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Update 2020-12-16: (True sticky posts banned; click to read.) So, owing to the evolution of the internet, or at least my own approach to it,...

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Oh, Hi, Blog.

I just made myself a bowl of salad. I've done this often enough. But today I was struck by how many times I deposited something in the trash can. The various strips I tore off the tops of bags to open them. A plastic bag of the lettuce blend that I emptied. Something cat-unfriendly that fell into the cat hair. The trash can was already about full, with take-home containers from restaurants covering most of the other contents. There's no recycling facility around this bit of the burbs.

I live, or perhaps "dwell" is a better word, basically alone, with my two cats. I have not kept track of how often I change the kitchen trash bag. I know my small upstairs trash is overflowing, as ever. I don't often get around to changing that one, but usually when I do, somehow, it's back to overflowing within two days, per my own distorted perception of time. Used tissues, the torn-off bits of my pay stubs, copious cat hair from brushing Kadie the tabby, the occasional chocolate wrapper. The whole rest of my room is just slightly chaotic, with envelopes and business ads strewn about miscellaneous items. One of them is from my dentist that I still haven't seen; my mother gave it to me. I've kept it for reference, even though I know where they are and can therefore glean their number from Google Maps.

Yes, my own life is perhaps at least a tad messy. But I could well be a symptom of the culture that produced me.

I'm making my living in a convenience kitchen. The particular store I work is quite high volume for its kind. Also, it's in Tennessee — a state with some of the nation's strictest food laws, per co-workers in the know. Any way, if you've worked "on the ground" in a business, you may know...

So. Much. Waste.

And, to add insult to injury, my company does not allow food that's been written off to go to any use whatsoever. Even though it's been officially written off as waste, they consider it theft if someone takes home and/or consumes, for instance, the two cookies that were in the warmer and didn't sell before expiration. Surely it's this policy that's theft! Perfectly good, warm cookies in the eyes of the single mother that's going to her other job when she gets off in two hours. Straight to the trash. Right with the country.

If you've been paying attention to the news, you know that everything's going to hell in a water bottle. The creation of those small water containers is leading to a historic unleashing of floods and "megastorms". With the rise of fascism comes the rise of the ocean levels. We should be combatting the plastic pandemic with all we got; instead, we're ripping aspiring migrant children from their parents' arms and developing bulletproof backpacks in an immediate surrender to the inevitability of mass shooters with military-grade rifles.

I guess what I'm getting at here is,

I need to make some radical changes to my own life. And so, probably, do you. Perhaps… we make changes together.