[ExI] oooohhh pioneers

[spike]

There was a recent Sierra Club activity wherein the proles were urged to
turn out all the lights at 830 pm local time:
 
http://sierraclub.typepad.com/greenlife/2009/03/turn-your-lights-out-for-ear
th-hour-march-28-830-pm.html
 
This brought back pleasant memories of a game my wife and I used to play
often on Saturday evenings before my son was born.  We called it Pioneers,
or later, after reading Willa Cather, renamed Ooohhh Pioneers.  To help our
European friends understand, I offer a concise history of the US.  In 1849,
gold was discovered in Taxifornia, resulting in bands of rapacious white
people charging across the plains from the American east coast, destroying
everything in their path like swarms of locusts.  
 
My wife and I wished to emulate these pioneers by turning off or not using
any technology that would have been unavailable to 1850s proles.  So,
everything that uses electricity, off.  No phone, no lights, no motor cars,
not a single luxury.  Young childless couple.  What do you suppose happened
next?  In all those Ooooohhh Pioneers games, it never failed.
 
We haven't played since Isaac was born, but the Lights Out Saturday Night
brought back fond memories.  Interestingly, this would be a perfect example
of a principle I call the Law of Unintended But Easily Foreseen Ultimate
Consequences, or LUBEFUC.  Half hour after those lights go out, do let me
assure you, the outcome is as foreseeable as the sunrise.  The couple is
desperate, wildly pawing at each other in the darkness, wardrobe
malfunctions occur, birth control devices will be difficult to locate and
utilize because the damn lights are out.  Result: nine months hence, right
around Christmas of 2010, a number of little FUCs will come into being.
 
The Sierra Club reminds the participants to not light candles, for one
candle is twenty times worse for the environment than a single light bulb.
But they fail to calculate or even estimate how destructive for the
environment is the birth of a single little FUC, especially a modern white
prosperous video-game playing beef-devouring prole.  They fail to calculate
or even estimate the impact on a young environmentally conscious couple who
will be missing in action for years if not decades, from their former
activity, immediately upon the birth of their little FUC.  Environmental
activism will be pushed waaaaaay down on their list of priorities, which
will suddenly have a large number of new, expensive and urgent line items.
Do let me calmly assure you on this point.
 
The Lights Out For the Earth Hour exercise is perhaps the most
environmentally destructive activity ever dreamed up by any organization.
 
spike
 
 
 
 
 
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