Picking up black walnuts to Bring Down THE MAN!

(WARNING: This post is Not Safe For Work if you're Al Gore.)

Yay! Hooray for me! I'm done with walnuts for the year! After probably ten hours of work, I cashed in my walnuts today, and received as a reward for my work a grand total of $6.57.

That wouldn't be much, if the story stopped there, but it doesn't.

I took my walnut money and bought two of the little pull-chain light socket adapter thingies that let you turn off a light bulb without flipping the power switch.

I put them in the bathroom, so now I can burn only one bulb when I need only one bulb, which is the vast majority of the times I'm in there. The only time I really need to burn all three is when I'm shaving. With the pullchains, I can turn on the two over the mirror at the sink if I need them, and turn them back off when I'm done. Previously, with all three running off the same switch, it was all or none.

Awhile ago, I had already switched out the 60-watt incandescent bulbs for 23-watt CFLs, so now instead of running 180 watts whenever I went into the bathroom, I'm only running 23 watts, less than 13% of what I WAS using.

(Pause here while Al Gore needs a moment of "alone time.")

I may ... MAY ... switch out the one bulb for a 10-watter from the kitchen. That'd be a 94+% energy savings.

(Pause here for Al Gore again.)

If I wasn't effectively trading walnuts (which are of no real use to me) for the adapters, I don't know how long it'd take for them to pay for themselves, but I don't think an estimate of "years" is all that unreasonable. So I don't know how cost-effective this is for real-live, actual humans. But once they save enough to pay for the three bucks or so per adapter, everything else will be just gravy.

(Now someone please get Al Gore a baby wipe!)

P.S. The less electricity you use, the less money you're paying the utilities in rates, and thus the less money you're paying the government in sales taxes. Just one little way to help Starve The Beast.

(Now Ron Paul needs a baby wipe too!)

Now, just to review -- Yay! Hooray for me!

This post may well give Al Gore a Gorgasm.

I finally gave in and picked up one of the big green (non-biodegradable, mind you) plastic bins for recycling from City Hall. It is bin number 666. Some people play Devil's Advocate; apparently, I play Devil's Recycler.

The instruction sheet they gave me reveals recycling to be a complicated and cryptic process. Instead of just listing ALL the materials they will pick up, the paper breaks them up into Several Groupings, and Each Grouping Is Numbered. It doesn't say anything about us having to seperate the materials. I guess whoever wrote the instructions just thought they Ought To Be Numbered.

I'm going to seperate them anyway, just in case. Besides, it will give me a way to get rid of more plastic grocery bags, which by the way Do Not Appear to be On The List.

You have to wash out glass and plastic containers, which begs the question -- which future would you impose on the planet - one with too much trash, or one without enough water? I wonder if it would wash them out good enough if I put them outside in the front yard until it rains.

Forget that; some things are too cheap and white trashy even for me.

So why, after decades of griping about granola-munching, caribou-loving tree-huggers, am I beginning to recycle NOW? Am I going to grow my hair long, wear beads, smell like pachouli, and insist that there are no absolutes, because I really really DIG Mother Earth, man?

Hell no. I don't give a flip about the planet. As long as it outlasts me, I'll be happy.

But what about our children, you ask?

"We" don't have any children. YOU might have a child or some childrens, but they are not "Our" children; they are yours. And whatever future you want to give them, the responsibility to pay for it lies in YOU, not in US.

Okay, we know what is NOT the reason, so what IS the reason?

Simple. It's the noblest motive of all -- to save me money. By burning the paper content, I've already reduced my trash from two bags a week to one bag every two weeks. That's cut my trash-bag costs by 75%. Chucking my tin cans, milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles, spaghetti sauce jars and the like into the recycle bin instead of the trash can may reduce my trash bag costs another 75% or maybe more.

But they're NOT getting my soda cans. Not as long as I can get paid to recycle them elsewhere.