Day 28:
Human beings have an amazing rate of consumption. Between the paper and the cigarettes, and the microwaveable meals. Between the thousands of pounds a day of potatos. The billions of grains of rice. By sheer weight, we consume more than every other living creature combined and more than any other creature that has ever lived. We consume by land (gasoline), by air (jet fuel), by sea (diesel). In the last one hundred years, we’ve hunted to extinction, depleted reservoirs, and filled our landfills so high they can be seen from outer space. In fact, some of our garbage has piled up there too. We are the black hole of consumption and the Big Bang of production. It’s just too bad they don’t cancel each other out.
You kind of get the feeling that if we could go back to the Jurassic Era, we would eat the dinosaurs out of house and home. We’d be shoving them head-first into the tar pits to help make room for a store that sold, well, nothing but stone tires, and–in no time at all–some cruel bastard would figure out how to yoke a stegosaurus. So would begin the Stone Age of forced animal labor. Let’s be honest, the Town of Bedrock–convivial home of the Flintstones–was not a glimpse of a symbiotic relationship between humans and animals–it was a dino concentration camp. Yeah, giant meteorite my ass!
But that–in a roundabout way–is how we come to today’s Indicator of Extreme Laziness (or IXL, as I’ve come to term it): garbage.And, in particular, not taking it out.
Ugh. Trash. Granola wrappers, pizza boxes, six two-liter bottles of Cola. So much garbage. And where does it all come from? Us. This is very disturbing. I realize–with mild consternation–that there is more garbage in my kitchen than possessions in my bedroom. Which really says more about the quality of my life than the growing state of my trash. And whom do you suppose is going to take all this garbage out?
This is one of those instances where Mallory fully rejoices in the grand, bosomly joy of being female. “When are you going to take the garbage out?” she asks, in her subtle, suggestive way.
“Garbage?” I pry my head away from the fridge where, for the last ten minutes, I had been looking for something suitable to go on the top of a pop tart.
“You don’t smell it?” Mallory offers, incredulously. Her hands on her hips, I am proud to think that she is going to make a great matriarch for our family one day.
“That’s garbage?” I say with genuine surprise. “I thought maybe there was a dead animal under the sink or something.”
“Honey, stop joking. You really need to take the garbage out.” She looks at me as if to say ‘Now.’
“But, it’s so cold out,” I groan. I give a shiver too and rub my arms for effect. “I’ll take it out tomorrow.”
Pop tarts and cheese? Pop tarts and potato salad?
Ugh, it’s hard to concentrate with that dead animal smell finding its way up my nose.
Why, I ask, does it seem that man’s only occupation is forever displacing garbage from one place to another? Consider this M & M wrapper I’ve tracked after finding in my bed the other day:
The Life-Cycle of an M & M Wrapper I Found in My Bed:
stage 1: M & M wrapper found amongst the covers
stage 2: M & M wrapper displaced to nightstand
stage 3: M & M wrapper found on floor near nightstand
stage 4: M & M wrapper displaced to bedroom dresser
stage 5: M & M wrapper inexplicably displaced to bathroom vanity
stage 6: M & M wrapper starting to metamorphose (biodegrade); displaced to bathroom trash can
stage 7: bathroom garbage displaced to kitchen
stage 8: finally, kitchen garbage displaced into nice neat displaced-garbage pile
I pull out a tub of miracle whip. A drop left. Yes! My miracle whip-pop tart sandwich is complete. The only thing left to do is throw away–displace–this tub in the garbage, which, frankly, is towering precariously.
“Whoa! How did this get so high!?” I shrieked.
Maybe I could nestle the tub against the side of the trash tower, propped up by a milk carton. Or perhaps I should get a step-ladder and gently set it on top of the cereal boxes, by the left over spaghetti…
“I think I’ll take the trash out now,” I said to Mallory, who was beaming at me from the doorway.
stage 9: inside garbage displaced to the outside garbage (AKA, the dumpster, AKA out of my sight!)
Indicator of Extreme Laziness #25 – the garbage is piled so high that it’s about to topple like a game of Jenga.
P.S. The upside, I was right about the dead animal. The down side, so was Mallory. It was in the garbage.
More hilarious–if disturbing–extreme laziness tomorrow…
