Mixed feelings

I recycle more than you. You don't know this, but it is, in fact, true. I make scenery for wargames out of garbage which means that there are a lot of things I don't throw out. Pretty much anything box-like, made of plastic, or in general, worthless.

Michel Foucalt once postulated (this is "Docile Bodies" I believe: here he is talking about balls) that if you force someone to physically be something (a soldier, a patient, an alcoholic) then they will follow suit mentally and take on the angle of that identity. Normally, I hate Foucalt (I call him Fuck Alt) but he seems to have a point. As I've begun filling my attic with garbage, well, I feel more environmentally alert.

So, it is with mixed feelings that I face the fact that my school cafeteria has done away with cafeteria trays and different sizes of soft drink (they now give free refills). Their logic for the drink is simple. Smaller cups, free refills, less garbage, and yes, I get it, but I don't eat in the cafeteria and so I would like a very large cup. Does that make me a horrible human being? I don't care.

But it's the trays that I find absolutely fascinating--their absense defies all reason. If I get a sandwich, some chips, and a piece of fruit, I run out of hands. This is a serious design flaw on their part. What's worse is that if you order food to go, as I do. They generally hand it to you in a container that is not designed to be carried by hand. I got a hot roast beef sandwich today straight out of a furnace, quickly envoloped in some nice insulating tin foil, and then thrown to me like a hot potato which I bobbled in line at the register for a good five minutes as the various people in front of me fumbled for change as they patted their food up into the air with agonized dexterity.

Maybe I'm missing the point. Perhaps, the school's juggling team isn't doing so hot and this is their way of making the student body practice without their even knowing it. All I know is that there must be some kind of tradeoff with all this. No trays means closer contact with the cafeteria tables, which I've never seen anyone clean, and which the staff will probably be less inclined to clean now since we're conserving water. This will ,of course, lead to fewer people in the long run I imagine, which is ultimately the best thing, all around, for the environment. On the other hand, quite literally, the water that's wasted from me putting my hand in ice after my game of hot potato has to factor in there somewhere as well.