First Posted 10-Aug-2015
Goes into, goes out of. My vestigial 12 year old brain thought that was funny. You’ll figure it out. My inspiration for this post came to me while I was relieving myself in a public bathroom on the southbound side of Interstate 35 between Denton and Austin, Texas. It is a recurring thought each time I take a break from driving a vehicle on our Interstate Highway System to take a piss, “we generate millions of gallons of piss that is piped to sewage treatment plants where we remove everything that isn’t water before allowing the water to return to our rivers and oceans. Is it all truly just waste?” I’m at home so I’m using my toilet. Still . . .
Donald Trump announces his candidacy for president during a rally at his Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York, on Tuesday June 16, 2015. Mr. Trump also announced the release of a financial statement that he says denotes a personal net worth of over 8 billion dollars.This rewrite of my August 2015 post on this is happening in January of 2016. The latest kerfuffle is over Trump’s flub of the pronunciation of our nickname for St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Trump cited 2 Cor 3:17. I’d go read the whole chapter. His use of that passage is a little inept. The press is lately giddy over Trump tossing digs at Ted Cruz, who seems to have been gaining momentum in the polls. I suppose I should care. I guess the assumption is that because I think Trump is a pussy and Cruz is the best of a pigpen of bad options, I should be upset at Trump. Since I write about politics I should have some interest in politics and something to say, perhaps. I kind of care more about my dirty toilet. I’ll vote Republican because their tweedle dumb is nearer to rational than the Democratic tweedle dee about justice for the people.
The thing I’d rather talk about in this post is my output as it drains into the sewers. Specifically, everything in our waste stream from garbage to sewage. We are looking at waste the wrong way. Think about how God designed this world. For everything that dies, that becomes waste or is currently generating waste, God made something that wanted that waste for food or other uses. What goes out of one thing goes into another thing in an infinite loop such that nothing is waste. All of it is used. You thought gazinta, gazouta was about sex? Fooled you.
We can start with dung beatles, who glory at elephant shit. My twisted little head keeps wondering as I relieve myself, what’s in my pee that could be used? What chemicals am I flushing down the toilet that could be a resource if they were captured and used? Quite a few, actually: “The Science Behind Historic Uses of Urine“. The rest of the thought is this: if we re-imagine our waste as a resource with value then instead of it being a problem it becomes a way to make money. That’s a way more interesting line of discussion for me than all this nonsense about what Trump said lately. The current political discussion is stupid. I want to have an interest in it, have a hope that the next idiot appointed to the Oval Orifice will actually do something to bring about a smaller, more effective government. But the feeling that this large, out of control bureaucracy is snowballing to its doom is rather attracting. So rather than pay attention to it I’d rather talk about the ten ways we can use our shit.