It was only after Al Gore won both the Nobel Prize and an Academy Award for his horror film on Global Warming that the new fad of 'doing something for the environment' really caught onto people. 'Friends of the Earth' and other clubs specializing in environment related issues sprung up overnight across the University campus, making everyones life quite miserable by pestering for signatures and donations to save the environment. However I was quite skeptic about the whole thing in the beginning, as I had assumed that President Bush's plan of including the sun in the axis of evil -according to the ongoing rumors following a White House memo leak- will solve the matter. Or at least the scientists would surely be able to find a way to reduce sun's temperature. But when my physicist friends informed me that it wasn't a feasible solution, I became a bit concerned for the first time. And when I found my money plant shriveled and lying dead in its pot after the four days of scorching heat wave, I finally decided that it was time to take things in my own hand. I quickly grabbed my purse, drove down two blocks to the apartment that housed the 'Friends of the Earth' and paid to register myself as a member. I vowed to work with them till every single human being was terrorized with the fear that the earth was a toast.
I started to enjoy working with this new group, specially because now every evening I could drive for two blocks in my new car. Since most of the shops and the University were very close to my apartment, I never had to go out in my car, but now this two block drive everyday, which although took less than two minutes, was at least giving me an opportunity to drive around. It was all good until the price of gasoline hit $4 per gallon, and I had to sell off my car to break-even with the cost of refilling my lighter.
As an active member of this group, I really worked very hard, often accosting people and pestering them to sign a petition for a new environment friendly legislation or bullying school children to sign petitions under their parent's name. Although I was diligent in my work, I must admit that sometimes this work seemed boring, and standing under the shade of some tree with my petition book in hand, I wondered if it was better to take up some other summer jobs. I toyed with such immoral thoughts before being struck by a sense of duty on catching a glimpse of two slender legs in a miniskirt and speeding up to them in quick steps to start a chat, obviously starting out with global warming before quickly moving onto other more interesting topics.
My diligence earned me the admiration of my peers and before I knew it I was made the President of the club. Only later I realized that the post of the President became available after the last incumbent had found it wiser to take up a summer job than to spend time collecting signatures of people who didn't give a hoot about the environment. As the President I felt the need to restructure the organization and to declare a manifesto. Writing a manifesto proved to be no easy task. I toiled for days, in fact months, before I had finally penned down my thoughts. It was a whooping 800 pages of facts, figures and threats about the impending doom. My colleagues at the club were impressed immensely, and some of them even compared me to Gore himself.
One of the members whose father owned a press felt that this manifesto could be made into a book, and before I knew it the typesetters were at work. I wanted the fonts to be large so as to make it easy for people of every age to read, but when I realized that it would indirectly mean cutting down more trees, I reluctantly agreed to lower the font size. The book became an instant success in the market and climbed to the top of the bestsellers list. My guess would be that people found the cover, that showed a penguin with its wings on fire, more attractive than the contents. The success of this book threw me into the limelight. I was congratulated by the Mayor and was invited for many talk shows, for which I had to fly from East coast to West and back many times a month. Our club was also now a much bigger organization. We got monetary help from many companies, surprisingly from some automobile and oil companies as well, and we accepted their donations gratefully. Soon we left our old apartment and moved into a bigger club house that was made after clearing off a part of the Old City Park and its adjacent pond. 'Friends of the Earth' became a major voice against environmentally destructive Government policies. We protested against almost everything -plastic bags, Chinese toys, SUVs, deforestation and so on.
Just when we were at the height of our success, a major problem broke out among the members. It was about the 'Animal Rights'. A faction wanted to start campaigns under the banner of 'animal rights' and they wanted to make a difference by starting an attack on the poultry farms, slaughterhouses and non-vegetarians. This was a radical idea to begin with, and I vehemently objected, and so did a few of my loyal supporters. But the 'animal rights' group had started off aggressively brainwashing the superdelegates of our association and was gaining support among them. We debated for hours whether animals were a part of the environment or not, and discussed the possible adverse effects should we divert our attention from the major environmental problems to include problems of animals as well in our agenda. Clearly it wasn't a part of the 800 page manifesto I had written. We tried a vote among the members, but the results were inconclusive as most of the superdelegates voted on both sides. It was a real political deadlock that the association was facing since its inception. Things were getting out of hand just when I received an offer letter from ExxonMobil and found it better to accept it. Within days I was impeached and my loyal supporters left the association in rage, blaming the animal rights wing for the breakup. The animal rights wing took over the 'Friends of the Earth' and changed its name to 'Friends of Earth and Animals'. I kept myself busy at my new job and quite forgot about them, until I bumped into one of my old loyalists last night who informed me that the 'Friends of Earth and Animals' had ceased to exist after a scandalous incident involving a photograph taken by Paparazzi that showed the incumbent president and many members of the group devouring platefuls of Kung-Fu Chicken in a cheap Chinatown restaurant .
I started to enjoy working with this new group, specially because now every evening I could drive for two blocks in my new car. Since most of the shops and the University were very close to my apartment, I never had to go out in my car, but now this two block drive everyday, which although took less than two minutes, was at least giving me an opportunity to drive around. It was all good until the price of gasoline hit $4 per gallon, and I had to sell off my car to break-even with the cost of refilling my lighter.
As an active member of this group, I really worked very hard, often accosting people and pestering them to sign a petition for a new environment friendly legislation or bullying school children to sign petitions under their parent's name. Although I was diligent in my work, I must admit that sometimes this work seemed boring, and standing under the shade of some tree with my petition book in hand, I wondered if it was better to take up some other summer jobs. I toyed with such immoral thoughts before being struck by a sense of duty on catching a glimpse of two slender legs in a miniskirt and speeding up to them in quick steps to start a chat, obviously starting out with global warming before quickly moving onto other more interesting topics.
My diligence earned me the admiration of my peers and before I knew it I was made the President of the club. Only later I realized that the post of the President became available after the last incumbent had found it wiser to take up a summer job than to spend time collecting signatures of people who didn't give a hoot about the environment. As the President I felt the need to restructure the organization and to declare a manifesto. Writing a manifesto proved to be no easy task. I toiled for days, in fact months, before I had finally penned down my thoughts. It was a whooping 800 pages of facts, figures and threats about the impending doom. My colleagues at the club were impressed immensely, and some of them even compared me to Gore himself.
One of the members whose father owned a press felt that this manifesto could be made into a book, and before I knew it the typesetters were at work. I wanted the fonts to be large so as to make it easy for people of every age to read, but when I realized that it would indirectly mean cutting down more trees, I reluctantly agreed to lower the font size. The book became an instant success in the market and climbed to the top of the bestsellers list. My guess would be that people found the cover, that showed a penguin with its wings on fire, more attractive than the contents. The success of this book threw me into the limelight. I was congratulated by the Mayor and was invited for many talk shows, for which I had to fly from East coast to West and back many times a month. Our club was also now a much bigger organization. We got monetary help from many companies, surprisingly from some automobile and oil companies as well, and we accepted their donations gratefully. Soon we left our old apartment and moved into a bigger club house that was made after clearing off a part of the Old City Park and its adjacent pond. 'Friends of the Earth' became a major voice against environmentally destructive Government policies. We protested against almost everything -plastic bags, Chinese toys, SUVs, deforestation and so on.
Just when we were at the height of our success, a major problem broke out among the members. It was about the 'Animal Rights'. A faction wanted to start campaigns under the banner of 'animal rights' and they wanted to make a difference by starting an attack on the poultry farms, slaughterhouses and non-vegetarians. This was a radical idea to begin with, and I vehemently objected, and so did a few of my loyal supporters. But the 'animal rights' group had started off aggressively brainwashing the superdelegates of our association and was gaining support among them. We debated for hours whether animals were a part of the environment or not, and discussed the possible adverse effects should we divert our attention from the major environmental problems to include problems of animals as well in our agenda. Clearly it wasn't a part of the 800 page manifesto I had written. We tried a vote among the members, but the results were inconclusive as most of the superdelegates voted on both sides. It was a real political deadlock that the association was facing since its inception. Things were getting out of hand just when I received an offer letter from ExxonMobil and found it better to accept it. Within days I was impeached and my loyal supporters left the association in rage, blaming the animal rights wing for the breakup. The animal rights wing took over the 'Friends of the Earth' and changed its name to 'Friends of Earth and Animals'. I kept myself busy at my new job and quite forgot about them, until I bumped into one of my old loyalists last night who informed me that the 'Friends of Earth and Animals' had ceased to exist after a scandalous incident involving a photograph taken by Paparazzi that showed the incumbent president and many members of the group devouring platefuls of Kung-Fu Chicken in a cheap Chinatown restaurant .
3 comments:
Awesome :D your sarcastic self at its best.
Good to hear that you liked it. I never write in a comic style, thought I would try some dry humor and see how it comes out.
People should read this.
Post a Comment