Happy Lennin's Birthday.

While I was driving to work this morning, every radio station had Earth Day crap on, so I turned off the radio and looked around at all the broken glass and broken furniture and broken pieces of cars and rotting stuffed animals from murder shrines and general garbage that litters my commute to the inner city and realized all this "eco" crap is for rich people with no real problems who want to feel good about "caring" and "doing something" without doing any actual useful work (hand-washing your garbage* is not "useful work"). Which of course I knew, but nothing drives it home like sitting at a stop light, next to a house you'd swear was abandoned if it didn't have DishTV, with three cracked and battered 1970s sedans and a city bus with one passenger.

And the J-S pretty much reinforced my realization with this delightful piece of meaningless blather on "eco-fashion" (note: There is no way in hell that woman wore a dress of recycled glass). Buzzwords and feel-goodery, at boutiques in Mequon. A shirt of 5% soy? Why are you wearing food? We need it for ethanol!

I don't even understand things like "purses made of pop can tabs." Eventually the person who buys it is going to get tired of accessorizing with garbage bling, and they're going to throw it in the trash (or take it to Goodwill, who will throw it in the trash). Unless your customers are going to spend the time to un-crochet all the threads holding them together to recycle the tabs (possible, if they're the type to hand-wash their garbage; unlikely if they're dropping $150 for lifestyle-boutique purses), "the planet" would be better off if you'd just recycled your soda cans intact. The maker and seller would be out some cash, but isn't the whole point of environmentalism to sacrifice your own well-being so the rock you're living on "feels" better and the polar bears aren't sad?

'What is it doing to help our universe preserve itself?' Are you freaking joking? The universe has been constant change for billions of years. No dress is going to stop galaxies from colliding, prevent our sun from going supernova, or even stave off the coming ice age.

I think I'm just cranky because I've yet to dream up my own money-making "eco" scam.

I'm also wondering where to petition for increased usage of DDT. But all those children who don't die are just going to exhale carbon dioxide, we can't have that, now, can we? *mutter*

* Full disclosure: I have beads and other art supplies stored in peanut butter jars, prescription bottles, and coffee cans. There is no spiritual element to my "repurposing": I'm too cheap to buy brand new storage containers when there are perfectly good plastic containers free with my breakfast. And I ran them through the dishwasher, because I can.