Author: dougabaird@earthlink.net

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Going to hell in a handbasket” Bumper Sticker

“Going to hell in a handbasket” Bumper Sticker

It’s not a knock on recycling; it’s a knock on “glossy thinking” — the kind of thinking that glosses over the difficulties.

While recycling is a worthwhile concept; re-using is preferable. The original plastic milk carriers had many generations of re-use because they were constructed for every-day use. Today’s flimsier store reproductions crack and break and are usually thrown out instead of recycled; the original carriers were scavenged whenever they were spotted. A plastic tub pickle container may be too thin and permanently branded to inspire re-use — but double the thickness, and use easily removable branding, and they would have a long life for plants, projects, or a multi-use container.

There should be a preference to use materials that are the least harmful if they are not recycled, and the least environmentally harmful/energy wasteful to manufacture and recycle. Glass would be preferred material.

Isn’t something made of 50% Recycled Materials with 100% of the material produced being recycled; better than made of 100% Recycled Materials with 50% of the material produced being recycled. Less recycle preach and more recycle outreach — human nature prefers easy — if people have to drive 15 miles to recycle a couple of flashlight batteries; how likely are they to end up in the garbage instead?

Ran out of space, but words are 100% recyclable.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Pride cometh before the fool” Bumper Sticker

“Pride cometh before the fool” Bumper Sticker

Pride is one of the best handles that users can grab a hold of to lead you around by the nose. Pride, even more than respect needs to be earned by your actions. The price of your Pride was to support and promote government social policies of race and gender bias.

You can’t compartmentalize bigotry: like PCBs; the smallest part can pollute the biggest body. That’s why every revered figure of human worth and equality was unalterably opposed to any discriminatory policy for any reason.

Your Pride is being used as another tool to destroy anything that may oppose their rise to power: and to bring another area of human belief and activity under their control. When you are no longer needed; and booted out into the cold; don’t cry that you were betrayed — for it was your pride that has betrayed us all.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Opportunity” Bumper Sticker

“Opportunity” Bumper Sticker

Short term thinking; long term denial.

There is a disconnection between actions and consequences that is frightening.

“Opportunity” used to mean that you could get a job and prove what you could do; now it means starting at management level with great pay and benefits, and no experience.

I can do business at the touch of a button — and spend hours fixing the fuck-ups. And then I’m asked to fill out a customer satisfaction survey.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Lots of Not” Poem

“Lots of Not” Poem

I first began to notice cell phones in the videotape rental stores; people would read out loud from an empty tape case, wait a moment, then their eyes would glaze and they would wander off. The same behavior started popping up in grocery stores; like a kind of wandering question and answer game show. People sitting alone in restaurants would feel compelled to describe what they were eating, and every detail of the table décor, to avid listeners who may themselves be sitting in other restaurants and describing their own dining experience.

The culmination, if you can call it that, took place in a doctor’s waiting room — where a middle aged woman took a cell phone out of her purse and screamed a long repetitive conversation to a deaf relative.

Over the years; I have been engulfed in the frisson of vocal public dramas, and have more than once overheard parts of conversations that made me wish I could have overheard more — but I have never heard an interesting cell phone conversation.

Where are we going with this? That’s the question in the poem, isn’t it?

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Responsibility” Bumper Sticker

“Responsibility” Bumper Sticker

Words like “justice” and “equitable” are very subjective in meaning; and can be used to support actions that “equal” and “ethical” would never condone; but words that can directly manipulate others have taken over the spotlight in our dog and pony show.

“Using” is probably the most important concept behind social rhetoric today — because using always puts the user in control and at the center of any action. Therefore “old school” concepts that are “loaded” with connotations and are historically tied to our views of ourselves and our humanity are a perfect tool for using; by threatening damage to someone’s self-image.