Earth Frickin' Hour

Okay, so I'm a couple of days late with my "What did you do for Earth hour" post. Sue me.

What did I want to do? I wanted to turn on every light in the house, put a turkey in the oven, maybe fire a roast into the barbecue. Then take out the little red toy for some completely pointless driving. Sure, it's Japanese, supercharged and gets pretty good mileage, but that's not the point, the point was to needlessly burn gas.

Yes, that was what I wanted to do. The missus, OTOH, wanted to go to yoga. Yoga by candle light, in fact. You'll never guess whose Earth Hour plans got realized.

So, there we were, off to yoga. "Okay," thinks I, "at least I'll get in a decent work out" (the only yoga I do is hot yoga, and, if you've never tried it, take my word for it, it's a stiff workout). Ha, not gonna happen, Andrew, because you forgot to plan for the hippies. God I hate hippies. Where's Eric Cartman when you need him? He would have had a field day with this.

Just imagine it...Earth Hour yoga, by candle light. But that's not all, they had a drum circle. Dammit, Cartman, where were you, this was a hippie target rich environment. Oh, and to ice the cake, the frickin' heat was turned off.

Now, I don't want to go off on a yoga rant, this being my Earth hour rant, but what, precisely, is the point of having a hot yoga class if it's not, you know, hot? Especially when it's not real yoga anyway. I went for a workout and got an hour of somewhat warm, hippified nonsense with a drum circle.

But at least we were saving the planet from global warming, right? Well, no. Leave aside the fact that glue ball wormening ranks with Piltdown man and the Tasaday "stone age tribe" of Mindanao in the catalogue of scientific cons. No. That's not fair, the Piltdown and Tasaday hoaxes never had the potential to destroy possessed by glow-bullshit warming. It's a hoax more on the level of "Silent Spring" and the banning of DDT, now closing in on 100 million dead. Yes, let's destroy the western economy and return to days of yore, a simpler, happier time when men worked themselves to death by 40, women died of childbirth complications in their 20's and children died from easily preventable, easily treatable diseases.

But I digress. I was talking about the utter uselessness of Earth Hour.

I live in Ontario. By turning off the lights, assuming everyone buys in and does so, we save, approximately, .01% of our power usage for the year. Power which is 44% nuclear, 32% hydro and 24% fossil fuel (source). So, 24% of .01% of 40% (Ontario's percentage of Canada, based on population) of 2% (Canada's share of worldwide CO2 production). That's a savings of about .0000002%. Maximum. Woo hoo. I sure feel good about myself now, don't you? But then again, that's really the point, isn't it?

Hippies.

Here We Go

As I suppose it is with others, I have long contemplated beginning my own blog. There was a time when I actually began one, but internet connectivity speeds in rural China (where I was living at the time) sucked balls. Big, wet donkey balls. So, as it was to be an ongoing photo essay of my time there, it died on the vine.

That was several years ago, and after I returned to the west, I became once again a passive consumer of the blogosphere; commenting occasionally, but mostly lurking. However, in the last few months a couple of bloggers, whose output I greatly admired, retired or dramatically scaled back on their work. A couple of others changed focus from the political to the personal.

I suppose, then, that the immediate cause is that I wish to pick up the torch. I don't purport to be able to fill the void these men left, but perhaps I can toss a pebble or two into it. Which brings me to the ultimate cause. I like to write. I don't know that I'm particularly good at it, but I do enjoy it, and will endeavour to use this blog to hone those skills I have.

What will this blog be? I don't know. At the beginning it will be whatever strikes my fancy. Perhaps that is all it will ever be. Let's get it going and find out.