Footprint
Dear Dora,
I been reading so much about conscientious people trying to reduce their footprints; this has raised my awareness to the point where I simply feel I had to try to do something!
My primary resolution for the year 2009 is to reduce my footprint substantially. While I am considering several approaches to this problem, as a stop-gap measure, I have resorted to walking everywhere on the outside edges of my feet. This has the dual benefit of lessening the abrasion of our Mother Earth while at the same time evening out the wear-and-tear on the soles of my sneakers, as normally I pronate ferociously.
One plan I have come up with is to hop everywhere. I am not sure this would produce the desired result, however. While superficially it might seem that it would cut the number of impacts in half, my own trials reveal that the length of my hops is actually only equal to (or even a little less than) my normal stride, so there is actually no net reduction in the footfall quotient. Furthermore, each footprint is heavier, as my entire body mass is airborne during the hop. This analysis also seems to rule out pogo sticks and unicycles.
Another possible approach is historically based. My grandmother and great aunt had toes removed from their feet as a form of cosmetic surgery to enable them to wear the narrow shoes so fashionable in their youth. I have considered this, but I am concerned because I seem to remember that they had balance and foot health problems as a result of their toe removals. I don't want to imply that I'm unwilling to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the environment, but I don't want to do anything rash and irreversible, only to discover later that it was incapacitating and maybe even ineffective.
I have given a lot of thought to high heels. There can be no doubt that they reduce one's footprint, but they also make a powerful fashion and lifestyle statement that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with right now. I can accept a certain amount of sarcastic comments and even teasing, but I'm a little afraid that even in these enlightened times, the others guys at the construction sites where I work might go too far and actually physically assault me.
Dora, do you have any insights into reducing my footprints?
Sasquatch
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Dear Sasquatch,
I am afraid that you are laboring under a misapprehension.
The issue is not to reduce one's footprint, but one's CARBON footprint. I gather from your letter that you generally wear sneakers; unless you wear coal-soled shoes or "diamonds in the soles of your shoes" ala Paul Simon, you're good.
Dora
Antenna Guilt
Dear Dora,
I recently had my car washed after all the winter weather, what with the dirt and road salts and what not. I try to be a responsible steward of my earthly possessions, so, as usual, I removed the screw-in radio antenna from the car before sending it through the maze of swirling brushes, gale-force winds and hurricane-like sprays that constitute our local automatic car wash. As I was later screwing the antenna back in (and in the process getting my hands VERY DIRTY) I realized with horror, that over the life of our car, I HAVE NEVER WASHED THE RADIO ANTENNA!
Besides my concern over whether I have inadvertently shortened the service life of the antenna, I feel so guilty. The poor little antenna has served us faithfully for years, never complaining, always working in its quiet and unobtrusive way, yet I have been so callous and unfeeling about its needs.
I took the antenna upstairs and lovingly washed it in a kitchen sink full of warm, soapy water, then dried it with soft toweling and my blow-dryer. I re-installed it, and it seems to work fine. My question is, how can I move beyond my deep feelings of guilt and anxiety for ignoring the feelings and needs of my car's radio antenna for so long?
Over Wrought
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Dear Over Wrought,
I have several observations about your insights into your cavalier treatment of your car's radio antenna:
1) Perhaps you are transferring feelings to your relationship with your antenna from your treatment of your husband, or even his treatment of you? Perhaps a mutual bath in a warm, soapy tub followed by soft towels is in order?
2) Don't dwell on this or you will soon find yourself bringing literally tons of auto parts which have not been washed up to your apartment for the soapy bath treatment. Try not to think about your lack of attention to your headliner, your tailpipes, your gaskets, your McPherson struts, or your fuel injectors. You can take solace in the firm knowledge that many of these parts would not really benefit from a soak in the tub; most were born and raised to thrive in the rough-and-tumble world hanging from the undercarriage, inches above the macadam blurring by below, and would sneer at any kind of bath that didn't include grit and road salts.
3) Perhaps, like me, you're becoming an Animist. Several years ago, like you, I was overcome by anxiety about my treatment of some of my "inanimate" life companions. In my case, it was my socks. I dreamt one night that all my clothes had eyes, but when I pulled my socks and underwear out of my dresser drawers, they blinked and squinted because they were so unused to the bright lights of the world. When I awoke I realized that socks and underwear were people, too, and should be treated with respect and dignity. I set my underwear free, and have gone commando ever since, but I pledged to dry my newly-washed socks on the handlebars of my bicycle as I ride to work each day so that they have a chance to see first-hand the beauty and the pain of the world before they are sent back to their dark and fetid work places in my shoes. I feel this campaign has been a compete success, as I have had no complaints from the socks, no more bad dreams, and I find that other bikers now give me
a clear path everywhere I go.
I hope this has helped.
Dora
Mike's "Spot On" © 2009 Predictions
Mike's "Spot On" © 2009 Predictions
As the offical start of winter and a whole new year approach, I again draw out my crystal ball and stare in the teeth (not a mixed metaphor ... my crystal ball has teeth) of our collective doom for predictions about the year to come:
* The force of gravity will increase yet again, further accelerating the downward trend of nearly everything.
* The magnetic North Pole will migrate slightly, finally coming to rest in a location below Passaic NJ early in 2010.
* General Motors will use its share of the federal bail-out money to grub-stake a new line of electric cars utilizing extremely long extension cords. With predictable results.
* Serta and Simmons mattress companies will have banner years subsequent to new ad campaigns featuring their products as superior investment opportunities, illustrated by charts showing the superior results of stuffing ones money in one of their mattresses to stocks, bonds, money markets, or just about anything else. "Put your money in your Simmons and sleep more soundly!"
* Senior officials of the Gambino, Bonano, Sanchez, Goldberg, and O'Leary crime families car-pool to Washington (in an American-made black limosine!) to plead for financial help in these troubled times. "We know all youse guys; trust us, you don't want us to fail!"
* By consensus it is agreed that we will quit saying "two-thousand-and-eight" or "two-thousand-and nine" and so-on for the year, and beginning with "twenty-ten" will use the format used throughout the late twentieth century, as God intended.
* By mid-March the price of gasoline will bottom out at 13
9¢ per gallon (regular unleaded) before shooting back up to $5.76
9 by early September, then dropping again to $1.72
9 by the end of the year. Major oil company executives will patiently explain, yet again, to the unenlightened that these fluctuations are the result of "supply and demand," but will seem to be stifling laughs while doing so.
* It will be revealed that most Americans were unaware that $1.72
9 is basically $1.73, not actually $1.72. When so informed, the majority will report feeling "cruelly manipulated."
* As with coffee, rice, chocolate, honey, gasoline, and Cabbage Patch Kids in former years, major media will report on / create a world-wide shortage of cinnamon in 2009. This will be followed by panic buying, hoarding, block-long lines of desparate Cinnabun-franchise managers camped out at empty cinnamon-warehousing facilities, and touching photo essays of teary, sunken-eyed young mothers with their toddlers pushing shopping carts laden with multiple 50-pound bags of cinnamon in anticipation of rationing.
* In February, the latest financial "fraud and failure" story will focus on state lotteries nationwide, which, as a result of investing their proceeds entirely in sub-prime mortgage planches, will be unable to fulfill their obligations to those who chose long-term payouts over smaller instant cash awards. Sneering spendthrift grasshoppers will be shown taunting the supposedly prudent ants by saying "suckas!"
* The FDA will be "embroiled" in a scandal and officials will be "grilled" about problems with sub-prime beef. Viewers across the country will fire-bomb TV stations after the umpteenth repetition of these lame puns.
* A religious sect will be exposed for bilking millions of devout followers out of literally billions of dollars worldwide, and using the proceeds to acquire and stockpile rare artwork, fancy real estate, and a sumptuous life style for their elderly leader, who will be shown to have a number of villas in Italy, expensive clothing, a private jet and custom-fabricated automobiles while deluded believers often scrimp on necessities and forego even food for their numerous children to make their contributions.
* America's economy will be revived and its environment will be restored to health by the successful implementation of a federally-funded nation-wide public-works project to dig up and landscape the interstate highway system.
* Men's fashion trend-setters will soon be wearing stilletto-heeled shoes, sold under the name "bayonet-heeled shoes."
* The cellular concept will be adapted to other uses. Car makers will save money in the manufacture of each car by eliminating the horn, and providing instead a small sending unit in the hub of the steering wheel which will activate cellular horns mounted on posts alongside the roadways. Churches will be shuttered, replaced as worshippers simply use convenient cellular prayer wheels in their homes and cars. Some will resist the idea of cellular sex, in which any convenient person of the opposite sex may be substituted when away from home.
* In 2009, America follows the usual trend from Spartan discipline in January to Dionysian excess in December, with the single anomaly that in April virtually every taxpayer pays their taxes with checks drawn on failed banks, with the notation "you guys figure it out!"
I am confident these predictions will be as accurate as any I have ever made.
