A nasty, heavy thump on the front porch drew Riley and I from our peaceful slumber on Saturday morning. About 3kg of the past was hand-delivered by some begrimed striding labourer into my present.
Eventually, when we had recovered from the rudeness of someone encroaching uninvited into our personal space so far as to be nearly upon the front steps, and I had brewed some coffee with which to fortify my responses, I peered from behind the curtains sideways out at the evidence of the encounter.
"Shock" is a little too strong a descriptor. Let's say rather that it took a few shifts of consciousness to come to terms with the resources bought to bear very early (before 9am!) on a Saturday morning to physically hand deliver to me, at my house, a phone book.
You may not be familiar with this concept. It is a large, alphabetical (by surname) index of all persons (in this case, although it could also be businesses) who have a telephone and who live within an arbitrary radius of a large city or, indeed, town. It is supplied printed on paper. Paper. It is not available for download. Not even as a PDF. It includes many many dozens of thousands of people, comprises hundreds of pages (more even than Infinite Jest!!) and asks to be let into the house and kept for a year or more. How very cheeky. I drew the curtain again and left it on the porch in order to ponder this request.
Pros
* I do have a phone. Conceivably I may wish to use it at some point in the next 12 to 18 months to call someone I don't currently know. This reference may help to source their number.
* My sister is about to move house and she may need a large amount of wrapping paper for her glassware.
Cons
* I feel it likely that anyone I am welcome to call will provide me with their preferred contact mode and the details thereof.
* My sister has completed wrapping her glassware, as she also received a delivery.
* It is large, ugly, poorly bound, and has nowhere else to live other than the drawer currently colonised by the mouse/mice and I feel it would be interpreted as encouragement to their expansionist ambitions.
* The house is already somewhat cluttered with books.
I feel slightly put-upon by this assumption that I want or need this reference tome.
There was no "tick the box" to opt in or out, no consultation, no other strategy, just presumptuous delivery. Another physical manifestation of the parochial concept of "service" that pushes down from the echelons what it is we plebeian suburbanites apparently want and need. For the same energy and carbon, perhaps I would have chosen a nice fresh (and blank) 8gb flash drive, or even a plain unbranded dvd full of data of my choice, or even better a bale (probably bales plural in relative terms) of mulch straw to bolster the efforts of my neophyte vegetables. So many options. So little consultation or inclusion.
But I digress.
I use the back door to leave the house for the errands in order to postpone the inevitable confrontation, athough I know the final outcome already. It just seems a little rude to put it into the recycling bin immediately. Let the poor doomed thing have a few pitiful hours in the sun, feeling the breeze and hearing the neighbourhood thugs practise their gansta cant before it begins the dark and unknown journey through the big yellow-lidded bin of second-chances to be reborn as thicker paper, light card or perhaps a box.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Showing posts with label Carbon Footprint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carbon Footprint. Show all posts
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Monday, July 06, 2009
Bronze Nails
I intended to blog tonight, and I even made a bit of an effort to think of decent ideas for once, but obviously this plan has not come to fruition. Please forgive me. I've just spent a cozy two and a half hours snuggled up to my Greader. So many blogs and articles and essays all queued up for me by topic or author. I have barely gotten through half of it. What a pleasure. If only I could read it on the couch.
The major distraction tonight was catching up with new posts from Club Orlov. One of the things I love about this blog is the "been there, done that" nature of the analysis and information. Just because the big big mass of Russia is a long way away (in all the different nuances that hang around after the cold war) doesn't mean we can't learn a lot from their recent history and experiences. It is one thing to look at a bunch of graphs and say, "This is going to be bad" and another to hear exactly how bad (and I don't mean just having to live on cabbage). There are little tidbits too, such as the value of bronze nails.
"It also makes sense to establish stockpiles of non-perishable materials that will preserve their usefulness far into the future. My favourite example is bronze nails. They last a over a hundred years in salt water, and so they are perfect for building boats. The manufacturing of bronze nails is actually a good use of the remaining fossil fuels - better than most. They are compact and easy to store."
I didn't even think about the possibility that nails might be made of stuff that erodes. I mean, that's a stupid idea, right?! What a perfect example of how our thinking as a system is faulty. Not that I'm ever going to be able to build a boat. Or even that I can use a hammer without hurting myself. Who am I kidding anyway, I'm almost certain to die off as soon as the chocolate supply gets dodgy. I've got three lightfittings in my house where I can't even get a lightbulb to work. Plus, I live nearly 150 kloms from the ocean. And I don't eat fish. Now. I reckon if rotten cabbages get on the menu, pretty much anything goes.
But I digress.
It's not just the handy hints towards a happy post-peak-oil-life that I enjoy and it is more than the fabulously footnoted details, it is that Club Orlov presents with a fabulous sense of humour. Anyone who can make me laugh involuntarily about global economic collapse due to the denial of the (easily projected) minimum production volumes and maximum affordable costs of energy has to be clever, resilient and fundamentally very, very funny.
I don't want to spoil it for you in case you have the urge to explore for yourself, and maybe you won't think so, but I'm still chuckling now. Anyway, that's the reason there will not be a blog from me tonight. I've been deliciously distracted and suddenly it is past my bedtime and time to don jammies and sleep. Ah, but my mind is spinning, trying to recalibrate my plan to take in all the knowables, the unknowables, the things we don't know we don't know and now to do all of this and yet remain flexible, with lots more humour!
The major distraction tonight was catching up with new posts from Club Orlov. One of the things I love about this blog is the "been there, done that" nature of the analysis and information. Just because the big big mass of Russia is a long way away (in all the different nuances that hang around after the cold war) doesn't mean we can't learn a lot from their recent history and experiences. It is one thing to look at a bunch of graphs and say, "This is going to be bad" and another to hear exactly how bad (and I don't mean just having to live on cabbage). There are little tidbits too, such as the value of bronze nails.
"It also makes sense to establish stockpiles of non-perishable materials that will preserve their usefulness far into the future. My favourite example is bronze nails. They last a over a hundred years in salt water, and so they are perfect for building boats. The manufacturing of bronze nails is actually a good use of the remaining fossil fuels - better than most. They are compact and easy to store."
I didn't even think about the possibility that nails might be made of stuff that erodes. I mean, that's a stupid idea, right?! What a perfect example of how our thinking as a system is faulty. Not that I'm ever going to be able to build a boat. Or even that I can use a hammer without hurting myself. Who am I kidding anyway, I'm almost certain to die off as soon as the chocolate supply gets dodgy. I've got three lightfittings in my house where I can't even get a lightbulb to work. Plus, I live nearly 150 kloms from the ocean. And I don't eat fish. Now. I reckon if rotten cabbages get on the menu, pretty much anything goes.
But I digress.
It's not just the handy hints towards a happy post-peak-oil-life that I enjoy and it is more than the fabulously footnoted details, it is that Club Orlov presents with a fabulous sense of humour. Anyone who can make me laugh involuntarily about global economic collapse due to the denial of the (easily projected) minimum production volumes and maximum affordable costs of energy has to be clever, resilient and fundamentally very, very funny.
I don't want to spoil it for you in case you have the urge to explore for yourself, and maybe you won't think so, but I'm still chuckling now. Anyway, that's the reason there will not be a blog from me tonight. I've been deliciously distracted and suddenly it is past my bedtime and time to don jammies and sleep. Ah, but my mind is spinning, trying to recalibrate my plan to take in all the knowables, the unknowables, the things we don't know we don't know and now to do all of this and yet remain flexible, with lots more humour!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Solstice and Spaceship Earth
It is winter solstice again; the long night.
I went to my little sister's place for dinner and to play cards and it was good to see them and catch up on their news. Time is moving faster for them now that she's going to have a baby. There's a very finite and concrete sense of 'time left before the baby comes' and 'everything after'. I can see what shape it is giving to weekends and plans and of course their relationship. All the natural winter urges are heightened for them.
I was thinking earlier today - what is the most beautiful thing that you can think of? Or perhaps it is a place or a person or a sound... feel the joy and the beauty it brings you. How precious and wonderful that is.
Now unless you naturally think of the Eagle Nebula, the Sun's corona or the rings of Saturn, chances are very very good that what you thought of - even your top ten - are all here on earth. Everything is here. So why is it that being a 'greenie' or someone concerned about the well being and survival of the planet is still considered such a social crime? I just don't understand how anyone can be so obstinately ignorant of the peril we're in. It isn't even that "if we break this one we don't have a spare" because we know this one is already broken and the question on every body's heart and mind should really be more like "how much can we mend it if we all pitch in?"
All those extinct species won't come back, but maybe we won't all have to genetically merge with salamanders to survive.
I went to my little sister's place for dinner and to play cards and it was good to see them and catch up on their news. Time is moving faster for them now that she's going to have a baby. There's a very finite and concrete sense of 'time left before the baby comes' and 'everything after'. I can see what shape it is giving to weekends and plans and of course their relationship. All the natural winter urges are heightened for them.
I was thinking earlier today - what is the most beautiful thing that you can think of? Or perhaps it is a place or a person or a sound... feel the joy and the beauty it brings you. How precious and wonderful that is.
Now unless you naturally think of the Eagle Nebula, the Sun's corona or the rings of Saturn, chances are very very good that what you thought of - even your top ten - are all here on earth. Everything is here. So why is it that being a 'greenie' or someone concerned about the well being and survival of the planet is still considered such a social crime? I just don't understand how anyone can be so obstinately ignorant of the peril we're in. It isn't even that "if we break this one we don't have a spare" because we know this one is already broken and the question on every body's heart and mind should really be more like "how much can we mend it if we all pitch in?"
All those extinct species won't come back, but maybe we won't all have to genetically merge with salamanders to survive.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Deadline of Death
I've got something I have to do and by God I am going to procrastinate until the very last second. I've put this off twice already (by weeks) and done nothing towards it. Nothing. Rather than complete this task, that I originally offered to do as a favour, I've done home improvements this weekend.
Yes, I, the least capable, least interested, least skilled person in all of south-east Queensland picked up a hammer! Then nails! Then discovered I needed screws instead and called a handyman. That was a call he'll wish he never answered.
There was a full ute-load to the tip! Carpet got ripped up! The man-hole (giggle) was investigated to ascertain the viability of taking out some walls (walls, it turns out, can be finicky things to remove. Apparently some of them are keeping the roof up! This is clearly an activity that will have to wait until I have another project due that requires an even higher, more demanding level of procrastination). I pruned, I carted rubbish to the bin, I culled papers, cooked. I even cleaned. The house is looking great.
Still this thing needed to be done. So I watched my tv show and laughed the jolly laugh of someone who is frivolously throwing away time knowing that the DEADLINE OF DEATH is inexorably drawing near. The show finished after only an hour - nothing for it, I must turn on the computer and begin this slow, tedious and uninteresting task and perhaps earn some measure of redemption as a person by finally completing this thing.
But oh, Google opens and I remember that I wanted to find out what car Vin Diesel was driving in XXX as he chases the 'submarine' that thankfully has decided to run on top of the water this time or it would have been a fully shit chase scene
"Can you see it?"
"NO YOU IDOT - it's under the fucking water"
"OK, stay calm, we'll just bomb the shit out of the river"
"Well that's cool, but now what's our reason for drinving this insane care around really really fast?!"
"What?! We need a reason?!"
"Yes," I think "that's a valid tangent so follow at this point" so enter: Classic Muscle Cars and after only 2 pages discover that the Pontiac GTO is nicknamed "The Judge". Cool. I also learnt what 'break horsepower' refers to (and it is not about stopping!), and then as I find myself comparing the relative merits and lines of the 64 Plymouth Barracuda and the 67 Chevy Camaro three things really struck home:
1. I know nothing about cars. Nothing. But somehow I now find them funny instead of reprehensible. I've changed. I also want to meet a mechanic who shares my dream of making the first moon landing in a muscle car. I'll be navigation, they can drive.
2. I am an olympic level procrastinator. The only thing more hilarious than trying to figure out my car's "performance" metrics (Audrey the 81 Mazda 323 is so banged about that we can't be sure which of the two models that were released that year she is. Using Occams Razor - I'd say the cheaper one, not the slightly sporty one. But they had the same engine capacity so no big diff right? Anyway I've kept a log of how many kloms she does every time I fill up the tank so that I can figure out her average kloms per litre, but it's in the glovebox and I forget to bring it in) to add into the heavy-weight champs battle of Barracuda Vs Camaro would be to blog about it and invite the world to laugh along with (not at) me. Please feel welcome to laugh .... now.
and
3. That's another Hour and A Half gone and there is now no way I am going to get this thing done now. Maybe I should just go to bed, and blame the Global Financial Crisis...
Another gold for procrastination!
(Oh, and Happy (Chinese) New Year! Go the mighty Ox!)
Yes, I, the least capable, least interested, least skilled person in all of south-east Queensland picked up a hammer! Then nails! Then discovered I needed screws instead and called a handyman. That was a call he'll wish he never answered.
There was a full ute-load to the tip! Carpet got ripped up! The man-hole (giggle) was investigated to ascertain the viability of taking out some walls (walls, it turns out, can be finicky things to remove. Apparently some of them are keeping the roof up! This is clearly an activity that will have to wait until I have another project due that requires an even higher, more demanding level of procrastination). I pruned, I carted rubbish to the bin, I culled papers, cooked. I even cleaned. The house is looking great.
Still this thing needed to be done. So I watched my tv show and laughed the jolly laugh of someone who is frivolously throwing away time knowing that the DEADLINE OF DEATH is inexorably drawing near. The show finished after only an hour - nothing for it, I must turn on the computer and begin this slow, tedious and uninteresting task and perhaps earn some measure of redemption as a person by finally completing this thing.
But oh, Google opens and I remember that I wanted to find out what car Vin Diesel was driving in XXX as he chases the 'submarine' that thankfully has decided to run on top of the water this time or it would have been a fully shit chase scene
"Can you see it?"
"NO YOU IDOT - it's under the fucking water"
"OK, stay calm, we'll just bomb the shit out of the river"
"Well that's cool, but now what's our reason for drinving this insane care around really really fast?!"
"What?! We need a reason?!"
"Yes," I think "that's a valid tangent so follow at this point" so enter: Classic Muscle Cars and after only 2 pages discover that the Pontiac GTO is nicknamed "The Judge". Cool. I also learnt what 'break horsepower' refers to (and it is not about stopping!), and then as I find myself comparing the relative merits and lines of the 64 Plymouth Barracuda and the 67 Chevy Camaro three things really struck home:
1. I know nothing about cars. Nothing. But somehow I now find them funny instead of reprehensible. I've changed. I also want to meet a mechanic who shares my dream of making the first moon landing in a muscle car. I'll be navigation, they can drive.
2. I am an olympic level procrastinator. The only thing more hilarious than trying to figure out my car's "performance" metrics (Audrey the 81 Mazda 323 is so banged about that we can't be sure which of the two models that were released that year she is. Using Occams Razor - I'd say the cheaper one, not the slightly sporty one. But they had the same engine capacity so no big diff right? Anyway I've kept a log of how many kloms she does every time I fill up the tank so that I can figure out her average kloms per litre, but it's in the glovebox and I forget to bring it in) to add into the heavy-weight champs battle of Barracuda Vs Camaro would be to blog about it and invite the world to laugh along with (not at) me. Please feel welcome to laugh .... now.
and
3. That's another Hour and A Half gone and there is now no way I am going to get this thing done now. Maybe I should just go to bed, and blame the Global Financial Crisis...
Another gold for procrastination!
(Oh, and Happy (Chinese) New Year! Go the mighty Ox!)
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Footprints & Bananas
This week my one year anniversary in the job ticked over. The day started well, the banana I peeled for my muesli was a double-yolker! A good omen in Qld.
One year anniversaries are celebrated with 'paper', I just printed out some emails. Then I felt bad. I did a carbon footprint quiz and learnt that if everyone lived like me, we'd need 2.9 planets. Crap. I was pretty embarrassed by that. It's the flying, and the car, oh, and that I live in a house all on my own. I mean really, that's just not fair. How do I know how far the veggies in Woolies have travelled? They keep pretty quiet about that kind of thing! I don't want to whinge too much, I think it was pretty lenient really. After all, the quiz didn't ask me if I have pets or not (add at least a half a planet for them, maybe more), if I take regular medication (that's gotta be a half-planet's worth, just on the packaging!) or if I buy stuff over the internet. Actually maybe that's good. I don't know. I don't think I can handle knowing at the moment. Still, 2.9 planets.
And that's not any old planet either, it's not like a twentieth of Neptune is going to sort out this problem. No, it's Earth or it's nothing. I wonder what the carbon (and remember, we haven't started really measuring any other kind of footprint yet!?) footprint for the colonisation of Mars would look like? Something like 486 planets probably. Then when we get there, we have to do terraforming!
Anyway, I was a bit bummed by the footprint report, so I clicked on the "Things you can do!" sidebar. Wow - I could put energy efficient lightbulbs in! I wouldn't have thought of that on my own... oh wait, I could reduce the packaging on things I buy and then recycle more. HHmmm. I think this is written for my neighbours.
You know what, I'd love to see one of these sidebars that suggests useful things like:
Five Great Tips to Help Save the Earth
1. Stop breeding! The Earth is overpopulated, especially with rich fat fucks like you!
2. Stop eating twice or three times the amount you need!
3. Walking is not a criminal behaviour!
4. Shopping will not fill the hollow place where your heart should be!
5. Stay where you are! Please don't travel to gawp at our problems - sort out your own back yard. Then you could plant some parsley in it.
Fine. So. Anyway.
Paper anniversary. I recycled all the paper I could this week, and have been spreading mulch around some parts of the yard. I'm not convinced of the science of the mulch anymore for water preservation (read this book if you'd like to know more) but it gave me something to do and I'm hoping it will keep some of the weeds down a bit. Or at least make them a little easier to dig up later. Presuming I can ever feel motivated again. All I wanted to do this week was sleep, and sometimes I seemed to achieve it while I was walking around. I have been a zombie this week, only the finger on the tv remote seems to have any energy.
So my double-yolker banana was a great moment in breakfast, and pretty much the highlight of the week, but didn't herald any wonderful abundances.... oh, *except*, now that I put it all together - I'm new in the job, so for the first 3 years I get a pay rise for each year that I'm there (separate to the CPI rise) and that (wait for it!) ticks over on the anniversary! Woot!! I would have got a pay rise on that day!! How terribly civilised!! It will be virtually indiscernible in terms of cash I'm sure, but the principal of the thing is simply marvellous!
And technically, money is still a paper-based currency, so The Banana didn't lie, the double-yolker really was a good omen!
You couldn't write fiction like that!
One year anniversaries are celebrated with 'paper', I just printed out some emails. Then I felt bad. I did a carbon footprint quiz and learnt that if everyone lived like me, we'd need 2.9 planets. Crap. I was pretty embarrassed by that. It's the flying, and the car, oh, and that I live in a house all on my own. I mean really, that's just not fair. How do I know how far the veggies in Woolies have travelled? They keep pretty quiet about that kind of thing! I don't want to whinge too much, I think it was pretty lenient really. After all, the quiz didn't ask me if I have pets or not (add at least a half a planet for them, maybe more), if I take regular medication (that's gotta be a half-planet's worth, just on the packaging!) or if I buy stuff over the internet. Actually maybe that's good. I don't know. I don't think I can handle knowing at the moment. Still, 2.9 planets.
And that's not any old planet either, it's not like a twentieth of Neptune is going to sort out this problem. No, it's Earth or it's nothing. I wonder what the carbon (and remember, we haven't started really measuring any other kind of footprint yet!?) footprint for the colonisation of Mars would look like? Something like 486 planets probably. Then when we get there, we have to do terraforming!
Anyway, I was a bit bummed by the footprint report, so I clicked on the "Things you can do!" sidebar. Wow - I could put energy efficient lightbulbs in! I wouldn't have thought of that on my own... oh wait, I could reduce the packaging on things I buy and then recycle more. HHmmm. I think this is written for my neighbours.
You know what, I'd love to see one of these sidebars that suggests useful things like:
Five Great Tips to Help Save the Earth
1. Stop breeding! The Earth is overpopulated, especially with rich fat fucks like you!
2. Stop eating twice or three times the amount you need!
3. Walking is not a criminal behaviour!
4. Shopping will not fill the hollow place where your heart should be!
5. Stay where you are! Please don't travel to gawp at our problems - sort out your own back yard. Then you could plant some parsley in it.
Fine. So. Anyway.
Paper anniversary. I recycled all the paper I could this week, and have been spreading mulch around some parts of the yard. I'm not convinced of the science of the mulch anymore for water preservation (read this book if you'd like to know more) but it gave me something to do and I'm hoping it will keep some of the weeds down a bit. Or at least make them a little easier to dig up later. Presuming I can ever feel motivated again. All I wanted to do this week was sleep, and sometimes I seemed to achieve it while I was walking around. I have been a zombie this week, only the finger on the tv remote seems to have any energy.
So my double-yolker banana was a great moment in breakfast, and pretty much the highlight of the week, but didn't herald any wonderful abundances.... oh, *except*, now that I put it all together - I'm new in the job, so for the first 3 years I get a pay rise for each year that I'm there (separate to the CPI rise) and that (wait for it!) ticks over on the anniversary! Woot!! I would have got a pay rise on that day!! How terribly civilised!! It will be virtually indiscernible in terms of cash I'm sure, but the principal of the thing is simply marvellous!
And technically, money is still a paper-based currency, so The Banana didn't lie, the double-yolker really was a good omen!
You couldn't write fiction like that!
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