Take Your Campaign & Shove It

So this girl for "[Your State Here] Campaign for the Environment" knocks on the door, and then rings the bell when I don't answer soon enough, and asks if I have a minute to talk about the natural gas drilling that's going on in our area. I tell her no, because the dog is barking like crazy, it's 8:45pm and my baby's asleep in the other room. She's adamant enough that she volunteers to let the dog sniff her and to be quick. I reluctantly give in.

She gives me her 2 minute spiel about what's going on, yada yada and what they're trying to do. I think she's cutting to the chase, but the dog is starting to bark again and I'm getting frustrated. So I ask her what she's looking for. The answer? Donations and letters to the City Council. I tell her that, honestly, this is actually something I HAVE read something about, and that if she needs my signature on a petition that I'm happy to do so, but that's about the extent of what I'm willing to do because I'm just not that passionate about it. I could tell she was frustrated at my bluntness; she handed me a flyer to read, said that then maybe I'd get motivated to act and went to knock on the door of our 70yo neighbor.

I understand that this is an issue I should probably be more passionate about, but I'm just not. I'm not apologetic about it either. The last thing I need right now is to join some committee and pledge $20 so that I can get one more email that I'm not going to read.

So this is my call to the City Council from the podium that I don't have. You guys need to listen to these people who are clearly passionate about something that you're not. You probably care about this issue as much as I do and the only difference is that you're probably taking money from these gas companies too. So get your act together and do the right thing so that I don't have passionate, hemp-wearing college students knocking on my door after dark. We're all gonna die anyway.

That's right. I said it.

The War on SUV's

White people are divided on this "war in Iraq" business. My next door neighbor was some sort of district coordinator in the Obama campaign and is heavily against the war. His next door neighbor is a gun-wielding conservative that only cares about defending our country, retribution and gays not having rights. HIS next door neighbor is a couple of lesbians. I don't know what they think about the war, but you should know these aren't the kind of lesbians you should care about.

I'm only now beginning to get over the tired-head associated with "war" talk on the news or radio. Politics seem so boring and futile. I guess my change of heart is probably rooted in these soaring gas and milk prices. Have you tried buying a gallon of milk lately? Crap. How does a war about oil affect cows? I don't know, but it does.

Anyway, I saw this interesting statistic today from Scott Burns:

The [war in Iraq], alone, is now clocking past $560 billion. That’s enough to manufacture and put in service over 22 million new fuel-efficient hybrid automobiles and dent the supply/demand balance for energy from the Middle East.

I don't know if 22 million people would have the money, or be willing to spend it on a brand new hybrid, but I thought this stat was pretty fascinating. If this war's still about the terror then I wonder if it'd be cheaper to build a bio-dome over America and put Pauly Shore in charge of homeland security.