Things Expressly Designed to Irritate Me (Or So It Would Seem)

[photo borrowed from the webpage of Southern California Disposal, also the same folks who are choosing to fly this flag]

Something new has popped up on the Santa Monica landscape, catching my eye, and irritating the hell out of me. We have a 100 foot tall tower adjacent to the Cloverfield onramp/offramp of the 10 Freeway (yes, I used an article before the name of a freeway, wanna make somethin' of it?) from which flies a 30'x50' American flag usually, but Old Glory has been replaced.

The owner of that mast has decided to fly the goddamn dirty hippie "American Ecology Flag" instead.

Here's what they have to say for themselves on their webpage (and the PDF of their press release here):

SCD Flies World's Largest Ecology Flag

Since the late 1960's, the Ecology flag has been an icon of the Ecological movement.

We are flying our large, 30 foot x 50 foot Ecology flag as a symbol that we are doing our part to reduce global warming through our recycling services and by our use of renewable, earth-friendly B100 Biodiesel fuel made from soybeans. By using Biodiesel, we are significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a leading cause of global warming. We are also lessening our nation's dependency on foreign oil while at the same time supporting American farmers.

Our hope is that the flag will serve as a daily reminder that all of us can play a role in reducing global warming by making environmentally sound choices in our daily lives.

For more information on the benefits of Biodiesel, please visit the National Biodiesel Board website at: http://www.biodiesel.org/.

Learn what you can do to reduce global warming by visiting: www.stopglobalwarming.org/sgw_actionitems.asp.

If GLOBAL WARMING (sorry, seems you always have to shout at the top of your lungs and intone the words with as much gravitas as you can muster) is your main concern, then you should be troubled by mounting evidence that switching to biodiesel is counterproductive.

I'm guessing the city is harassing them over some petty issue, so this is Southern California Disposal's sly way of tweaking our city over their green nonsense. At least I hope that's what they're doing. Clearly, 'going green' is a great excuse for garbage haulers to charge more fees, so all this green nonsense could be good for SCD's business. I'm hoping that their flying of that goddamn dirty hippie "American Ecology Flag" has more to do with motivated self interest than any desire to 'save the planet'. I don't mind greedy businessfolk duping idiot hippies into thinking they are on the hippies' side, I do mind dumb hippies duping businessfolk into following silly and counterproductive practices just because of the latest faddish nonsense regarding the latest push to 'save the planet'.