Proof the world is crazy x 2

  
Don’t let them force us to drop our planet-friendly habits

ATHLETES GOT INTO trouble for trying to bring their own milk to the Commonwealth Games in India. Why? Because the milk was still in the cow.

“Leave the animal outside,” officials ordered. “And use packaged milk from the canteen.”

This is SO DUMB. Bringing your own cow as a portable milk carton (a common habit in India) is WAY more environmentally friendly.
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The same day, there was an article in the business pages about an “appliance sales mystery”. Asians buy all the same stuff as Westerners do, EXCEPT for clothes drying machines, which we shun.

Why? Because we have vast amounts of miracle elements called “air” and “sunshine”, which dry clothes at no cost. You may have heard of them. If you want to see them, I keep quite a large supply outside my window.

But the members of Satan’s dark army (“businessmen”) are planning campaigns to make us change our habits.
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The world has gone mad. We Asians are being forced to drop our timeless, planet-friendly ways to adopt climate-destroying alternatives.

I tried to raise these issues in the local coffee shop—but my friends and colleagues (“idiots”) instead wanted to share toilet tales, inspired by recent nonsense in this column/ website.

One guy had been collecting stories of people attacked with toilet seats. There was such an attack in America last week and another in Thailand earlier.

“But the news reports never deal with the obvious question,” he lamented. “Did the attackers afterwards leave the toilet seat upright or horizontal?”

(As a married man, I agree this is a key issue.)
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But I COULD comment on a question from reader Peter Bentley,  raised on this website: “Why do women go to the toilet in groups? Men never do.”

A friend and I did an experiment once. Halfway through dinner at a noisy restaurant, I got up and said: “I’m going to the gents. Anybody want to come with me?”

My friend jumped up and said: “Sure, I’ll come.”

As we headed off, we could hear a horrified silence descend on the crowd.

On the way back from the toilet, I told my friend: “That was a bad idea. Now everyone will think we’re gay. We better tell them we’re not.”

He shook his head. “You can’t,” he said. “It’s against the law to say you’re not gay. It’s discrimination and a hate crime, and you can be locked up for three years.”

Aiyeeaah! I wish he’d told me that earlier!
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Halfway through writing this column, I got good news from India via email. A widow who kept a cow as a portable milk supply for her two boys was distraught when a tiger ate it. In the past, villagers would have killed the tiger. Instead, they forgave the tiger and started a Facebook page to raise money for a new cow. True story.

The tiger will probably become a YouTube sensation and Justine Bieber will sing a song about it. That’s the nature of fame these days.
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But my smile was short-lived. In the next email, a reader told me that a new law has been passed in Shanghai.

It is now illegal to hang your clothes out to dry in that city.

People in China are being forced to buy clothes drying machines instead. Satan’s army won that round.

Fight back. Save the planet. Never leave home without your cow.
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Technorati Tags: environment,china,washing machines,cow,green,India

Comments

[Ram]

Its really true... Just some 5 or 10 years back, we use to get milk from a person who milks his cow and immediately supply it to the nearby houses in his bicycle. Now, everything comes in cartons...

This video "The Story of Bottled Water" tells how things are forced on the customers and what we consider "healthy" is not really healthy - for us and our wallets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0

[TS]

It's alright to say that you are not gay if you immediately follow it with the sentence: not that there's anything wrong with that.

[grandpa]

"It is now illegal to hang your clothes out to dry in that city.
"
What do they do with trespassers?
Hang them?

[Tomomi]

"It is now illegal to hang your clothes out to dry in that city." --> absurd

I hope there'll never be a law like that in my country.

[Lift Lurker]

Now I understand why Asia is so backward compared to the West.

In Asia, this is what happen: 6,000 years ago some wise man say: "Hmm..look at the wind. I believe we can use wind to dry our clothes before we wear them"
And so people start to hang their clothes to dry before wearing them. They find it is more comfortable to wear dry clothes.

Progress! But this one progress continue for 6,000 years no change. Big progress from wearing wet clothes, but no further progress.

Village life remain the same.

In the West it go like this. Someone say: "Hmm..look at the wind. How can we use it to dry our clothes?" So they hire designers to think and design.
They come up with power generating windmill.

They need lots of money to put up windmills so they go to investment banker and start IPO.

They hire steel designers, builders, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers to develop wire transmisison.

Consumer product companies hire designers and laborers to build driers, and marketers and advertisers to convince people they are useful.

Truck delivery drivers deliver the machines to our house.

Repairmen fix the driers when they break down.

People borrow money from banks to buy driers.

Banks use the money to lend to consumer companis and windmill companies to expand.

The economy grows and grows and grows.

All because of capitalist visionary.

Meanwhile village life remain the same. Wise old man think: Hmm... look at that cow, maybe we can drink its milk.

[Angela]

While hanging your laundry to dry outside your apartment window is environmentally and pocket friendly, it can pose danger to people walking on the ground.

In Singapore, there has been many unfortunate cases of people injured by falling bamboo poles. Or those hit on the head by wet mops.

Hang your laundry responsibly!!!

That's my message before I rush off to another meeting.

ps: I don't have dryer and hang my laundry indoors. Some of my neighbors hang their laundry on the window so I end up with a wide collection of my neighbor's underwear and socks blown through my open window when it is windy outside.

[Vaibhav]

Ram - We still get milk from a cow. We dont look at those cartons of homogenized milk. There is a place near delhi which supplies cow's milk. It is slightly expensive than the one supplied by big companies but we prefer it to the packaged one.

[rafanjr]

... i once asked a male friend to the loo...thinking maybe our dates would need sometime to talk behind our backs... we never got around dating them again... probably they thought we were gay.... but we're not

(not that there is anything wrong with that)

[Lift Lurker]

It's alright to say that you are not gay if you immediately follow it with the sentence: not that there's anything wrong with that.

TS, thank you for reminding us. It's good you are so understanding and patient when we forget. Please be assure no offense intended.

[Mahjuja]

LOL, I was hanging out with two of my guy friends on campus and we went inside the library where I was walking behind one of them, who decided to visit the loo and I just kept following him until my other friend started frantically calling me back. Then the cleaner lady comes up to me to show me where the ladies room is, thinking I'm nuts. I tell her I forgot I was a 'she' after hanging out with the guys.
;-)

[Chamin]

Suppose my garden has a mango tree, and it bears more fruit that I cannot finish with (not uncommon). There are two possibilities:

1. I give the surplus away to my neighbors. I am happy, they are happy.

2. I sell the surplus to the grocery store, and the neighbors buy them. The economy grows.

What most of Asia calls "economic growth" is the increase of going shopping :-p

Economists have no way to model happiness in to their models, so it is ignored.

[Chamin]

Sri Lankan guys do (did?) have a tendency to go to the loo (or a place with some trees, when they cannot find one) in groups.

The protocol is usually different from what Nury tried. One would say he wants to go to the loo, and a few more would say "I too am going".

[Christyn Rana]

Hanging clothes out to dry and falling while doing that in Singapore has resulted in fatal falls. What does that mean? That means I shall invite my enemies for lunch, get em to dry my clothes, execute my genius idea and get em killed.
Looking at the low birth rate in singapore, I suppose the government should enforce each household to own a dryer. But if budgets are an issue, allow men to dry the laundry.

[Chamin]

They have been trying hard to make Singaporeans use dryers.

The police does not entertain complaints about stressed residents spilling coffee on other people's cloth-poles. Any accident involving the poles are blown out of proportion and reported.

@Christyn>
I think Singapore's low birth rate is compensated by immigrants from less developed countries who don't mind a dictatorship when it comes with better living conditions :o)