Alright, so I lied. I'm not really all that pathetic of a human being. I'm actually fairly alright on the grand scale of people.
I am not a serial killer, I don't litter, I don't like Hitler or North Korea, and yeah, I'm part of this pseudo-hippie generation that's too afraid to drop acid, but we're totally cool with rallying in large groups organized by completely random strangers on the internet.
Compared to people who are serial killers, do like Hitler and don't know how they feel about North Korea (because they haven't seen this; trust me, once you watch it you'll know how absolutely not-confused you should be about North Korea. Spoiler, there are NO people who aren't in on this whole let's-play-tea-party WITH A MILLION RANDOM PROGRAMMED ROBOTS POSING AS PEOPLE. Yeah.), and those who may be dropping acid or who don't admit to the fact that they're afraid to...I'm basically a saint compared to those folks.
I pay taxes, I usually have a job (except I quit my low-paying, awful conformist Plato's Bucket-O'Misery Job), and I love animals and don't drop acid or deny the fact that I'm terrified to. I also try not to meet random people from the internet, in real life. That's just a bad idea in general.
Honestly, I'm like a kitten when you compare how much impact I have on the universe right now. A kitten who enjoys coffee way too much and has a penchant for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but still. Kitten.
I fucking hate cats.
Oh, and I'm single-handedly going to be supporting the loan industry in about three years when they start beating me over the head with payment notices. More on that in the next post, thank you Eryca.
So, this whole sustainable-earth movement that's starting to get way crazy is interesting to me. I want to learn how to be a less-useless human (as in, leave a fairly shallow carbon footprint, cut my costs to society, etc.), but I don't know how to do it. Now, I could go the whole Freegan route, but I think that's a little to extreme for me. Dumpster diving is not, repeat not something I ever want to have to experience, but some of their ideas are kind of cool. They're trying to be as recycle-savvy as they possibly can, which is cool, but they're overestimating the human ability to not create waste. We--as in mankind, of which they are a part of--created Styrofoam; we're all basically going to hell for that.
We can, however, make hell less hot and gross by cutting our waste or attempting to plug what we think is garbage (actually completely usable stuff) back into our human-waste cycle and make ourselves less dangerous to...ourselves.
That whole little rant was totally confusing, but I'm going to try and clear it up. I'm running on six hours of sleep here, give me a break.
Ok, so we're wasteful, horrible monstrosities that kill baby bunnies and puppies with our nasty garbage-that-could-potentially-not-be-garbage; lets talk about how to kill less of them, especially since we're in college. (Finally, I'm getting to the point.)
Being in college, as I've been bitching about since...August, is hard, but it's also hard on the places where we're actually in college.
City schools I think have it the easiest because they've got a lot of different resources around, and there's probably a pretty big hipster-eco movement that's being born every few minutes, but rural schools and those that don't really have adjoining college-towns are pretty much in the shits for the next forty years or so. Red cups stick around, and since there's usually nothing else to do besides drink to excess in smaller towns, people are going to be littering more and just generally turning the town into a gigantic condom-dump.
Bloomington is actually a fairly eco-friendly town; it's inhabited mostly by frat boys, sorority girls, hipsters who weren't mainstream enough to rush/pledge, the rest of us losers, townies, and professors. Guess which ones have the least amount of impact on the environment?
At least in my opinion, it's probably the "Rest of us Losers." I'm not included in that because I drink too much non-fair-trade coffee, but still.
ROULs probably don't have cars, so there go carbon emissions from motor vehicles. We rely mostly on public transport, bikes, and loading rides off friends when absolutely necessary, so that's a good thing. We're also not rich enough to be eating out every day, so we eat on our meal plans or we grocery shop at the cheapest place in town where we can get the right amount of food. Hipsters are good about this too, so yay for dorky-ironic glasses-wearing folks.
For IU students, the grocery store with the best bang for the buck is BloomingFoods. It's a fairly organic place to get fresh fruits, veggies, meats and cheeses (we're in the middle of fucking nowhere, people; farms are like Starbucks here) that are grown locally or at least very nearby-ish. Compared to Kroger prices for bulky processed foods that aren't all that interesting, healthy or even good, it's a fantastic deal.
Also, keeping healthy and eating naturally is pretty easy on a meal plan since there's a dining hall in every neighborhood on campus, and veggie/potato/salad bars and vegetarian/vegan options everywhere. My in-residence convenience store (on meal-points, yesssss) has a whole section just for organic foods. I have organic strawberry spread for my PB&J sandwiches, and while it normally would have cost me a bit to introduce that to my diet, I had already paid for it through my meal plan. Fucking awesome, that's what that is.
But anyways, besides food (which I talk about way too much on this blog I think, and it's going to have an impact on me eating all the fucking time), there are other ways to keep your footprint shallow. Buy second hand.
Ok, so I have a ton of awful experience into why this is a bad idea, but there are some good ways to do this. Plato's is a good place to go if you want trendy clothes, but you have to be really careful to double check your clothing in the dressing room for stains, holes, rips and tears. The buyers are (usually) doing their best to make sure the clothes they buy from customers are in good conditions, but we are NOT nasty-finding scan-bots. We are teenagers who hate our jobs and want to move far far away. You do the math.
There are tons and tons of thrift shops in most college towns and cities though, so try those places too. Vintage shops are sweet, especially since most of the stuff is in good condition, won't break the bank (step away from the vintage Gucci, my friend) and--bonus--a lot of the stuff in them are one of a kind since people didn't believe in recycling their sweet clothes from the 70s and 80s. Hi Mommy, I'm looking at you; plaid prom dress, or sweet blazers (with removable shoulder-pads, please g-d). Which one did you choose? Gee, I wonder.
Fun fact, my own mother doesn't even read my blog. Fabbbbbuloussss. I'm going to make her read this later.
Anyways, Ebay and etsy are also great for this. Etsy is really cool since you're basically ONLY getting one of a kind stuff, since it's all either vintage or handmade, and eBay is just fucking eBay, so it's awesome. I loveeeee eBay.
Bloomington residents have places like the Cactus Flower to rely on, which is in this really really cool victorian-style house on Kirkwood (main drag) and...Dunn? I think. Probably. But it's got Cactus Flower which is this really cool vintage shop with two floors of stuff, and then in the same building is also this tiny little astro-hipster-awesome jewelry store with sterling silver studs by the dozen in awesome designs and shapes. Fun fact, I have six piercings (on my ears, you perverts); 4 in my left ear, 2 on my right, and I am proud to say that I never have matching earrings, so this place was amazing for me. I got to buy single studs and mix and match. I'm currently rocking a moon and sun combo, with a few cinch-hoops and a diamond that I got for my bat mitzvah thrown in. To not match is kind of interesting, since I know very few others who actually do it. Makes me feel special despite the fact that I am very much not.
Here's another way to be less wasteful, and I think this is the biggest way.
BE CREATIVE.
Honestly, when people get bored, the Earth is the biggest loser. College kids eat when they get bored, they also drink alcohol and generally engage in debaucherous and dangerous behavior, but for the most part, they waste a ton of stuff. Candy wrappers, red cups, alcohol bottles, ping pong balls, pizza-money, etc. You know you've done it and you know it's bad, but how to stop?
Make an effort to find a recycling bin, or a the least a garbage can. They're everywhere and I swear you can hold onto your cup long enough to get it to one. I absolutely despise it when people make an effort to toss their trash and miss the bin, and then leave whatever they were trying to throw out on the ground. I yelled at a guy once when I saw him do this, and made a big production of going to pick it up and place it in the garbage can. Needless to say, he was beet red in embarrassment and I guarantee that he'll think twice before leaving his crap lying a foot away from the bin.
Life Lesson? It pays to go against the grain. I know you hear this all the time, but I'll bet you've also seen the effects of this possibly going badly. It can go well, I swear. Just speak steadily, try not to yell, and you know what? Embarrassment goes a long way. People act like they're all high and mighty when someone calls them out on something offensive (for example, racial or religious epithets that are offensive), but in reality, they're covering up for serious embarrassment and shame from being caught in something they know is wrong. Believe me, please?
K, thanks, serious rant-ish part is almost over. I swear the next post will be less somber and more hilarious.
I'm a realist, I know that drinking on college campuses isn't going anywhere--not even saying that I want it to--but I'm optimistic that people are creative enough to create their own fun and ways to keep garbage off the streets and out of our air and water. Carpool to a beach or go to a movie at the campus theater (ie; free), go work out with your friends, do some ART (hugely-major art dork with absolutely no life beyond senseless but awesome doodles in class that turn into not-shitty-but-not-amazing semi-art), read a book...seriously there are so many things to do that don't involve getting drunk or high that people never even think of. And when they happen, people say, "oh, hey we should do this more often."
But they don't.
Why?
Because they're idiots. It's that whole being-human thing.
Advice Dump
Anyways, moral of the story is to waste less.
Use your re-usable water bottles and coffee mugs.
Ask for a paper cup instead of Styrofoam.
Don't call people mean names. They don't like it and they're gonna call you out on Facebook.
Try to respect the place that you live, and fall in love with where you are again.
We have no idea how lucky we actually are to have clean parks and trees all around us, so try and make sure your children have that opportunity as well.
It's not fair to them to deprive them of what we've fucked up royally.
Don't hurt puppies, they're cute and they grow up to be useful.
Love (because I think it's not unrequited since people are ACTUALLY READING THIS!),
Miss Guided
I am not a serial killer, I don't litter, I don't like Hitler or North Korea, and yeah, I'm part of this pseudo-hippie generation that's too afraid to drop acid, but we're totally cool with rallying in large groups organized by completely random strangers on the internet.
Compared to people who are serial killers, do like Hitler and don't know how they feel about North Korea (because they haven't seen this; trust me, once you watch it you'll know how absolutely not-confused you should be about North Korea. Spoiler, there are NO people who aren't in on this whole let's-play-tea-party WITH A MILLION RANDOM PROGRAMMED ROBOTS POSING AS PEOPLE. Yeah.), and those who may be dropping acid or who don't admit to the fact that they're afraid to...I'm basically a saint compared to those folks.
I pay taxes, I usually have a job (except I quit my low-paying, awful conformist Plato's Bucket-O'Misery Job), and I love animals and don't drop acid or deny the fact that I'm terrified to. I also try not to meet random people from the internet, in real life. That's just a bad idea in general.
Honestly, I'm like a kitten when you compare how much impact I have on the universe right now. A kitten who enjoys coffee way too much and has a penchant for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but still. Kitten.
I fucking hate cats.
Oh, and I'm single-handedly going to be supporting the loan industry in about three years when they start beating me over the head with payment notices. More on that in the next post, thank you Eryca.
So, this whole sustainable-earth movement that's starting to get way crazy is interesting to me. I want to learn how to be a less-useless human (as in, leave a fairly shallow carbon footprint, cut my costs to society, etc.), but I don't know how to do it. Now, I could go the whole Freegan route, but I think that's a little to extreme for me. Dumpster diving is not, repeat not something I ever want to have to experience, but some of their ideas are kind of cool. They're trying to be as recycle-savvy as they possibly can, which is cool, but they're overestimating the human ability to not create waste. We--as in mankind, of which they are a part of--created Styrofoam; we're all basically going to hell for that.
We can, however, make hell less hot and gross by cutting our waste or attempting to plug what we think is garbage (actually completely usable stuff) back into our human-waste cycle and make ourselves less dangerous to...ourselves.
That whole little rant was totally confusing, but I'm going to try and clear it up. I'm running on six hours of sleep here, give me a break.
Ok, so we're wasteful, horrible monstrosities that kill baby bunnies and puppies with our nasty garbage-that-could-potentially-not-be-garbage; lets talk about how to kill less of them, especially since we're in college. (Finally, I'm getting to the point.)
Being in college, as I've been bitching about since...August, is hard, but it's also hard on the places where we're actually in college.
City schools I think have it the easiest because they've got a lot of different resources around, and there's probably a pretty big hipster-eco movement that's being born every few minutes, but rural schools and those that don't really have adjoining college-towns are pretty much in the shits for the next forty years or so. Red cups stick around, and since there's usually nothing else to do besides drink to excess in smaller towns, people are going to be littering more and just generally turning the town into a gigantic condom-dump.
Bloomington is actually a fairly eco-friendly town; it's inhabited mostly by frat boys, sorority girls, hipsters who weren't mainstream enough to rush/pledge, the rest of us losers, townies, and professors. Guess which ones have the least amount of impact on the environment?
At least in my opinion, it's probably the "Rest of us Losers." I'm not included in that because I drink too much non-fair-trade coffee, but still.
ROULs probably don't have cars, so there go carbon emissions from motor vehicles. We rely mostly on public transport, bikes, and loading rides off friends when absolutely necessary, so that's a good thing. We're also not rich enough to be eating out every day, so we eat on our meal plans or we grocery shop at the cheapest place in town where we can get the right amount of food. Hipsters are good about this too, so yay for dorky-ironic glasses-wearing folks.
For IU students, the grocery store with the best bang for the buck is BloomingFoods. It's a fairly organic place to get fresh fruits, veggies, meats and cheeses (we're in the middle of fucking nowhere, people; farms are like Starbucks here) that are grown locally or at least very nearby-ish. Compared to Kroger prices for bulky processed foods that aren't all that interesting, healthy or even good, it's a fantastic deal.
Also, keeping healthy and eating naturally is pretty easy on a meal plan since there's a dining hall in every neighborhood on campus, and veggie/potato/salad bars and vegetarian/vegan options everywhere. My in-residence convenience store (on meal-points, yesssss) has a whole section just for organic foods. I have organic strawberry spread for my PB&J sandwiches, and while it normally would have cost me a bit to introduce that to my diet, I had already paid for it through my meal plan. Fucking awesome, that's what that is.
But anyways, besides food (which I talk about way too much on this blog I think, and it's going to have an impact on me eating all the fucking time), there are other ways to keep your footprint shallow. Buy second hand.
Ok, so I have a ton of awful experience into why this is a bad idea, but there are some good ways to do this. Plato's is a good place to go if you want trendy clothes, but you have to be really careful to double check your clothing in the dressing room for stains, holes, rips and tears. The buyers are (usually) doing their best to make sure the clothes they buy from customers are in good conditions, but we are NOT nasty-finding scan-bots. We are teenagers who hate our jobs and want to move far far away. You do the math.
There are tons and tons of thrift shops in most college towns and cities though, so try those places too. Vintage shops are sweet, especially since most of the stuff is in good condition, won't break the bank (step away from the vintage Gucci, my friend) and--bonus--a lot of the stuff in them are one of a kind since people didn't believe in recycling their sweet clothes from the 70s and 80s. Hi Mommy, I'm looking at you; plaid prom dress, or sweet blazers (with removable shoulder-pads, please g-d). Which one did you choose? Gee, I wonder.
Fun fact, my own mother doesn't even read my blog. Fabbbbbuloussss. I'm going to make her read this later.
Anyways, Ebay and etsy are also great for this. Etsy is really cool since you're basically ONLY getting one of a kind stuff, since it's all either vintage or handmade, and eBay is just fucking eBay, so it's awesome. I loveeeee eBay.
Bloomington residents have places like the Cactus Flower to rely on, which is in this really really cool victorian-style house on Kirkwood (main drag) and...Dunn? I think. Probably. But it's got Cactus Flower which is this really cool vintage shop with two floors of stuff, and then in the same building is also this tiny little astro-hipster-awesome jewelry store with sterling silver studs by the dozen in awesome designs and shapes. Fun fact, I have six piercings (on my ears, you perverts); 4 in my left ear, 2 on my right, and I am proud to say that I never have matching earrings, so this place was amazing for me. I got to buy single studs and mix and match. I'm currently rocking a moon and sun combo, with a few cinch-hoops and a diamond that I got for my bat mitzvah thrown in. To not match is kind of interesting, since I know very few others who actually do it. Makes me feel special despite the fact that I am very much not.
Here's another way to be less wasteful, and I think this is the biggest way.
BE CREATIVE.
Honestly, when people get bored, the Earth is the biggest loser. College kids eat when they get bored, they also drink alcohol and generally engage in debaucherous and dangerous behavior, but for the most part, they waste a ton of stuff. Candy wrappers, red cups, alcohol bottles, ping pong balls, pizza-money, etc. You know you've done it and you know it's bad, but how to stop?
Make an effort to find a recycling bin, or a the least a garbage can. They're everywhere and I swear you can hold onto your cup long enough to get it to one. I absolutely despise it when people make an effort to toss their trash and miss the bin, and then leave whatever they were trying to throw out on the ground. I yelled at a guy once when I saw him do this, and made a big production of going to pick it up and place it in the garbage can. Needless to say, he was beet red in embarrassment and I guarantee that he'll think twice before leaving his crap lying a foot away from the bin.
Life Lesson? It pays to go against the grain. I know you hear this all the time, but I'll bet you've also seen the effects of this possibly going badly. It can go well, I swear. Just speak steadily, try not to yell, and you know what? Embarrassment goes a long way. People act like they're all high and mighty when someone calls them out on something offensive (for example, racial or religious epithets that are offensive), but in reality, they're covering up for serious embarrassment and shame from being caught in something they know is wrong. Believe me, please?
K, thanks, serious rant-ish part is almost over. I swear the next post will be less somber and more hilarious.
I'm a realist, I know that drinking on college campuses isn't going anywhere--not even saying that I want it to--but I'm optimistic that people are creative enough to create their own fun and ways to keep garbage off the streets and out of our air and water. Carpool to a beach or go to a movie at the campus theater (ie; free), go work out with your friends, do some ART (hugely-major art dork with absolutely no life beyond senseless but awesome doodles in class that turn into not-shitty-but-not-amazing semi-art), read a book...seriously there are so many things to do that don't involve getting drunk or high that people never even think of. And when they happen, people say, "oh, hey we should do this more often."
But they don't.
Why?
Because they're idiots. It's that whole being-human thing.
Advice Dump
Anyways, moral of the story is to waste less.
Use your re-usable water bottles and coffee mugs.
Ask for a paper cup instead of Styrofoam.
Don't call people mean names. They don't like it and they're gonna call you out on Facebook.
Try to respect the place that you live, and fall in love with where you are again.
We have no idea how lucky we actually are to have clean parks and trees all around us, so try and make sure your children have that opportunity as well.
It's not fair to them to deprive them of what we've fucked up royally.
Don't hurt puppies, they're cute and they grow up to be useful.
Love (because I think it's not unrequited since people are ACTUALLY READING THIS!),
Miss Guided
Posts
OH MAN, FREEGANS!
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