TALKING ED
Omar Hassan
Kelly Belmar
backyard
bowl
RIDING THE SCUMLINE
This month's column is not pretty. In
rises above fact it's full of foul stench, black
the confusion smoke, oil slicks, garbage dumps,
and slime sewage and toxic waste. This column
with a fat is about our world as we know it.
Madonna Reality tells us that oil fires are still
burning out of control in the laid-to-
wastelands of Kuwait, equally
matched by the continued burning and
destruction of city block-sized plots of
rain forest every minute in South
America. Undiscovered critters are
wiped out before we even know they
exist. More oil, sewage, chemicals and
toxic waste than our small minds can
even comprehend is being poured into
the oceans every day via tanker spills.
broken pipes, polluted river run-off
and acid rain.
4 THRASHER MAGAZINE
Highways and freeways designed for
80 m.p.h. traffic are now obsolete
unless you drive them at three o'clock
in the morning. The fact that we drive
at all anymore is an idiotic concept
that has gone beyond transportation
to personal convenience complete
with telephones, fax machines and
microwave ovens in the car, Every-
body is uptight, in a hurry, following
too close, flipping each other off or
pulling guns to get the last word.
Oh, recycling! At least half of those
bottles and cans and newspapers you
so diligently save are dumped in
landfills anyway. Don't look to the law-
makers, politicians and bureaucrats to
solve any problems. They've already
been paid. As of this writing, the Call-
fornia state budget was fifteen days
past deadline and state workers were
not getting their paychecks. That tells
me the fat cats in Sacramento just
plain aren't doing their jobs. Same
story all over the country. Fire 'em.
Cut their pay. That's what has and will
happen to tens of thousands of work-
ers all over this globe, mostly blue
collar and lower middle class at that.
In the face of it all, you have to
laugh. And above all, readers, ya gotta
skate. If you lose your sense of humor
and your right to skate, you lose your
sanity. For all we know, this ball of a
planet could have been overpopulated
back in the 1920s and it's taken this
long for the cancer to take hold. The
gnarliest scourge on this planet is not
AIDS, malaria, cholera or the threat of
killer bees. It's the human race.
The solution? Well, the hope lies in
the problem. You. The kids, your par-
ents, humankind. If there's a chance of
making this maneuver, then we've got
to educate ourselves. Start by turning
off the TV. Don't even buy newspa-
pers. All trash. Read books. Write let-
ters. Talk about it. Organize. Yell. The
revolution will not be televised. It
won't be about race or religion. It will
be about time for Mother Earth to
blow us off the face of the planet.
Sorry,
Kevin J. Thatcher
THRASHER
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EDITOR
Kevin J. Thatcher
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