Are you mentally Ill? Take this test...

Answer this simple question...your nation's crops are about to utterly collapse due to anthropomorphic climate change. You:
A) Stock up on Ben & Jerry's ice cream because prices will probably go up.
B) Call congressman because it must have something to do with the potholes in the highway.
C) Dust the bicycle off to reduce fuel consumption and pollution
D) Not a damn thing.



Tell me who is mentally ill. Excuses pile up like butterflies on a car's radiator fins but it still doesn't solve anything. We are each responsible for this gigantic climate flux and can also be responsible for solving the problem. Unless we do absolutely nothing and hope some magic tractor beam technology will be invented that dissolves carbon from the atmosphere...in which case most of us are fucked.
The very fact that I had to leave my sunglasses on in order to take them off at the precise David Caruso CSI Miami moment...because that might better connect with brain dead television addicts...is really gross. I must be crazy for thinking years of self abuse can be contradicted by a mere blog.

We have to change our ways. "Oh, I've got kids and it'll be hard..." hahaha
I really see how that is equivalent to B's defense of her crusty toothbrush and cockroach bathrobe. She had her reasons for living in filth and we have our reasons for destroying the climate. We're ignorant of the consequences but we nevertheless change nothing. I'll have it be known that I wasn't always a environmental evangelist. I liked hiking and animals and such but there was a time when going to McDonalds or tossing a single serve milk jug in the garbage was done automatically, mid laughter as I spit on an ugly girl's back as I tossed my Red Sox hat onto my head. I had to decide to make changes...I grew up... and I believe I've made the mature changes so I'm not changing back. I'd say that someone who has totally changed and refuses to reverse his changes isn't the intractable one and someone who is still living like it's 1988 and their parents are away for the weekend is the selfish cunt who is fucking everything up. Most people are born-again environmentalists because our parents were selfish and ignorant people of the 1950s with minds as closed as the Gaza strip. Come on, they thought Asbestos was healthy. Doctor's recommended cigarettes. So thanks to David Brower and a resurgence of Thoreau's work and Edward Abbey and Ralph Nader and Jimmy Carter we had to learn piece by piece that our actions would have drastic consequences and that maybe we should do something. What? "Regulate our Waste" I chuckle when I say it because as simple as it sounds it's totally outside the realm of understanding for pretty much every person, except B, that I've met in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, etc. No one regulates their waste or their consumption. It's a free-for-all and it's killing us.
Where B and I have gone astray is by trying to do more than our share. That causes unnecessary and counterproductive problems for us as individuals, but attempting to do at least our share is not a mental illness. No. If you think it is then you are the one who is mentally ill. It's hard to believe that Fox News is wrong in that respect, but believe me. This (complete environmental meltdown) is not a problem that 2 or 200 people can solve. It needs a full 313 million or it won't work. Yard waste dumpsters are being contaminated by a handful of idiots tossing motor oil in with their leaves and branches. We need complete cooperation or else the voluntary monitoring system breaks down and we end up using more resources than if we didn't try to recycle anything.

So, my encounter with the distraught B has had good consequences as I was able to parallel my own behavior with that of a known lunatic, and also compare the behavior and the insane rationalizations of society as a whole with the behavior of the same lunatic. Very interesting. I feel that I've found the perfect metaphor that people can relate to. Most people will really agree that saving a toothbrush encrusted with maggots, because it can be used to clean grout, is crazy. But I see now that the same deft and deadly self-justification are in use each time we knowingly contribute to a drought condition that will soon kick us in the ass by refusing to use a bicycle or the bus or a scooter. Texas is filled with V8 engines speeding with one guy at the wheel hauling only his cowboy hat and a pair of rubber boots on his way to the H.E.B to buy a single serve pop. Is that not mental illness? We each find ways to justify our own downfall and the difference only comes down to social acceptability...not innate rationality. The same blockades (Fox propaganda, greed, stupidity) prevent us from a mass change just like B refused to let go of a "popcorn bowl" that was encrusted with black mold...which is way worse than the loss of all corn crops in North America...of course.