Making It Up As I Go Along #308

MONDAY...
— Back to supervisor days. Begin the week of CNI supervisor while Christine and Megan are training. It goes pretty well... time flies by.
— Family Day messes up my grocery shopping. I have no milk and little of other stuff and the grocery stores are closed. Blah!

TUESDAY...
— Busy day. Work is okay, more morning snow to deal with and it’s getting real annoying when forecasts say stuff like a dusting of snow and we get five or so centimetres instead.
— Supper and a movie with Karl after work. Good food and a fine movie.
— A couple of e-mails when I get home and off to bed.

WEDNESDAY...
— Lunar eclipse day... I look at it for a few minutes at 10:00 tonight... kind of neat.
— Work is fine... after work is quiet. I watch Bang the Drum Slowly on DVD and little else.

THURSDAY...
— Work is okay and Megan, Melissa and I order Greek food for lunch... to celebrate Megan’s birthday.
— Home to see the stupidity of mankind. It’s easy to observe... recycling does it. That is to say, when you walk past a forest of black recycling boxes all full of cardboard and paper... and still, some schmuck leaves their blue box of plastics there... that guy’s not the most alert individual you’re going to run across.

FRIDAY...
— Good night’s sleep makes the day better. Last day as CNI supervisor... again. It was a fairly fun week.
— Off to the movies and supper with Karl. The pub is crowded though so they stick us at a little table in the centre of a room where it looks like a last minute addition. We’re basically sitting at the kiddy table. But the food is good all the same.
— Movies are good. Charlie Wilson’s War and a second viewing of I Am Legend.
— Fall asleep on the sofa to end the night.

SATURDAY...
— Quiet day around the house. Some e-mails, a bit of phone time catch up, a couple of movies, and the hockey... both in the afternoon and evening.

Taking Out the Trash
Littering. Is there any worse atrocity in the existence of mankind? Well... yes, I’m sure there is. But it’s still a pretty nasty thing all the same.

Back in the day, when I was a young kid bouncing around a car with nary a seatbelt to be seen, I’d litter. The world was our garbage can and bubble gum wrappers, and the occasional tin can, would find themselves hucked out the window rather than stored in a bag in the back seat. You’d make a game of it. You’d toss it straight out and see if you can keep your eye on the item while the car speeds away on the road to grandma’s house.

As time went on, we began to realize that not only would nature appreciate not being adorned with Hostess chip bags... but that we’d enjoy nature more when it’s void of that stuff. So there was no more throwing of tin cans and coke bottles into a lake or cove just to throw rocks at it and see who has the best aim. And there was no more deposits of those chip bags and chocolate bar wrappers into nearby streams while we returned to our game of war after a salty or sweet snack.

Instead we wanted to take care of our environment and bags and wrappers returned home with us, stuffed deep in pockets and forgotten until our mothers pulled the balls of paper out of the washing machine... nice and clean and ready for the trash.

Some littering has developed out of our attempts to do good. Recycling policies have us marching bins of plastics and papers out to sit at the curb all day, awaiting pick up. But if the wind picks up or the gulls or crows are looking for scraps, the end of garbage/recycling day is much more reminiscent of the late 1970s. Grocery store flyers and aluminum cans explore the neighbourhood for days afterwards and they often end up in those old places we shoved them as kids. Bushes, rivers, shrubs along the shore of a pond... all the 1970s trash dump sites are revisited, but this time as a result of our good intentions and a bit of wind.

But we live in a complicated age. Some anti-recylcers can now be seen as littering by actually using the garbage cans provided. A plastic water bottle or an empty coke tin being discarded in the trash will bring the harshest of responses from those wishing to save the environment. I’ve seen many a heated discussion start in my office simply because someone tosses their coke can.

Other littering has somehow become socially acceptable. Two items that are seemingly encouraged to be tossed out of a moving car remain. There’s the bubble gum spit. And the cigarette toss.

I believe that some think old gum will simply help the local pothole problem. Done with your gum and spit it to the street. Nature will see to it that the wad will find it’s way into the depths of broken asphalt and our vehicles will run smoothly over them, melding them to the pavement itself. In another fifty years, we’ll have no more need of road repair. We’ll be driving along Bubble Gum Avenue. And, in fact, it’ll be a form of recycling. From popping bubbles to maintaining a city’s infrastructure... the circle of gum... goes on.

As for cigarettes, it’s the most bizarre of our littering ways. I always puzzle over the fact that a smoker will prefer to maintain a perfectly clean ashtray... probably to use it as a storing space for change... then to use it for it’s actual purpose. Don’t use the tray, toss it out the window instead.

I hear some say that the smoker probably does it because the don’t want to smell the car up for the non-smokers who ride in it. Well this is kind of like putting a band-aid on a scraped knee when the guy’s jugular vein is pumping all over the place. The grey cloud spewing from your lips doesn’t smell like peppermint you know. Fact is, if you smoke in your car, the car’s going to smell like an ashtray. So you may as well use the one that’s sitting there waiting for you.

Not only is a tossed cigarette disgusting, laying along the curb all soggy with rain and muck. It can be dangerous too. I once did a Fire Prevention Plan for a park and, low and behold, in my readings I found that some park fires are started due to discarded cigarettes from passing vehicles. But I suppose this is also a form of recycling. After all, when a forest fire is finally extinguished, one rarely finds the cigarette that started it. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust... and all that good biblical stuff.

I guess even God believes in recycling.