Garbage Studies

“Andy” has a big brain and is a masochist, so he is getting a PhD.  This entails learning a lot of broad stuff in his field, then learning more than anyone has ever known before about one specific slice of his field, and writing down impressive new thoughts about that minute slice, until someone calls him a Doctor and my parents cry with pride.  Along the way he reads a thousand hundred million books

We have complimentary skill sets.

on obscure, nuanced ideas then tells me about them until I can’t wrap my head around why anyone cares about the  type and depth of feelings that your eyeballs have looking at something and how that affects your holistic the interpretation of the thing itself, and then I go do practical things like ferment carrots and learn how to pick locks.  When the apocalypse comes, we will have very distinct roles to help us survive and restart society. 

But the other night he made passing reference to an academic field that piqued my interest, and it is called Garbage Studies.

(Just let that sink in.  You can be a doctor of the philosophy of the study of garbage.)

Scholarly AF.

So, yeah, sure.  You can learn all kinds of things from garbage, like what a society values (or doesn’t) and eats (or doesn't) and stuff about how they live.  In really old societies, the trash is sometimes all that is left, so you take what you can get. 

So it’s a real thing.  Today, it focuses on cool stuff like reducing waste and efficient recycling.  There’s even a center in Serbia devoted to this, and it has a Kids Garbage Lab, which is also a thing I want to set up in my back yard.  (It will be…different from the one in Serbia.)

Seriously he just wants everyone to leave him alone.

Garbology, a modern phrase that involves trash bags more than midden heaps, was—no kidding, Reader—coined by A.J. Weberman in 1971, when going through Bob Dylan’s trash.  This is true, because I found it on Wikipedia.

So it turns out Romans were big into recycling and repairing, and we know that because of Garbage Studies.  Modern Garbage Studies, when not figuring out the societal meaning of a plastic refuse island floating in the Pacific Ocean that is currently three times as large as France (What does it mean?  It means we are doing it wrong.) can focus on all kinds of things in today's world that are clearly garbage. 

My suggestions are as follows:

Scott Pruitt – They’re already studying him!  11 cases are open so far!  Who spends $43,000 to build a sound proof phone booth in their office?  Definitely someone who respects the trust and power instilled in him!  Certainly not anyone who is doing anything wrong!  Who systematically does all in their power to stop us from NOT killing the world?  Garbage People! 



**UPDATE: Through the power of positive thinking, that schmuck is GONE!!!! Score one point for decency and the environment!  Better late than never, "Stephen"!**

Why you making this about me?

That Slow Driver in the Fast Lane –  Look, slow drivers are fine, live your life.  You’re careful, you’re safe: great!  And slow turners, well, I just assume you’re carrying a full pot of soup in your passenger seat to take to some lonely sick old lady who has outlived her family.  Look at you!  Being such a good person!  The glue that keeps the fabric of society together!  BUT WHY ARE YOU IN THE LEFT LANE, SLOTH TOYOTA?

Hypocritical Progressives – as a subset of hypocrisy in general.  Sloppy lazy internal logic counts too, because even when you’re not malicious, just too lazy to apply your own value system, you’re still screwing up.  But I digress.  (I’m not perfect either but seriously, you gotta try.)

We are not focusing on the hypocrisy of the right.  It is there, but I'm interested in cleaning my own house here.

Who does that?  Don't do that!

When someone spends their lives and their careers specifically touting ideals like equality and fighting for a just society, but then they’re like, “ohyeahbut, I mean, not for me though," you get on this list.  It’s a vegan who won’t even wear leather because the pooooor animals, but then bites the heads off chickens for fun.  

Stop ruining it for the people who do want to create a just society built on the America ideals that people in power were naïve enough to tell us meant something back when we were young and impressionable. 

You suckers told me the dream was real, now you gotta deal with me.

Aggressive Sales People – Look I know everyone is just trying to make their money buy maybe don't tell me what to do?  I know what I want, and what I don't.  I am trying very hard almost all the time to be a decent, kind, reasonable person.  It is a social contract to be decent to each other, but if you break that contract, it is broken.  If someone expects me to carry all the weight for the both of us, we’re all going to be disappointed.
   

NOT Using the Oxford Coma – The Oxford comma is objectively correct.

The American Medical Treatment of Women and Mothers – I am not citing any of this because there is too much to cite.  Google it at the risk of your own tranquility.

Fun fact: did you know that with all the hoops that drug companies have to jump through to get their product approved by the FDA, they don’t have to test their fancy new drugs on women?  And because of that, like 70-80% of the drugs are not tested on women?  So we just don’t know things like, is the dosage the same, does it mess with your hormones, are there other side affects that haven’t been considered?  

Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor
not a...hunh.

And when your doctor is like, this blood  pressure med totally works, they really don’t know if or how that is true for lady-people?  Because apparently they only need to test their crap on real people, not weirdo boob people?

And maternal mortality rates, that is a whole other thing.  For clarity of terms, maternal mortality refers to women who die while pregnant or within 12 months of giving birth.  And sure, some of

This guy knows.

those ladies were hit by a bus, right?  Sure they were.  Which is why we compare rates, not just the incidence of death itself.  And like I mean, Sweden, sure, they’re good at everything, they have super low maternal mortality rates.  Plus they have those meatballs. 

But did you know that moms in Lybia have lower mortality rates than we do here in God’s Country?    Or how about we’re the worst in all developed countries?  We SPEND the most on maternal care.  But our mamas die more! Perhaps I don’t understand what “developed” means.  And—AND, Reader—our rates are on the rise!  Wait, you ask, are everyone’s rates on the rise?  Nope! Just ours!  As everyone else gets it more and more together, we’re like, shut that hospital down!  Medicaid is for pussies!  Women should be championed and revered says Paul Ryan!  But not the mamas!

And get this, get this, this is good: The rates for black mamas are 3 TO 4 TIMES AS HIGH as those of white women!  

And that rate.  

Has not changed.  

In 60 years.   

For context, sixty years ago, Brown v the Board of Education had just happened.  The US had just launched its first space satellite.  Fifty years ago, MLK was murdered.  Forty years ago the first personal computer was introduced. Today we have brain plugins that fix paralysis and surgically implanted learning, but we still let black mothers die.

Hey, but let's focus on what matters!

The reasons for our mama mortality rates involve things like access, poverty, insurance, etc.  Things that policy creates or doesn't, worsens or corrects.  Things that elected officials have everything to do with.



Georgia is the worst in the nation.  

Someone should study this Garbage.

Disney’s Jessie and Bunk’d— I know, I know, Disney really has been doing so much better in recent years.  Tiana was a boss (though, Disney, since you're def reading this, you get the serious side eye for her no good, lay-about, happy-but-lazy prince of color…).  Frozen had a whole plot point about “don’t just marry some dude!”, and true love was about sisterhood not some kiss.  Moana is a gem. 

But their live action kid-targeted sitcoms are the worst.  Jessie is about some super rich family who has adopted kids but are never home so they have a “regular-joe” nanny (named Jessie) who helps them navigate their penthouse condominium lives.  From what I can tell the parents are literally never there, for unclear reasons.  Because it would probably be very difficult to invent an engaging TV show context highly populated with kids who have ostensibly normal-ish lives, and aren't cruising to Milan on a private yacht with no parents.  

Then the kids get older so they move on to a summer camp that just never ends in Bunk’d?

So let’s talk about the kids, shall we?  There is an Indian boy, who has an accent (yay immigrant representation!) and is the most annoying book worm science and math nerd.  Not a cool smart nerd.  A terrible smart nerd.  Like the nerds from Nerds before they get laid, but with racial undertones.  There is also the blonde white girl, and you’ll never believe, Reader, she is spoiled and selfish and only cares about fashion and nail polish and being pretty.  

Except on Disney TV!

Let’s not forget the sassy black girl, or the white boy who gets in trouble because he has poor impulse control and doesn’t think anything through, but never reeeeeally gets in trouble because hey, boys will be boys. On the side, he treats lady people just like you’d expect him to.  At camp, there is an East Asian girl who resents her overbearing tiger mother, and plays violin. 

Also the script is terrible.

This show has no redeeming qualities.

The All Lives Matter Movement—we’re not even talking about it, is how much garbage it is.

Climate Deniers—not to take it back to Scott Pruitt and his mischief of compatriots, but let's go broader to all the people who are like, "but I don't want to believe true facts, so I don't have to" or "but I don't understand how it works and that is like expertise, so me saying it doesn't make sense is like it actually not making sense," or "but God would never let anything bad happen to his children."  I just can't even.  It's science.  Science, y’all.  Quit breaking the world, we’ve seen that movie and no one wants to live there. 

Sailor J – No, I’m kidding Reader, she’s a national treasure; I just wanted to see if you were still paying attention.  Put this woman in your life.

This list could go on forever.  Go Google kittens, or watch this.

Ok but really the Pacific trash island is 3x as big as France now.

How to Install a Toilet, a Helpful Guide.

Me, on the roof with a chainsaw,
the week before roof guy came over.

Step 1 (toilet minus six weeks):  Wonder where that stain on the kitchen ceiling came from.  Discuss it with your boyf, who calls a roof guy.  Work from home one day so roof guy can come by, reseal the vent thing on the roof and while he’s at it fix some other little stuff on the roof and the porch.  While he’s there, go outside and make small talk about  how you’re glad he’s there to fix it, and how the cats are super interested in all these outside noises.  Have him point and laugh at the cat in the window, and say something like, “Ha, he wants to help!  Ha!  And you can help too!  Ha!  Because it's just as silly! Get it?  Because women can't do stuff on roofs or with tools! HA HA HA!”  

Go back inside.  

Step 2 (toilet minus four weeks):  Realize the stain has spread, and there’s a new one.  Point it out to boyf, saying "Something must still be wrong."  Boyf says, that’s always been there.  Point out that it hasn’t. 

Step 3 (toilet minus three weeks):   Hear boyf, who has kilzed the water stain, which immediately reappears, say “Huh!  Something must still be wrong!” 

Turn water off on the toilet immediately above the stain. 

Step 4 (toilet minus two weeks):  Boyf goes to get new toilet, and ask about installation.  Turns out the toilet itself costs less than the installation, which boyf decides is dumb.  Boyf calls, and is like it’s dumb, right?  We can just do that, right?  HARD YES LET'S DO THIS.

 Step 5 (toilet minus ten days): Bring toilet home, to live in the garage as it slowly acclimates itself to its new environment.  Toilets are sensitive, like fish and all the stuff I never unpacked when I moved in, and must be eased into their new homes. 

Step 6 (toilet minus one day):  Get home from work.  Take that first deep breath of “Home!!!!!” because I actually am home after work, which has been rare recently.  Boyf points out that it’s toilet day.  I make this face:

He is correct, though; he talked to me about it earlier (say, in the last 10ish days, probably multiple times), and asked when I had time to get the new toilet in.  Thing is, life has been balls-out non-stop hectic since like….January.  Last weekend I was in my own house only to sleep.  Monday I had a thing.  Tuesday I babysat.  Wednesday I had a nerd meeting.  Friday I’m meeting friends after work.  Saturday I’m going to a graduation and learning to sew.  Sunday is Mother’s Day.  We have to get this toilet in cuz his son is coming to stay with us soon and he needs a place to put his poops.  So Thursday is toilet day, and this is Thursday.  I now make this face:

We take the toilet upstairs.  On the outside of the toilet box is a handy check list of things you need to install it.  It is the first time we have noticed this list.  We do not have the things.  (Didn't see that one coming, did you, Reader?)  

For the love of God, pleaaaase

I make a hard sell case for, look we got it upstairs which is like half the battle, and there is absolutely no chance that I am leaving the house so any trip to the toilet installation supply store will be a solo run, and what if I don’t go out with my friends tomorrow, and instead we handle this project not-right-now. 

He agrees, on the condition that we watch a YouTube video on how to install a toilet, since to this point we have done absolutely no research.  I agree, we watch this helpful video.  It is very instructive and has snazzy between-scene effects like pieces of the screen flipping over like tiles.  I highly recommend it.  I text my friends that I am a jerk and not joining them the next night.  I spend my night not doing things I really need to get done.

Step 7 (toilet day):  

Give up on writing out numbers for each of these steps.

Turns out it was mostly just a putty knife
and some other stuff we had around the house. 
We totally could have done this on Thursday.

Get done with work. 

Put on pajamas.

Take newly acquired toilet tools upstairs. 

Put on latex gloves because obviously.

Decide not to rewatch the how-to video, but also not to look at the instructions.

Carefully rip leaking toilet out of the bathroom, only almost ruining the linoleum.  Toilets are stuck to the ground with wax, which is brown and gooey in a way that makes you really uncomfortable and you wonder why they couldn’t have gone blue or something  Then you realize that brown is a choice that allows you to overlook the grossness of that is actually happening here, since everything you are touching that is brown and gooey can be conceived of as wax.  Get the old wax off as best you can, but definitely don’t do anything like clean the ring of lint and hair that clearly defines where the old toilet sat.  Assume the new toilet will have the same footprint.

Unbox the new toilet, but do not in any way catalog the pieces, because you already know what you’re doing, you watched a video for crying out loud.

Put the new wax down, and the screws, and the new toilet base on it. 

Realize the new toilet has a different footprint than the old one.  Simultaneously realize you don't care.  Surf on the new toilet to properly seal the new wax (toilet surfing is a real thing and if you had watched the video you would know that, Reader).  Then screw the base into the floor with the washers and butterfly nuts that came with it.  Realize you are

using the wrong butterfly nut.  Realize you have used the wrong washers.  Take it back apart, but also still don’t look at the instructions to be sure you’re doing it right, or have used all the right pieces in the right order this time.  Realize you didn’t put the little plastic things down that the nut-hiders clip onto so your guests aren’t scandalized by the pig sty you make them squat in.  Briefly get the instructions out and handle your ish correctly.  Toss the instructions away again.

Put the big rubber thing on the tank, and the tank on the back of the base, and screw it on with the remaining washers and butterfly nuts.  You are sure these are correct, because they are the only ones left, but also you don’t check, because, again, you watched a video. 

When one washer won’t go on, get really mad at it.  Call it choice words.  Realize you bent the washer when screwing it onto the wrong part of the toilet earlier, and decide the best next choice is to hammer it flat again and then maybe the sorry little snit will work.  It won’t.

Look for other washers in the house, find one, and make an executive decision that it’s good enough. Install the tank.  

Baaaaarely attach the water hose because you didn’t measure anything at any point in this process and it was REAL CLOSE to being a Situation, Reader, but by the skin of your teeth, it reaches.   Realize you have some pieces left that you don’t know what they are and casually glance over the instructions just for funsies.  Identify the left-over pieces.  Sigh.  Have to loosen the tank back off so you can put rubber bumpers in between the tank and the base. 

The tiny rubber lines between us and the barbarian hordes.

Eeeeee!!!

Hold your breath and turn on the water.  Watch the tank fill up and realize there’s beauty there.  Flush the new toilet with childlike awe.  Check the floor for water seepage or drips.  Flush it again.  Rejoice, because the toilet is flushing and no water appears to be leaking onto your floor.  Chest bump, fist bump, high five, and generally celebrate because you DID IT and you are DONE!!!

Turn around and realize you have a dirty old toilet sitting in your landing.

Goddammit.

Realize this toilet has juuuuust a little bit of toilet water left in it.  Realize there is no way to handle that water upstairs.  Sigh again.

Carefully carry the toilet down stairs and outside, dripping toilet water on yourself, the carpet, and your soul the whole way.  Consider what it would do to property values if you just left it in the yard, or better yet, turned it into a planter.  Consider if the trash collectors will notice that you are slowly putting pieces of toilet into your garbage each week.  Decide to just let it live in the garage, to acclimate itself to its new life, and go wash your hands for seven minutes in scalding water.  Call dibbs on first sit on the new throne.

Nailed it!

Tea Pot

This lady has  tea pots.

I own a tea pot now.  This is perhaps not as consequential in reality as it is in my psyche but you should know a couple of things: I don’t really drink tea, I don’t care about tea, and generally I think tea pots are dumb.  Not like, conceptually dumb; conceptually I get it, and in fact they’re a lovely tool.  I just…maybe it is more correct to say, generally I think tea pots are ugly.  Thaaat’s the ticket.  They tend to be either traditional, in which case ugly-fancy with a patina of “how to be ladylike” about them, or more casual, in a “yuck yuck, I’m just a country momma but I kin still make a good ole pot of tea!” vein (full disclosure I own a collection of serving dishes in the shape of

These are perfect. 
It's totally a different thing.

vegetables and a variety of pig and chicken sculptures and they are beautiful, I fully stand by THOSE ugly ceramics), or faux-artsy in a Pier One Imports flavor that, while I am deeply susceptible to in so many other useless tacky consumption-addict items of theirs (where do I get my proud roosters?  You guessed it!), I recognize for what it is in tea pots. 

(I do not recognize it for what it is in Christmas ornaments made out of twigs and leaves in the shape of woodland creatures, or soup bowls shaped like pumpkins, or the previously mentioned roosters or elephant pigs, but the tea pots are just a bridge too far.)

Do I own that pig?  Yes I do.

"...omg these white people....."

In tea pots I’m like, do I really want to spend money on pretending I have a deep and informed interest in Japanese tea culture that, when questioned, will immediately be revealed as “I have no idea what inspired this generically Asian-style ceramic but I am 100% sure it was made in China and certainly that counts as me being exotic and worldly, plus they had it in blue, I like blue…”  So even Pier One teapots do not turn my head.

It doesn’t help that to me, generally all tea tastes like it sure would smell good.  Like, that is the flavor. It has a flavor that makes you go, gosh, whatever this dingy water came from probably smells delicious.  All twitter comments about the flavor of la croix apply to teas except instead of just fruits, the spectrum widens to include baked goods, flowers, soaps, and concepts like “harmony.”

The functional side of tea pots, I will admit, I like.  I like it in the same way I like a garlic press (which is an actual valuable tool, unlike a bagel slicer, which remains just painfully dumb) and a jig saw and a shovel.  It’s a simple, direct, actually-useful tool based on essential concepts in action, and that’s kind of my jam.  It’s why I like church key can openers better than electric ones, even though they take longer to use and you might get tetanus.  Who cares that you’re bleeding, your SOUL is healed by the essential doing-ness of the thing you are doing.  (“Andy” thinks this makes no sense but he also doesn’t see the point of making your own vinegar, so he can’t be trusted.)

Well I went to a thing the other week.  It was a craft fair, but not like the one out front of the retirement community where everyone is selling salt and pepper shakers that are painted in polka dots and the quilt from Roseanne.  This was a Big Deal craft fair, with Big Deal vendors who make Big Deal stuff.  It was gorgeous stuff, really, and if I were independently wealthy I would have so many completely baller edgy jackets and subtle, stimulating necklaces (plusalso all this stuff). 

We would be best friends.

(If I were independently wealthy the first thing I would do is become a falconer, and take my Lady Hawk everywhere like Paris Hilton and her rat dog, with the same attitude of “I don’t understand why this is a problem, she is my soulmate.") 

 One of the venders in there was a potter, and I learned an important lesson:

Teapots are not ugly.  Cheap teapots are ugly. 

It was an "ah ha" moment.

I love ceramics, love love love them (serving dishes shaped like vegetables, people.).  The ones I like best make you want to touch them all the time, and I don’t know if you would have guessed this but I am not the number one reigning queen of impulse control so I 

Ima break it.

DO touch them all the time.   This is also how I make friends at Big Deal craft markets, if friendship is defined by one person having a face full of childlike joy while the other one is deeply, deeply uncomfortable.

Anyway, there was a potter, and he made v cool, clean looking, functional but beautiful and VERY touchable stuff like mugs and teapots and serving bowls and vases and teapots and I loved them all and since it’s my birthday, my step mom got me a Big Deal teapot and I frigging adore it.  There is no good place to display it in the house and I don’t drink tea and also I had to get it home without shattering it, which was its own adventure, and I just want to keep touching it.  It is beautiful.

So now I have to figure out how to like tea. 

Tea is something that has this air about it of, well but you should like it. 

This guy
doesn't drink tea.

Real people like tea.  People who are not soulless voids like tea.  They maybe have one cup of coffee in the morning to acknowledge that they are still bound by their human body, but they prefer the rest of their day, when they imbibe tranquility by the perfectly-seeped thimbleful and, idk, get their taxes done on time.  To me, tea tastes like warm water with an aroma of how bad you are failing at appreciating the true wonder of this mystery called life.  I even like drinking hot water—just that.  Just water, but heated up.  Warms you up, makes your tummy happy.  But give it a dumb name and make me wait three minutes and give it an aroma that is a lie and I don’t know why I didn’t just make coffee.

As previously mentioned, however, part of what is appealing to me about a tea pot is the true functionality of it.  It is made to be used, and designed to be very good at what it does.  So I want to use it, or at least try.

Ugh, but tea tho…..

It’s the kind of pot that comes with a screen in it because Big Deal tea comes from loose leaves.  So I need loose leaf tea that I might actually like.  How…how, Reader, do I figure out what kind of tea I like?  They all smell good and that means a whole bunch of nothing when it comes to the flavor.  They all have a list of reasons why they’ll cure what ails you.  They all have names made of words, or at least sounds.  This is much like me trying to find a decent bottle of wine when I don’t know anything about wine, except I will actually drink the wine even if it’s not my favorite, and the same is not true of bland, tepid herb water.

I'm listening....

So like…are there tea selling establishments that offer flights of teas, or tastings, or something?  Yes, yes it seems there are.  They are called houses or rooms instead of bars or pubs, and the food is less deep-fryer and grill focused then the brewing establishments I am more familiar with, but they exist.  There appears to be a spectrum from fancy-pants to acid trip.  I am not sure there is a dive bar equivalent, but if there was, it’s porbably not where Big Deal tea lives.  I bet they all generally pretty much have their scone game on lock, and I am a fan of scones, and also costuming, soooooo I’m interested.

Hypothesis: the tea room employees will become just as (or more) frustrated than people who work at craft beer bars when I walk in with my “I don’t know what I like, I don’t want to learn about your product, I don’t care about your hobby, but I am picky, please serve me a drink” attitude.

It has been pointed out to me that, in the meantime,

I mean, because obviously, right?

I could just make coffee in my tea pot (it has also been pointed out that I don’t like tea, never have, and probably never will.  While we all have to acknowledge this is true, Reader, I really want to wear an astronaut costume to some sort of Mad Hatter tea room to munch on some cookies or perhaps a Scotch Egg, so we’re in this now).

And this is the moment where it pays to have an awesome tribe.  Cuz I while I don’t like tea, I know people who do, and they have, like, all the teas.  Furthermore, they are also interested in committing to ridiculous events, and now there are plans for a tea party.   A goblin tea party.  There will be tastings. There will be scones (I assume).  There will be everything ranging from clothes to outfits to costumes.  There will be pinkies in the air and also whisky.  I will use my Big Deal tea pot and hopefully, when it’s all done, I’ll know what weird dried leaves to Amazon Prime to my house (or just more Foldger’s Classic Blend, whatever). 

Real talk, when this suggestion came up, I actually legitimately had a moment of, well but tea parties happen in spring or summer and it's still February...

This is gonna be great.