:

Burt's Bees, the kind and natural brand that was bought by Clorox from founders Burt Shavitz and Roxanne Quimby for almost a billion bucks in 2007, has expanded into all kinds of markets now, including makeup and, as you see, toothpaste. I actually picked up this "Fruit Fusion" toothpaste before I started seeing online ads for it, and then the ads were everywhere. I liked the fact they they had cute fruit instead of an expensively licensed character on the tube.

I'd been happy with the few Burt's products I'd tried. I have a lip balm that my wife gave me that is smooth and protective. I once got a free bottle of the Garden Tomato Toner, which made a great aftershave.

But Burt's Bees for Kids Fruit Fusion Toothpaste? Worst tasting toothpaste I ever tried.

When you start to brush, you get the fruity flavor found in many popular kids' items, like Froot Loops. And then it starts to taste like soap. Like, genuine Ralphie-said-fudge-but-not-really-fudge kind of soap. It's a really bad taste and at its strongest as an aftertaste, when you spit the crap out.

What were they thinking? Children swear so much that they must be used to the taste of soap? Sadly, we no longer have the mores we had about swearing in Ralphie's day, so I doubt it. Then again, they claim that they have a 4.7 of 5 rating for the stuff, so maybe kids are just stupid. Or maybe the adults, who are writing the reviews, never bothered to try it themselves. When you see reviews like "It is free of all the unnecessary things other companies put in their toothpastes and I feel comfortable giving this to my son," you get the feeling the adult is carried away by environmentalism and is blind to the product's screamingly obvious defects. Bleah.

And, by the way, the company has discontinued my Garden Tomato Toner. Fie on you, Burt, and your stupid bees.

So it looks like it's back to mint for me for a while. Or the Minions....

Leaf it as is?

In my town everyone was raking and blowing (and blowing and blowing) leaves to the side of the street. Guys were out with leaf blowers and flashlights in the dark. We don't do a pickup of leaf bags; what we do is, starting this year on November 5, have crews go around with a street sweeper and suck up all the leaves on the side of the road. There's no way to know what day they will show up. You have to get those leaves out ASAP and keep adding to the pile until they come by. After they've been down your street, any remaining leaves are your problem.

Well, they hadn't gotten down by my house yet, and now it's all gone to hell. The snow we got last night and into this morning required the town plows to come out of storage, so all those piles of leaves along the curb just got thrown back onto everyone's lawns.

This is why I use the lawnmower and mulch. It helps that I don't have a lot of tall trees.

Meanwhile, in California there are terrible wildfires killing people and razing entire towns, and the finger of blame is being spun around like the spinner in the Game of Life. Some people say it's global warming, and until we reduce carbon emissions to zero, wildfires will keep raging out of control. Others point to the more down-to-earth problem of poor forest management; when President Trump suggested that, all the smart people in the media had a collective cow. But he did not just make this up; serious foresters have suggested that the budgetary and environmentalist turn from thinning forests and removing brush is the obvious change that preceded the years of terrifying fires we see now.

I guess we'll find out, or not. The United States keeps lowering its emissions of carbon, but India and China and plenty of other countries keep pumping out more. So, if that's the real problem, better move out of California because there's nothing we can do.

Then again, there are memes like these that make the rounds:

Yep, all those dead leaves provide places for the butterfly larvae to chill out over the winter, I guess. And you know what else dead leaves do? Burn.

Dead leaves don't burn as well as dry grass, it's true -- like the grass that California has with its antiquated water system -- but there's more life in grass even this late in the year than there is in the fallen leaves. I wonder if a forest ranger would look me in the eye and say that a lawn with the leaves cleared off is in more danger of spreading fire than one with dead leaves thick on the ground.

Anyway, I can hardly trust the pop environmentalism one sees about. "Don't kill the dandelions!" they say. "Save the honeybees!"

Well, guess what? Dandelions are a poor source of food for honeybees. But they seem to be great for wasps. I don't have honeybees. I haven't poisoned the dandelions in a couple of years, but only because my doggone dogs keep eating the grass and I don't want them getting sick. But all I see are a scattered few bumblebees and an enormous number of yellow jackets, and I'm allergic to wasps, so to hell with them.

Besides, as Glenn Reynolds says of global warming (among other celebrity crusades), "I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who keep telling me it's a crisis act like it's a crisis." Those folks will have to give up their big houses, their private jets, their big cars. Hell will freeze over before that happens, so if it does happen I guess there'll be a cooling trend somewhere.

Environ-mental.

Today we have a couple of environmental notes for all you tree-French-kissers out there. I feel the need to establish my bone fides on this issue. Earth-friendly Fred is all about nature. I could watch it on TV all day. And look! I'm already green as can be!

Could be something I ate.

For example, here's one environmental promise I absolutely keep:

The 30 Wears Challenge: Yes, it's brutal, but you have to promise that if you buy an article of clothing, you'll actually wear it 30 times. I know! It's like, you should be a saint or something by then!

In fact, I can't tell you how many times I wear things because I wear them until they die. Seriously, unless I get too fat for an article of clothing, or my wife tells me I'm embarrassing myself wearing it (c'mon, everyone knows leisure suits are coming back), I will wear something until it falls apart. I have favorite shirts I've probably worn 30 times since April. I've worn dress shirts to the office not realizing that the cuffs and collar are literally threadbare. A pair of pants I loved just ripped along the back pocket when I reached for my wallet; I had to sit at my desk all day and stay there until no one was around. Fortunately I was driving to that job so I didn't have to wear ripped pants on the subway -- but, then again, I might have hustled some change that way. "Help out a guy with bad pants?"

Here's another environmental idea that's in keeping with the season of Halloween: Recycle yourself.

I've got a body. You've got one. Birds and bees, they all got one. All God's creatures got a body. But you know what else we all got? A day in the future when we stop using it. What do you plan to do with yours?

Well, you can stick it in a grave and take up valuable land. I kind of like cremation, though, just in case I'm not quite dead -- I'd rather be burned up at that point than awaken six feet under. (Scaaaaary!) Plus, when you're a pile of ash, you have several options for planet-friendly secondary use:

1) Tree planting.

You can have your ashes interred with a potted tree and planted. This, like all options with one's mortal remains, requires the cooperation of your survivors to carry out, but let's suppose they are nature-lovers too and can be trusted. There are still other issues with this, as the site Humour Zone notes:

Of course, we do not want haunted forests, so please include instructions that your dead-body tree be planted far from other dead-body trees. An individual haunted tree is not so terrifying.

Another option for your burned-up cremains is to be:

2) Eaten.

Cedric Voets of Cracked shares the story of a teenage girl in California who decided to bake the ashes of her dead grandpa (I guess "the ashes of her live grandpa" would be silly) into cookies for her classmates:

All said, at least nine teens ate gritty grandpappy cookies, some having been tricked into it, others volunteering for this once-past-a-lifetime experience. Though it wasn't actually that hard to get your hands on the cremains of this late, not-so-great-tasting man. Previously, the teen had offered one student a handful of the ashes in exchange for switching seats in class. And honestly, from that point on, they really should've expected that any future dealings with her would come with a side of dead grandpa.

One difficulty she ran into with her grandpa-disposal scheme is that ashes are hard to eat. I think the takeaway here is that if you want your ashes to be eaten, especially by unsuspecting enemies whom you had invited to bite your ash, you have to find some medium that works better at concealing the ashiness than sugar cookies. It's a problem, because people generally don't like gritty food. Blueberries, spinach, and of course grits can all be gritty if they're poorly prepared, but it doesn't make them easy to eat. It gets you nowhere if they just spit you out. I'd suggest having your ashes used in some kind of savory snack like a chip and handed out at the cannabis store.

And speaking of drugs, you might wish to be:

3) Snorted.

Yes, we're dragging the story about Keith "Keef" Richards snorting his old man's ashes with cocaine again, because it's the most Keith "Keef" Richards story ever. Richards claims to be clean now, though, so you are not likely to be able to get him to snort you. Start interviewing drug addicts as soon as you get a bad diagnosis, would be my recommendation. Make sure they like you. No one wants to put someone they don't care for up their nose.

👻

So there's some thoughts on these important green issues. Make the right choices and you could be as green as ol' Fred! Or you could just get there by eating some gas station chili dogs. Urp.

Plastic bags.

New York wants to do away with plastic shopping bags, as California has.

They can take my plastic bags when they pry them -- well, actually, they won't have to, because like California, New York is shedding citizens quickly. The last person left will be in a plastic-bag-free zone, I guess.

But that's not the issue I was addressing today. It's the plastic bags that dry cleaners use. My question for you is, do you leave your clothes in the bags when you bring them home from the cleaner, or do you take them out of the bags?

NO! DON'T DO WHATEVER YOU DO! DO THE OTHER THING! YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!

Sorry. It's just one of those stupid issues where people will tell you something with absolute assurance and be contradicted by a similar person a moment later. The Internet seems to be falling out of love with the YOU'RE DOING _____ WRONG storyline, but it loves to make the same scold in different ways.

I usually leave my dry cleaning in the plastic when I bring it home, to keep the nice clothes safe and free of odors (i.e., bacon) until the next time I wear them (e.g., someone dies and I need the black suit again).

Well, how dumb am I? The environmental loons at EWG tell us that dry cleaning chemicals are so toxic that you have to air dry your clothes outside after you get them dry cleaned. So the birds can put back what you just had the cleaner take out, perhaps.

Others, perhaps less frantic, say you need to take the clothes out of the plastic to get the chemicals off-gassed before they can discolor your clothes, and also that dampness from the cleaning process may cause mildew. And everyone hates plastic anyway because it's garbage that lasts forever.

But wait! My dry cleaner has this poster up:

"Protects clothes in your closet! Breaks down in the landfill!"

Okay! So maybe it's all right to leave biodegradable plastic on my clothes? No, that can't be right.

This particular cleaner with the sun-bleached poster is proud to avoid using the popular dry cleaning chemical PERC, a.k.a. perchloroethylene, which is probably healthier for the workers (per OSHA) but will have no effect on anyone else.  But WAIT! EWG would want to know, does he use Siloxane D5? Hydrocarbon cleaning fluid? "There are very few truly 'green' dry cleaning technologies," they say, and go on to list no actual processes one might consider "dry cleaning."

So many perils! So many wrong choices to make! What do we do?

You probably know what my advice is in these circumstances: Do whatever the hell you want. Seriously. You're going to be wrong anyway, according to all the right people, so do what you want. Leave the bags on? Groovy. Take 'em off? Fine. Inhale chemicals? It's your trip. Smell like bacon on your job interview? Go for it. When we're always wrong, we might as well be wrong in the way we like best.

Personally, I will continue to leave the bags on in the closet. That way, when I have to wear the black suit to my own funeral, you won't smell the bacon. I mean, I know the formaldehyde with which they shall fill me will likely drown it out anyway, but you don't want to give people the wrong idea. "I thought I knew what Fred was made of... turns out it was bacon."

Assault on battery.

Black Beauty, my gas-powered lawn mower, bit the dust.

A moment of silence, please.

It was barely operating at the end of last season, and as I got it tuned up this spring I realized there were some serious problems. Like, part of the chassis had ripped up around a bolt that held on the motor, so every time I pulled the cord the motor was getting closer to pulling off the chassis entirely. It was time to call it.

Fortunately I have another mower handy, a battery-powered one made by Ego that my wife bought me a couple of years ago. It's a good machine, much quieter than the gas mower, and cuts well, requiring no gas, no oil, no spark plug, no air filter. There are, however, some problems --- one related to the dumbest safety feature I have ever seen, but all the rest related to the battery.

Quickly, the dumb thing: The handle retracts for easy storage (the mower weighs nothing), but when one of the plastic clamps that holds the handle extended pops out, it stops running. So the operation of the machine is entirely at the mercy of a cheap bit of plastic, which by the way now pops out every time any torque is put on the handle, like if you might want to turn or something. So I have had to clamp it in place to keep the machine operating. That's poor design.

As for the battery, it's the same old same old. The real reason we're not all driving electric cars now has nothing to do with evil gas companies or evil car companies. It's the damned batteries. I'm no engineer, so I'll eschew the science lingo, but allow me to describe the six serious problems I have observed with batteries:

1) Short life: I have to recharge the battery three times to get my lawn done; four times if I'm dealing with wet or long grass (and as I mentioned a few days ago, these are not uncommon circumstances). I don't have the rapid charger Ego makes, so it's half an hour or more to a full charge. You get at least 45 minutes of mowing, so it's a net gain, but it's still very frustrating. What happens when you and your electric car are stuck in traffic for a long time?

2) Long recharge: As I say, the recharge takes quite a while and stops the whole mission cold. This is not a problem with a gas mower -- fill it and go. But the load time for large batteries is considerable. For the country to have fleets of electric cars running around, gas stations would have to be replaced with battery exchanges, where universal batteries that fit every car could be exchanged for charged batteries. You couldn't just have plug-in stations where people get the car zapped and go on their way, like in the Watchmen comic book. Batteries that load like that have not been invented.

3) Instability: Weird things can happen with batteries. If I hit a thick, wet spot of grass with a gas mower it might stall out. The clog can be cleared and the mower restarted. If I do that with the Ego, the battery gets overloaded and has to shut down. The whole thing can discharge. It doesn't make it unsafe, or more so than gasoline, but it is another level of inconvenience, because you have to give it time to cool down.

4) Environmental hazards: Two things about batteries that make them less enviro-friendly than people may think: a) The juice still has to be generated somewhere, and it's not going to be solar and wind but almost entirely natural gas, coal, and nukes; b) Batteries are basically micro-Superfund sites of toxic materials. This doesn't relate to problems with my mower, but it's interesting. Storing energy is a lot harder than people think. Nature's spoiled us by storing it underground in delicious oil.

5) Price: Yes, I could buy a second Ego battery and have one charging while I use the other, but their cheapest lawn mower battery (2.0 amp) is $129. Their most expensive one (7.5 amp) is $386, the price of a good gas push mower.

6) Energizer vs. Duracell: Most Americans are aware that Energizer has a pink bunny mascot, but not that rival Duracell does too. Really!

Duracell's is actually older, but was only seen outside the U.S., so the two reached a deal in 1992, because obviously there's no way to sell consumer batteries without the use of pink battery-powered rabbits. That hasn't stopped the lawsuits, and there's one wheezing through the courts now. Couldn't one of them have been a tortoise? (Tortoise beat hare, as you know.) Or at least a green rabbit?

So those are my battery issues. I do have to say that thanks to my battery-powered mower and my clamp and the beautiful weather, I got everything cut yesterday, so I really shouldn't complain. It beats an old-fashioned push reel mower. Power to the people!

Bring Down Big Horse!

DATELINE: JULY 15, 1898, WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President James Weaver today announced a new plan to "free our cities from the grip of the vested interests of 'Big Horse'" and "bring our nation into the twentieth century."

"Too long have we subjected our citizens to the environmentally crushing load of horse manure in our streets, causing disease, disgust, and a stink fit to wake the dead," said the president, a scented handkerchief over his face, from the corner of 14th Street and Constitution Avenue. "Boundless heaps of horse droppings are causing an environmental catastrophe that may well bring an end to human life as we know it. Fortunately today there is an option: the internal combustion engine!"

"The Salvation of Our Cities Is the Internal Combustion Engine"

The president went on to say that with this advanced technology and "America's endless supply of gas and coal, the horse will be obsolete in decades---but only if government acts now."

Mr. Weaver outlined his proposal, including allotting millions of dollars to the Winton Motor Carriage Company, to help the company develop the "auto-mobile."

"Without government intervention and support," he said, "it is a certainty that these 'horseless carriages' will never be successful, will never free us from our dependence on animal power and all the pollution that comes with it, which threatens even the mightiest cities on the globe."

Prominent members of Congress have disagreed with the president's position, saying that if the "auto-mobile" is a benefit for mankind, then consumers will be the driving force behind it, by buying the mechanized vehicles instead of horses.

But Mr. Weaver disagrees. He concluded his remarks by saying, "We can be certain that, unaided by government, no advance will be possible. So I urge Congress to act on my proposals immediately. Failing that, let me say, I've got a fountain pen and I've got a telegraph, and I will ignore Congress and do what must be done."

Recycle the usual suspects!

Last year I did a humorous report (well, I laughed) about the recycling practices of a fictional neighborhood.

Lest you think it was all just a gag, though, I would like to share with you some quotes from the town's recycling ordinance combined with pictures of the stuff our townsfolk put out for recycling.

ALL RESIDENTS MUST RECYCLE THE FOLLOWING ITEMS:

MIXED PAPERS — NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES, CARDBOARD, JUNK MAIL, BOXES, OFFICE PAPER, PAPERBACK BOOKS, & TELEPHONE BOOKS — Tie in bundles no larger than 12". 

Plastic Containers & Cartons—includes juice boxes, frozen food containers.

PLEASE DO NOT PUT CO-MINGLED ITEMS IN PLASTIC BAGS.

Tin & Aluminum Cans & Foil

Plastic Containers & Cartons—includes juice boxes, frozen food containers.

Brown craft cardboard must be flattened & tied. 

Plastic Containers & Cartons—includes juice boxes, frozen food containers.

PLEASE DO NOT PUT CO-MINGLED ITEMS IN PLASTIC BAGS.

Am I the only one who read the sheet? 

Actually, I'm not sure I did! I usually fail to bundle my papers, just leave them in the plastic container, loose.

Here is the only house I saw that had no violations of the ordinance---but you would have to believe the daily paper is the only recyclable material that goes into their home.

What must the town elders think of us people? "So they believe electric fans, McDonald's cups, and plastic toys count as 'plastic containers and cartons' -- interesting! And when we say 'no plastic bags' it means they think we want plastic bags. How counterintuitive!"

Here's the thing---I have never seen the trash men not take something that was put out on recycling day. I've seen worse than I photographed here. They take it all. I think I could put out a dead deer in one of those buckets and they'd take it. They exercise no judgment in the performance of their duties.

Which makes me wonder if any of this stuff is actually going into the single-stream recycling flow, or if it's all just going to the landfill anyway. They pick it up in a standard garbage truck. If there's food scraps and stains in the pizza boxes---and you know there are---that supposedly contaminates the paper fibers. Are garbage fairies really picking all this over after pickup day? "You're good; you're naughty; you're good...."

Some towns are a lot more serious about compliance to recycling rules. They issue tickets and summonses. I think in Oregon it may be a shooting offense. 

All this for what may be a load of crap anyway. Last year science writer John Tierney penned a scathing New York Times article on the practice. And the Guardian also ran a sad piece about it. Bonus: Absolutely no one wants your old TV. 

And yet, the town's noncompliance irritates me for two reasons: 1) I am easily irritated, and 2) Even if recycling is a crock of crap, it's one that's been put upon us because we believed it was important. So if we're going to do it, we ought to be able to follow some simple instructions. It's like we all enthusiastically agreed to put on this big kabuki dance but we refuse to learn the parts. 

If we can't comply, we should just throw everything in the garbage and the hell with it. If recycling is just virtue signalling, then burn it all for power and screw it. 

Recycling Day.

TOWN OF ROLLING PINES

2015 RECYCLING SCHEDULE

Recycling will be picked up on Thursdays, except for weeks in which holidays fall on Mondays

Glass and plastic should go in the blue bins

Paper should go in the green bins

Corrugated cardboard must be tied in stacks no thicker than 6 inches

No Food---Wash All Glass and Plastic; Do Not Include Paper or Cardboard with Food or Food Stains

Thursday, September 17, Benjamin Lane, Rolling Pines

No. 23 -- The Petersens put their glass and plastic in the blue bin and their paper in the green bin, except on weeks when Timmy can be pressed into putting down the iPhone long enough to take out the trash, in which case anything may wind up in any bin

No. 22 -- The Hopkinses lost their blue bin years ago and just throw everything into the green bin

No. 20 -- Joe Grooblacker heard that recycling centers are overwhelmed with unsaleable cardboard and so just throws everything in the garbage

No. 19 -- Erma Goldblatz, a very determined sixth-grader, keeps the rest of the Goldblatzes in line with their recycling to save the world from Global Climate Change, but there are a number of Goldblatzes and some of them are teenagers, so it's impossible to make sure they all do what their supposed to

No. 16 -- The Furburs always meticulously recycle their pizza boxes, sometimes with crusts still in them

No. 14 -- Old Man Ubrecht often puts scrap metal, bullet casings, old keys, Canadian pennies, small broken appliances, and other such things in the blue bin

No. 11 -- The Harrisons think everything that is plastic can be acceptable by their local town, including used drinking straws, that hard plastic packaging from electronics, thin wrap from packs of napkins, plastic cups, and so on

No. 10 -- The Dales only put out corrugated cardboard once a year, shortly after Christmas---a tied bundle four feet thick

Intermezzo -- Jimmy, the possibly homeless guy, or maybe on a bad fixed income (although Joe Grooblacker thinks he's rich), with the shopping cart from Hockner's, which closed five years ago, comes around sometimes early on Thursday mornings to take deposit bottles out of the blue bins, usually leaving Green Giant cans and Reddi-Wip cans and Canadian pennies and things on the ground

No. 8 -- Margaret Mazzelli's New Year's resolution to be good about recycling fell by the wayside in March and has not been seen since

No. 5 -- The Yans, who call Carson Snodgrass at no. 3 "Felix Unger," put out the recycling once, on Memorial Day week, and got so annoyed that it didn't get picked up that they never bothered again

No. 3 -- Carson Snodgrass, who sorts everything properly, ties up boxes as carefully as Christmas gifts, and always disposes of garbage with garbage, writes letters to the town council, the local police, and the sanitation department demanding that his neighbors be ticketed for their laughable recycling efforts

No. 1 -- The Crotskis are under the impression that the town has a large compost pile, and therefore expects food garbage from its citizens on recycling day; therefore the Crotskis' food garbage goes in the green bin (contaminating everything on the recycling truck), all other recycling in the blue bin, and absolutely no food garbage in the garbage on garbage day

Connor and Daphne -- a Fred Classic.

First run two years ago (and given High Praise! at the time by the tastemakers at IMAO.us), "Connor and Daphne" seemed due for a rerun, it being spring at all. As always, your comments are welcome.

----

Connor and Daphne: A True Enough Story

By Frederick Key

Connor was a bear who was polite to his neighbors but not your warm, huggy type. Connor was proud of his bountiful garden and his lush green lawn, which he tended faithfully every year.

One spring, a big family of meerkats moved in next door. Connor met Daphne, a dewy-eyed kid with a bubbly personality.

It being spring, a couple of dandelions popped up on Connor’s lawn. Connor came out of his shed with his tools and sprays, ready to do battle with the weeds.

But Daphne stopped him. “Connor, look how beautiful that little yellow flower is!” she cried. “How can you be hating on such a sweet little thing?”

“If I don’t get rid of them as soon as they pop up, they ruin the lawn,” he grumbled.

“They have every right to be here—as much as that grass that you have to buy seed for,” she said. “These so-called ‘weeds’ are native to the area, you know. And they’re useful too! You can eat them, or even make wine.”

“But—”

“Why do you hate flowers so much, Connor?”

“I don’t! I’ve planted all kinds of flowers in the garden.”

“Oh, I see. You only like the ones you planted. The ones that nature provides you have to blast with all kinds of horrible poisons, is that right? Those sprays are dangerous, you know. They make the wildlife sick and they get into the water supply!”

Finally Daphne wore Connor down. He promised to let the little yellow flower live, and grumbled all the way back to his shed.

In a couple of weeks, little yellow flowers popped up all over Connor’s lawn. He had to admit that Daphne was right—the yellow flowers were pretty, and a nice contrast with the green. Then they turned into white heads, and then the puffs blew  away. With all the seeds gone to ruin other lawns, Connor was left with a patchy landscape and ugly naked stalks with ragged leaves. Which, in addition to the other weeds Daphne wouldn’t let him kill, left…

Connor was pretty sore by now, you can bet. The dandelions saved by Daphne had ruined his grass, exactly as he’d predicted. He went down to his cellar to get his shovel and pick to start digging deep, for now the roots of the dandelions were well beyond his ability to dig them up with hand tools.

While in the cellar, Connor noticed he had an unexpected and unwelcome guest—a rat had taken up residence in his home. He steamed upstairs to go to the store and get a trap.

Daphne was outside. “What’s wrong, Connor?” she asked kindly.

“Got a rat in the cellar,” he said. “Going to the store to get traps and steel wool and things.”

“No, no! You mustn’t do that!” she said. “The rat isn’t hurting you, is he?”

“Not yet, but—”

“And yet you want to break his little neck? Connor, how cruel! And poisons, too, I’ll bet—that’s always your answer, isn’t it? Poison! Why do you hate living things so much?”

“Damn it, Daphne, I—”

“Anger is a sure sign that you’re losing the argument, you know that? That poor little rat! With his sad little whiskers and sad beady little eyes!”

“Why do you always have to go straight to the emotional appeal? It’s completely unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable? I’ll tell you what’s unreasonable. Ask yourself, who was here first, Connor? You and your artificial man-made house, or the native wildlife?”

“Fine! You go down there and catch him, and you take the rat home!”

“Why would I do that? He’s obviously happy where he is.”

Once again, Daphne wore him down.

But a couple of weeks later, when Connor found he had carpenter ants attacking his deck, he snuck out to the big hardware store and made a purchase.

Daphne and the dandelions and the rats and the carpenter ants and the termites tried to throw him a going-away party, but Connor had already left.

We asked Daphne what the moral of this story is.

We tried to ask Connor but—oh, well.

The end.

Indiana Bat vs. Tuxedo Anti-Gamblers.

A bat is standing between the town that gave the world the tuxedo and casino gambling. And that's how the town likes it.

It's complicated.

In a nutshell: Voters in New York last year approved a casino bill, allowing for casinos to be built in the state. Voters may have been thinking it would be great to revitalize the many crappy areas, like the old Borscht Belt---but these voters have apparently never seen a real casino and its environs. Even if the casinos, which invariably can maintain peace only with the most thuggish means, is not itself a cesspool, the area around it is. Or it will be. Add to that the fact that we're so overloaded with gambling in the northeast that four of 12 Atlantic City casinos have gone bust this year, with more on the way. No American community I have ever seen was made happier with casino gambling.

Tuxedo seems to feel the same way.

Tuxedo is a town, and it contains Tuxedo Park, which itself is not a town so much as an enclave, and an enclave of people with lots of dough at that. It has been that way since even before the railroads started running north of the city. The Lorillard family built a castle there on tobacco wealth. Griswold, one of the later Lorillards, started the fad in 1886 for the new men's dinner jacket named for the town that later swept the world.

Tuxedo Park is still loaded with people who are loaded, and they do not want to host a scummy casino full of people in sweatpants playing nickel slots. A Malaysian resort company named Genting wants exactly that. Maybe they intend to do something more high class, but it's like running a liquor store in a city---you want a twee little place with wine or artisinal vodka tastings, but to make ends meet you sell Night Train Express and Wild Irish Rose. It's all booze in the end, right?

Well, this little dude wants to put a stop to it.

Indiana Bat; photo thanks to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

He doesn't actually care, but he is an endangered species and he is in the area, and foes of the casino have latched on to the plight of the Indiana Bat as a means of stopping the casino from being built. They may really care about the bat, or some of them may, but I think it's a case of: when you got to beat a dog, any stick will do. Even a bat.

And that's what environmentalism has become in this country now---nothing but a means of stopping some people from doing what other people don't want them to do.

As you can gather, I'm not a fan of casinos. Of course I live nowhere near Tuxedo---I'm no tobacco millionaire---but I don't want a casino there or any closer than that to me. But it makes me uncomfortable to see the way care for the environment has become nothing more than a means of forcing some people to conform to the will of others in the land of the free. One could easily begin to wonder if environmentalism ever meant anything other than forcing other people to do what you want.

Well, go get 'em, Indiana Bat, I guess. I don't like the bugs you eat and I don't much care for the casinos you prevent. Just stay away from my attic and we'll be fine.

UPDATE (12/18/14): No casinos in Orange County; see follow-up entry here.