Earth Day 2009 Celebrations

I am so heavily involved in environmental causes, I almost completely forgot it was Earth Day!

To celebrate while I'm at work, I am leaving all the lights turned on that I can do, and I have just set my fan blowing and my heater is now on full-hot. Sure it's warm in here but I'm just going to have to sacrifice my own comfort to piss of some watermelon fascist out there.

When I get home I will be turning the a/c as cold as I can stand, and open the windows to let some heat in, and turn all the lights on. I encourage you all to do the same. Remember: Global Cooling must be combated! Everyone do your part to fight against the natural variances in the output of our sun! Lean to the left hard enough and we'll change the position of the Earth relative to a flaming nuclear reaction eight light-minutes away!

What a bunch of tripe.

********

Dateline Recruit Training Command, Navy Training Center, Great Lakes, Illinois. Earth Day 1996:

A bunch of soon-to-be Sailors were going about their business in the usual way: as slowly as they could due to fatigue, and as quickly as their commanders could make them move while being limited to solely verbal abuse.

One Seaman Recruit wanted to make a difference. He wanted to do his bit. He wanted to observe Earth Day and made the mistake of mentioning the day to his company commander.

As my division filed out of the mess hall to line up in formation to march off to wherever it was we were to be next, a strange noise greeted our ears. We looked around and saw a rare sight. What we heard was the voice of that one Seaman Recruit, cracking now and starting to go hoarse but still yelling as loud as he could (on orders from his company commander):

"TREE, TREE, I LOVE YOU TREE! I THINK WE SHOULD GET MARRIED!
TREE, TREE, I LOVE YOU TREE! I THINK WE SHOULD GET MARRIED!
TREE, TREE, I LOVE YOU TREE! I THINK WE SHOULD GET MARRIED!
TREE, TREE, I LOVE YOU TREE! I THINK WE SHOULD GET MARRIED!. . . ."

There was a HUGE tree outside South mess hall, to the right of the steps at the front entrance. Big enough a full grown man's hands were several feet from each other when he wrapped his arms around the trunk. This Recruit was showing us how much he loved the tree (again, on orders) by standing there hugging it and calling out the above phrase until he was told to stop. I would bet a small number of dollars that he had to stand there the entire time the rest of his division was inside eating lunch. Gotta love the Navy Way sometimes.