Sustainability seems so rigorous, like scaling a rock wall when you’d rather watch TV. It sounds so virtuous, like passing up bacon, eggs and hash browns for a tofu scramble. It sounds so boring, like having two basic outfits, both black. It sounds so unsexy, like sensible shoes and cotton underwear. It sounds so constraining, like penny pinching and calorie counting and going to AA. Party’s over, now let’s get down to… ugh… sustainability. Not.
Take them trying to pass off “less is more” for what we all in our guts know is the truth: “more is more” and “bigger is better” until you can’t even fit into your elastic waist pants or afford to fill the tank on your monster truck.
Or take their idea of staying home and staying put and living local and having potlucks as a way to save money and energy. Me, I am a Southwest fun-fare junkie. Take me, oh symbol of freedom, to the year-round playgrounds of the planet… to Minneapolis to shop at the Mall of America, to Texas to party during spring break, in winter to Hawai’I for surfing and Colorado for skiing, in August to Paris when the Frenchies have cleared out and left the Champs to us. As long as my credit card holds (the one from Southwest where I earn free trips, whee!) Local is for yokels. Local is taking out the garbage, cleaning house, yard work and work work. Lemme outa here! Oh, did I mention night life? Unless local is the Big Apple, you risk having nowhere to go after midnight in the gazillion bergs and burbs of America.
So less and local sounds like starvation and house arrest.
How about lazy? Lazy sounds good. Lazy is staying home with a beer watching TV. Lazy could even be having no lawn to mow by covering the whole thing with compost. It’s throwing out some lettuce, carrot, tomato and cucumber seeds for salads and zucchini and cabbage and Chewbaca (or is that bok choy?) for some hot veggies, throwing straw over the whole thing, letting the rain come and getting dinner out the door without having to go to the mega market in the mega mall. And it’d be free. I like free. Lazy is buying everything online and having it delivered to the door, never making the effort to drive and shop. Lazy is Netflicks. Lazy is E-bay. Lazy is going over to your neighbor’s house to watch the game, or down to the corner sport’s bar – let them make the Buffalo Wings. Lazy is not buying new clothes for every g’dam wedding, it’s just wearing what you had last year… if it still fits.
Lazy is telecommuting to your desk job – why not, everyone else does it? You don’t shave, work in your PJs and as long you get your assignments in on time, heck, why sit in traffic two extra hours a day to go to an office burning up that friggin’ expensive gas? Lazy is lounging with your kids in bed on Sunday, tickling and giggling, rather than going to Disneyland.
Lazy is forming a car coop so you don’t have to take care of a hunk of steel that spends most of the day sitting around degrading in your driveway – let someone else drive it sometimes and gas it up and take it to the car wash. Lazy is buying food in bulk; less hauling of huge garbage bags of packaging out to the curb or to the dump. Lazy is sharing errands with neighbors – by picking up their photos at the drug store this time, they’ll get your eggs the next. Half the trips. Well, come to think of it, lazy is a digital camera so you don’t even have to take your photos to the drugstore.
Or take electricity – lazy would be getting those curly compact fluorescent bulbs. They last so long you may never have to change them. Put some solar panels on your roof and let the sun handle your electricity. It’s putting out energy anyway, why not take some of those free rays rather than paying a bundle for the old rays stored in fossil fuels. It’s called ‘fossil’ for a reason. Very very old. And hard to get. In fact, on sunny days the electric company will pay YOU for your extra electricity – lazy is getting the power company to pay you. Yep. That’s ultra-lazy. Charge up that electric car and have some rays left over. Use that extra income (earned in your pajamas, a big criteria for lazy living) to get someone to double glaze your windows. Or caulk your house. Heck, you could make a quick pot of chili and throw a caulking party and get your friends and neighbors over to help. Community is way lazy – share the work, spare yourself the lonely drudgery of breaking your back doing it all solo. A very lazy dinner might be inviting the neighbors to a pot of chili even if they don’t work. They can bring a salad, dessert and, yes, Buffalo Wings and have a total feast. Eat your heart out, Denny’s, we’re staying home and pigging out. Wait, no, is this what those sustainability loonies call a pot luck? Whatever, if they want to live lazy too, they are welcome to it. Cards anyone?
1 comment:
Well said!
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