Some days, my mailbox overflows with hilarity…like today. I got the new Roy Zimmerman CD! You should, too! It’ll cheer any liberal to realize that you aren’t alone, and you’ve got a theme song.
But I also get other mail that’s almost as funny, although not intentionally so. For some perverse reason, there are some of you readers out there who think you are making a statement and causing me grief by signing me up for conservative magazines and newsletters. You really shouldn’t. You know what happens? It comes in the mail, I flip through it, I laugh, and I toss it in the trash. Then when the phone call comes later, dunning me to pay for their magazine, I tell them that I don’t read it and I didn’t order it, and they get to eat the cost…and I laugh again. All you’re doing is contributing to the local landfill and hurting my mailman’s back, and that isn’t nice.
But you’re a conservative, so what the hell do you care.
Anyway, so far today I’ve received:
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Assurances from a wattled, snake-eyed Newt Gingrich that Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is the great future hope of American Conservatism.
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An advertisement from Human Events telling me that my lungs are dying and I have to stop exercising (it’s bad for you!) and buy their supplements.
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Ann Coulter tries to sell me stock tips better than the Marxist tripe the Wall Street executives are peddling.
The Zimmerman CD had some real competition on the humor side, but wins in the talent department.
If Bobby Jindal is the future hope of conservatism, then it’s proof possitive that they are insane idiots that live in their own, made up, reality. That dude is insane, and I still have no idea how he could have become the governor of Luisiana. And frankly, given how he has signed into law a pro-creationism bill in his state, I really don’t see how he can hope for any kind of serious national run. Oh well, little Newt has never been known as someone that has reasonable opinions.
“It comes in the mail, I flip through it, I laugh, and I toss it in the trash. ”
Consider recycling this material. It might then have future existence as something useful.
Bye Bye Jindal’s reputation, he’s getting pats on the back from the wrong people.
By the way, PZ, I hope you’re not throwing the magazines away, but are instead recycling them. Granted, clay paper isn’t all that great for anything except, umm… anything, but I’d like to think that the piles of waste paper being sent to you are not going to the landfill!
“All you’re doing is contributing to the local landfill ”
Recycle?
“That dude is insane, and I still have no idea how he could have become the governor of Luisiana.”
Look to the first part of your sentence for the answer to the second part. Then maybe check the Bobby Jindal exorcism thread for confirmation from actual and former Louisianianians.
Yeah seriously, recycle those magazines! What kind of godless hippie liberal are you if you don’t recycle them?
Regarding the comments to recycle the junk mail: I don’t know, maybe it actually makes more sense to landfill it. Consider this – if you cut down a tree and use half of it to make paper out of, then use the paper once and bury it, that’s half a tree worth of carbon that gets sequestered back underground instead of going into the atmosphere. On the other hand, if you keep recycling and recycling and recycling, every time it goes back to the plant, part of it winds up getting converted back into CO2 and going into the atmosphere, until finally the whole tree becomes CO2 again.
I’m just saying, recycle vs. landfill of paper is not as cut-and-dried as one might think, particularly when most paper is made from farmed trees. So, we should all cut PZ some slack on whether he recycles his junk mail.
The old joke about Louisiana politics is that you need two good hands to vote. One hand covers your nose to shut out the bad odor while the second hand casts the vote.
“So, we should all cut PZ some slack on whether he recycles his junk mail.”
How can you so callously consign that innocent papyrus to being a vehicle for Coulterisms for all eternity?
The trouble with this thinking is that most landfills harbor bacteria that break down the paper and emit methane gas, which escapes from the landfill. Methane gas is, pound for pound, about 70 times as effective a greenhouse gas as CO2 is. Fortunately, it breaks down in a few decades … into CO2 (and water vapor, but that rains out fast enough to not matter).
You’ve got to send me that one. It sounds like it’s right up my alley…
Re #1: I still have no idea how he could have become the governor of Luisiana.
Last I checked, Eddie Edwards was still in jail, or my home state probably would have tried to reelect him.
I probably shouldn’t let you guys in on this but: it’s actually an elaborate, multi-generational bet. We’re trying to see just how awful a governor has to be before Baton Rouge becomes some sort of hyper-dense bad politics singularity and the laws of reality are rewritten. Pretty good for something we came up with in the 1930s, amirite?
As someone who uses his email inbox much more often than his physical mailbox, it took me a moment before I realized that we’re talking about real mailboxes that the post office delivers actual physical mail to. I’m not sure what this says about me …
Well it may not be beyond hope of recycling–provided the paper is nice and soft, and you have an empty nail in the outhouse.
Newt “Mr. Family Values” Gingrich has no business preaching to anyone on anything. To describe his morality as bankrupt is to leave no word to describe his ethics.
As for Coulter, that woman is the incarnation of the seething self-loathing of Repugnicans, made flesh and bleached a shade her stylist doubtless calls Aryan Blonde. If there’s any justice in the world, she’ll be crushed under a fallen shelf of history books she’s never bothered to try to read.
She’ll never be as pretty or accomplished as Helen Thomas, and she’s never gotten over it.
I suggest recycling all that crap. Give it to the Freedom From Religion Foundation so they mulch it down to make more large signs and bumper stickers with even more severe comments, such as; “No gods, better humans; better humans, no gods; simple as that”
Hey, if you don’t want the Guns & Ammo subscription I ordered for you, then give ’em to one of those job-stealing homeless immigrants you love so much, pinko.
Oh I see you didn’t get the “From a Pilot’s perspective” email about Obama.
It’s a real scream. As in I screamed MORON at the monitor as I read it.
Oh, ROY Zimmerman. For a sec I thought you said Robert Zimmerman.
Rev. BigDumbChimp, I had to check that out and found a singularity of stupid. The first three paragraphs are hilarious. She didn’t get into politics until 2004 when her father died, apparently she just voted republican because he did. Now she pays attention, but fortunately she now has a husband who can guide her. Thank the lord…
http://theblessedhomekeeper.blogspot.com/2008/07/obama-from-pilots-perspective.html
Most of these things seem to boil down to one thing. He’s black and doesn’t have any pride in his white ancestors. In one of her replies she seems to be defending everything and claims she did research to see how true this stuff was. She probably just went to Free Republic and some kind of Fox forums. Christians tend to be gullible but christian women like this seem to be both gullible and self loathing. Yikes! I can’t even imagine thinking that I need a man to help me make decisions like this. Double yikes!
“Louisianianians”
That’s a soda snorter.
You know, I’ve been thinking about this whole recycle paper thing. If the goal is to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, then are we not better off if we cut down trees and bury them? New trees will grow, locking up more carbon. But if we recycle paper, aren’t we just burning carbon to re-manufacture the paper with no real benefit? Wouldn’t we be better off to bury that paper in a land fill and cut down new trees to lock up more carbon? I think we need to cut the trees down and use them before they catch fire and release their carbon back to the atmosphere. The great thing about trees is that we can always grow more.
Well if the last greatest hope of conservatives is a fruitcake like Bobby Dingdong then it sounds like we don’t have much to worry about.
If your city doesn’t recycle junk mail yet, surely there is some there who recycles newspapers and magazines.
Wow, PZ, such dogmatic rhetoric from a scientist is quite unexpected. I thought that you would apply the scientific method to all of your thinking rather than toeing the party line like the Christians do. Simply because the liberal Democrats tell you what candidate to vote for should not be so influential. Think for yourself! Apply the facts, you know, as if you were in the lab..
recycle recycle!
… bigjohn, wtf?
Jingal is s biology major who doesn’t understand evolution. Cringe and fail.
Clinical trial after clinical trial shows that supplements have little or no efficacy. In other words. THEY DON’T WORK.
Ann Coulter has to be the evillest of all drag queens. I am told most are actually quite nice although I haven’t yet any in person, yet.
WTF, Inky? Oh, you think this about recycling, don’t you? Well, this has gone so far off topic that no one had read PZ’s original post. I don’t think that the thrust of his post is recycling but, rather, this;
“But you’re a conservative, so what the hell do you care.”
As if squandering huge quantities of tax money on recycling to make a few people feel better was a worthwhile cause. It’s all about the dichotomy between the liberal dogma and conservative dogma. There is essentially no difference. Both require huge, inefficient, central governments to spew ever increasing tax dollars on wasteful programs. I am advocating thoughtful, reasoned, evidenced based, programs which will possibly actually work.
There’s a proper way to recycle crapmail from wingnuts:
Save up all your other junk mail – overpriced-tchotchke catalogs, “Val-Pak” coupons, etc. etc. When you get a piece of trashmail from the Bad Guys, find the postage-paid reply envelope, stuff it full of their junk along with some other junk, and send it back.
Better yet, fold everything up inside a brochure from a good liberal cause, the leftier the better, before you put it all in the envelope.
And of course, don’t mail it from home, and never include anything that would make it traceable. It’s their shit. Let them clean it up.
OK, I admit it’s an environmentally shitty idea, but annoying the hell out of wingnuts is so much fun! =evil grin=
p.s. @ bigjohn756: I could say something about it being a dogma-eat-dogma world, but I won’t. :-)
Pfft! HaH! That’s nothing – someone set me up with a subscription to ROSIE magazine once. (I still haven’t figured out who did it) Aauurrgghh!;-) Talk about land fill.
For some reason when I first read that, I omitted the “CD”. This morning’s coffee is off or something. Anyways, I found myself thinking WTF? You can mail-order starving musicians thesedays? Sounds cool! Cool sounds! But do I have to feed them? Or do they arrive (with) COD? Oh, wait, C-D…arrggghhhh…
Yeah I’ve gotten it from a few friends who lean to the right. Most of them see the stupidity and easily refutable bullshit but a few were like
“These are interesting points. We should be afraid.”
idiots.
“As if squandering huge quantities of tax money on recycling to make a few people feel better was a worthwhile cause.”
Bigjohn, would you care to back your claims that a) municipal recycling programs cost “huge quantities of tax money” and b) that recycling has no benefit? With facts, please, not rhetoric.
AGH TRANSPHOBIA KILL KILL AGH ok I’ll be fine. Sorry about that. Come on, there’s GOT to be ways to insult Ann Coulter without mentioning transvestites. Ann Coulter IS an insult. Never mind her appearance, she’s a total waste of entropy in all ways.
Anyhow. What a lame way to try to annoy someone: screw your favourite charities out of money. Now, that might be a worthwhile tactic for some of us…signing that Donohue prat up for The Watchtower, anyone?
Roy Zimmerman is surely one of the more entertaining musicians I’ve seen lately. I’m always checking his youtube account for any new videos.
Actually, Sarah Palin is the future of American Conservatism.
Though if Jindal actually gets ethics reform done and cleans up Louisiana (an impossible task indeed), he’ll be trotted out as the Republican Obama, just you wait and see.
bigjohn #26: “I am advocating thoughtful, reasoned, evidenced based, programs which will possibly actually work.”
No, you’re not.
You are plainly saying that anyone who isn’t a conservative is bananas. It’s kind of funny when you say “It’s all about the dichotomy between the liberal dogma and conservative dogma” and how they are equally pernicious to the taxpayer. It’s funny because the “dichotomy” you recognize isn’t based on definition, but on knee-jerk reaction – almost entirely a conservative invention.
That D-O-G-M-A sounds awful thoughtless and irrational to me…but then, you ARE conservative, aren’t you?
I am not a conservative. I am not a liberal. I try to maintain a flexible outlook based on the situation.
As far as the cost of recycling, I based my statement on an article in the local newspaper which explained how much it cost my city to recycle and, also, from an episode on “Bullshit”.