happy election/earth day

[danschank]

1.
since my state held its primary today, i thought you guys might get a kick out of this awesome tv funhouse skit from SNL. it's from the beginning of the primary season, so all the original candidates (and a few who never actually ran) are parodied. laugh out loud funny-ness.

2.

Comments

[chocolatebark]

but we found a frog with no lungs the other day! It's not TOTAL ecological ruin!

[danschank]

evolution is our only hope.

[chocolatebark]

HERETIC

[lapsedmodernist]

have you seen this?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/17/2164780.htm

I love the decaying gardens. Now that I'll be living over there, I will be able to see them.

[lapsedmodernist]

I mean that there is another one in the North Atlantic, it's in the article. I am guessing the one the article is about is one of the halves of the total soup.

i'm glad people seem to have clicked on that link

[danschank]

... not as glad to hear that there's a SECOND one in the north atlantic. but i'm not surprised. i'm actually really fascinated with this stuff right now. as catastrophic as it is, it's kind of useful to me artistically. i'm getting more and more motivated by the idea that these bitter pills enable an almost "sublime" sensation, on account of being so insurmountable. "sublime" in the sense of a tidal wave, rather than a beautiful snowflake, obviously. (which isn't to say i'm not trying to curb my own consumption, etc.)

totally jealous about the netherlands, by the way. congrats. i was in amsterdam for a week or so in college (i have extended family there), and i remember feeling like it would make a very agreeable home...

Re: i'm glad people seem to have clicked on that link

[bing_crosby]

you should maybe read or look at the intro to David Nye (not the science guy)'s American Technological Sublime. I have issues with it as a work of history but the ideas are appealing-- Kantian sublime for the industrial era.

[apresminuit]

dead & dying plants are necessary for shelter, escape cover, & nesting habitat for a lot of birds & other animules, so allowing a garden to decay is also pretty "green". i kinda like that the article doesn't mention that, tho; i am gettin mighty tired of fashionable faux environmentalism.

i like things where a certain, say, politic is implied by the practice

[danschank]

like, you can read that article and get a sense that it might be a more sustainable model, (maybe?) but there's no self-congratulation.

i think the problem with the mentality of environmentalism in the states is that it's perceived as an upper class conceit, when in practice it seems that poor people are almost always on the receiving end of the problems (regarding water shortages, trade deregulation, natural disasters, etc.). i wish the conversation could change accordingly, but what are you gonna do?

there was a dude on tavis smiley recently

[apresminuit]

who, in addition to being FLY AS HELL, spoke to some of those same points w/r/t poor folks relationship w/ environmental issues & potential solutions in what i thought were really super smart & unassailably practical terms:

"We get hit first and worst with all the negatives of the environmental problem. Our children have the cancer, the asthma epidemic is out of control, we are the ones who are eating the bad food, and we don't get the organic food. People who have the money, they can go Whole Foods... that looks like Whole Paycheck to us sometimes

Re: there was a dude on tavis smiley recently

[danschank]

i've just glossed over the interview, and it seems pretty great. thanks. his organization seems pretty amazing.

(i kinda love tavis smiley in general)

i'd like to see an overlap between the whole foods mentality of environmentalism, and the stuff he's talking about. progressives are so bad at populism, it seems... the ideas are there, but not enough people get ideas out of, say, the university setting.

the sad part is that this kinda demonizes things like organicc produce or composting or whatever. everyone apologizes for being a "hippie" before even mentioning it. but in the larger picture, what "green living" signifies about someone culturally strikes me as pretty insubstantial in the face of what living accordingly signifies in the larger scheme.

[ceciliaj]

Thinking about all the plastic in the ocean makes me sad. But it's important to think about.

[danschank]

it's kind of insane that it's not being talked about EVER in the news. i was telling my dad about this the other night and he didn't believe me until i pulled like three credible articles on the subject (i think a blurb from ABC news finally sold him).

[ceciliaj]

Argh, the environment is something I canNOT talk about with my dad. He sends me dumb skeptic arguments about global warming all the time. I see value in being contrarian (and practice it myself often enough), but I'm disappointed how unwilling he is to budge on that one.

[bing_crosby]

My uncle, who grows sunflowers next to his fields so that birds will come eat the seeds, and pick bugs off the other plants while they are at it, just lets the sunflowers stay for the winter and they make beautiful rows of twiggy stalks in the otherwise empty fields. It is, as you say, a shot at a different aesthetic. thanks for the article.. and for that video which did make me laugh out loud. Obama with no teeth :)

i thought you'd like the garden article

[danschank]

re: snl, some of my favorite jokes are almost overshadowed by people laughing at the previous one. like when guiliani claims he "had bob hope killed."

the guiliani character is drawn really well too.