All of this douchebaggery is Sci-fi's fault.

I'm not a huge sci-fi fan, but Mr S. is. I think they recycle the same old stale story line. Humans are evil and are ruing the earth. That is pretty much all sci-fi-fi is these days.

Almost every time we watch sci-fi and it has that plot line I look at Mr S. and say - this is all your peoples fault! This is the reason people believe stupid things about the earth.

So I had to laugh a little inside when I was talking to a guy I know about those cube satellites. Immediately he freaked out about space junk. He's like - this is so dangerous.

Me - well most of this stuff is going to burn up in the atmosphere.

Him - No it won't!

Me - Well.... what stuff has fallen to the ground?

Him - No - it's going to hit other stuff in space. All you need is a grain of sand to hit the space station.

Me - Yeah. That's true, but the space station is still up there. So nothing must have hit it yet.

Him - Well, they don't tell you everything. When I saw that movie Gravity it really freaked me out.

He even said the words at some point in the conversation - "you know how we are ruining the earth"?

I'm like - the Earth is going to burn out one day!

I'm routinely shocked at how many people tell me we are ruing the earth. All small talk eventually turns to this. I swear. Considering how many people we have on on this planet I think we aren't doing too bad honestly.

Also I just feel like that's a very first world problem. You know my deepest fear is? Being homeless and I'm not doing too bad. Not that the earth is a little warmer or dirtier. If all you have to worry about is us ruining the earth - I just have to roll my eyes. We are living longer than ever! Do you you know how many people are living to 100 these days? A LOT. Humans are sure doing a shitty job of ruining the earth by that standard.

It's been a million years since I've had a ruining the earth post.

Whats in the boooooooox?



I used to love all the over boxing that happened before the recession happened. It just made you laugh in a "how can a company afford to do this sort of way". You just couldn't believe the judgement of some of those boxers. It was crazy and funny all at the same time. See: ruining the earth. Then the recession hit. Companies got more efficient and over boxing pretty much went away. Until today!



First, lets give you an idea how big this box is. That's a Galaxy Edge s6.



This is what is in the box. A camera battery.



I still love over boxing. It makes me laugh. You have to admit - it's funny.

Todays Ruining the earth Story.

Oh people! You must wonder why I'm constantly on tilt with companies. You do wonder that don't you?

This is why.



Some adult-tard actually sent me a vacuum filter in a big giant box. And look at all that fucking packing material! The item in front of the filter is some Revlon color stay lipstick. I put it there for scale.

Vacuum filter - not breakable.

Oh! And get this. The filter, which by the way could have been put in a padded envelope - weighed less than an oz. The packing material weighed 3.7 ounces. Four times what the item weighed.

And! Wait for it. They charged me 8 fucking bucks for shipping.

I know you are saying "hey dumb ass". You knew you were paying 8 bucks for shipping. Yes.. I .....did.

These days, you sort of get used to paying inflated prices for shipping. Usually I grit my teeth and just pay it. But come on! What are these people thinking? Other than "hey sucker - here's your filter".

If they would have stuck the filter in an envelope, it wouldn't have even caught my eye. But, when a big box shows up with a tiny little item inside, you know I'm going to bitch about it.

See my ruining the earth series here.

How I'm still ruining the earth.

I have to admit.. I don't really care that much about ruining the earth. A meteor is just going to come through and make everything right with the universe anyway.

So - when a company's packaging gets on my radar - you know it has to be excessive. You can see this stuff happens all the time. Here.



This is a simple roll of lead tape. It was the only thing that was in that box. WTF?

Does it really cost less to send a big box like this rather than a small envelope? I mean.. that's only explanation. Right? Lead tape isn't breakable.

Still ruining the planet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm stuck on this right now. I'll get over it eventually. But I find it funny and absurd when the trendy thing is being "green", and the phrase "carbon footprint" is said more often than "hello".

So - this is the great big bag I just got from the Verizon store. The only thing in it? A wireless card. Since the salesman didn't even ask if I wanted a bag or not -I took what he handed to me. Because you know I wanted to blog about it.

I can't be the only one they are handing these ginormous bags to. And come to think of it - I've bought a bunch of stuff at the Verizon store and I've never needed a bag this big.

My other attempts at ruining the earth here.

Over boxing returns to great laughter.

The economy must be really getting better. Why else would Amazon think they could spend so much energy to ship me some batteries? Take a piece of cardboard. Place batteries on it. Shrink wrap. Stick shrink-wrapped package in a cardboard box. Then put that box in a bigger box. Ship! Happy customers all around. Right?






This is how much room they took up in the box after you took out the cardboard stabilizer. You know, so it doesn't make noise.



I bet you guys are wondering what is inside that little box. "Whats in the boooooox!?" Well - lucky you. When I started this post I hadn't actually opened the box yet. It turned out to be these four batteries which are super special. They must be because I was forced into an unboxing experience.



I don't even care about ruining the Earth. I care about the health of the companies that reside on the Earth. And that has got to be ridiculously expensive to send batteries this way. You'd think it was nuclear fissile material or something. Oh come on, don't get twitchy,you see the spooks who travel through this site.

Still ruining the earth.

I haven't had one of these post in a really long time. Companies have been pretty good.

The thing is - I don't even give a shit about the earth. I care that these companies make profits and give people jobs. Which is why, when they send me non breakable items all fluffed up in bubble wrap - it sort of annoys me. What I really want is for them to just shove this shit in a padded envelope so we can all be happy. If you have to run over it with a car to break it - it doesn't need to be in a box. Okay?

This is how amazon.com sent me hedge trimmer line. I bet I could drop a brick on this stuff and it wouldn't break. Sending it in a reinforced envelope seems like a no brainer. And no - I couldn't buy it locally. The stores were out. What do you care anyway. I probably gave five people jobs to get this to my house.



This is the funnier one though. Camera sensor cleaner swabs. For the love of gawd I can't believe I spend 3-4 bucks a pop on these, and still have dust in my pictures. I often find myself chanting "must make clean. MUST MAKE CLEAN". The hazards of changing lenses all the time I guess.



These are super non breakable. The are practically q-tips for shits sake. Envelope please Adorama.

How I'm ruining the earth - Part II

Part I here.

I think I might be starting to have an issue with the new "direct to customer" trend.

Obviously - the big beneficiary is the big box store who doesn't have to deal with as many inventory issues. But this just moves the inventory burden onto the retailer, and the customer. For example:

A few weeks ago I special ordered some curtain rods. I thought I would pick them up at the store when they came in, but they were directly shipped to my house. From Canada.


As you can see. They aren't very special. Just very minimal rods. All that stuff to the right is just packing material.

Waiting the two weeks to get them wasn't that much of a big deal because I was busy with other stuff. But - I was suppose to get two rods, not one as shown above. It took another two weeks to get the rest of my order.

Now mind you.. it has taken me a month to get some very uninspiring curtain rods. I only liked them because they fit as close to the wall as possible so I can make my bedroom into permanent midnight.

And now... I have yet even more packing material. See that little tiny circle? That is my curtain rod.



I mean - all this has to be hurting the retailer, right? I just can't be the only one this happens to. Can I?

This is how I'm ruining the Earth.

The very first entry on this blog was about my Friendly Robotics robomower. Here. After 3 years our battery finally gave out. Pretty impressive actually.

Even though I was initially unhappy with Friendly Robotics - after 3 years it is one of the few products that has worked reliably. And - it actually has given us many entertainment hours.

Since we have had this mower quite a long time now, the novelty has worn off for us, and it has just turned into a trusty appliance. But - it draws so much attention still after all these years. I find myself being a little uncomfortable at how many people stop in front of the house to watch it. People are fascinated by it.. so I often find myself amused at people's reactions. I will go out to check it if has finished, and someone will be stopped in the street watching it for minutes.

At any rate - this is the packaging the battery took to get it to me safely. A bit much.

Bubble Nazi series.

The past few years it feels like I've had a giant stick up my butt about a lot of things. So today I found it super amusing to run into this guy who seems to have one of the funnest hobbies on earth making bubbles. He spent half of his time telling children not to pop his bubbles "because it was art". Seriously. To be fair, that bubble does look like a duck.

I've seen him at a lot of other things like Maker Faire, but he always gets pushed out because it's really hard to take pictures of bubbles, and there is so much other stuff to show you. Today however, he was the funniest thing in the room. So to speak. I thought to myself - self, the world has made you a little bitter. But not that bitter! I think there is still hope for me. I mean, clearly artist have a lot of stress. Like children ruining their art.