I don’t Mean to Piss on Your Parade, But …

We’ve come a long way, baby, since the days of kerosene lamps, milking our own cows and outhouses. We have home water delivery, personal shoppers, and credit cards are so '80s when we can pay for things with our cell phones. It’s a constant array of ever-evolving items and services to make our lives easier.

We have biodegradable potato chip bags*, the increasing lineup of hybrid cars, we’ve thankfully long moved away from the ubiquity of Aqua Net-needing hairstyles that destroy the ozone layer with their CFCs.

Our green-ness struck me around the holidays as I’m walking around this enormous outlet mall called Woodbury Commons in upstate New York. Here I am, carrying my Banana Republic shopping bag and fending off personal-space-invading Asian shoppers (also ubiquitous) when I had to pee.

So I go to the restroom and am pleasantly surprised that they have installed flushless, waterless toilets throughout the shopping center. This is a good thing, right? Saving 1.5L of water per flush, conserving the environment, going green, yay us.

But then I got to thinking: What the hell IS a flushless, waterless toilet anyway? Seriously, isn’t it just a hole in the ground? How’s it different? Where the hell is all that piss going? And what’s more, why the heck did they have to build an enormous porcelain basin for me to piss in in the first place? I assume the creation of said porcelain basis must have produced a waste product in and of itself? What makes this such an advance? I just don’t get it.

To me, it’s the reinvention of the outhouse. We’ve come full circle. We piss in a hole and shit in a compost pile. It’s the friggin’ frontier all over again. I like Mustangs, not a mustang. I’m not going back. From now on I will piss in a Sun Chip bag and hope for the best.

* This is how fucking retarded people are in America. Our fat asses, who consume God-knows-how-many bags of chips a year, finally had a capitalistic corporation do something good! The Frito-Lay Co. developed a biodegradable bag for their Sun Chips in 2007. That way, when your lazy ass leaves it on the ground in the park it will just break down over time and not affect the grass or the soil. So what happened? The stupid, fat, ridiculous American consumer complained so much about the bag being—get this—too loud, that it was pulled from the market in October 2010. People would rather not be bothered while reading their video game magazine in a Subway than put up with a little extra noise in the hope of protecting the Earth. I’m disappointed, but what’s worse, I’m not surprised.

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Bananas?

That ASPCA commercial with Sarah McLaughlin? You know the one I’m talking about, when “Angel” is playing over pictures of all those poor animals in cages or being rescued from horrible situations? Damn that kills me. I have to turn away every time it’s on. I love animals. If I won MegaMillions tomorrow I’d buy a farm for all the doggies and the kitties out there.

And around holiday time you just cannot escape those sad commercials from every charity known to man. They pull at your heartstrings, rightfully so. They need donations, and hey, the holidays are a time for giving, right? The lonely old people for Meals on Wheels, the WWF trying to protect natural habitats, the Christian Children’s Fund …

Damn those starving African kids. You know what I mean: There will be the slow, solemn narration by a guy with a tenor voice while video is running of 11-year-old Chikeze who is caring for his three young siblings because his parents were murdered in some dictatorial coup? One kid has a booger running down his lip, the other has a fly crawling by his eyeball. You can’t watch. Those shits are set up for you to cry. (Seriously though, Africans have been starving for 50 years now; how the hell do they have the energy for sex?!)

Then you see poor Chikeze, holding his 9-month-old, fly-infested little sister, as he’s woefully staring at a picture of his long lost parents. And I’m thinking … How the HELL did those poor motherfuckers get a picture of their damn parents?! You mean to tell me this motherfucker who ain’t got no shoes, lives in a hut, and sleeps on the dirt was able to get a picture of his parents? What is that, a family heirloom? Who the hell is going around taking pictures of poor ass African families? You mean to tell me CCF is taking my 39 cents a day and walking around in the dust taking pictures? Geez, Ezekiel, put down the fucking camera and start handing out bananas! Bring ’em in by the truckload. Like lil Chizeke needs a damn picture?! His parents are dead. What he needs is to be adopted by Madonna. But in absence of that, give him the damn Nikon so he can hock it for a goat. And save Heifer.org the trouble of sending one to his village.

Now is the Winter of my Discontent

It’s the winter in New York. It’s bound to be cold, wouldn’t you suspect? Most mornings I put on my coat, grab a scarf and my messenger bag and head off to work.

My wife does the same thing, as I’m sure countless women do, again, considering it’s winter. In New York.

What amazes me is that women refuse to close their jackets properly. They’ll just stand there outside, holding their jacket together, refusing to either button it up or zipper it up. And then they bitch that they are cold. Well, ladies, I love you, but you’re retarded. It’s cold … because it’s WINTER IN NEW YORK! Quit shivering over there on the street corner and either button the coat or your mouth! Either way I'll become infinitely happier.