A Conservative Estimate
Saturday night I suddenly became homesick for my vegetarian days. Not for health reasons, or because I had a particular longing for seitan, but because I was sitting in a barbecue restaurant seemingly surrounded by assholes.
It would be an obscene generalization to say that all meat eaters are assholes, or that people who don't eat meat aren't, but there's still a tail end of the carnivorous bell curve where as an establishment's percentage of offerings approaches 100% meat (e.g. barbecue, wings, steaks), its clientele approaches at least 50% jackass.
On this particular occasion, our table neighbor was illuminating his dinner companions about the wisdom of recycling:
One of his friends interrupted finally, at this point, to ask meekly whether there might not be more principles involved than simply economics.
At this point I figured it was only a matter of time for him to add that he forbids his kids from wearing seatbelts because no one can really prove whether they will always save a life, or that unless someone can prove global warming that he's going to keep on making as much pollution as he wants, or. . . .
It would be an obscene generalization to say that all meat eaters are assholes, or that people who don't eat meat aren't, but there's still a tail end of the carnivorous bell curve where as an establishment's percentage of offerings approaches 100% meat (e.g. barbecue, wings, steaks), its clientele approaches at least 50% jackass.
On this particular occasion, our table neighbor was illuminating his dinner companions about the wisdom of recycling:
Do you know what they figured out? No, seriously. Recycling programs in the US are actually subsidized by the United States government. Do you know what that means? It doesn't save money to recycle. In fact, I think it actually may cost more money to reprocess a plastic bottle into a new plastic bottle than it does just to make it from scratch. And here all these damn environmentalists have been telling us all these years that it's the better way to do things. Tell me, if the government is paying to make it look like it pays off when it actually doesn't, how is that actually helping anything? I'm never going to recycle again. I don't care how much of a deposit they give me back. It's all nothing but a bribe.
One of his friends interrupted finally, at this point, to ask meekly whether there might not be more principles involved than simply economics.
I don't see how it matters. You know what else I found out? They're telling you all this stuff about garbage that never goes away, but if they were to build a new landfill in the middle of the US in, say, Kansas or something, and it was thirty-five miles on a side — I know it wouldn't be a very pretty sight — but thirty-five miles, it would have enough room for all the trash in America for the next thousand years. I'm serious. So who fucking cares how much garbage anyone makes. It doesn't matter.
At this point I figured it was only a matter of time for him to add that he forbids his kids from wearing seatbelts because no one can really prove whether they will always save a life, or that unless someone can prove global warming that he's going to keep on making as much pollution as he wants, or. . . .