I’m most dreadfully sorry that I missed my update on Sunday. I was in Portland, Oregon, hearing about how outdoorsy, athletic and ecologically-conscious everybody in the city is supposed to be. Which is amusing, because at least eighty percent of the people that I saw in my two days out there was smoking like Chicago's industrial sector. There I was in what was supposed to be the “greenest” city in the country, and the people were producing more particulate smog and greenhouse gases than our Chevy Astro van accelerating uphill with a trailer behind it. Even better, my hosts wanted me to believe that all these human chimneys were among the most active people on earth, people that bike to and from work every day and spend their weekends hiking, skiing and kayaking, pausing only for a few push-ups and sit-ups. Bull. I don’t care if you DO live in an oxygen-rich temperate rainforest, unless you want to tow an oxygen tank and a team of experienced emergency cardiac surgeons along with you at all times, you can’t be both a chain smoker AND a triathlete. Shriveled, prune-like lungs just don’t work that way.

One thing I did manage to notice through the pallor of cigarette smoke was that the entire eastern side of the country should be burnt down immediately. I base this statement on the fact that the emissions that would result from such a fire would be absolutely dwarfed by the ecological damage that would be forestalled by destroying all civilization on the eastern seaboard and starting over. The east, compared to the rest of the country (where “the rest” is defined as “Portland, Oregon; Phoenix, Arizona and the airports in San Francisco and Detroit”), has an unhealthy fixation with putting things in bags. Whenever I buy ANYTHING, from a book to a rutabaga to a can of soup to a computer game, the cashier puts it in a bag. Without asking. Even a candy bar, which I can obviously carry pretty easily, is tossed into a five-gallon plastic bag. Then when I say “oh, sorry, but I don’t really need a bag”, the cashier/bagger/retailer puts on an expression that says something to the effect of “why are you making me do all this work? Now I have to REACH into the bag, GRAB your candy bar, TAKE the stupid candy bar out of the bag, and then PUT THE BAG BACK ON THE RACK, all to save some stupid tree or llama or whatever it is that gives us bags.” I always worry, when I see such an expression, that as soon as I turn my back the cashier is going to set fire to the entire rack of bags, just to spite me. Everywhere else I’ve been, however, I haven’t had a single purchase thus bagged. I bought three books somewhere in Portland-the cashier thanked me, took my money, folded the receipt and put it into one of the books, then handed my the stack. She didn’t even ask if I wanted a bag. I almost kissed her, it was so refreshing. Here in the east, that would be considered poor service. Out in the real world, you’re expected to ask for a bag if your hands are too small and child-like to carry a newly-bought book. The same thing happened in Detroit, which is an incredibly environmentally apathetic city. I couldn’t find a single recycling bin in any of the restaurants, food courts or hallways in the four hours I spent in the airport, but when I bought a toy, a candy bar and a book in one of the gift shops, the guy asked if I needed (not “wanted”, “NEEDed”) a bag before he packaged it up. Wonderful. Then I went shopping today, back in good ol’ New Hampshire. At Borders, I bought two paperback books, CARRIED THEM, IN ONE HAND, to the counter, paid for them, and then had to practically lunge at the cashier and physically prevent her from putting a bag around my .5 pounds of book: “No, I don’t need a ba-I said that I don’t need a bag! NO! STOP! Don’t put it in a bag, for the love of trees!” Ridiculous.
The moral of the story is that it is entirely possible that my columns, from next September on, may be coming to you from Oregon, where I will be choking on cigarette smoke, practicing my fake cough, and rejoicing in the lack of bags and the wide availability of recycling bins and pretty moss.

Required Reading
Rubber Band Machine Gun
Oh....my.....bacon. No dorm-dweller or cubicle-prisoner should be without one. This is going to be the hot toy for this Christmas, DON'T MISS OUT!

Link Pimp O' the Month!
Since I haven't gotten ANY submissions yet, I have no choice but to declare myself the Link Pimp O' November. Let's just say that the computers in The Vermont Country Store's Weston division, which are supposed to allow customers to visit the Store's website, now have Fredrickville as their homepage. Who knows how long it'll last, but I caught five people browsing the site and giggling, and I know that at least one of them wrote down the address, so it's good enough for me. I'm going to treat myself to a pint of Ben&Jerry's icecream as my prize. GET OUT THERE AND PIMP! And then be sure to tell me about it-you might as well get credit for all your hard work, eh?

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