Adventures in Extreme Recycling

Recently I took somewhat extreme measures in the interest of recycling and waste reduction. ‘Extreme’ is a relative term, of course, but it’s fair to say that this required a level of dedication—and effort—that went somewhat beyond my usual recycling practices. The experience demonstrated an important point about material waste and our overdependence on disposable plastic products.

I was going about my usual workplace business one morning in February of 2017 when a gentleman I know caught me in the corridor and said “Hey, Mike, I was wondering if you could help me with a little problem.” Ever willing (and curious) I said “sure!” and followed him to his office. Considering my typical Facilities Coordinator responsibilities—paired with my reputation for highly personalized, better-than-average customer service (not to toot my own horn too much…), knowledge of unusual and esoteric things, and willingness to assist with special problems—, it’s possible that I could be called upon at any given time to assist with anything from furniture reconfiguration, decorating advice, or a more comfortable office chair to repainting, workplace dirt (of the gossip type, of course), or disposing of an animal invader, alive or dead.

In this case, the coworker’s former office mate, who retired recently, had left behind in their shared office a staggering amount of bottled water hoarded over the years and left to slowly spoil in the drawers of several lateral file cabinets. Unfortunately, spoiled is an accurate assessment. Some of these bottles of water were more than eight years old; almost all of them had a crinkled, sucked-in appearance, as if the air had been vacuumed out of them; and many of them had apparently leaked, judging by the serious rust damage and black, sooty residue in the bottom of almost every drawer. As much as I would have liked to actually drink this water, it simply wouldn’t have been safe.

My coworker asked me if I could help him to get rid of all this water. No sane person with access to clean drinking water would ever consume the contents of these expired, deformed bottles, and he wanted the extra filing cabinets out of the office. I told him that I would be happy to help. Before he could even ask me what I planned to do with all the water, I explained that I had a special plan. Not one bottle’s worth of water would go to waste. Every single plastic bottle would enter the recycling stream. This water would be put to use, damn it. My coworker thought that I was crazy. “Well, if you’re actually willing to go to all that trouble…”

I counted and removed all of the bottles, packing them into cardboard Bankers boxes. There were 436 total. Maybe 50 of them stayed in our Facilities suite for watering plants; the rest went to the loading dock. I borrowed a neighbor’s pickup truck and swung by on a Saturday morning to load up the nine boxes. I took them all home. I immediately set to work opening the bottles up and pouring the water into my washing machine to aid with a couple of loads of laundry—and here’s where a troubling reality set in: for all these bottles, and all this plastic, it doesn’t actually amount to very much water at all. The wash cycles alone of two laundry loads amounted to more than 100 bottles of water. The plastic left over nearly filled three kitchen-sized garbage bags. The effort required and the end result were not proportional. Somehow I’d thought that this water would go farther than it did. I couldn’t believe it.

Don’t get me wrong: I understand that there’s great utility and convenience in bottled water, especially in parts of the world where sterile, safe piped drinking water isn’t readily accessible (or available at all). In crisis situations—disaster areas, warzones, or regions affected by severe drought, for example—it is indispensable. It means the difference between life and death. As an international traveler, I freely admit that I’m going to purchase and consume bottled water rather than tap water in many locations (although I will still make every effort to recycle, even if that means flying the empty bottles home). Similarly, it would be foolish or stunningly ignorant not to acknowledge that numerous communities in the United States have antiquated water systems—that our citizens have been exposed to, and continue to consume, water containing unacceptably high levels of lead. It's a fact that authorities have neglected this growing crisis, and it's a fact that officials have failed to protect consumers, including the most vulnerable of them, children. Then there are all the older homes and structures that, ideally, should have their pipes replaced since the solder sealing connections between pipe sections often contains lead. Bottled water has its place for sure.

The problem, in my opinion, is that the bottled water industry as a whole has created—not surprisingly—a psychological overdependence on these products and, for many people in the industrialized world, an exaggerated sense that bottled water is always better than tap water, and that tap water is always unsafe. I know people who feel exactly that way. My labor-intensive exercise in extreme reuse demonstrated just how much plastic is loaded into the consumer stream—and discarded—in the interest of consuming, well, not much water comparatively. A lot of that plastic doesn’t get recycled. A lot of it ends up in our street gutters, our streams and rivers, and our ocean. Decomposing plastic leaks toxins into soil and water—including, not surprisingly, the water inside the bottle. Water is heavy. Think of the amount of fuel required to transport it all. Think of the resources required to make the plastic bottles themselves. Think of the water depletion in areas where the corporations harvesting and bottling this water for mass-consumption pump it from the ground—or take it directly from the municipal water supply—then market it as fresh, clean, "pure" mountain spring water. (That's dishonesty, plain and simple.) Think of traditionally drought-affected regions like parts of California where these companies overburden and slowly drain the underground aquifers, then justify their greed while locals can’t pump enough water for gardens, farms, or vineyards. (Nestlé!)

Despite my efforts to salvage all this bottled water in what I jokingly call the Great SEI Bottled Water Atrocity of 2017, I am extremely grateful that my fellow SEI staff person approached me. Had it been anyone else to respond to the request for assistance, those hundreds of bottles of water would surely have been dumped, easily and without much thought, into our dumpsters. I simply couldn’t do it. My conscience, anchored by a strong commitment to environmental stewardship and responsibility, would not have permitted me to take the easy way out. I’m an educated white American guy who acknowledges his white privilege, and I could easily take my access to water for granted—but I don’t. It is such a precious resource that, to me, its flow and fall are analogous to life itself. My efforts are a proverbial drop in the bucket—mostly meaningless, devoid of real impact. I know this. But imagine if the majority of people thought and acted similarly. The difference, in my opinion, could change the world.

Incidentally, if you're wondering about my own drinking water, I prefer tap water run through a filter. I think that it tastes better than bottled almost all of the time. I carry water in a Nalgene, thermos, or other type of reusable vessel.

The Landlocked Lighthouse -- recent adventures in art (in part)

First off, an announcement: Etsy art sale! If you like my artwork, and you are interested in purchasing something, I'll take 20% off of any item listed on my Etsy page--or 40% off of any one item priced under $150 if I can hand-deliver the art to you (i.e., no shipping needed). Just contact me, tell me which piece(s) you want, and I'll reduce the price before we complete the transaction. (Or, if you're interested in a particular piece of art but want to negotiate the price in your own ultra-special customized way, just...you know, e-mail me and we'll talk. Because I'd really like to sell my art to you.) Yes, I'm desperate to make some extra cash. Why? I'm saving up for a trip to Boston later this year, possibly a trip to India around Christmas, and, hopefully, a trip to Iceland next year. I'm also saving for some more significant (translated: expensive) work on the house. Oh, and I started skydiving again. Not exactly an inexpensive activity.

Also, my friend Jen Hykes introduced me to the work of John Brosio, an artist who paints intense, dramatic, amazing tornado images (among other things, including giant monsters and flying saucers)--often incongruously paired with tranquil, sometimes warmly pastoral scenes of everyday normalcy in the foreground. Staggering and absolutely unique. I am reminded of Edward Hopper in some of his work. Please check out John Brosio's website. I did a few new tornadoes myself this past spring. The green one against the yellow background became a wedding gift for my friends Zoe and Alex who recently married in Philadelphia. This is the second time in about a year that I've given a newly married couple the gift of twister, painted with vivid colors and almost cartoonish subtle abstraction. I admit that it's a little bit unusual--and promise that it isn't meant to foreshadow things to come or cast some sort of creepy meteorological curse on the couple. All I can say is that it's a very Mike Jehn kind of wedding gift.

Other new art from the spring of 2014 includes an affectionately splattery visual expression of how I feel about Valentines Day; a bright pastel spiral thing (how else to describe it?!); and a tranquil early evening sky over hilly plains called Barren Blue:

Before Christmas, I attended a really cool DIY craft night for adults (plus food, cocktails, and really good beer) at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum called MAKEnight with my friend Kris Keller. Aside from getting to explore part of the museum while intoxicated and act completely like kids again, we all got the chance to create customized holiday cards with LED lights, craft metal tree ornaments utilizing soldering techniques, and build wild wreathes with all manner of materials at a giant table accommodating no fewer than twenty people crowded around it like Santa's elves. Here's mine, made of plastic bags, plastic beads, twine, leather string, and twist ties:

For Christmas, my mom received a little wall hanging made of hand-burnished keys screwed onto a wooden base in the form of a cross, updating--but also greatly simplifying--the gilded regal aesthetic of Old World religious artifacts using modern found objects: 

Meanwhile, my friend Amanda Amodio received for Christmas the latest example of what I consider one my signature (and favorite to make) assemblages: a bottle cap sculpture. I collected the caps from all corners of my territorial range, and the laminated particleboard base came from an old computer desk that belonged to my grandfather.

This next piece was an assemblage that I donated to an art auction benefiting a fantastic new literary 'zine called B.E. and held as part of a fundraiser/poetry reading/celebration at my little neighborhood coffee shop Biddle's Escape. It's constructed of a wooden base that I bought at the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse and spray-painted blue; a deer antler and a dog jaw that I found and bleached; keys, which I love to use and have collected probably thousands of; chain; a little brass padlock to be used as a bell chime; and the bell itself from a dismantled telephone. I heard that this assemblage went to a very appreciative and excited owner.

These last images are of two small oil pastel drawings that I created for my sister Kathleen as companions to a larger drawing called Stained Glass Flower that I drew in 2003 and that Kathleen purchased a couple of years ago. I actually drew these new companion drawings at Kathleen's house in Groton, CT a few days after Christmas; and my three year-old niece joined me for a creative art session. (Well, she joined me for about twenty minutes before losing interest and free-wheeling into another room as young kids will do!)

PS: this post has nothing to do with a 'landlocked lighthouse.' I don't even know what that is. I just like the idea of it--a lighthouse nowhere near water. A lighthouse that exists simply to express the idea or image of lighthouse. The words have a nice cadence to them. It would be a great title for a novel or an album. Blogging is weird...

Show and Tell

A lot has happened since I posted last. (That was about ten months ago.) I embarked on a brief but much-needed road trip to Connecticut in March 2013, visiting family in Groton and helping a friend by hauling a van-load of personal items back to Pittsburgh from Hartford. (While in Hartford I walked around the magnificent Mark Twain House as well as the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and photographed Richard Meier's gleaming white Hartford Seminary.) My beautiful niece Ariana Genevieve--hometown Groton, CT--was born at the beginning of March. I traveled to Seattle, Portland, Mount St. Helens, Vancouver, and many points between with my loyal long-time travel partner Amanda in March, staying with other wonderful friends and their kids as our 'home base' in Tacoma between side trips. I flew to Atlanta in May for yet another good friend's wedding. My leopard gecko Luna, with me since 1997 and much-loved member of the family, finally passed away in the spring; but I also acquired a new pet, a spunky red-tail Boa constrictor named Reggie that likes to hiss a lot with his mouth open (trying to be a bad-ass...) but behaves himself once he's out of his terrarium. I sold a painting (this one) at Lawrenceville's Art All Night in April and completed my eighth consecutive Rachel Carson Trail Challenge in June.

An American five-lined skink (sometimes called blue-tail) that I found in Georgia.

In April, I participated in a benefit art and music show hosted by a group called Project Okello at Grove City College after having been contacted by one of the event organizers through Etsy. I met some really fantastic people, handed out some business cards, and enjoyed the top-notch live music provided by student groups. My friend Ryan and his son Kole stopped by as well as my parents. (Dad's a Grove City College alumnus.) I was really overwhelmed by the atmosphere of positivity, warmth, and community at this event, and although I didn't sell anything, I'm glad that I took the risk of participating.

There's been plenty of live music in the past ten months as well: Martha Wainwright, Carrie Rodriguez, Soul Asylum, Suzanne Vega, Aimee Mann with Ted Leo, The Black Keys & The Flaming Lips, Dave Matthews Band with JD McPherson, Mary Fahl, Brett Dennen with Goldspot, and the incomparable Steve Martin & The Steep Canyon Rangers featuring Edie Brickell--probably the standout show of 2013.  (We'll see if Nine Inch Nails on October 8 can top it!)

The big project of the year--ongoing but nearing completion just in time for autumn--is the reconstruction of my front porch. My long-time partner in crime Ryan and I demolished the original porch on Mother's Day. As of this writing, the cedar skirting is being installed and we still need to add the railings. I've been working with Matt Johnston of Johnston Woodworking and everything looks fantastic. It's been a long time coming, and this is one project that I'll be grateful never to have to do again (at least not on this house!). You can see photos of the porch progress here.

The rest of this post is basically a Show and Tell from the past year--no staggering literary icing, no profound sprinkles of wit, no Maraschino cherry of glowing insight, just pictures paired with brief explanations. Enjoy!

First, here are some photos of Reggie the red-tail boa:

 

 

...and a couple of Lucinda (one of my two corn snakes) just because she likes to show off from time to time:

We hauled much of the debris from my front porch up to Cochranton, PA and had ourselves a little bonfire on my friend Ryan's parents' property. Along with wood from my porch, we also incinerated paneling and other debris from a crumbling mobile home that Ryan and I spent much of the afternoon demolishing. Behold the fire:

This past summer was the third in a row that I "had a disagreement" with Poison Ivy and walked away wounded. However, I was extremely fortunate this time, owing largely to the great care that I've taken in working to trim down the evil plant where it resides in my back yard; rather than having it all over my body, I only suffered from a breakout on my right arm. No big deal (although the constant seeping is disgusting).

The adventures continued with the appearance of a sinkhole that opened up beneath my street, directly across from my house. Fortunately the Wilkinsburg borough responded relatively quickly to fill the hole in. It was a little scary considering how difficult it sometimes is to determine how deep and extensive such a hole can be, or just how serious the subterranean erosion is--especially if it's caused by a ruptured pipe or storm sewer line.

On a whim, I planted some sunflower seeds in the back yard this summer. Not only did I not expect any of them to actually grow, but it didn't matter to me. It was really just an experiment: would any of these find purchase? If yes, fantastic; if not, oh well. As a matter of fact, one hearty specimen--and one alone--did decide to take up residence. (I'm wondering if I might have accidentally weeded some of the others out before I'd realized what infant sunflower plants look like.) Here it is:

I'll conclude with a little DIY project--the creative repurposing of my old (and useless from the time I moved into the house) kitchen garbage disposal as a planter. It's doing a lot more good sticking out of the ground filled with dirt and hosting a gladiola bulb than it did producing odors of death and shameful filth beneath my sink basin for two years. Plus, it looks really cool. The photo below was taken several weeks ago; the entire bed is now finished with uniform crushed stone, decorated with interesting objects including rusty saw blades, a ceramic insulator, bathroom cup/toothbrush holders (one pink, one white), a cologne bottle, an old steak knife, and a retired paintbrush that served honorably in the name of house improvement for two years. I'll share photos of this garden of whimsical oddities at a later date.

Homeowner wins & woes

Goodness, I'm a bad little blogger.  Here we go again. I haven't posted since January--nine months ago.  Can a person even call himself a blogger if he only posts a few times a year?  Eh, who cares, right?!  It's not like I'm getting paid to do this--and, for what it's worth, I don't consider myself a real blogger anyway.  Fortunately, despite my abysmally casual commitment to this blogging hobby which borders on abandonment (with parental visits just frequent enough to avoid the tragedy of forgetting altogether), my last post really caused a stir, bringing decent-hearted human specimens from varying walks of life together under the banner of common experience--and all because of a miserable ass who enjoys attacking other people through craigslist.  Who'd have thought?!

Turtles in Central Park, New York City, August 2012.  (Photo by Michael Jehn.)

Over the past nine months, I've received numerous responses from fellow craigslist patrons who have, through no act of malice, misspoken word or knowing crime, incurred the wrath of crenovationsllc@gmail.com (whose real name, mailing address, phone number, and other juicy personal tidbits were provided by individuals who kindly responded to my January post).  I won't provoke or indulge Mr. Dan Hobbins of Gibsonia, Pennsylvania further--since I've already stooped pretty low by now--except to say:

Mr. Hobbins, I'd love to share your fruitful wisdom, your razor-sharp insight, right here on my humble blog. Please, grace us with your staggering intellectual presence, under your own name, in your own earnest and completely uncensored words.  You are welcome any time--but only if you stand behind your true identity. 

(Somehow I don't think he'll show...)

Anyway, enough with the facetiousness and on to some real news. I've called this post 'homeowner wins & woes' because I'd like to share a few of each with the world.  I'll start with a win.  The foyer flooring--a handsome dark manufactured bamboo product with a pitted, antiqued surface texture that complements the existing wood paneling and stair railings beautifully--has been installed, thanks to a lot of hard work by Mr. Matt Crowe. Sure, there were some woes associated with the win.  The bamboo wasn't my first choice for material, but the stuff I really wanted wasn't in stock at Lumber Liquidators and would have taken two months to arrive on order.  The foyer sub-floor was so uneven, the walls so untrue (i.e., not straight and precisely aligned, as opposed to "not really walls" or "walls that are lying") that we didn't get the first piece down until late afternoon on the second day.  Of course, the bamboo is so dense and solid that many of the hand-hammered nails wouldn't go in even after pilot holes had been drilled--and the nail gun simply kept splitting the tongues on the boards.  Frustration...but not defeat.

Fortunately, one new nail gun and two weeks later, the floor was complete: shiny and new (DUM, DUM, DUM--like a virgin...), glassy in its perfection, complemented by new quarter-round shoe moldings, doorway thresholds, and a brand-new $115 cast iron register grate from Signature Hardware to replace the existing one that had been so grievously molested by time and moisture that it might as well have been recovered from the wreck of the Titanic.  A final minor woe regarding the floor: every speck of dust, every tiny scratch, stands out instantly against such a dark patina.  Luckily I'm a cleaning freak.

In addition to the flooring, the foyer walls leading all the way up the stairs to the second floor have been completely repainted in a warm, inviting yellow tone called Caribbean Sunrise (win), although the amount of pre-painting plaster repair necessary was unbelievable (woe) and painting itself, especially above the stairs and the stained glass window--where I teetered precariously on an old chair resting atop a haphazard pile of furring strips and plywood scraps stretched between the second stair landing and the top rung of a ladder (disaster waiting to happen but thankfully avoided)--was a total bitch (woe).  The heinous old mini-fridge-sized air conditioner in the foyer window that I couldn't even use because its plug doesn't fit standard outlets is gone (win) and my metal scrap-collecting neighbor Dave helped me get it out of the window and took it for me so I didn't even have to worry about how to dispose of it (win) and the tacky-as-sin paneling that had been hammered in above the air conditioner is gone (win) and, miraculously, the original double-hung sash window was hiding inside (win) and is in terrific shape!

Furthermore, my mom--who is awesome--found very cheap, very hip curtains for both the entryway window and the living room window that perfectly fit the mid-century modern look that I'm going for (win).  By the end of the year, I should have the rest of the stair treads painted and the two landings professionally carpeted; the second-floor hallway floorboards will finally be painted within the next month; the master bedroom on the second floor will be remodeled by mid-December including drywall and carpeting; and, with any luck, I'll be getting a new front porch in the spring.  (Matthew Johnston, if you're reading this, please let me know whether or not you still want the job; it's been a while since I've heard from you!)

I will end with one last, but lingering, woe: I've been having a lot of trouble getting rid of one of my tenants.  Call him whatever you'd like--Stefan, Sylvester, Simon or Salvatore--since I'm not going to reveal his actual name on the Internet.  The guy's got a lot of serious issues that I had not anticipated and am not professionally equipped to deal with: chronic hoarding, poor hygiene, and a manner of aloof passivity that I didn't even think was possible.  He's so unassertive, so lacking in proactive initiative or self-defense--of ideas, personal needs, or opinions, I mean--, that I've wanted to scream out loud on countless occasions.  I was a fool for having allowed him to move in at all, my judgement blinded by the prospect of quick, easy rent money; for this I accept full responsibility.  Per our original verbal agreement, pursuant to the lease, he was supposed to have been vacated by the end of September; but, as I should have expected, he managed to completely avoid moving out, and naturally he failed to communicate any concerns or unexpected snags to me ahead of time (lack of communication being another one of his issues).  I granted him another full month.  He didn't move out--and then the trashy wet week-long misery delivered by superstorm Sandy created a scenario in which I wouldn't have wanted people trudging into and out of my house repeatedly anyway, tracking leaves and mud everywhere.

So, my tenant has until November 15th, and that's final.  No more excuses, no more bullshit, no more house projects delayed by his frustrating ineptitude.  If he attempts to linger for one more day, he will encounter a front door whose lock has been changed upon return.  On the bright side, at least he's a harmless soul who wouldn't intentionally harm another breathing creature--or, for that matter, likely utter a profane word--if a gun were pressed to his temple.  I wish him joy, prosperity, and fulfillment in all his future endeavors, and openly acknowledge that he is probably a better person than I shall ever hope to become; but I also want him the hell out of my place.  Is that so much to ask for?!

One57 luxury apartment and condominium tower under construction in midtown Manhattan, August 2012. (Photo by Michael Jehn.)  The construction crane visible in the photo was badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Stupidity: when it comes to people, you can count on it!

People are really damned stupid. Not you, of course. Not everyone. Just...a lot of people. Give stupid people a forum for unbridled self-expression like the Internet and their stupidity--manifest in the form of irredeemably idiotic blog rants, self-incriminating photographs, belligerent discussion board personas, relentless strings of unrestrained typo-laden Tweets, less-than-pointless YouTube clips, you name it--will flourish like bacteria on the floor of an Interstate rest stop bathroom (especially during those frantically busy holiday travel periods when the janitors can't get in there often enough to push stinky pink bleachy bacteria-murdering stuff around with the mop). For the record, I will attempt to demonstrate here and now that this is not an irredeemably idiotic blog rant; but that's ultimately for you to decide, not me.

Anyway, I would like to share a recent instance of incredible--yet sadly typical--human stupidity with you. No, I'm not referring to the capsizing of the Costa Concordia cruise liner off the Italian coast. That was certainly stupid, avoidable, tragic--which is nothing to say of the captain's criminal egotism or staggering cowardice--, but that story is not my own. No, my story is about linoleum flooring. Specifically, it's about my attempts to recycle some old linoleum flooring from my house for artistic purposes by offering it for free on Craig's List. That act in particular is not the stupid part, but let me explain.

Last week, after months of procrastination, I finally got around to downloading about 400 images from my digital camera to my computer. Among these were photographs of the linoleum flooring that decades ago had graced one of the bedrooms in my house--a bedroom that had clearly once been a nursery or baby's room before it was carpeted and turned into Mrs. Brown's dressing room, complete with an enormous vanity and the most gratuitously large collection of [mostly unused] makeup products that I have ever seen outside of a department store. Here are a few photos of what I like to refer to as the creepy nursery flooring:

Here's another photo that illustrates some of the other cute figures that appear in the flooring, like kittens and chickens (on wheels?!), rabbits and piggy banks, even a camel:

I knew that the flooring wasn't in fantastic shape; but it's certainly unique, rare, slightly endearing, definitely amusing--and a potential goldmine for artists who use such materials. Thus, I posted on Craig's List, as I have done on many occasions before, this time offering any and all of this linoleum flooring for free to anyone of creative persuasion willing to stop by and check it out.

One of the first individuals to respond said this (and only this): "some of that old flooring was made with aspestas."  Okay... Appreciate the warning, but, um, that's not even how you spell "asbestos." Granted, I could have been a snarky shit by responding to that effect but I simply thanked this person for the concern and forgot about it.

Now, here's where the stupid comes in. The very next day I received this response to my earnest attempt at freecycling from the faceless dunce hiding behind the e-mail address crenovationsllc@gmail.com: 

LOL !  You must be drunk ! IT"S GARBAGE ! Where do you drunken nuts come from ?  Did it ever occur to you that the" VINTAGE" linoleum has "VINTAGE" asbestos in it?

Okay, stupid! I thought to myself. You wanna show the world how unequivocally stupid YOU are by attempting to make a fairly smart person feel stupid?! Think you can get away with jabbing an honest gent who happens to enjoy a good stiff drink now and again? HUH?!  And this is how I responded:

Drunk?!  Occasionally, absolutely, but not when I posted (to the best of my knowledge...) and certainly not right now.

Honestly, what was the point of your responding to my post if your only accomplishment was to sound like an ignoramus fuck?  Why do you think that I'm giving this stuff away as opposed to trying to sell it?  Clearly you're not familiar with the fact that some people actually use this material for art.

www.billmillerart.com

If even one person can or will use this linoleum to create something funky, unique, beautiful or inspiring, why NOT give it away as opposed to tossing it in the trash?  One last thing: asbestos is only dangerous when large quantities of it are inhaled in airborne particulate form.  Working with materials that contain asbestos can be done safely as long as one protects oneself from airborne particles--especially when those materials aren't known to crumble into clouds of fine dust.

Do a little research before trying to sour perfect strangers' evenings with your abusive ignorance, chap.  In plain English, get a fucking life.

So there you have it. I never heard back from the prick, in case you were wondering. Maybe the universe afforded him a moment of clarity just potent enough to recognize that he, in fact, was incorrect about something. But probably not. In all likelihood my response was deleted without ever having been read. You know, my mom was right years ago when, during any one of a number of arguments, she would rhetorically remark You always have to have the last word, don't you? DON'T you?! Yes, mom, and I still do.

Before I finish, I would like to share one final example of stupidity--or whatever you want to call it--that I have encountered perhaps half a dozen times in the past few weeks. Perhaps you've seen it yourself:

The day that I first encountered--and subsequently screen-captured--this particular web artifact, I was enjoying an uneventful music-supplemented morning at work doing something or other on the computer. (At that very moment, as you can tell, I was listening to songs by Pink Floyd's David Gilmour--one of the best guitarists of all time--on YouTube.) So, you ask, what qualifies this as an example of stupidity? The claim, boldly splashed across the top of the image like a front page newspaper headline, that Jesus Christ is Lord? No, certainly not. Lots of people believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. The fact that an online Christian dating service is trying to seduce me and thousands of other unsuspecting viewers with an image of a generic bleach-blond Barbie slut who, for all I know, could boast a laundry list of mastered (and commercially available) filthy acts that would put poor Mary Magdalene to shame? BINGO! I can think of some other things to call it, too: shamelessly desperate. Tacky. Sad. 

* * *

Oh, and to the blond girl in the image: I'm sorry for the things I said. You're probably a very nice girl. I just hope that that particular shot of you doesn't appear in your high school yearbook anywhere. Or as your Facebook profile photo.