Going off the grid
Last night I watched Morgan (Super Size Me) Spurlock's new show, 30 Days on FX. Two thumbs up.
I loved the one about the straight born-again Christian guy being forced to live with gay men in the Castro in San Francisco. And the other born-again Christian guy going to live with the Muslim family in the midwest.
See, the premise is just like Super Size Me, only it extends beyond McDonalds and veganism. It deals with a variety of socio-political issues.
Anyway -- blah blah blah. The point is this. Last night's episode was about going off the grid. They made two fossil-fuel hungry Americans live in a sustainable-living co-op with a bunch of hippies who don't bathe. They had to compost their own poop. (Ever notice how close the word co-op is to poop? Just one letter off.)
I was thinking about it in the shower this morning and I realized that going off the grid would be a total impossibility for me. Oh, sure, I could power my Tivo with solar panels -- not to mention my DVD player and laptop and Sirius satellite radio and millions of Japanese kitchen appliances. Plus, I already shower outdoors.
But what about Nuvo? I MUST HAVE Nuvo. Nuvo is the new Japanese "home robot" (PS: you need a NYT subscription for that link. Worth reading however -- very Pinocchio.). Can I keep Nuvo powered up? Will he work on solar? These are the kind of questions I need answers to.
Well, I would need those answers to these questions if I was going to go off the grid. But I'm not gonna. Not gonna. And not just b/c of the Nuvo quandry.
Here's the thing: I kinda think hippies are stupid. Now I'm not just pulling this out of my ass. In college, I lived in a clothing-optional vegetarian co-op. Yes, you heard that right. And those people were stupid. Buying a coffee maker required hours of deliberation. We even had to achieve quorum. Don't ask. The point is it was a big pain in the ass. For a coffee maker.
Like my college roommates, the people on 30 Days were dumb. They acted like gardening was really hard. Um, gardening is so not hard. You put stuff in the ground and it grows.
OK and here's the other thing. You want to compost your poop? Hire Mexicans to do that. Pay them $5/hour. To them, that's a lot of money. And you don't have to compost your own poop. $5 an hour is worth that. Plus, now you have time to do other things. Like grow fancy stuff like arugula and heirloom tomatoes and figs and make your goat cheese. Then you can sell it to local restaurants and gourmet grocers. And then we can pay for the Mexican labor who will happily compost our poop.
But see, I worked out that whole part. It's much more complicated than that, me going off the grid. So many complications. For example, I'd have to start my own vineyard and start dealing in black-market Ding Dongs and Donettes.
I can't think about this anymore. I had teriyaki chicken today. Teriyaki chicken peppered with so much MSG that it effectively put me into a semi-coma plus all the adjoining symptoms (dry mouth, drowsiness, nausea, dizziness, general lethargy). Plus Gilmore Girls is on. Bye.
PS: I have trained Free-free (AKA Jeffrey) well. Instead of running out to get us Chix McNuggets and Big Macs at McDonald's, he is over at Hal's right this very minute, picking up our to go order of endive salad; filet mignon with black truffle oil, foie gras, roasted fingerling potatoes, sweet carmelized onions, and broccolini (that's baby broccoli for the uninitiated); and a side of risotto. Not that there's anything wrong with McDonald's. I like that, too. Just not every night. If I wanted McDonald's every night, I'd move to Iowa.
I loved the one about the straight born-again Christian guy being forced to live with gay men in the Castro in San Francisco. And the other born-again Christian guy going to live with the Muslim family in the midwest.
See, the premise is just like Super Size Me, only it extends beyond McDonalds and veganism. It deals with a variety of socio-political issues.
Anyway -- blah blah blah. The point is this. Last night's episode was about going off the grid. They made two fossil-fuel hungry Americans live in a sustainable-living co-op with a bunch of hippies who don't bathe. They had to compost their own poop. (Ever notice how close the word co-op is to poop? Just one letter off.)
I was thinking about it in the shower this morning and I realized that going off the grid would be a total impossibility for me. Oh, sure, I could power my Tivo with solar panels -- not to mention my DVD player and laptop and Sirius satellite radio and millions of Japanese kitchen appliances. Plus, I already shower outdoors.
But what about Nuvo? I MUST HAVE Nuvo. Nuvo is the new Japanese "home robot" (PS: you need a NYT subscription for that link. Worth reading however -- very Pinocchio.). Can I keep Nuvo powered up? Will he work on solar? These are the kind of questions I need answers to.
Well, I would need those answers to these questions if I was going to go off the grid. But I'm not gonna. Not gonna. And not just b/c of the Nuvo quandry.
Here's the thing: I kinda think hippies are stupid. Now I'm not just pulling this out of my ass. In college, I lived in a clothing-optional vegetarian co-op. Yes, you heard that right. And those people were stupid. Buying a coffee maker required hours of deliberation. We even had to achieve quorum. Don't ask. The point is it was a big pain in the ass. For a coffee maker.
Like my college roommates, the people on 30 Days were dumb. They acted like gardening was really hard. Um, gardening is so not hard. You put stuff in the ground and it grows.
OK and here's the other thing. You want to compost your poop? Hire Mexicans to do that. Pay them $5/hour. To them, that's a lot of money. And you don't have to compost your own poop. $5 an hour is worth that. Plus, now you have time to do other things. Like grow fancy stuff like arugula and heirloom tomatoes and figs and make your goat cheese. Then you can sell it to local restaurants and gourmet grocers. And then we can pay for the Mexican labor who will happily compost our poop.
But see, I worked out that whole part. It's much more complicated than that, me going off the grid. So many complications. For example, I'd have to start my own vineyard and start dealing in black-market Ding Dongs and Donettes.
I can't think about this anymore. I had teriyaki chicken today. Teriyaki chicken peppered with so much MSG that it effectively put me into a semi-coma plus all the adjoining symptoms (dry mouth, drowsiness, nausea, dizziness, general lethargy). Plus Gilmore Girls is on. Bye.
PS: I have trained Free-free (AKA Jeffrey) well. Instead of running out to get us Chix McNuggets and Big Macs at McDonald's, he is over at Hal's right this very minute, picking up our to go order of endive salad; filet mignon with black truffle oil, foie gras, roasted fingerling potatoes, sweet carmelized onions, and broccolini (that's baby broccoli for the uninitiated); and a side of risotto. Not that there's anything wrong with McDonald's. I like that, too. Just not every night. If I wanted McDonald's every night, I'd move to Iowa.