(Blog)

One time (now) I read this article about some guy giving a college graduation speech. It’s this speech. And then I rewrote it as my own speech, which I prefer better, because I’m young and selfish and unkind, just like the guy giving the original speech expects me to be.

What are old people good for, besides ridicule? Tales of regret.

Once, I was poor, and it was awful; once, I worked at a slaughterhouse, and it wasn’t. I’ve imbibed poop-water in a distant land and it gave me the shits for months. I shot a hockey puck at a girl I liked, and missed. Once, a nervous-hair-chewing girl came to town, and moved away, and I was kind of kind to her when she was around, but mostly she wasn’t; I think that’s because I was selfish.

See, everyone thinks they’re the invincible lead in their own story within a greater world; it’s not that we don’t care, we just can’t see outside our stories. I’m using stories as a metaphor because I’m an author, so that’s all I know.

Being the hero of your own story makes being kind tough, because who gives a shit about the nervous-hair-chewing girl, right? You’re the hero. Still, as we get older, our reflexes dull and we can’t play FPS games anymore, so instead we play casual Facebook games and give all our money to Gameloft, and Zynga, and others. We slow down and lose our faculties. We can’t tell jokes anymore. We realize through endless microtransactions that we were, after all, not the lead of the story at all.

And like that, this cruel, inhuman modern life grinds you down into dust. But it something like fairy dust. And if you have kids, you’ll sprinkle them with it with every lesson and every story you pass on. Many of you have decades of the stuff on you, and inside you. You’re even breathing it in right now, your parents’ lives. See, they live on through you, and you’ll live on through your children, in an endless cycle of reincarnation through fairy dust.

I’d say “don’t be a dick”, but some Trekkie nerd already made that speech, so I’ll just say this: In 80 years or so, I’ll be 134, probably with robot legs, and laser eyes, and a cyberbrain, and a lot of cats. Hopefully by that time, some of you will have become kinder, because you’re all a bunch of dicks right now. I can tell. I used to be one of you. When you are as kind as the Element of Kindness, and we’re all living in space, drop me a line, and I’ll say “I told you so”, and we can arm-wrestle with our cybernetic future arms and toss back a space brew or seven. Cheers, now get the fuck out.

I don’t like talking about something before the wheels are in motion. Not out of superstition so much as because I don’t want to be let down if things don’t go as planned.

I have a morbid sense of excitement over the (possible) flu pandemic. I’ve been listless, not feeling alive for some time. Witnessing a disastrous worldwide event that has everyone on edge makes me feel alright. I’m a germophobe and a loner—suddenly, I’m ahead of the curve.

While I’m satisfied with the cheap wood laminate flooring that I inherited when I bought my home, I’ve been waiting for the time when I’ve got the extra change needed to get some real hardwood floors installed. And as a tree-hugger, the first thing that came to mind was, naturally, bamboo.

Bamboo, unlike trees, can be harvested like any other crop, and grows back remarkably fast, but how “green” is it, really? Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one thinking about this. In short, since bamboo is a renewable resource, it’s definitely better than your average hardwood flooring, but the industry behind it isn’t. Apparently, bamboo is so hot right now that whole forests are being razed to make room for more bamboo crops.

That’s right. In order to make a legion of first-world “eco-conscious” Prius-drivers more satisfied with themselves, workers in the third-world are destroying swaths of our natural forests. It’s the dark side of “green”. What’s worse, much of this bamboo comes from China, so for those of us who buy Fair Trade coffee and look for locally-sourced materials in our products, know that some Chinese kid is suffering through borderline enslavement so that you can feel good about your renewable bamboo flooring.

Oh, and all those chemicals used in other materials? They’re used with bamboo as well. It’s not like changing one material will change all materials. Fortunately, as with any product, there are good and bad companies out there. Apparently, Teragren is one of the better ones. And there are no less than thirteen dealers in my area, so I’ll have to get a quote. But to be honest, after just this cursory search, I’m already kind of turned off of the whole notion, and I’m almost afraid to look into any other green products, because I suspect the entire thing is a house of cards built on lies and there’s no such thing as “green”, besides dollars.