Peak Magazine Subscription

At bookstores everywhere in the Moorestown Mall named B. Dalton.

I just started a couple magazine subscriptions in the past few months, so naturally the expiration notices are already arriving en masse.  The last one actually struck fear in my heart.  Newsweek sent me a brown, craft-paper envelope - no indication of sender - with big, bold letters stating "LAST NOTICE - YOUR EXPIRATION IS APPROACHING!"  Now if that's not an explicit death threat, I don't know what is.  Either that or existentialism via postal carrier. 

"My passport!" we'll pretend the middle guy exclaimed.

Why have I chosen to let my periodic mailbox friends lapse?  Ugh.  This stupid environmental...thing.  It's as though I did something ecologically disastrous in a past life or something.  Maybe I was in charge of throwing those Manhattan post-war confetti parties or something, and in the days leading up to the parade I'd bounce around the supply room incessantly barking "more confetti!!"  God I loved confetti...

And now here we are, on the brink of man-made cataclysm, and I have to read my Good Housekeeping online, like a chump.

How deleterious is the magazine publishing industry?  Let's find out.  Do you know how many are sold every single day?  I went to the only source that counts - Yahoo! Answers - and learned I wasn't the first to inquire:

Quat a lot indeed!  I'm definitely going to dig a little deeper and talk to the store staff/manager to find out.  Naturally I'll specify WHAT magazine - are we talking about you?  Wheels?  So many variables.

[Fourth-wall break: that was the "Best Answer"?  This world is f@%&ed.]

Of course, this doesn't account for the vast number of mags produced and not sold.  Sure they're recycled.  But the embodied energy in the quat-a-lot of never-even-once-perused issues of BOP and Tiger Beat is so staggering as to induce apoplexy.  (Do they even make those magazines anymore?  Yes.)

So like it or not, no more confetti parades for me.  Thank god we didn't just wrap up a seven-year foreign war, or I might suffer a relapse.

You'd Think Solar Installation Companies Would Work "It's on the House" Into Their Marketing. Or Maybe You Wouldn't, I Don't Know.

 Had that dream again last night. You know the one - you open the hybrid microwave-mailbox to find an envelope so ragged and abused it looks like Marty McFly sent it from fifty years in the past.  You rip it open to find out that the installation of your new solar array is scheduled for this Wednesday, and the state grant came through - the whole install is free!  It goes on to note "make sure the elevator in your house is clear of debris so installers can work safely and quickly" - that's when the dream-panic kicks in: my elevator is a mess!

It'll have to remain a dream for now.  It's not that the glorious photovoltaic array that taunts me while I sleep is too costly - the financial gymnastics that can make it wildly affordable are very much in place and available.  No, I'm merely abiding by the ever-cherished Energy-Efficiency Pyramid.

It was gonna be called the Energy-Efficiency Triangle, but then they thought, come on...

See it?  Yeah, there at the top - Renewable Options.  Damn that's up there.  To express why, let's go through a boring exercise.  Say you currently use 1000 kilowatt-hours per month.  Your monthly electric bill, thus, $200.  In order to completely replace your utility needs with renewable solar, you'll need an 9.4 kW system (assuming the Northeast's average of 3.5 'sunny' hours per day).  Neat, fork over the $60,000 (post-incentives) and it's yours. 

Above, a 10 kW system, in order to show your inability to afford it.

That is, if you're living in Stupidville, population one.  And the one is you.  And you're the mayor.  And for some reason you still campaign during election season.

Picture any pyramid you've ever seen.  No one starts at the top.  Sure, paratroopers, but they were so rare in Ancient Egypt.  The bottom is where it's at.  You take the first step - understanding conservation in general, performing energy audits, using the web as a resource for study and planning.  If you're bipedal, you proceed one foot after the other, ascending Mount Sustainability incrementally, bumping your summer AC up to 77, popping in CFLs where they oughtta be, and caulking the s-word out of your leaky walls.

Different Mario.

There's still a long way to go before you're relying solely on the Big Yellow Dude in the Sky.  The sun, we're talking about. Wait who did you think?

And so I'm somewhere in the middle. Sure I've extended my reach upward here and there, then slid back down to collect some of the lowest-hanging fruit I missed.  It's like when Mario completes a level, but then runs backs and has a coin-collecting fiesta. 

Let's go back to your hometown of Stupidville for a second (btw, you're mayor and sole voter - change the name?).  You only "use" 1000 kilowatt-hours because you haven't yet climbed the EEPyramid.  Picture any number of movies where there's a montage and through a series of physical and spiritual exertions, our main character grows substantively and by the time the montage is over, is a changed person.  Similarly, run up the various steps of the pyramid, and you'll quickly reduce your energy needs.

Wow.  Talk about incontrovertible.

Diminish your dependence on frosty AC and toasty heat?  One-thousand kilowatt-hours suddenly drops to 900.  Kill all your vampire outlets that trickle wattage when devices aren't in use?  900 is now 880.  Ditch the hot water when washing clothes or running the dishwasher?  Down to 825.  Caulk up the leaks, spray insulation where needed - 800.  Now to some heavy hitters - replace the old fridge, hot water heater, or best of all air conditioner?  Watch that 800 fall to 700.  Send your kids to boarding school?  Sweet, merciful five hundred.

Made up numbers, I know.  But if you can cut your electrical use by half, suddenly your cost-prohibitive solar installation becomes not only palatable, but straight-up appropriate.


EDITOR'S NOTE: I tried to 'shop a solar panel under Rocky's arms as he climbed the steps of the art museum.  Evocative image, eh?

OJSTW Quandary: If W Gets S'd, How Will I Lazily Waste My Mornings?

Caught a really superior TED talk today.  Jason Clay from WWF explains how the great changes in the market that are needed shouldn't be coming from the consumer side - it will just take too long, and we'll be in a Costnerian waterworld by the time the mindshift is made.  Instead, an intense focus should applied to the real movers and shakers - the top 100 companies that are directly involved in the commodity trading of the world's most precious and endangered resources (think pulp for paper, cotton, biofuels, etc.).

He argues that transforming these companies into sustainable purveyors will generate a kind of market gravity and pull in smaller producers to the same ecologically suitable practices in order to stay competitive.  

You watch now.

LOLpower: four

Alright, Um, Stalkers...Caterpillars... Gas Prices - OH, Things That Creep!!

Out of sight, out of mind.  So goes it with gas prices.  It's an okay metaphor - not perfect by any means - but here's what I'm saying: when the price of gas at the pump isn't at the forefront of the national discussion, we seem to forget about it and how critical it is to crafting our government's foreign policy.

Again, for effect: our government's foreign policy.  Sound important?  It should, I wrote it in italics.

And no, we're not at $4.11 per gallon, where we peaked in July 2008.  We're sitting relatively pretty at $2.74.  Of course, the days of $1.50 a gallon are long gone.  We've come to accept high-twos as the new norm.  It's doesn't take a crystal ball to predict we'll soon view the low-threes as the new norm.  But if there's one indicator the nation should be following like Tiger on the 18th, it's the price we're paying at the pump.

"Good try, n00b," my one friend who's smart at this stuff would say.  "Per barrel pricing is where it's at.  And I don't say 'n00b'."

Seventy six bucks.  Seems paltry compared to its record of $145 that same July 2008.  But if there's one commodity where pricing can be artificially invented as though out of the ether, it's petroleum.  I don't know that for sure; the real answer might be pork bellies, but when's the last time a pork belly drove you to work?  Don't answer that.

Fact is, there's a sleeping giant on the other side of the world.  Actually the giant has been rising for some time now, but it's one of those giants that's way, way bigger than you think once it's fully upright.  Like a giraffe, I suppose.  This giraffe is two-headed - China and India.  You can picture it.

Take a look at this technical statistics graph I drew up.  What jumps out at you right away is how much the expected China/India demand is probably going to be as compared to the current demand.  The number of oils used by these two exploding nations is going to skyrocket, not to mention grow stripes.

What does it mean?  It means when that striped demon-Giraffe is fully-awakened and sprinting, the finite supply of oil will be in that much greater demand, thus pressuring prices upward.  How up? 

Fifteen dollars per gallon.

Nah, probably not, but let's keep an eye on it, mmk?

Bringing Home the Gold: Trophy Recycling, and My Curious Distaste for Sporting Commemorations

Clearly not won for Best Photographer.

One way writers like to start an examination of a topic is to offer the etymology of the word itself.  It tends to cast the topic in a new light and asks that the reader consider another - presumably simpler - culture's perspective.  In this historical frame of mind, a more profound understanding is supposed to surface.  I guess.

Well this post is about recycling trophies.  And you know what?  Trophy in any other language still means trophy.  Latin, trophaeum - monument to victory.  French, trophee - spoils of war.  I'm none the wiser having learned that.  Or am I?  I'm not.  What's clear, however, is that the concept of 'trophy' is nearly ageless.  But it's our consumer culture that has turned it into a first-place beast.

Cleaning out my old room, I decided the thirty or so trophies I'd amassed throughout my childhood didn't warrant sitting on my mantle.  For one, I'd have to get a mantle.  There's just no place in a latter-twentysomething's home to showcase all the teams I was a "Participant" on.  That's right, participant.  Sure there's a championship in there, a couple all-star games, but the majority of them are of the "He Totally Rostered!" variety.  This post is not intended to elucidate the virtues or lack thereof of "awarding" everyone, thereby diminishing the prestige of the actual victor.  Instead, it's to ask where the effsies are all these trophies gonna go??

Think about it.  If every kid averages 1.5 recreational sports, 6 years of participation, 2 teams/leagues/seasons per year, and earns 0.25 merit-based awards per year, that's 22.5 trophies per person.  Where, pray tell, will these shiny little monuments of mediocrity end up?  Sure, that half-a-trophy gets thrown away - its little dude on top is missing its head.  But let's extrapolate on this math for a sec. 

Do you know how many ten to fourteen year-olds there are in this country?  Imma tell you.  Twenty mill.  Yup.  Brats, too, but that's another story.  So these twenty million brats kids will grow up, slowly drop from their respective sporting teams because of their a) badness at said sport, or b) growing interest in opposite sex.  They'll attend college, drink all the beers, and get a job they tolerate.  Meanwhile, this small slice of the American population will be carrying in tow...a half a BILLION trophies!  

If all those trophies were lined end-to-end, they'd still be...a half a BILLION trophies!  And if you tried to stack them vertically, you stop right away because trophies are odd-shaped and cumbersome.

Half of a billion trophies.  It's like a word-play thing.  If you don't like it just move on.

"But writer guy," you ask, "where did you come up with all those little stats?  Source please?"  Man,  I dunno, I made them up.  Full disclosure, there.  Come up with your own stats if you so choose, but you can't deny that there's a trophy problem in this country.  And our political leaders are all too quick to just sweep it under the rug. And surprise, surprise: Big Trophy's behind it.  And you know what happens when you ask too many questions of Big Trophy?  They give you a goddamn trophy. 

Step one is disposing of the existing glut of these memorials.  There's actually a good amount of services that will recycle them.  Check this out for a more serious treatment on the subject.  Planet Green also spits game.  There's really just a few options - the items are stripped down for their recyclable materials, reused with a new nameplate (often for charitable organizations), or turned into art.  Ogle below.

Image Credit: Green Eco Services

And here's Hunter Cross, who just went berserk with a glue gun and made this happen at The Dallas Contemporary for an installation in late 2007.  More pics at the link.  Obv.

Image credit: Hunter Cross

The next step is the trickier one, which I'll only touch on briefly.  That is to change the mentality of the American athletics community.  Terrific, you took third place in districts.  Celebrate?  Absolutely.  Memorialize with millennia-to-decompose cubic foot-occupying closet fodder?  I dare say no.

But being a part-time unpaid blogger, I totally understand the psychology behind it.  High-fives fade.  The joy, the smiles, the one idiot that dumps Gatorade 95% on the ground and 5% on Coach Thompson - all memories worth keeping.  But we feel a compulsion to embody these memories in a...thing.  Something that lasts a little longer; something to give the memories life - but not immortality.  May I suggest...

1. Ice Sculptures for winter sports
2. Watermelons for summer sports

Wow.  Environmentally-devastating tradition over.  New, sustainable and let's face it, super-cool one begun. Armies of farmers and ice sculptists gainfully-employed.  Now that's a victory for everyone. 

And as for Big Trophy?  If they want to play in the 21st-century sporting arena, they'll retool their shops and get busy on that water-freezing machine.  Which I guess is just called a freezer. 

Renaissance Man Crush....GO!

So there's a great resource on the web that shows you how much electricity it takes to do all sorts of things - run your washing machine, light your home, freezify your popsicles, etc.  It's been my go-to for a couple years now, and today being Sharing Wednesday (somewhere, probably) I thought I'd bestow it unto you: www.michaelbluejay.com.

Yes, that does read "I was born into a cult". 

If you're feeling clicky, your first thought was like mine - when did Weird Al start wearing suits?  Au contraire, Frenchie, that in fact is Big Mike Bluejay, Human Extraordinaire.  In addition to creating the web's definitive guide to household energy use, Mr. Electricity (a moniker that appears to be self-donned) also drops comprehensive knowledge on the process of home-buying, how to snag cheap plane tickets, bicycle safety, and his stint as a Ben Folds Five groupie (natch...).

Google "cheap airfare guide" - Bluejay's on top.  Google "household battery guide" - it's Bluejay season.  "How to buy a home"?  The Bluejays are in town for a three-game series.  If you were dorky enough to ask Jeeves "what's a boss site about saving electricity?" - you guessed it: the North American Coastal mother-flyin' Bluejay.

Homey just slays search engines.

It harbors hope, doesn't it?  One guy, rockin' long last-century locks, just pwning number one rankings.  Sure, his page looks like it was designed in 2001 - but it's actually from '98, so dude's a visionary.  Don't hate on his skills.  (BTW - search "website design tips"?  Yup.  A Michael Bluejay Joint.)

Why is he worth noting on a blog about saving humanity and all of nature's creatures and the environment and music and love?  I'll let the man speak for himself.

He doesn't use air-conditioning until it gets up to 96°.  He's never had a beer in his life.  He sleeps on blankets instead of a bed.  Anyone else picking up on the Chuck Norris/Jack Bauer/World's Most Interesting Man vibe?  I'm just sayin'...

So should we idolize him?  Raise him up to the vaunted status of welebrity cewebrity Internet icon?  I don't know.  All I know is I want to get an apartment with him and possibly write his autobiography.  That's right, autobiography.  That's how inside his brain I need to get.  Also seems I would make more money that way.

How Could We Ever Expect Government Regulation to Trump Market Forces For the Good, I Write in My Invisible Sarcasm Font?

OJSTW guest blogger Stephen Colbert didn't seem to get around to my request to pitch in with an acid-tongued critique of the Senate's failure to enact climate legislation of any kind.  Regardless, I'll step up and do the duties - and in my most seething faux-pundit voice, to boot.

Ahem.  Mi mi mi mi mi.  Is this thing [my keyboard] on [plugged in and recognized by my laptop's device manager]?

Where do you get off?  Yeah!  I'm talking to you, liberals!  Has your on-average five-and-a-half years of university education taught you nothing about capitalism's infinite dominance over state-imposed legislation?  You can tax-jack cigarettes all you want, but the consumer will always make the final choice as to how much cancer he or she chooses to get!  Because you see America is about choice.  And the inaction our Congress has taken this summer has shown that their constituency wants this energy crisis.  You keep crying about a "two-degree rise" - well maybe it was two degrees too cold in here!  Ever think of that?

[Okay, the biting-parody voice doesn't suit me.  Let's now return to my own Teddy-Pendergrass-tender-parody voice.  Seamlessly, too.]

Is there an example in our recent international history where we faced a collective problem, together mounted a firm stance against it, and actually resolved said problem in a way that kept our species going and lead to the longest high-five sesh on record?  How quickly we've forgotten. 

The light....spreads out...the letters.

 Image credit: burnbarrel.org

In a month and a week - September 16 - I will be celebrating alone, in my loft studio rent-controlled apartment time-share...loft (god I'm suburban), because no one seems to recall that we have a world-recognized holiday called International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer.  Its penchant for falling out of memory is probably due to its timid tagline: "Nine-Sixteen - We'll Never Forget...To Try To Remember...As Best We Can...To a Reasonable Degree".

Let's face it, our situation is comical!

The year was 1994.  PM Dawn was rocking the charts.  Four Weddings and a Funeral was revolutionizing the multiple-and-varied-festivities genre.  It was then that the United Nations General Assembly commemorated the date September 16 - when in 1987 the Montreal Protocol was signed.  I can assure you, they don't just give out holidays - this one was worth it.

The short story: it was learned in 1985 that there was a hole over Antartica - no ozone where there should have been ozone.  Ozone, of course, being the gas that naturally occurs in our atmosphere to protect us from ultraviolet radiation.  So a gaping hole would mean excess UV radiation - skin cancer, respiratory system irritation, cataracts, and ultimately accelerated climate change. 

But once recognized, the world's leaders had a series of sleepovers, shared super-secret secrets, and when all was said and done, made a totally serious pact to limit production of chlorofluorocarbons, the stuff that eats ozone like Four-Cheese Cheez-Its.  Screw hair control, they basically said.

Am I right??

And it worked.  In only a few short years, it was determined that stratospheric quantities of CFCs and other harmful gases had leveled or decreased, and the ozone was reforming.  Boo-yah.  International cooperative enforcement policies FTW.  Let's get these guys a holiday - is 9/16 available?  Sweet, stamp it [this presumes there's a form of some sort and the 'stamping' thereof makes it fully official].

Shall we close with some lessons?  This is what proverbs were made for:

1. There's more than one way to skin a cat.  (Market forces only take you so far; when society's general interest is involved, a government body can trigger positive change faster than any unregulated market.)
2. Necessity is the mother of invention.  (A threatening issue arises, and humanity's innovation steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the park.  Home run.  And there was a runner on second.  Plus it was a walk-off.  Also broke up a no-hitter.)
3. Never mix your liquor.  (I'm prepping for that 9/16 celebration.  Evites to come.)

LOLpower: three

Power Down, Y'all!

That says 37.4%.  It was drawn during a euphoric jubilee, so go easy.

"I'm just one person, what can I do?"   - some idiot, 2010

 A lot of people look at the energy quandary we're in and feel no solution is possibly on the horizon - what with the confluence of spiraling national debt, protracted economic agony and population growth that will threaten our way of living for future generations.  With that frame of mind, it's easy to just want to lay down on your couch and order Papa John's, while making sure to request extra garlic sauce, because they won't give it to you if you don't ask.

And then there's me - brilliant like a wizard and twice as popular at parties.  Why?  Because simple old me, with merely a drive to change and some questionable grammar, just cut my energy use by a whopping - that's right, I'm going with whopping - 37.4%.  "Prove it," someone randomly shouted from the crowd.

Add 'em up, fool.  What that's saying there is I used 3684 kilowatt-hours (kWh) in May through July of 2009.  It seems to think I used 2681 in that same period of 2010, but no, I assure you it was only 2308.  Good try PSE&G, with your wild assumptions despite not even knowing me - that's an estimate you made there in July, and you know what happens when you make estimates?  You make an ass out of yourself...mates.  I happen to have it on good authority I used a mere 950 kWh in July.  How can I be so sure?  Let's just say I keep an eye on my meter. 

 Image credit: 4hforestryinvitational

No, not like that...though I must say I'm disturbed that image was so readily available.

What I mean is I use an iPhone app called MeterRead that lets you enter your meter reading and extrapolates your usage, enabling you to get a good sense of how much and when your electricity use is more than it should be.

So over the past few months, as I've religiously logged my meter readings into my trusty app and made a conscious effort to eliminate waste energy, I can say with confidence that one person can make a difference. 

"One person can also set fire to a daycare center," some moron in the crowd may yell.  Whoa! Wait, why would you even say that, it seems irrelevant and counterproductive?  "My point," the moron may continue, "is that just because one person does something doesn't mean everyone else should.  Free will!  Also, 'Free Bird'!"  Put your lighter down, moron.  And possible arsonist.  

The overriding mission doesn't necessarily have to be a reduction of energy use.  I'm all for gadgets and gizmos and Christmas light shows and racing three remote control firetrucks simultaneously just for the purpose of mind-blowing my dog.  But I damn sure expect the juice to be coming from the ever-renewable source of the 6.5 kW solar installation up on that there roof.  Because if not, my dog gets a free pass, and we're back to playing boring old fetch.

No way.  That dog's just too big.  And - OMG is that cat dead!?  And what's the significance of the missing dog poster?  Is he in that fire?!  Too many questions!  Not enough "Contact the Artist" links!

Image credit: picture-book.com

Fine.  Let's start with the assumption that you want to make a difference by cutting your wasted energy.  What I, the Energy Wizard (trademark?), have done is proven it's easy as pie!  If you're wondering what actions I took to decrease my electricity use, you're about to find out - right after this commercial break.

Or, more likely, in another post.  I'm off to track down that artist.  That illustration is haunting me. Dog's too big, I'm tellin' ya...

The Great 7/19 Blackout: 30 Minutes of the Apocal-ish

Recently I was couchin' it at home, and as I drank my whatever-it-is-I-drink, things truly felt serene.  A light thunder rumbled ever so gently, like a snorer's obstruction in the nasal passage that doesn't quite require medical attention (though a sleep study wouldn't hurt).  I watched my local sports team perform however-it-is-they-perform, and considered the state of my union: it was pleasant.

 8:37 PM. A crude artist's rendering.  The rendering's crude, the artist's actually rather polite.

At that moment, a tiny slice of armageddon pierced my world.  Without warning the lights ceased to shine.  The television halted its broadcast.  The microwave's green glow of the wildly wrong time dissipated into nothingness.

8:38 PM.  High-res photo of the blackout.  Diagonal white lines are "spirit streaks".

My entire world suddenly shifted into the 'off' position.  In my desperation, I think I coined some new profanity like "shuck".

Step One in my survival handbook was apparently "Have an Exceptionally Dumb Look On Your Face", so I did this.  Soon my brain was running through possible disaster scenarios that might be playing out at that very moment, momentarily convincing myself of each one's veracity.  "Could this be...oh my word...this is al-Qaeda.  They're here!  They've exploded all the transformers in a quarter-mile radius!  Of course they'd start with suburban South Jersey - it's where we'd least expect it!"  Then I'd switch to a more likely circumstance.  "No no no - this is merely the straw that has broken the camel's back that is our decrepit power grid.  It was me, running my wash at an inopportune - nay, catastrophic - time, that has overwhelmed the infrastructure up and down the entire Eastern seaboard.  My bad, you guys, this one's on me."

Each potential cause I identified served to explain the situation, but did nothing to mitigate its effects.  In fact, as time wore on, the intensity of the disaster at-hand only magnified - or perhaps just my perception of it.  I envisioned a torch-bearing mob banging at the windows of Wawa (in my head, they were already zombies - go figure!), each flashing-light vehicle that sped by was en route to a bloodied, society-crippling riot, and the pitter-patter of rain that still caressed my roof was the precursor to epic floods that would leave this land in ruins, or at least with that moldy smell that's annoying to get rid of for awhile.

Geez, brood much?

Doomsday visions swirled in my head. I checked my cell phone.  Twenty minutes of darkness.  A thought along the line's of "God hath left us - was He ever even here?" entered my mind, but delivered by Daniel Day-Lewis.



It was a steamy night, and the absence of AC was fast becoming palpable.  A bead of sweat formed at my brow - my left one, if memory serves.  For a moment I rationalized that turning on a fan would allay the meltdown, until it sunk in that everything I own is grid-operated.  Even my batteries plug into the wall, for hyperbole's sake!

Forty minutes into this hellscape, an explosion of light and sound filled the air.  Greta Van Susteren's mellifluous tone wafted through the room, which is strange because I wasn't watching Fox News.  I swear.  I was too mentally exhausted by this point to consider that particular conspiracy theory.  Instead I cracked open another whatever that I had deftly tucked in the freezer at the outset of the crapstorm.  I have priorities, and I exercise them.

The next hour passed much like the one that follows a near-death experience.  I think I wept at one point, the evidence being smeared eye-liner all over my face, which I don't even wear because I'm a gentleman; I'm telling you, it was a weird night.  But I vowed to myself this: I will prepare myself.  I will be ready when the next blackout hits.  Because that one might be the real deal.  So whether it be excess grid-demand or Talibanistic in nature, I'll be prepared. 

It should be noted I talk to myself in italics.

So here I am now, sixteen days later.  In those sixteen days I've lost my phone charger and ran out of milk.  Because the only thing I am more than an American, is an idiot.  Someone should write a song...

Wow.  Talk about a powerful, let alone apt, image.  The only thing that could ruin it is a self-aggrandizing caption that totally neutralizes the meaning behind it.  And the only thing that could make it better would be like a bunch of machine guns at the bottom-right there.  You know, for freedom.