“What I can’t stand about 'An Inconvenient
Truth' is not the content. I agree with the content. It’s the people who watch something like 'An
Inconvenient Truth' or 'Bowling for Columbine' and think that they’re an expert
on the subject.” Matt takes a sip of his water. What a relief to hear the rest of that
thought. Being an environmental science major
and never having had a job in your field is frustrating. A wasted
education. But it adds insult to injury
when you hear people who had no knowledge of basic science telling you global
warming isn’t real. Matt’s an
exception. He’s way smarter than the
average American. Still, he did not spend four years and $16,000
specifically studying global warming in the wider field of environmental
science. Few people have.
To emphasize my point, I introduce my stepdad,
Bob. He is an Irish, Catholic New Englander born into an upper-class, old
money family of doctors. Bob went to an
all-boys boarding school for Middle and High School and then a private business
school for college. After graduation, he
joined the Marines as a helicopter pilot after naively watching 'Apocalypse
Now' and thinking it was a war-glorifying epic.
To this day I still don't think he quite grasps the nuance of that
film. Bob then retired from the Marines
to become a member of the LA SWAT Team.
His hobbies include watching sports, drinking beer, golfing, Fox News,
Tom Clancy novels, supporting our troops and being wary of foreigners.
Here’s the anecdote to drive my point home:
one summer, we were in Connecticut for a family reunion. Bob was
preaching to his family about the liberal’s giant fabrication known as global
warming. One of the points my stepdad
made about how it didn’t exist was that we were, at that moment, surrounded by
a beautiful harbor with nice weather in the middle of summer.
Jobless and newly graduated from environmental science and relying
on my family for room and board while working retail, searching for better
means of employment, I held my tongue.
This was, after all, a family-funded trip.
Bob is educated. However, he is an
archetype for the general public’s benightedness to (global warming) science.
What he said on the deck of the beach house was equitable to saying, ‘I
wetted my finger and stuck it up in the air. The wind was blowing South,
i.e. global warming must not exist.’
Obviously not someone who understands the reflexive property. I
expected better from a private education.
The conversation with Matt is less talking point and more fact-driven. We
cover Hubbard’s Peak Theory, Milankovich Cycles, Hurricane frequencies, the
changing of El Niño, the decrease of the sun’s output over the last century and
the period of warming during the Medieval Ages. All in great detail.
We keep downing water. We’re still dizzy and dehydrated from all of the
Budweiser and slam-dancing. Salt lines trim the black souvenir
t-shirts. Cigarette, reefer and body
odor saturate the fabric. It gives new smells to the olfactory, hints of
dried, burnt wood and freshly cut grass.
Newly-formed bumps punctuate our bare arms, hints of what will be black
and blue tomorrow. Veterans of the mosh pit, now discussing global warming in an all-night burger
joint. Just two regular guys on a
Thursday night/Friday morning.
Meanwhile, ganja fumes and the heavy
beat-driven rap/reggae DJ sets waft through the thin walls, lightly vibrating
the table top. Pot is next door, the answer to munchies is in here.
Being the environmental science major, I eat the veggie and portobello mushroom
burger. Matt, the skeptic, long-haired, metal head from the Bible Belt,
eats a quarter pounder, all-beef patty. Water bonds us together in this
meal, just as the covalent bond unifies Hydrogen and Oxygen. Two atoms that would otherwise repel.
As the conversation continues, we both sink lower in our seats. The synthetic materials fart underneath our
movements. The minutes tick by. Our
mouths keep talking in spite of the mounting fatigue from the waning
catecholamines. Some of what we are
saying might be coherent. We’re losing
alertness too quickly to know.
The old couple behind us keep to themselves. No sounds out of them other
than the occasional rustle of yesterday’s paper. Occasional clanks and
scratches as silverware-to-plates as they eat their key lime pie.
Behind the counter, the grill shushes and
steams. Chopped onion caramelizes and red raw meat cinders to a
commercial quality umami. The workers are wiping down vacated
tables and throwing trash away. Winding
down just as we are.
The old man gets up from behind us and heads to the soda jerk. He takes a
quick, shallow breath as if to say, “That’s a pretty interesting conversation
you’re having there. Al Gore would love you.” Wait, he does actually say that. Christ, I’m tired. The man is wearing a P-Coat and scarf.
He has a salt and pepper beard. He
appears to be in his late 60’s.
Disguised cleverly as the scholarly type. The beard has me deceived. “But you
raise a lot of good points. However,
the last Ice Age was 10,000 years ago.
That would put a bit of a hole in the Milankovich cycle theory.”
It was actually 20,000 years ago.
I let it slide. Respect your
elders - they hold valuable information.
That’s how you qualify to become elder.
There’s a test “That Al Gore…” he continued. Quick aside:
When someone uses the article ‘that’ for anything or anyone, it connotes
contempt. “…sure is a genius. He is definitely laughing himself all the way
to the bank. He has made a lot of money off of this whole scam.”
“It’s not a scam. Al Gore did not discover global warming. It was
some dude in the early 1800’s. I don’t
remember his name, but I’m sure you can find it. Al Gore is only
responsible for bringing it to national and international attention in the
early 1980’s.” Not trying to showboat my knowledge, just sharing it. This, I try to explain, was not what Matt and
I were originally discussing. “The debate was whether Al Gore had merit
for receiving the Nobel Prize. He,” I
said, pointing to Matt, “did not think so.
I did. My reasons being that Gore
stresses fossil fuel reduction, therefore, pollution. Even if global warming is a false positive,
the objective is to live sustainably and responsibly as if it were not.” Surprise elocution this late at night and
still tipsy. Being big on discourse, I
hope naively that this will trigger more of it.
The old man finishes refilling his water.
He goes back to reclaim his side of the booth, across from his wife, my
back to him. He wiggles back into his original pose, takes a sip of water
and sucks his teeth with too much self-satisfaction. He looks into his
cup. It’s empty again. Matt and I wait patiently. The fluorescent lights buzz. There is enough non-point noise in here to
make musique concrete.
“I knew some woman back in Sonoma. She
taught at the university up there,” he tilts his cup back up to his beard where
his mouth might be. No yields, I presume.
“Great gal. She taught a lot about
that subject of, what d’ya call it, the study of plants and animals and how
they evolve. What is that...” I
answer with 'ecology.' “Yeah, ecology. She did some great work. Good thinker.
I wrote my exit thesis in one of her classes. You don’t get teachers like those anymore.
Smart woman. I forgot what her
name was. We were actually up in
Sonoma. Just looking for a house. Real buyers market right now.”
“Anyway, about the Nobel Prize...” I start.
“You should have a talk with her someday.
The professor. Did you ever go to
college?”
“Yes, I went to UC - ”
“I went to college back in 1968. Can you
guess how old I am?” This is the point
where discourse ends. Commence talking at in place of talking to.
I look over at Matt. His eyebrows point upwards, his mouth
goes tight and he peers down at the floor for a second and then out the window.
He’s abandoning me. Luckily, the
old man’s wife cuts in. Up to this point,
she’s been nothing more than the back of a head.
“Do you know how much it cost to go to college
in our day?” she asks, I’m assuming, me.
“If it wasn’t free, I’m sure it wasn’t nearly
as much as what I had to pay.”
The old man answers for me. “Well, after
the war,” for the love of God or whoever is listening, please don’t do this
to me, “I got my G.I. Bill. It was for fighting the damn slopes
overseas...” I’m not even on a first name basis with this couple,
"...my government subsidy was for 600 a month. That covered my books, room, board and
tuition. Everything taken care of on 600 a month.”
“Well, I’m highly envious. I remember I
had to pay off $16,000 and that was after help from my parents and free tuition
from...”
“I have a grandson,” of course you do,
“and he is being robbed. These colleges make so much money off of students.”
“Hey, watch out there, that’s capitalism and
for-profit universities your talking about. They found a way to make a
profit. Don’t knock a system as flawless
as ours. It’s Un-American.” My
attempt at light-hearted derision.
“The government has gotten too big!” My
attempt fails.
“I agree. You should give all that GI
money back. Tell them you won’t stand for their socialist welfare. Also turn in your diplomas!” Like a bowl of pretzels at a party, once I
start, I can’t stop.
“If the government really wants a role, they
should be stepping in to take care of the real problems.” I smell a
rambling manifesto coming on. I beg her
to tell me what the government needs to do.
“They need to put an end to sperm banks.” I’m reveling in
this. Matt, however, is blowing a
gasket. I can tell by how it looks like
he’s holding his breath. At this point,
his face is a traceable red. He’ll go through other colors later on. “Women, and don’t get me wrong because men
are responsible to...”
“Oh yeah, how can they not be. After
all, they’re men.”
“...they don’t want any responsibility.
They just want to spread their seed in any way they want. They
don’t want to become fathers, they don’t want to take charge of children.
Just create franchises of their DNA.
And women want no commitment to men.
This is what is tearing our moral fabric apart.”
“Can’t say I blame men for not wanting to take
part. I mean, the mothers, for God’s sake, turn into crazy old women who
usurp the attention of restaurants patrons minding their own business .”
There is no harm in this. They
were never listening to me to begin with.
“And then when their children don’t end up
turning out they way they want to, they get a psychiatrist to make up some
condition. Like this ADD or ADHD.”
Matt is now lobster red, bordering on maroon. He’s like a mood-changing chameleon. Trying to blend in with the frustration
overtaking his cortical areas.
“Your generation is in trouble. You have
a lot of lazy people who are uninformed who have the vote hostage.
They’re going to vote for some real losers just because they don’t want
to get out and work. Your hard earned money will go to supporting their
laziness.” the man adds. No voice of
reason in this couple. They’re perfect for each other.
“Sounds a lot like the geriatric population.”
You know who said this. Good
thing Matt's not drinking anything, otherwise it would be shooting out of his
nose.
“Now, now, just wait a second, young man...”
I stop to notice that all four of us are outside. I remember! -
about 30 seconds ago that the joint had closed. We were ushered
outdoors. The lights were turned out in
the dining area. The cooks had turned out the last of the lights in the
kitchen. They are now exiting through
the front doors. Matt finally exhales.
He looks off into the distance, drinking his Coke. He steps over to a trash can to deposit his
dead soldier. This is the last real thing that happens.
Just at that moment, the couple starts
fattening at an exponential rate. Their voices become pain-stricken and
garbled. What little coherency they had
is now gone. Their clothes rip open, revealing their bodies as fleshy,
oblong masses of pulsating soft tissue. Like birds in a flock all
turning at the same time, Matt and I bolt to the car and get in as quickly as
possible. Matt jams the key into the ignition and awakens the
engine. We move quicker than
hummingbirds. My seatbelt is on but we
don’t move. I clear my throat in a way that that says ‘what are you
waiting for - floor it!” Matt shushes me
and tells me to watch.
After all of their human characteristics had
disappeared into the two throbbing masses, the couple head next door to a crowd
of five club patrons and two bouncers. Four of the group flee, tossing
their cigarettes to the ground, trails of vapors in their wake like a living
cartoon. The bouncers curse loudly and
run inside the club, slamming the doors behind them. The one straggler of
the abandoned group is busy roaching a spliff.
His kin is no where to be seen nor did they even try telling him to get
out while he can to save himself. His
back is to the beasts. The hideous
growths move in on him. First they knock him over. He drops his spliff. “Aw, man.” he begins. He looks behind him. Without skipping a beat, he screams bloody
murder. The two growths overtake his
lower half. Not able to kick anymore, he
starts punching at them in vain. His fists become engulfed in the blobs’
insatiable gluttony. Without any
explanation, the Rasta’s body shrivels up.
The volume of his cries for help silence. His carcass diminishes until it is nothing
more than a tam and hemp bracelet-wearing skeleton.
The two blobs grow, secreting more pus,
spewing more blood and waste in the process.
They head down the street at an unbelievable velocity. Like leviathan, organic vacuums, they consume
everything in their path. Garbage cans,
trees, cars, drunks, everything. A ray of mucus tails the two massive
tumors, as they heed an unmistakable Eastern direction. Their wanton damage does not stop until they
arrive at the doorsteps of 310 First Street, Washington, DC. From there, they start a rally and encourage
all of their friends to adopt a Conservative political ideology. So long as it benefits them.
Anyway, here’s the title of this story:
Fire in
the Nursing Home: The Case for Soylent Green
