Snorting Pixie Dust
Destroying the world to feel good
Mrs. FarSide has us on a regimen that is supposed to flush out the gall bladder and bowels to get rid of gall stones and toxins, and aid in weight loss. It consists of eating 4 large apples per day for 6 days, then drinking a witch’s brew of magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts), bitter orange extract and olive oil to launch the Great Purge. Needless to say, if I ever see another apple for the rest of my life, I will find separate living arrangements.
So, since I can’t sleep due to frequent trips to the Purging Station, I thought I would regale the dear reader with a rant on the “green” economy. Lucky you.
Back in the Dark Ages before the Great Reset, the missus and I would make our monthly pilgrimage to the grocery store. Admittedly, this wasn’t one of my favorite chores, but once every 30 days was tolerable.
We drove the car on a round-trip of 3km (~1.5 miles), purchased all our groceries for the month, used about 10 plastic grocery bags plus the product packaging, and the missus made up any shortfalls that month with a quick walk to the neighborhood co-op.
Today, we order almost everything but fresh veggies online. Each product comes wrapped in multiple layers of bubble plastic, stuffed inside a cardboard box, wrapped again with shipping film, taped all to hell and back, and a label is afixed to it. The entire engineering project is then delivered by a combination of truck and motorcycle - depending on the distance travelled - a minimum of 1km per package, which is usually one product per package.
Keep in mind that every household trash can in Indonesia is precisely designed to use plastic shopping bags as liners. In the Dark Ages, the 10 or so bags we brought home from the grocery store had a double life as a trash bag. Now, we have to buy a supply of virgin plastic bags to use for trash, the vast majority of which are used to dispose of the bubble wrap and shipping film. The cardboard boxes are collected and presumably recycled.
Mrs. FarSide thought she’d save some resources and order as many items from a single online store to cut down on fuel use and sheer volume of plastic wrap. The one she chose offered free shipping - but not if the box contained more than 3 items. This meant that ordering 9 items only got free delivery IF they were broken up into 3 separate boxes of 3 items. To do this meant 3 separate orders, and consequently 3 separate motorcycle hotshots and 3 times the amount of bubble wrap and shipping film.
This logistical and resource-laden nightmare is brought to you by the “green” idiocy. Somehow, all of these efforts and materials are better for the “environment” than our monthly trip to the store. How in the hell did ANYONE think this was a good idea? What special kind of fevered insanity dreamed up adding layers and layers of plastic and transportation as a means of reducing our impact on the world? Worse yet, folks just go along with this Rube Goldberg-esque infrastructure actually BELIEVING they are doing something righteous.
Just as an example, in the Dark Ages I would buy peanut butter at the store. I would compare the prices of the various brands on offer and select the one that gave me the best perceived value for the money. Now, I can select the precise brand and variety I want from dozens of vendors across the entire country, and in some cases Southeast Asia. I find the best price, and with my various incentives and coupons, I can have my peanut butter shipped in from 500km away for free, saving a buck off the vendor up the street. I do this on purpose as my silent middle finger to all this abject stupidity.
I don’t care anymore. I listen to the Bumbledicks crowing about the “green” revolution and energy transition, and all they see is the nice, clean air and streets in their precious tract housing developments.
What they don’t have to live with are the grotesque strip mines ripping up vast swaths of land to get at a handful of minerals. They don’t have to live with the toxic refining or the mountains of discarded batteries, solar panels and wind turbines that never produced enough energy to negate what was used to produce them. They don’t have to pay the full price of their EVs, because the government steals money from all of us to subsidize their virtue signals. They don’t have to stare into the faces of the humans whose lives are stolen at bargain-basement prices to create their sparkling fantasies.
These Bumbledick bastards (pardon my Mandarin) are sick, delusional and pathologically narcissistic. They think that, somehow, gluing themselves to priceless artwork will magically replace 200 years of technological development with their ridiculous contraptions that are far more harmful than a city full of internal combustion engines (ICEs).
If even a small fraction of the money and effort wasted on toxic “alternatives” had been plowed into research and development of better ICEs, our cars would be farting (pardon my Korean) rose pedals and potable water by now.
With all this horrific mental illness running rampant across the globe right now, I can almost sympathize with armed lawyers thinning the herd.
I have no problem with reducing my energy usage through more efficient devices. I love recycling anything I possibly can (I use old peanut butter jars for pickling). Mrs. FarSide grows a lot of our spices and vegetables on the porch, reducing the load on the whole farm-to-market infrastructure. I even have solar chargers for flashlights, power banks and cell phones. Maybe it’s from being raised by Depression Era parents, but I get as much use out of everything I buy as I possibly can.
However, converting arable land to solar and wind “farms,” or ripping it up for some pebbles is just freakin’ nutz.
The worst part is, all of this is based on deliberate disinformation and malinformation. It’s all complete rubbish, and the slimy shadows pushing it know it. To them, it is nothing more than a callous and cynical game to make themselves richer, and the rest of us poorer.
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It would be hilarious if it weren't so frustrating, infuriating and, yes, sad. Sigh.
I hope your gall bladder flush succeeds. Reminds me of a group fasting purge some hippie herbalist concocted with water, cayenne, apple cider vinegar and something else- this was 40 years ago. It was while trapped in a cabin in winter Lake Tahoe, after a New Year's Grateful Dead series of miracles, before my first trip to Hawaiii-Big Island. Somehow this was certain to prep our bodies against staph and other tropical parasites- Burning all the way through, purging the parasites, I'm sure. Weirdly I did feel better for a spell.