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| Aaaghhhhhhhh!!!! |
The names the City had chosen were, in our opinion, coldly inadequate and hopelessly bureaucratic. I thought we could do better. And I was right. Some of the names submitted by genuine Tattler readers were better, and oftentimes are far more descriptive of what it is City Hall appears to be doing in this important matter.
Though, of course, this is to dangerously assume that City Hall knows what it is doing. Outside of telling us they're ever so busy with stuff, they haven't actually communicated any actual intentions or goals here.
This is how this contest was described a week ago today:
We have only held this contest twice in the nearly 5 year existence of the Sierra Madre Tattler. At this moment I cannot recall the reasons why we did it before, and honestly I am too lazy to go into the pile of 1,400 or so posts back there and find out what it was we thought we were doing.
But that said, today we are once again offering a 30 count box of audio music CDs from my own personal collection of thousands to the person who can come up with the best new name for the soon to be mashed up Tree Commission and Green Advisory Committee. This is your chance to be rewarded for your creative abilities, an opportunity that sadly does not come along as often as it should in adult life.
However, there is now a problem. I can't decide which one to pick. There are a number of them that I feel are very good, and I can't seem to make the final choice. An embarrassing dilemma for me. So what I am doing today is posting an A to Z list of those that I think deserve to win, and leaving the final choice up to you. A cop out I know, but what can I say. I was out late last night.
One other thing. If you do not believe that any of the A to Z are up to the honor of renaming the Green Tree Mash Up Whatever Committee-mission, and believe that you can do better, submit a new one of your own. You do know that we're hardly sticklers for arbitrary rules here at The Tattler, and we'd hardly presume to stand in the way of a sudden burst of white hot creativity on your part.
Here are the Top finalists, minus any new ones that you might wish to add today. There is no particular order to the selection, outside of the fact that this is how I typed them.
A) Buzz Lightyear Action Committee for the Preservation of All That is Natural In Sierra Madre
B) Bureaucracy Sustainability Commission (BS Commission for short)
C) The Utter Waste of Time and Resources Commission
D) Green Is Whatever Paul Alva Says It Is Commission
E) The Green Busybody and Snoop Commission
F) Pope Paul and the Bobbleheads Commission
G) Put Down That Hose Or I'll Taze You Bro Commission
H) The Sell-Out to the Sacramento and Washington Development Lobbies Me Too Commission
I) Green For Sale Commission
J) Building Industry Bosses, Development Devotees and Realtor Greenies Commission
K) The Green We Love Best Is Money Commission
L) North of Guyana Experience, Tie Me Leprechaun Down Sport, Green Behind the Rears, Gargle, Spit, Recycle, Repeat Commission
M) The Tear Out the Trees and Shrubs, Replace Them with Concrete, Asphalt, and Apartments, and then Tear Those Out and Replace Them with Trees and Shrubs Commission
N) Johnny Bummer's Empty Keg and Endless Ail Party Commission
O) The Popes of Green Witch Village Commission
P) The Buck Starts Here Commission
Q) Linda Blair and the Projectile Green Symposium
R) Zsa Zsa Grabmore & the Green Belly Achers
S) Condos Will Save the World Commission
T) Johnny Electric's Green Action Squadies
U) Composting of Sierra Madre Commission
V) Kowtow to Sacramento Commission
W) The Green Pond Scum, Transportation & Homeless Shelter Scam Committee
X) Team Never Green
Y) Bombastic Bandini and the Methane Kids Commission
Z) Cha Cha and the Recusing Heels Committee
We hope to have chosen a winner by next Sunday. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.
Something Inspiring to Help You Make a Caring Choice
There was an article in Time Magazine recently that discussed a new United Nations inspired concept for leading a sustainable lifestyle while availing ourselves of a seemingly endless food resource. And that is eating bugs. The article is titled Fight World Hunger by Eating Bugs, Urges U.N., and here is its six-legged essence:
It’s time to rethink our aversion to bugs-as-food, advises the United Nations in a new report. And no, not in the Man vs. Wild sense, grimacing as you dangle tiny wriggling arthropods over your chops, then mumbling the words “To my health” before chowing down. Instead, the international organization is advocating the protein-rich diet to deal with an exploding global population and growing environmental concerns.
“It is widely accepted that by 2050 the world will host 9 billion people,” write the authors of a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report titled “Edible Insects” in its introduction.
To accomodate this number, current food production will need to almost double. Land is scarce and expanding the area devoted to farming is rarely a viable or sustainable option. Oceans are overfished and climate change and related water shortages could have profound implications for food production. To meet the food and nutrition challenges of today – there are nearly 1 billion chronically hungry people worldwide – and tomorrow, what we eat and how we produce it needs to be re-evaluated. Inefficiencies need to be rectified and food waste reduced. We need to find new ways of growing food.
That is, new ways of thinking about food, namely the sort of potential nourishment Westerners routinely spend piles of money and time obliterating via exterminators, repellants, pesticides and our shoes. The report points out that insects have always been part of our diet, noting that today more than two billion people already consume insects as food and implying that the reason Westerners don’t comes down to irrational cultural distaste.
Hopefully whatever it is we finally call the Tree Green Mashup Whatever will conduct a symposium on the proper culinary preparation and presentation of insects. You know, to help you overcome your irrational Western aversion to getting your chow on over a bowl of wiggling grubs.
You can read the rest of the Time Magazine article by clicking here.
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