Showing posts with label Earth Hour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Earth Hour. Show all posts

Mailbag Vol. 2 Issue 5

By Glenn and Jake

Welcome to yet another issue of Mailbag, one of the least respected features on One Year in Texas. If it's not beloved why do you keep doing it, you might ask. That's simple: we love writing it and reading it 5 years from now.


Dear One Year in Shit,

Wow. I'm the dude that wrote in last mailbag you had about how I stepped on a nail and how the tetanus shots were better than reading your website. Then you published my letter and said you had an aluminum baseball bat with my name on it. Before I insult you further, I would like to know if you meant this literally or figuratively. I do hate your site but this is important for me to know - professionally and personally.

- Cecil Fielder


Hey Cecil, we did not realize that it was you writing that letter last time. In an odd turn of events, we actually do have a Cecil Fielder baseball bat, but it's not aluminum. Instead it's a regulation wooden bat that sometimes we try to hit dingers with. I say try because we're quite bad at baseball. If you weren't my favorite baseball player we'd probably break your legs when we saw you, but since you are we'd just get your autograph and put it next to our Gilbert Gottfried autograph on our wall.

I was searching for A Flock of Seagulls b-sides, demos and live tracks and somehow I ended up on your site. Since I'm a die hard follow of AFoS's philosophy I never just assume things. I don't want to assume that you guys or girls don't have any AFoS material, though it doesn't look like you do. I wanted to write in and ask if you were into AFoS or if you had any AFoS content on your site. If you don't, could you tell me where I could find some b-sides? Those are songs that didn't appear on their studio released albums.

- Alicia, Unofficial AFoS Internet Coordinator

Yes, I do know what b-sides are, Alicia. Here's a link to a collection of A Flock of Segulls b-sides for your listening (and dancing) pleasure. If there's one thing I'm good at it's finding shit on the internet. To answer your other question, I'm not a big fan of of A Flock of Seagulls, but they're okay. They have funny haircuts, and I'm a fan of that. Thanks for the letter, Alicia.

Hello oneyear. Can you please tell me what the fuck this "FML" shit is about? I was able to find out from my teenage cousin that it stands for "fuck my life" but why do I keep seeing this shit all over my Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Stumblr, Tumbler, Facebook, Twitter, Tweetie, Twitterberry and Buzzfeed? And I'm not even bringing up how much it's on blogs, which I also read very frequently. Can you tell me how this started or why people seem to be using it on the internet so much? I'd really like to know if it's cool or not and if it is cool I will start to use it. For example, I will end this letter by using it.

FML,
Tony


Funny thing, Tony, we were going to do a parody of FML at one point, but we decided against it out of laziness, if nothing else. Fuck My Life is a website that women love reading. It's where they can complain (which is a woman's number one hobby) about some situation (like a girl at work saying "ho" or somebody shitting on the bathroom floor) and then saying "fuck my life" at the end of the anecdote. I'll give you a made up sample:

My boyfriend and I were having a threesome with a transvestite just to see what it was like. When my bf snorted coke off his dick I died inside a little bit. I haven't been able to look at him in the same way since then. Fuck My Life.

So yeah, it's stupid, in my opinion.

You're web page is kind of funny. I don't get some of the jokes, like when you talk about the Ugandan Giant Kamala. Is just referencing him funny? It's defnitely not as funny as when he tries to pin somebody when they're on they're stomachs instead of shoulders. That is some seriously funny shit. Kim Chee goes fucking nuts and shit.

For those of you who didn't watch WWF programming in the 1990s, you need to hear about Kamala. You just did, from this reader's letter. Kamala was a big wrestler from Uganda and we think the idea of an "African native" trying to pin someone on their back is self-evidently funny. Merely referencing him in passing is hilarious. Would you rather we mention Ugandan autocrat Idi Amin and his propensity to murder political dissidents? That's not funny.

Dear Oneyearintexas.com,

I found your site on my child's computer when I was searching through his chat conversations to see if he was conversing with child molesters (he's not, but he's getting oral sex from a girl his same age). I don't know how he would even find your site. I know he's always telling us fish puns, and that your site also has fish puns on it, so maybe that's how he found it. What are some of your favorite fish puns?
-Snooping Mom


How old is your son that he's already getting oral sex? This should be concerning you more than fish puns. Fish puns have never led to rapid transmission of STDs or destroyed a young person's fragile self esteem. At worst, they lead to laughter. My favorite fish puns are anything to do with carp, gills or plankton. Jake's so much better than me at doing fish puns so I won't even try. But seriously, quit snooping around your son's computer.

Hey Dummies,
What is your big fucking problem? You guys keep talking about shit like Twitter, Earth Hour, Skype and Coldplay. And what's the deal with this RETARD Mikey? Who is this fucking guy? Please answer me as quickly as you possibly can. Thank you and fuck you.

Mikey is not retarded; he just sees the world in a simpler way than any of us. Some might say this is a better way, but I wouldn't. I personally think he's a high functioning autistic, a disease he contracted from a mercury vaccination a few decades ago. If you're trying to ask why we write about popular things, it's because we want to be popular. The point of creating any form of art - and yes, this website is a form of art - is for people to like it. People like Coldplay, people use Skype and billions of people in the United States alone participated in Earth Hour. If you can make Wolf Eyes, child molestation or whatever obscure shit you're into be popular then we'll write about it.

As always, send mail to mailbag@oneyearintexas.com.

Tuesday Debate: Earth Hour

By Glenn, Jake and Maddie



Earth Hour (aka "the hour that saved the world") is held every year on the last Saturday in March by the WWF (not the same WWF which once held a casket match between Kamala and the Undertaker at Survivor Series '92). Earth Hour is meant to raise awareness of climate change by turning off non-essential lights and electrical appliances. In 2009, Earth Hour was held on March 28, between 8:30 and 9:30 PM. What follows is a debate over the merits and morality of last Saturday's event.


Glenn/Pro: Earth Hour alone will never solve our world's massive environmental problems, or so we thought until last Saturday night. At 8:30pm CST, the Earth turned off its lights for one hour and also turned a page on a past. Between the comments section of this website and graffiti in the worst parts of our nation's biggest cities, you've seen the debate over Earth Hour rage on like an uncontrollable fire. Like any fire, this one threatens to kill everyone in its path and affects people already in the most drought-filled areas. I supported Earth Hour because I think if people turn off their lights, it will lower our carbon footprint, which is what causes global warming. Also, it will force people to remember what it was like to live BEFORE we got fitted for our carbon shoes. That was a time when we didn't have lights, computers or even the internet. A happier time? Possibly, but it was certainly a time when we respected and reversed the beauty of mother nature. Now we treat her no better than Eric and Lyle Menendez treated their mother.

Jake/Con: I don't want anybody to be under the impression that I disrespect the Earth. I have never once called the Earth a bitch or slut, even when I felt the most betrayed by it. I love the planet we live on, it's beautiful and full of wonder that could only have been created by a higher power. There is simply no denying that. Yet, I feel that Earth Hour is an over-hyped bit of nonsense. The Earth already has its own day, now we're supposed to give it an extra hour on the last Saturday of March? Fuck that! We're supposed to turn off unnecessary lights and appliances? I already DO that. I don't go into my basement at night and turn the lights on if nobody is going to be down there. I'm not a mass murderer, and I don't behave like one. The people who organized Earth Hour, the WWF, should have spent their time organizing something that will actually help people. Instead they wasted their time putting together a single hour where we turn off lights. Organizing an hour encouraging people to go outside and pick up the Wendy wrappers whipping across their lawns would have served as a better cause, in my opinion.

Glenn/Pro: If you're trying to group me with Wendy's, I'm almost as offended as the children of Wendy's founder Dave Thomas were when they found out they were adopted. I agree with you that Wendy's does more to destroy our planet than Exxon, BP and Chevron combined. Where we differ though is the mutual exclusivity. I think you can work to pick up Wendy's trash and put them out of business while also turning off your lights for an hour to stop global warming. I don't mean to accuse you personally of turning on unnecessary lights but as you well know, there are several libertarians and Republicans in our country right now who will turn on every light in the house just to spite the Earth. If they'll do it for one hour, what's stopping them from doing it all the time? That's what Earth hour seeks to counter: the real energy usage of libertarians and the symbolic energy usage of human beings. I do not mean to imply that libertarians are not human beings, yet I realize that's how it will be taken.

Jake/Con: We could sit here all night trying to figure out ways to put Wendy's out of business and pointing fingers at emotionless, spiteful libertarians, but we just won't. Not tonight. While Republicans and libertarians are undoubtedly the Hans Grubers of the world, not all of them are trying to single-handedly bring the planet to its knees, begging for mercy, only to spit in its face and deliver a crushing blow to its (figurative) melon. My point is that we should always be turning the lights off if we're not home, unless its to ward off serial killers. Nor do wet need to leave our stereos on while on vacation, playing the latest Hootie and the Blowfish hit record, just because we think its not getting enough radio play. I think a person with even below average intelligence, and a normal level of hatred and spite for the planet, would turn off their appliances and lights just out of habit when heading to the local soda fountain for a lemon Coke. The WWF needs to stop shoving what we already do as a habit down our throats and pick up all these fucking spicy chicken sandwich wrappers that are cluttering up my front lawn, making it nearly impossible to walk outside without choking to death on the fumes of rotting chicken breast fillet fragments.

Glenn/Pro: I take your point that most people don't spend their time running stereos while on vacation or using lights in vacant rooms. But as I said earlier Earth Hour is also a symbolic gesture. Most Americans don't leave their car idling for hours in a garage (unless they're trying to kill themselves) but they do drive in excess of what they could be doing. The proof of this was shown last year when gasoline prices went sky high and gasoline driving went way down. Sometimes it takes market forces - look at me, sounding like a fucking libertarian - to make people change their behavior patterns, but sometimes they just need to think about it more. Thus the goal of Earth Hour. The cost of water has never gone up in my life, but at some point I stopped letting it run while I was brushing my teeth. This was because of the very successful Water Hour held in the early 90s, to celebrate the fall of the Soviet Union and encourage people to go longer without water.

Jake/Con: Earth Hour is symbolic to you, but for many people it is very real. For many people, like my grandparents, Earth Hour is the only thing they do in order to help the planet or other people. If WWF spent as much time promoting not throwing trash on the streets and breaking bottles in fragile ecosystems as they did promoting the Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon storyline back in 1997 and '98 the entire Earth would be sparkling clean. I'd like to reiterate that I'm not against people doing Earth Hour, I'm against the WWF, who are wasting their time and money (that people donated) to promote Earth Hour instead of promoting something that could make even more of a global impact.

Maddie's Take: Wow! What a great debate, guys. With so many WWF mentions I am surprised things didn’t get more ugly—but then again, Earth Hour reminds us of nature, which makes us feel calm and at peace with the world, so I shouldn’t be too surprised things stayed so civil. Glenn makes the very important point that turning off lights does in fact waste less energy, and in turn lowers our carbon footprint and helps defeat the very real problem of global warming. Jake agrees with Glenn that turning off lights when not using them is a good idea, but he thinks the organizers should have put their money and energy behind an event that actually encouraged people do something more active, like picking up litter. Glenn is obviously right that Earth Hour was a symbolic gesture, but, in my humble opinion, that is what makes it dangerous. As Jake said, Earth Hour is the only thing his grandparents have done in their entire lives to help humankind in any way, shape, or form. It makes them feel like they are doing something important, when in reality they are just doing something they should be doing. This is why Earth Hour was a silly concept and why I am rewarding Jake as the winner of this debate.