Maybe it’s because it’s 8 a.m. on a Friday and the weekend is nigh.
Maybe I’m just a bit loopy.
But my favorite ultra-progressive, take-him-with-a-grain-of-salt columnist and uber-agitator, Mark Morford, is cracking me up.
Today the San Francisco Chronicle writer, in his “Notes &Errata” column, takes on the continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash in the Pacific Ocean.
Also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Pacific Trash Vortex, it’s “at least 1,500 miles wide … 30 meters deep, 80 percent plastic, and 100 percent appalling. Truly, there is nothing else quite like it on Earth.”
The enormous stew of trash floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man’s land between San Francisco and Hawaii, according to a Chronicle story.
Yuck, right?
Of course is it all very frightful and a mess that will likely never be cleaned up, but you can laugh a bit with Morford, who in his typical Allen Ginsbergian-style rant offers a modest proposal: “Why not protect the jellies and save some sea birds and clean the ocean and cut right to the chase and, well, simply eat the plastic bottle yourself, on the spot, when you’re finished drinking that two-cents worth of water for which you paid $3? I can see the Greenpeace campaign now.”
Then there’s his eco-tourism idea.
“Ah, but perhaps we are not thinking ingeniously enough. Perhaps we should consider simply turning the garbage patch into a giant Disney tourist attraction, add some platforms and some floating rides and Starbucks kiosks and funny T-shirt stands for the kiddies. You think?
“Families from all over the world could float out to the GPGP on special garbage-plowing cruise ships outfitted with little detachable pontoon boats, which the kids could hop into and float out among the stew, armed with cool little nets (plastic, natch) with which they could spend all day fishing around, scooping out all sorts of magical, mysterious goodies from all over the world. Imagine! It’s like the world’s biggest claw vending machine!
“Funny ashtrays from Indonesia. Cheap plastic watches from Japan. Weird European food wrappers and skanky soccer balls and giant drums of mysterious chemicals, plastic coat hangers and old bottles of bleach and rancid flip-flops and free leftover Nike cross trainers for Mom and, oh my God, Timmy, isn’t that your old “Doom II” game cartridge? It’s yours to keep! Or, you know, just throw it back. What fun!”
Happy Friday, everyone.
I have to go.
It’s going to take me all weekend to eat this Fiji bottle.
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