Affordable Sustainability Archives

Redneck Sustainability: Urban Scrappers

November 7, 2011 by David Mark Brown

When I say “urban scrapper,” I’m not talking about some underground Sunday night fight club for hipsters with too much kempt up frustration, I’m talking about today’s savvy, entrepreneurial recycler of society’s droppings.

This duty has increasingly been taken up by the growing and noble urban class of redneck–the urban scrapper. And the rest of us, who wince or even shudder with disgust at the idea of getting intimate with the undoing of our daily cast-off (Cast-off: (n.) the dreck that ripples outward in the wake of a typical modern life on a daily basis) owe the scrapper a profound debt of gratitude.

You see, while I’m sustainability conscientious, like most of us, I’m dastardly lazy.

The West Needs More Western

August 18, 2011 by David Mark Brown

For many, the contemporary icon of the Western genre is that of the semi-nomadic wanderer or the knight errant–the pale rider. While that is a Western motif, it’s usually shown in contrast to the frontier, societal enclave from which fate has removed the rider.

The larger motifs of classic Western literature and film revolve around the local social order maintained by personal codes of honor that are strictly enforced. Abstract law is for sissies and Yankees. Westerns grow organically from the fertile soil of independence and libertarianism.

With a hoe in one hand and a rifle in the other, tough men and women etch meaningful existences from the harsh wilderness environment using their wit and fortitude. Those desiring to exploit the land for easy gain or to pillage others are the enemy. Most simply, the Western is a morality tale caked with dust and manure. And this, dear reader, is what I think Western civilization needs a bit more of presently (both morality and manure).

One True Pants: Anniversary and Wake

July 14, 2011 by David Mark Brown

We’ve done it. The process has taken every bit of tensile strength OTP could muster. But the day has come. It’s official. OneTruePants are dead. Long live OneTruePants.

At midnight tonight it will have been 365 days that the same pair of hemp pants have adorned my blessed lower half. (Heroic music begins as OTP montage rolls.) We’ve had some great times together, and nothing less than the glory of the afterlife will be able to fill the drafty emptiness OTP will leave behind (in all our hearts). But the pants are truly spent.

Through summer heat, winter chill, dirty diapers, spit-up, diarrhea, dog bite, roofing, demolition, wine, chocolate, chili and BBQ, dancing, laughing, crying, two weddings and a funeral, my one true pants have been my rod and my comforter (wait, that sounds familiar).