Centerfold

Once again, I've borrowed a title from the '80's. The J. Geils Band had a hit by that name, circa 1984. When you think of Centerfolds, Playboy is the first magazine that comes to my mind. They made them famous, with such notable women, as Marilyn Monroe to Pamela Anderson baring it all for men to drool over. I've had a subscription to that "Gentleman's" magazine since the mid nineteen seventies. I don't think I threw any of them away. Inside there are advertisements for leather folders to preserve the naked women in a classy way. I put mine in boxes. When I was airbrushing fairly regularly, I often used them as references for my work, but lately, I've been reading them and then putting them into storage, never to look at them again. Due to my inability to find gainful employment, I have to move back home. I've amassed a sizable amount of junk, and sorting through it is a full time endeavor. There is a lot that has very little practical use, but I can't bring myself to part with it. My father is a worse pack rat than I am. He won't throw anything away. So compiling my junk with his is a good way to insure that most of it will remain buried in a time warp.
I tried gettig rid of some of my worldly goods on the internet. I have a couch that I cannot bring to his place, simply because there's no place to put it. I put that up for sale for $1.00. So far nobody's interested. I have one of those mini-cube refrigerators that has also garnered zero interest. The last item was my collection of Playboys. They're only magazines so who would want them? I put them on Craigslist for $1.00 just to get them out of my possession. I was hit by a number of inquiries, so I quickly changed the ad to read "Best Offer" instead, hoping that I could actully benefit from they're disposal. Once I weeded out the kids who were looking for "Whacking material", I was left with only two bidders. I ended up settling for $35.00 which was fine with me, otherwise they would have ended up in the recycling pile and the trashmen would have scored on that one. As much as I hate to admit it, times are changing too fast.
We now live in a disposable society. Buy it, use it, throw it out and buy a new one, seems to be the standard procedure for most of our goods. The electronic industry creates an incredible amount of pollution, due to the rate that things become outdated. I keep seeing stories on the news about how much recyclable material is in most ciruitry, and someindustrious guy goes about salvaging old computers, cell phones, radios and other assorted gizmos and not only melts down the precious metals from the circuit boards, but also found that the i.c. chips are even more valuable. I've got some computer equipment that's outated but in good condition, I hate to just dump it, yet when I try to find one of these industrious recyclers, there are none in my area. Why is that? I always see what a potential danger old batteries are to our environment, and back in the early nineties, some sort of ordnance was passed that stated any business that sold batteries, had to take old ones to be recycled. I never found anyplace that did. With Hilary, Barack and John out stumping for votes, I'd like to hear their thoughts on ways to get people up off their lazy asses and do something about a probelm that I'm reasonably sure I'm not the only one experiencing. As a race, we're too cavalier about what happens to what we don't use once it leaves our hands. The old "Out Sight, Out Of Mind" adage holds true in that respect. We only think about potential pollutants once they cause a problem like Love Canal, we're not proactive about environmental hazards, we wait until things get out of hand, then react to them, rather than mandate change before things get over our heads.
We as humans are so disposable, yet our dominance on the planet is making life difficult for the other living things. In New Jersey, they've had to change the hunting regulations because bears have been a problem in populated areas. Well DUHH, if we keep bulldozing wooded areas and building homes there, the bears don't exactly have Travelocity to help relocate them, so our solution is to kill them. If a bear kills a human, we feel justified doing it in, but bears would rather avoid us if they had the choice. We're taking that option away. It's even more mind boggling that I started out writing about a J. Geils Band song and ended up worrying about the future of our planet's animal life. I think I may have a problem...