New Post

I didn't like the construction of the first sentence of the previous post, so I decided I needed a new post. I'm drinking a beer after a long night of work. For someone who loves beer as much as I do I'm surprised to admit that this is my first beer since Seattle, which was two weeks ago.

Has it been that long, tasty pal? I'm working on a Double Take Brewing Co. Amber Ale; brewed in Rochester the label tells me. It hits the spot for certain.

I had a strange thought the other day: crude oil, for all the odors and flammability, is a natural product. If leaves, having turned all sorts of beautiful fiery colors, fall into a pond, do we consider that an ecological disaster? One in which the polluted pond now has aquatic life choking away into death because of the decomposing leaves eating up the oxygen?

I guess leaves burn too.

I had another strange thought the other day: I'm one of the three types of asshole that makes it extra dangerous to swim in the ocean in the immediate wake of rain.

The first type is the uses-pesticides-on-his-lawn-and-home-garden guy. Whenever the first rain comes, all that runoff comes swooshing down the storm drains into the concrete riverbeds and washes out to sea.

The second type are me and my compadres, the too-poor-or-too-cheap-to-buy-a-new-car-so-we-drive-our-old-POS-and-drip-oil-everywhere folks. I joke that I don't need to get an oil change because I put oil in every few days, which is like changing it, right? It's always fresh and new. Then the rain comes, and people like me, with our old polluting cars (too bad it doesn't smell like old leaves) contribute directly to the level of petroleum in the ocean.

Luckily for everyone (in the world) the ocean is generally big enough to filter out and render the levels of runoff pollutants rather inert over a big enough time frame.

The third type of asshole is the I-don't-pick-up-my-dog's-poop jerk. Whenever you hear about "bacteria levels are too high" at the beaches right after a rain, it's directly a result of these bastards not picking up their dog's shit. With the pesticides and petroleum, animal waste is washed into the storm drains and out to sea in a nasty brew, made cleaner only through time.

I know it's not the most pleasant or convenient thing ever--grabbing a steaming deuce with an inside out baggie and then finding a can to drop it in--but that's one of the costs of the love, loyalty, and companionship that a dog brings you, goddammit.

In Long Beach, at least in our neighborhood, it's a serious problem, and we're right next to the damn beach. In Brooklyn it was a problem too, but maybe less so.

I remember thinking, while we lived out there, that they should make the fine for not picking up your pet's droppings five-thousand dollars. Draconian? Yes, obviously, but how many people would just let it sit there if that was the cost? Imagine all the extra police you could afford, added to neighborhoods just to keep an eye out for irresponsible pet owners. Nobody would be able to pay the fine all at once, and it would have to be made part of their monthly bills. Rent, heat, phone, dogshit ticket, electricity.

If that was the case, you better damn well believe people would remember their duty to take care of their dog's doody.

That reminds me of a scene from a Futurama episode where Bender, enthralled with the way of life on a planet that's modeled after ancient Egypt, says in reference to a slave working on a giant statue of the current pharaoh, "If you spend your whole life carving a guy's toe, you're gonna remember him." It was all part of his neurosis about not being remembered.

My amber ale from Rochester is finished, and so shall this stream of consciousness post be as well.