Michael Wolraich's picture

    Earth Hour is the New Black

    Happy Earth Hour, everyone! In a gesture of appreciation for our beautiful planet, which if all goes according to plan will slowly simmer to death sometime this century, dagblog is joining the stampede of environmentally concerned municipalities and other organizations turning the lights off major landmarks for one hour this evening. Though dagblog doesn't yet own any landmarks, DF and Deadman are feverishly negotiating to acquire the Largest Ball of Twine in time to turn the lights off there at 8:30 CST. In the meantime, we are honoring Earth Hour by going black. I had hoped for a complete blackout, but my fellow dagbloggers insisted that black-on-black would be difficult to read and thus obscure this very important message, so our font, alas, remains whitish, though I did argue them down to a light gray. We also encourage readers to forego Google for a day and instead use our sister site, Blackle, which has saved 1,155,629.216 Watt hours and counting.

    Now some may argue that energy savings from black pixels is negligible and on LCD screens, nonexistent, but these Earth Hour grinches are missing the point. Going black is a symbolic gesture: The long-suffering Earth feels appreciated, we delude ourselves that we're making a difference, and corporations that profit on the planetary destruction brand themselves as greenmongers. It's like Mother's Day without the cards. In fact, that's a great idea. Coming soon: Express your sympathy and support for the planet with a black Get Well Soon, Earth card by dagblog. All proceeds go towards the purchase of the Largest Ball of Twine.

    Comments

    Here's a relevant quote from a talk I saw by Slavoj Zizek, the "Elvis of Cultural Theory." He's a bit of a clown, imo, but I liked this bit:

    This is why I find so problematic this whole stuff with organic food and so on. Do you really believe that if you the buy the apples--so-called organic apples, which are usually more rotten and cost half more, do you really believe that they are more healthy? No. It’s also not competition, but it makes you feel well, you know, like, “My God, I participate in something great. I am not just a stupid consumer. I show solidarity with it.”

    It’s the threat that I encounter here every day when I unfortunately have to go to Starbucks coffee. You know, like, practically they make you feel that with each cup of coffee you save some Guatemalan kid from starvation or whatever...

    You see that poster everywhere, some deformed black child and then “for a price of one cappuccino you can save his life,” whatever. The message, I think, if you read it between the lines, it’s a pretty cynical one, is, “Pay a little bit and it will make you feel better and you don’t have to worry about it and you don’t have to politicize it and so on and so on.”


    Missed it.


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