Keeping It Up

Issa, of Alberta Coop Grocery

"Organic" is one of those words that picks up connotations like a co-op hippie picks up odors in the bulk spice aisle. It's a word you can brandish. Or scoff at. It's loaded. So let's review:

Organic does not mean "sort of brown and nubbly." It does not mean "smelling like patchouli oil." It does not mean "more expensive." Okay, it does, but only because someone else is picking up the tab for the cheap stuff, in fertilizer run-off,  groundwater contamination, antibiotic-resistant superbugs, and algae plumes. Most of all, it does not mean "associated with liberals."

Okay, it does.

But that's the nature of things that become buzzwords, however legitimate they may be. People start reacting to them without a lot of critical thought. For instance, I have a visceral and bad reaction to the phrase "family values," even though I think they are a good thing. Our own family values elevated Scrabble and backyard badminton and summer cookouts with colored aluminum tumblers full of lemonade and walking in the woods and rolling logs for salamanders and putting the salamanders back and replacing the logs and singing in the choir and eating at the same time every night and getting put to bed with a chapter of The Wind In The Willows. Also, we were supposed to get good grades and not be racists.

"Sustainability" is another buzzword you hear a lot lately, and it's one of my favorites.  Unfortunately, a lot of people hear someone going on about sustainability and all they conclude is "that person doesn't want me to ever have any fun." And that's simply not true. We sustainability people want everyone to have lots and lots of fun! Only with Scrabble sets and backyard badminton. We think that should be an easy transition from blasting an ATV all over the desert or gouging up a mountain trail with a motorbike. We like Scrabble. We think you will, too.

So "sustainability" is another one of those words that is beginning to provoke a backlash, especially among fans of unrestrained capitalism. But it shouldn't. It passes no judgment and chooses no sides.

All "unsustainable" means is: you can't keep it up. You might find a politician who will tell you he can keep it up forever, and even provide evidence on Twitter, but trust this: he can't.

There are all sorts of things that are not sustainable. For instance, suppose you get in on the front end of a Specklebutt Corgi boom. You buy a matched set of Specklebutt Corgis for $500 and pretty soon you have another eight Corgis to sell for $500 per, and willing buyers snap them up in hopes they can turn them around at $1000 a pop. This happy circumstance plays out for a few more generations and then the bottom drops out of the specklebutts, and a sorry spectacle it is, too. Corgis are unloaded for free with crate on Craigslist. It's unsustainable. It can't be kept up.

Or say someone finds a huge underground reservoir of prehistoric Corgis in a kibble cave. They are enormous. They are brought up topside a few at time where it is discovered that they have great value as draft animals with their short, massive limbs. Two of them can pull a train by themselves but their antique balls fall off in the modern atmosphere and they cannot reproduce. Nevertheless, prehistoric Corgi futures soar, and the animals are hauled up as fast as they can be hauled. The potential seems endless, but it is not. There are only so many of them. Eventually people will have to figure out how to do without ancient Corgi power, but in the meantime, trainers and Corgi-yoke manufacturers are pulling down solid wages and brokers are making a killing. There's no incentive, in an unrestrained market, to leave any of the proto-fidos down there. And why, the brokers ask, can't we just figure out what to do after we've run through all the dogs?

No reason at all, if we weren't going to be nose-deep in Corgi shit by then.

So when Mitt Romney says, as though this is a good thing, that he will do everything he can to get the last dog out of the ground, I'm going to vote as hard and as often as I can for his opponent. His position is not sustainable, economically or in any other way, and a grown-up would know that and plan ahead. I don't care what the man straps his own dog to.

Rolling Out A New Welcome Mitt

With two more primaries coming up on Tuesday, polls continue to show Newt Gingrich tracking well among the pissy, and Rick Santorum is coming up hard on the rear. Concerned establishment Republicans have begun to express doubt about Mitt Romney's package, and he has been advised to take new measures beyond declaring expediency as a bedrock principle. Work is being done on the personal as well as policy front, with an emphasis on the steadfastness of his positions, including some that are still under construction.

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Details are sketchy, but according to his new hair tousler, Mr. Romney and a fresh dog will begin touring the country in a bus, the Rolling Plunder Express. Fidough, a certified pound mutt with a stars-and-bars bandana, will have the run of the top of the coach, where he will bark the bark of freedom. To project vigor and enthusiasm, Mr. Romney will bound out at every stop and roll up his sleeves just enough to reveal Nascar logos on his special holy underwear.

It is thought to be the best strategy to own up to his Massachusetts health care plan, under which all residents are affordably covered, by stressing that this was a youthful indiscretion, for which he is very sorry. He is expected to introduce a bold vision in the health care debate that will slash costs dramatically by endorsing a new line of Christian Science Medical Centers. Those who complain that the franchise amounts to little more than a chain of Jell-O restaurants with no ambience will be promptly accused of waging war on religion. After emotionally recalling his own hardscrabble upbringing in utero, he will unveil a new proposal, which will cover every citizen from just before fertilization to birth, equipping them with tiny little concealed-weapons permits and other protections under the full extent of the law. In addition, innocent future American lives will be saved by the passage of the Sperm Empowerment Act, under which contraception will be defunded and semen delivery system enhancement pharmaceuticals will be offered for free in little candy dishes by the door at Walmart. Failure to enact this will be spun as discrimination against the elderly sperm hosts. Women will benefit, inasmuch as roughly half of the resulting fetuses are projected to be women, after nine months of incubation, labor, and up to eighteen wallet-draining years of care.


In other areas, Mr. Romney is on record as affirming that the sacred institution of marriage is between one man and one woman, at a time, although he believes certain accommodations might be made to confer many similar rights to homosexual couples, as long as such a union is not called marriage, but rather "a filthy abomination in the sight of the Lord." He further pledges to podcast a weekly ecumenical Prayer Breakfast featuring plenty of pork products.

On the energy front, Romney will continue to castigate Obama for nixing the Keystone project, which, he will point out, would bring thousands of temporary jobs to America building the pipeline to transport Canadian oil to a gulf port for export abroad, until we have a chance to devastate our own resources.

His experience as a businessman will be touted as giving him unique insight into slashing the bloated federal budget, beginning with the elimination of ethanol subsidies, except in the corn-producing states, and the elimination of all military bases in states with fewer than four electoral votes. Regarding the military budget, its growth will be reined in to two digits. Under the Romney Doctrine, excessive military force will be limited to regions with serious mineral resources, and the grateful recipients of our military attention will be reminded that freedom isn't free, although we would be happy to work out an extended payment plan.