Waste not, want not

Before the power went out the day of the infamous "2003 east coast blackout" the air conditioning was set so high in my office building that many people complained of shivering. Of course, not being able to open a window, call the landlord, change the temperature on the thermostat or put a sweater on, they were left with NO choice but to plug in portable space heaters. This is the kind of Mongoloid mental retardation that is responsible for the world we live in, where university educated men drive alone to work in 8 cylinder SUV's while high school dropouts secure hostile oil reserves.

My hippy mother raised me to be very conscious of the environment; ours was a very green household. We always considered how much packaging was involved in any purchase and even my first summer job was selling biodegradable garbage bags made of recycled plastic door to door. To this day I annoy my co-workers by emailing office memos reminding people to turn off their computers, turn off their lights, try not to print unneeded parts of documents... and would you all PLEASE take the fricken time to fricken twist the fricken faucet that extra fricken inch so it doesn't fricken drip hot water all fricken night?

(There are dick jokes coming, bear with me, it'll be worth it)

At my house I have those big heavy sock things to stop drafts, I yell at my friends when they leave the door open. I continue to drive my 14-year-old Volkswagen with 275 thousand kilometers on it... I even subscribe to "if it's yellow let it mellow" (well... unless I have guests coming over).

All in an attempt to conserve and reduce waste.

Over the last few years, as I've paid more and more attention to the state of the world, I've tried my best to live the old Gandhi proverb that "you must be the change you wish to see in the world." I go what I consider to be that extra mile, doing things that even my mother hadn't ingrained in me at a young age. I started bringing canvas bags grocery shopping instead of coming home with plastic ones, I bought food almost exclusively in bulk by purchasing things like oatmeal and raisins by the scoop, I even started biking 10 kilometers uphill to work (of course that was also influenced by a desire to stay in shape).

My new years resolution was to go even further to reduce the amount of waste I created. If I managed to go all summer without air conditioning then I could manage to keep the furnace a little lower and I would start turning it way down when I left for work. Living alone it's hard to work up the motivation to cook, especially when coming home late. Frequently I arrive with some form of takeout, most of which makes a LOT of waste. So I decided that when I called ahead and asked if they'd prepare my order, I'd also ask if they would mind not putting it in a Styrofoam container and to instead wait and put it in some Tupperware that I'd bring. If they said no, I'd simply buy somewhere else.

Last night it all came together in a glorious explosion. I was coming home late from work so I called into my favorite Vietnamese place and asked if they'd prepare me a big bowl of soup. I arrived to pick it up and handed over my Tupperware container, they laughed as they always do, making jokes to each other about how it smelled like a "white-boy's pasta sauce" (which it did, a little). I got home and parked myself on the couch to play some Tetris on xbox live with some friends. I was so comfy and warm that I decided to wrap myself in three blankets and turn off the furnace completely. I figured if I'm going to turn it down, I might as well turn it all the way off. And if it's off when I'm at work, why not when I'm asleep under a bunch of blankets? So I wrapped myself up good and tight and gulped my delicious hot bucket of soup while playing Tetris until I fell asleep. I was happy, warm, cuddly and complete, self satisfied in knowing that I was doing my part to slow the destruction of the earth.

January 9 will most likely go down in history as the coldest day of 2004. The temperature was recorded as being -45 Celsius and THAT, my friends, is nipples-that-can-cut-glass-*COLD*.

It was early morning when I awoke and the first thing I noticed was that I could see my breath, indoors. Something I had never experienced before in my decadent North American lifestyle. My face was incredibly cold but thanks to the three blankets I was SO warm and soggy.

Let me just break the monotony here and, out of blue, suggest that if you ever have a dream about pissing all over yourself, that you immediately wake the fuck up because, you guessed it: you ARE pissing all over yourself.

Jesus H Shitsticks... I wet the fucking bed...

Let me say that again in case you were just skimming...

I FUCKING PISSED MYSELF

And once more for the search engines... (props)

AH+FUCKIN+PISSED+MESELF

I cannot believe this, I'm almost 30 and I've soiled the sheets while I slept. I never had this problem as a child... Yet here I am, so cold and confused that my resting body has evacuated an entire bladder's worth of digested extra-large-Vietnamese-beef-noodle-broth all over my stomach. I'm somewhat accustomed to waking up every morning without complete control of my genitals, but THIS is a new twist indeed.

I have soaked through my pajamas, TWO DUVETS and a fuzzy blanket. Everything is drenched and soggy right down to and including my couch.

I immediately get up and strip myself bare; I tear the quilt covers off the duvets and take the covers off the couch cushions. You can believe all the Tyler Durden philosophy you want, but I can assure you that a duvet is NOT "just a blanket" when it's down-filled and LUMPY FROM ABSORBING URINE.

I imagine you're laughing pretty hard right now, picturing me naked and freezing in my sub zero house, cramming piss soaked sleep-ware into a washing machine at six o'fucking clock in the morning, my frozen and shriveled genitalia sunken into my body like an ice-blue ingrown toenail. You're just going to have to trust me when I tell you that there is absolutely nothing amusing about frozen piss icicles in your pubic hair. Feel free to prove me wrong, in fact... I dare you.

How exactly is one supposed to clean a pissed on duvet? I'll tell you how, one buys a fucking new one that's how. I've literally pissed away two very expensive and hard to manufacture items in the name of trying to concerve. Can I have my environmental merit badge now?

Foggy, frozen and frustrated beyond all belief I shivered my way into the bathroom and turned the shower on. But of course, SILLY ME, having turned the heat completely off on the coldest day of the year my pipes have completely frozen solid and no water comes out.

Hi! my name is Teg, and I'm FUCKED.

What kind of options present themselves to a man in this kind of situation? Am I supposed to go to work without a shower?

Hello, Hi. I smell like piss. How are you?

Am I supposed to call my father and wake him to ask if I can come over and use his shower?

Unable to bring myself to call and confess my dilemma to a neighborhood friend I warmed tap water on the stove in a stewing pot and filled the tub a few inches, enough to soap myself up. Boy, you have not lived until you have scrubbed frozen piss shards off your body and then rinsed with ice water, fuck you and fuck your camping trips too.

Despite being "awoken" early (I use quotes because "awoken" has this angelic euphoric vibe to it and this was more like being torn from the womb of slumber by a scalding pair of pliars... I just can't think of a word for that) I am now late for work. Of course on the coldest day of the year my humble little shit-box isn't going to start, no sir, it's going to chug and shudder and die a long slow painful german death, that's what it's going to do.

Imagine the look on the guys face when you stop him in the alley and explain that you really REALLY need a boost.

"No seriously, my pipes froze and I couldn't shower, please just give me a boost it won't take long."

"Please?"

"Dude, for real, I pissed my fucking pants. Ok? Give me a boost before I start to cry."

Or hey, try getting to work and having your boss chew you out for being late, get yelled at for being irresponsible and disrespectful. What then? What do you do then?

"I'm sorry sir, it's not my fault, you see I had a big bowl of soup and... well it was cold and... well shit, I guess I'm a jerk after all, fire me."

In the end I guess I got my revenge by staying at work late and writing this instead of reports that were due. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about sharing it with the world but I'm not one to stop telling a self deprecating story once I've started. In the end I didn't really learn a lesson from it all, I'm not going to change my ways, I'm still going to strive to conserve. But I think from now on the furnace can stay on, it can stay on until the tulips bloom.

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