Opie, you haven't finished your milk. We can't put it back in the cow, you know.

April 2: estival

I wonder if any little towns call their summer celebration "the estival festival"? 

Hee hee...I would buy that t-shirt!

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1. Do you recycle?
   I do, yes - to the extent that my family of origin jokes that "the recycling cops" won't get me if I fail to maintain my pristine record.
2. Have you ever hung clothes on a line instead of using the clothes dryer?
   
   yep: all the time when I was growing up, and a certain subset of my wardrobe is still air-dried. The clothes dryer is the least energy efficient appliance in most households.
3. Do you walk or bike to work to save energy?
   
   no, for two reasons: I work outside of my comfortable self-propelled range (5.3 miles) and I also begin working at an absolutely inhumanly early time of day to be moving under my own power.
4. Do you use a water filter for your tap water or do you buy bottled water?
   
   I buy bottled water, because filters don't filter the crap & critters in the local water. I live in Hell.
5. How many trees do you kill each year buying new books?
   
   Looking at it that way...how many trees do e-reader users kill, powering the little bastards? I think of it like this: I buy a lot of new books every year, thereby encouraging their authors to keep writing. That's kind of the POINT, like going to the movies featuring your favorite actors, or supporting musicians whose work you value. The good stuff doesn't sprout from nowhere. Artists need to eat, too.
6. Have you ever considered recycling your cellphone?
   
   I've recycled—or repurposed—each phone that I've upgraded from, though it's only happened twice so far. Yeah, I'm only on my third phone. Can you imagine? And yet somehow I've managed to survive.
7. All you need are a few simple non-toxic ingredients like baking soda, vinegar, lemon, and soap to clean your home. Are you willing to throw away the bottled chemicals?
   
   no, because THROWING THEM AWAY isn't going to accomplish a Goddamned thing. It makes a LOT more sense to USE THEM UP before starting on something new. This is the sort of thinking that's filling up the landfills at an alarming rate. "I need the newest lightbulbs! Must clear out all the incandescents and replace with CFLs!" Rather than Waiting. Until they burn. Out. DUH.
   Wasting what you've got isn't saving anybody anything. And blathering about non-toxicity doesn't do a bit of good when you're standing on top of a heap of half-full bottles of toxins, to do it. Shut up, conserve, use what you have, share what you have with someone else who can use it, stop pretending you have the answers to problems no one's presented, and live your own life rather than trying to live others'.
   Whew!

[from The Cat, who got it here; the title quotation is Aunt Bee Taylor, from The Andy Griffith Show]