Remember Poltergeist 2? Me neither, except for that creepy ass Living Theater guy-Julian somebody--gaunt and dying of cancer and playing some psychotic undead preacher from the past, if I remember correctly, and occasionally stopping by to bellow, "you're all gonna die!" at our heroes.
Well, I've had Julian Whosis in my brain recently vis a vis the whole global warming thing. As regular readers of my blog know, I've been fretting about global warming and trying to do some stuff that's relatively easy to reduce my carbon footprint. All fine and good--the compact flourescents really do cut the electric bill quite significantly, and the bushes outside my house enjoy the nutrition-rich compost--except for this.
I live near an entrance to Franklin Park (offical motto: The Part of The Emerald Necklace The City Started Neglecting When The Black Folks Moved In Next Door!). At said entrance, you can pull into a parking lot where your car is invisible to the road.
As you might imagine, this makes it a hotspot for people slacking when they should be working. Whenever I take my dog up there, I spot an assortment of School Bus drivers, police officers, Verizon and Comcast repairmen, and various other people in vans and trucks drinking coffee, reading the Boston Herald, and generally sticking it to the man by slacking when they should be working.
Now, I don't have a huge problem with this (except, you know, as a taxpayer, I hate to find cops napping, but oh well. Forest Hills Cemetery is another big police nap spot), except for this. Everybody sits in their cars, vans and buses reading the Herald and sipping coffee with their motors running. I'm not just talking about today, when it's twenty-five degrees out; I mean pretty much always, no matter what the temperature is. (Because I suppose if it's under 70 out, you need the heat, and if it's over 70, you need the air conditioning.) The school buses sometimes sit there idling for an hour.
So here I am with my stupid little compost bucket and my compact flourescents, and the slackers in the park are probably pumping more carbon into the air in a week than I'm saving in a year.
It just depresses me. People will not compromise their own comfort one bit for the greater good. God forbid when it's fifty-five degrees out you should take your illicit nap with the heat off. No matter what piddly little things I do, some moron with a full tank of gas, a schoolbus, and an hour to kill can pretty much render all my efforts irrelevant.
But what the hell, I live on a hill, so I'll probably have oceanfront property anyway. So why should I care? I'm off to buy some hundred watt bulbs, a Hummer, a leafblower, and a shitload of plastic bags!
