The Return Of Monday Hate

Hello all. Well it has been a long time since my last post, a new baby can really get in the way of pointless blogging, so I'm really going to try to get back to blogging on a somewhat regular basis.

And what better way to try to get restarted than to bring back my formerly regular feature of Monday Hate? Those of you that were reading my blog before the kid as born will remember how this works, that every (hopefully) Monday I list off the things that are annoying me at that moment.

So here's what's bugging me this Monday:

Zipcar. I cannot even begin to convey how much I hate this fucking company. Yet another case of an environmentally unfriendly company calling themselves "green" to sell their products. (My favorite is British Petroleum re-branding themselves "Beyond Petroleum") I have so many supposedly liberal friends who use this service and seem to think that the only emission coming out a Zipcar is sunshine, happiness and flowers. Well, the same crap that comes out of a car you own is the same crap that comes out of a Zipcar. The air quality of our urban areas is at a crisis, not to mention the issue of global warming. And those aren't the only environmental problems with the American car culture (we will eventually pave over every single acre of this country). Yet somehow Zipcar makes a lot of people think they are doing something positive for the environment, and that is one of the ways the company sells itself. But I think it's a lie.

They claim that by car sharing, there are less cars owned by individual people, and that equals less driving. But I don't buy it. Less cars owned by a population does not mean less number of hours there are cars on the road. What Zipcar has done is make cars more available, and for a lower cost, where they wouldn't have been previously for a lot of urban dwellers. This makes people make bad choices for convenience, like run errands that could be done on public transportation.

Zipcar claims that they are lowering car ownership, but I really don't think they take in to account the number of people without cars already that are using their service who would have previously figured out a different way to do what they needed to do. The main reason I don't own a car or belong to Zipcar is because I know how easy it is to make the wrong decision with an air-pollution machine readily available.

And really, if you live in an urban area, especially Manhattan, and you can't run you normal errands like buy groceries, pick up supplies at the hardware store or bring home a set of shelves from Crate & Barrel by foot and subway with a cart, you are just being lazy. My wife and I even brought home an area rug for our living room from Macy's by way of the subway. And we live as far from the subway as you can get while living in Manhattan.

But people think they are doing something good for the environment by using Zipcar. These are probably the same people that think they are doing good by buying Poland Spring's "eco-bottle" when getting their bottled water. Dumbasses.

We all want our air quality and global warming problem fixed, but so many of us don't want to be the ones that have to give something up for it.

It's the new way to be "green" in the 21st century. Don't actually do anything positive, just make people think they are doing good. I think Zipcar's motto should be: "Alleviating liberal guilt about polluting the air since 2000."

Fresh Direct. See most of the reasons above. It's bad enough that it requires big trucks traveling long distances to get our groceries to the market, now we need them driving around the city to get them to our homes. Again, you really should be walking or taking the subway/bus to the grocery store in New York. Seeing these big Fresh Direct trucks sitting on the streets idling while the driver makes a delivery is so bothersome. Just about every grocery store in the city has delivery, except they have guys that do it on foot with carts. No carbon emissions required.

Texting and walking at the same time. I think this may actually be more annoying than people who text and drive. You think you can text and walk at the same time? Well, you're wrong. Nobody can, and yet so many people do. And they usually bump into the rest of us as they swerve down the sidewalk, block our way when we are trying to get around them in a narrow hallway and they are moving at a snail's pace or almost cause accidents by walking out in the street without looking where they are going. Seriously, stop and move to the side if you need to read or send a text.

I've got a new rule for the rest of us. When anyone texting walks by, not looking where they are going, give them a swift elbow to the face. That'll teach 'em.


Well, that felt great to get off my chest. Hopefully I'll have another instalment next week, and will be blogging more regularly again.

Remember, if it's Monday, I must be hating.