old school is still the best school.

in my day, we dropped dead of a massive coronary at 55, and we liked it.

-jerry stiller

* * * * *

funny thing is, that's actually not really true.

you see, in the old days, and even in the new days, in certain parts of the world, people didn't mess around with "technology" when it came to the basics.

take some advice from doctor oz (never thought i'd say that), who feels that old world diets, like you find in the mediterranean, and certain asian cultures, diets that came over with our grandparents' generations, or great grandparents, and died when our parents decided that everything had to be bigger, faster, more intense, cheaper, yet more monetarily rewarding, these diets are actually better for the body than any diet science will concoct in a test tube.

ever watch emeril? isn't it so silly when the audience cheers every time he puts garlic, or butter, or alcohol into something he is cooking? how they ooh, and ahh, when he tops his culinary delights with olive oil, or how they squirm and mumble when he mentions something like tofu, or squid, waiting for him to really sell it to them.

but despite all the "health taboos" he mixes into his dishes, it always seems so delicious when he's done. as emiril would say, "i wish you guys had smell-o-vision". then we fumble around our kitchens trying to make cake with i can't believe it's not butter!: spread, splenda, and eggbeaters.

hey, look, i'm not saying that modern butter, or sugar you pick up at the supermarket is definitely healthy for you. but you know what? most of that shit is pretty far from being real butter and sugar. but i am saying that real ingredients are real good for you.

you know what else? i've churned butter before, i did it every morning for weeks, and the butter, the milk, the cheese, the yogurt is not only delicious, it's not only good for you, but churning butter for 5 minutes a day will work out all those pesky arm flap muscles that women spend hours on end in the gym trying to work off.

or take dark greens. people these days seem to shy away from dark greens (americans, anyway) unless one or two of them have managed to seep into the novelty sphere (baby spinach, the 90's were good to you). everyone wants the romaine, the "caeser" style salad. why? because we got it in our heads that romaine is the ultimate in lettuce elegance, but wherefore art the rest of the veggies? most salad lettuce standards are mostly water (iceberg, romaine, cabbage) which is why we have to douse them in bleu cheese, croutons, bacon bits, and barbecued chicken, whereas some of the more obscure greens (chard, collard greens, fennel, bok choy, broccoli, endive, frisse, mustard greens, the list goes on) actually have a whole lot of good stuff inside in addition to being unique flavor endeavors. still, if its not potatoes, or pickles, or romaine, we don't eat it. so where do we get our good vitamins?

how about here for example:

once upon a time "they" told "us" that iron skillets were not good to cook with, because the iron in the skillet leached into our foods, and that this was a bad thing (but also because "they" were trying to sell non-stick pans).

wrong.

this is a great thing. people need lots of iron in their diets, and the amount that you get in a meal cooked in an iron skillet is by no means too much. what's more, new studies show that (big gigantic fucking DUH) the chemicals that are used to treat modern style pots and pans also leech into our food and that they are actually very detrimental to our health.

ever consider the health benefits of eating a pair of wrinkle-free, stain resistant, perma-pleat dockers?

ever eat a plastic shopping bag?

seems like a pretty stupid idea, yeah?

then why would you cook one into your food (teflon pans, plastic bags, and wrinkle-free chinos are all made of the same polymers)?

older generations also tended to avoid gorging themselves at every meal, and eating at odd times of the day. they also tended to get a little fresh air and exercise once in a while. sitting at a desk isn't really a great workout (i know i'm not feeling the burn right now, anyway), nor is watching TV, nor is fantasy football (no matter how much of a man you feel like when a bunch of real athletes that someone told you are good turn out to be good).

older generations worked in the yard, and got together for a pickup game on the weekends, they took walks after large meals, and a lot of them walked or biked to work (you don't have to go back too far to find generations where that was the only option), work that actually earned the title "work".

and if you need me to science these things up, i can. regular meals allow the body to develop a routine, allowing for better digestion (much like your brain functions better when it can set its circadian rhythms to a regular sleep cycle), your body knows when to kick into peak metabolic mode. breakfast really is the most important meal of the day because your body has all day to digest it, and if you eat a proper meal in the morning (after giving your body time to grind out of sleep mode) you won't be as hungry throughout the daylight hours. conversely, late meals are no good. your body needs time to work food through your system, if you eat late, and go to bed before your body has time to move everything through, the rest becomes collateral damage (basically, fat). taking a walk after a meal is a stellar idea, because a fully upright body is the best position for your inner workings to effectively move the food down the line, and it keeps your metabolic rate a shade higher than resting, which means you'll burn more of the fats and such, and move the goodies into your system faster.

i won't go into the other idiotic eating habits we partake in, like why we find it necessary to eat meals the size of footballs (when i look down at my stomach i can't even imagine where that much food goes), or why we aren't suspicious of an eatery that can make 200% profit on selling us a quarter pound of meat, a bun, 3 slices of cheese, and condiments, for a dollar, or why few can grasp the concept of being a functioning organism without eating meat, when oxen eat very strict vegetarian diets, and we used to use them for all of our most labor intensive tasks, meanwhile people take the stairs to the food court burger king once every blue moon, and expect someone at the top to be handing them the stanley cup or something.

what this is really all about is how shocking it is to be hit with all this advice that seems to be common sense even for the most idiotic jackass, it's not good to ingest teflon, using real real ingredients doesn't just taste better, it's actually good for you, eating meals at the usual times helps your body digest properly (why yes, i guess that does mean that taco bell's newly discovered fourthmeal is a hoax), being physically active promotes a healthy being.

but it's also about how quickly, in a matter of two generations, basically, we turned our backs on concepts that slowly developed over millennia of trial and error.

"eggs are good, eggs are bad, eggs are good, eggs are bad. you know what? screw it. let's just invent a fake egg that passes all these arbitrary tests that have no time tested foundation in the real world, and call it a day."

stop the madness.

we eat eggs for a reason. it's not instinct to just crack open things that fall out of a chicken's vagina and eat the gooey insides, nor is it instinct to crawl under a cow and yank at her teats, then beat at the milk until it separates, and spread one half on toast, and dunk cookies in the other half.

these are things that have developed over a very long time, and they worked so far, didn't they? humans are still here today, living and breathing, and doing useless studies to debunk the things that got us here, and in the meantime getting cancer from all the things we invent to combat the effects of laziness and ignorance.

well, that actually wrapped up pretty nicely right there...

we are killing ourselves with the solutions to problems that never really existed.

congratulations, everyone.

we're morons.

it's not easy bein' green... but it sure is easy spendin' it.

being a useful and neutral member of the natural equilibrium requires the use of common sense, and the rejection of excuses. don't think of a reason why you shouldn't live neutrally, admit the reasons why you should.

* * * * *

want to do something good for the planet?

stop buying everything that says "green" on the box.

with all the shit going on in the world, it's hard to believe that there aren't more important things for people to worry about than what kind of garbage bags i use.

i do believe that in my life, what kind of garbage bags i use is an important thing for me to worry about. just briefly, however. for about 30 seconds i pondered what kind of garbage bags i use, then the decision was made, and i don't worry about it any more.

i spent 30 seconds thinking about how plastic garbage bags will never biodegrade in a landfill. nope, not even the biodegradable plastic ones. thing about those is, their biodegradation is based on heat. they need to be heated to a certain temperature before the plastics will even begin to "biodegrade". but the problem lies in the reality of their disposal. landfills are moist affairs, and water cools. furthermore, most items dumped in a landfill are either immediately buried in other garbage where they are insulated from the heat of the sun, or they immediately blow away and land in some body of water where the water below keeps them at a low temperature no matter how hot the sun gets. even if biodegradable plastics were afforded the opportunity to bask in a lab perfect atmosphere in which they could break down, they merely break down into toxic gases and tiny little plastic particulates.

so when i thought about it, i realized: i am one man, i create approximately one medium sized bag of garbage every couple of weeks, that equates to about how many paper bags i acquire due to forgetting to bring reusable cloth bags to the grocery store. paper bags are often made of recycled materials, and paper bags will break down in a landfill (in fact even faster if it is buried in moisture), and break down into components that the natural world can currently digest.

decision made: i use paper grocery bags as garbage bags.

my mother, above so many other things about my life that she might be worried about, is appalled by my bag choice.

word on the street is, plastic is simply far superior to paper on the issue of being able to contain a volume of empty space that may be filled by unwanted articles of refuse.

but that mother of mine, like so many others, despite her lifestyle, is down with "going green".

so what solution is there for people who want to go green without changing anything they are doing?

recycled plastic garbage bags, of course.

pause for common sense...

...aaaaand... we're back.

recycled plastic garbage bags? but these are garbage bags. using them to haul trash seals their fate. their cycle will end here. so these bags, a mere 60% recycled, mind you, will quickly end up in a landfill, or ocean, or cuddly baby seal esophagus, where they will be removing 60% of the recyclable plastic from the reuse cycle, and adding 40% more new plastic to the earth.

what's green about this?

this is the opposite of green.

this is red (color wheel humor).

this actually hurts the planet by turning potentially reusable plastics into trash.

so if we can't go green by buying green, how do we go green without changing our lifestyles? how do we go green while remaining consumers?

easy answer: we don't.