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See all my blog posts at my Google blog site at this link: Tempests in a Bowl of Chowder Soup
We have been hearing a lot about this term lately, to the effect that: "We should all do our parts to be environmentally friendly, to leave the least “personal carbon footprints" as possible in our daily life." But in the past week, I have encountered two incidents that were environmentally unfriendly, not to mention rude.
The 1st Personal Carbon Footprint
I was eating an ecologically friendly dinner of organic vegetarian tofu dish with some friends at a restaurant and in came a couple of corpulent proportion, both in weight and fashionable wealth. Their combined bio-mass must have tipped the scale at more than 500 U.S. avoirdupois pounds. The woman held her hands in such a way to show off a diamond ring with enough blinks that must have cost her a duchy.
I normally form opinions of people not by their appearances but by their behaviors. They parted the crowded restaurant’s traffic wave just as Moses parting the Red Sea. They walked as if they owned the right of way, charging ahead, yielding to no one and taking no prisoners. In deference to their loud display of haute couture, a few puffs of their faux royal airs and their lofty ranks in body mass index, a svelte and graceful hostess, probably an aspiring fashion model herself, led them to a roomy posh bench seat table uncomfortably close to ours.
They mounted the seats as if ascending the thrones, making all the noisy fanfare of their presence by protesting it was not a good location, bad lighting, etc. The queen grilled and pestered the poor hostess with questions and pronouncements that put the Medieval Roman Catholic Church Inquisition to shame and the poor girl close to tears. Distracted by this noisy interruption to their quiet dinner and the rude treatment of the hostess, all the neighbor diners glanced at them askance with annoyance.
Then they held court with a pile of food large enough to feed the Darfur refugee camp for a day or a troupe of fashion models for a week at the height of New York fashion show season (OK, I may have exaggerated a little). Talk about consummate consumption. They belonged to the class of people called nouveaux riches, they demand respect where respect is not due and any small slight reminds them of where they have been.
Just as everyone thought the quiet had returned to the Western Front, then out came a series of cannon shots that were heard all over this small part of the haute cuisine world. Up shot the Queen of Hearts from her royal perch, red-faced, breaking loose a series of gale-force winds. She hurtled headlong towards the ladies' room. . . . ,and alas. . . missing the royal flush along the way. . . . , dripping a trail of odorous "personal carbon footprints" behind her.
Another Personal Carbon Footprint
In another incident, I was driving on a freeway to a friend’s house for dinner. The traffic was moving blithely at a leisure pace. Then I heard a car honking a series of "get out of my way" blasts from behind. I glanced at my rear view mirror and saw a black SUV weaving its way in and out of traffic and trying to get to nowhere fast. As the SUV zipped past me, its tailpipe belching out clouds of black exhaust, its driver kept blasting the car horn as if he was performing a CPR on his gagging car, a huge monster of a gas guzzler. Then it cut in front of a Toyota to my left, the driver in that Toyota yelled out "Hey, buddy, what’s your hurry? Heaven can’t wait?" A less cordial voice echoed him "Hey, it is better to shit in your pants, if that’s your hurry, than to get us all killed!" The large gruffish man in the SUV, with flaming red full facial beard and mustache like a cartoon character Yosemite Sam, stuck his middle finger out in appreciation, hurled back a series of retorts sprinkled with the big "F" word as blatantly as his honkings. He then accelerated, leaving a trail of foul "personal carbon footprints" and smoky bad feelings behind him.
After a few minutes, the traffic ahead began to crawl. Up ahead I could see a heavy pillar of black smoke bellowing from an object engulfed completely in flame. As the traffic inched ahead, I recognized the offensive SUV lying on its side, choking on its last gasps of air on its raging funeral pyre. Its formerly indomitable owner, his eyes wide open in a shell-shocked daze, his mustache and beard singed short and close to his anguished face, stood hopelessly and trembling nearby. As I inched closer behind a file of rubberneckers, I noticed a wet patch running from his crotch area down his left pant, ending in a sizable pool of liquid around his shoes. I heard a familiar voice rang out couple of cars behind, "Hey! Look at that! He finally got in touch with his inner child and relieved himself! "
Here again folks, the poor man might have joined the fate of his car, becoming a huge pile of personal carbon footprint, and got recycled into a natural process called "the Carbon Cycle". You all want to go naturally when the time comes and got recycled into a more ecological friendly "the Nitrogen Cycle".
So, folks, be nice to your fellow man! Try your best to leave small "personal carbon footprints" for the rest of the world. Be environmentally and courtesy-wise aware!
The number of hits on my website has reached 300 last week! Thanks also for your valuable feedbacks.
On this Presidents Day Holiday, I gave some thoughts on the men (and hopefully in not distant future, women and minorities) that steered and chartered the course of our national history: George Washington for his courage and leadership during our nation’s birth; Thomas Jefferson as chief architect of our nation’s vision of democracy and a moral voice to our nation’s cause; Abraham Lincoln for his unyielding conviction and moral strength to abolish slavery and to keep our Union whole.
In my opinion, President Lyndon B. Johnson should also be included as one of the great presidents the United States have ever had. He knew that “charity begins at homeâ€. His visionary "The Great Society Program" drove his agenda for Congress beginning in January, 1965, to abolish poverty, to enact many Civil Right Acts, to establish programs to help the medically needy (MediCare) and to beautify America, which included urban renewal and environmental conservation. He strongly believed that education was the key to overcome poverty and ignorance, which was one of the contributing factors in racial discrimination. In 1965, he introduced "the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)" to help our nation’s schools to realize his goal. But then the legacy of the Vietnam War weighed heavily on his shoulders and on our nation’s mind. In order to reconciled a divided nation, he chose not to seek another office term. Thus a grand dream for our nation abandoned, an opporturnity missed.
I sincerely hope that our next elected president will revive and carry on with this dream.
Be My Valentine!!
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