We’re having a little DIY fun here…

1. You got the ingredients mix wrong on that DIY shampoo and now sport a hairstyle that’s been kindly described as early “Telly Savalas”.
2. The t-shirt quilt you’re creating chronicles your pathetic journey from Black Sabbath worshiper to Bon Jovi fanatic (it also contains 17 threadbare Bruce Springsteen tees).
3. The DIY lamp you created out of old kitchen appliances was so frightening that your cat, Mr. Cuddles, took one look at it and has now been missing for over a week.
4. In designing your own electric bike your only success has been in permanently numbing your ass from the repeated shocks from the ungrounded battery and exposed wiring.
5. Your attempt to utilize your breakfast bacon grease as biofuel has transformed your Volkswagen Beetle into a driveway sculpture.
6. You’re still removing splinters from your behind after testing a reclining chair you creating from wooden pallets you snagged from you company’s loading dock.

Given our focus ‘all things green’ we thought we’d throw together a fun list of ghoulishly green scary movies.  Here’s our top ten.  Don’t hesitate to add your own:

10.   Let’s get it out the way right off the top.  The thought of having to sit through Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” is a terrifying prospect for about 50% of the American public.  All those Power Point charts, stock footage, melting glaciers, and God forbid facts…it’s just too much for many people to emotionally handle.  Still…I know when I first saw it, it frightened the hell out of me.

9. “The Fly” (1986) – Mess with mother nature and you just might get what’s coming to you.  And while we’re on the topic of messing with mother nature – how many genetically modified substances do you ingest every day?  Jeff Goldblum (drooling fly goo above) has some graphically scary transformation scenes – David Cronenberg does some very icky movies – and the film’s ending just might make you think before you squish that ant crawling up your pant leg…or maybe not.

8. “The Blob” (1958) – Danger lurks in outer space (or cold war Russia). A comet crashes near a small town unleashing a creature that resembles a giant blob of gummy bear residue and possessing an insatiable desire to consume human flesh – always a good horror combo. Throw in a heroic young Steve McQueen and some pop corn and you’re good to go.

7. “Open Water” (2003) – Get out there and dive into nature…if you dare. A couple left to drift alone in a shark infested ocean try to resolve their relationship issues only to see that most terrifying of all relationships…with mother nature…go bad…

6.  “Them” (1954) – Long before Three Mile Island and Chernobyl there was this classic depiction of the hazards and potential damage done to nature by nuclear testing.  What better villains than giant voracious ants.  A few people-hungry ants escape from a nuclear test site in the New Mexico desert, happily munching on unsuspecting movie extras all the way to L.A. sewers.  A young and virile James Whitmore stars in this classic science lesson.

5.  “The Birds” (1963) – Is that a wood thrush in your beehive Mrs. Smith? This Alfred Hitchcock classic still has me looking at crows with suspicion.  Tippi Hedren sets the standard for fright flick screaming.

4. “Jaws” (1975) – The granddaddy of all animatronic monsters, a giant pissed-off killer whale terrorizes New England vacationers.  What could be more chilling?  Spielberg probably did more damage to the shark population than global warming and long line trawling combined.  Still a great scary movie.  Good karmic antidote: see “The Cove.”

3. “Arachnophobia” (1990) – A deadly South American spider enters the U.S. in a coffin and starts both breeding and killing.  Somebody call Lou Dobbs!  A comment on NAFTA, isolationism, or just a scary manifestation of people’s issues with our spider friends?  Anyhoo…Jeff Daniels and John Goodman get the job done.

2. “The Wicker Man” (1973) – Not to be confused with the 2006 turkey starring Nicholas Cage, (scary only in the fact that it ever got released), the original English classic explores the dangers of meddling with folks hell bent on pursuing religious freedom…in this case paganism.  Is the strange community on this remote Scottish island really a bastion for tree-hugging nature lovers and organic farming?  Probably not, but getting torched in a giant wicker sculpture is a very scary prospect.  High creepiness quotient!

1. “The Blair Witch Project” (1999) – The first of the low budget pov handy-cam genre and probably the scariest.   Are we really so frightened by nature and the Jersey woods that we can wet our pants without ever seeing the scary witch monster?  I recall being slightly disturbed leaving the theater after this one – perhaps it was the prospect of how much moolah the film makers were making with zero production value…

We’re just trying to have some fun here…

• You’ve been working for ten long years to complete a 30′ tall sculpture of Queen Elizabeth out of 20,000 recycled Ballantine Ale cans and your kidneys are about shot.
• Putting your Hummer in neutral going down hills has saved you only .008 gallons of black gold per mile.
• You tried a pair of hemp sandals but found them largely un-combustible and difficult to fit into any of your old hash pipes.
• Your neighbor’s wind farm is blocking your view of the local oil refinery.
• They have yet to make an authentic Ben Roethlisberger jersey out of organic cotton.
• The Wave Power installation in your Koi pond won’t power your 3,000 cubic foot hot tub.
• Scientists have failed at all attempts to make a 100% organic version of Velveeta.
• Hamburger Helper’s new ‘All Vegan Simulated-Sirloin Helper’ just doesn’t get the job done for you.
• That ‘Soy Hold’ hair gel you bought makes you look like Marie Osmond on a bad-hair day.
• You were recently mauled by a horde of carpenter ants after a failed attempt to talk them out of your house.

Related: previously on altCon – 10 reasons to go green

• a plasma screen in every room is this year’s home improvement goal
• you think “Energy Star” is an award for burning more electricity
• your electric bill is delivered by hand-truck
• your home draws so much power it has a nice, warm glow on Google Maps
• when you get home and turn on the lights theres a ‘hit’ on the national power grid
• your home entertainment system needs its own electric meter
• before starting your car, you program your SUV’s GPS to get you from gas station to gas station
• you paved over your herb garden for extra parking
• when you enter an appliance store the first words out of your mouth are, “Show me the biggest one you’ve got.”

We’re not doing a serious scientific analysis here, just having some fun.

• The 4 seasons in your area consist of:  very warm, hot, very hot and ‘I’ve gotta get the hell out of here!’
• That SPF 50 isn’t working anymore – if you connect all the sunspots on your face they’d resemble a detailed street map of Hartford, CT.
• Your pet husky, Snow Buns, sheds year-round.  Your living room rug now looks like the hairy debris of a New Zealand sheep shearing festival.
• You parked your 2008 red Corvette in your sunny driveway for six months, and it’s now a funky shade of pink.
• The ski resort down the road has evolved into a year-round mountain bike park and rock climbing destination.
• There’s a 30′ sailboat moored in 15′ of water on the spot that was once the living room of your beach front condo.

• You dumped your last two girlfriends because they couldn’t spell ’sustainability’.
• You actually enjoy eating quinoa.
• The only ‘hemp’ in your underwear draw…is, well….underwear.
• You spend so much time shopping at your local Whole Foods that your mother thinks you work there.
• You check the recycled number on yogurt containers before you look at the flavor.
• You traded in your Escalade for two SmartCars and an e-bike.
• Your only house pets are the earth worms in your composter.
• You won’t watch a television show or movie unless Ed Begley, Jr. or Darryl Hannah is a guest star.
• You think your friend’s Prius is ’sexy’.

For all you youngsters out there, June Cleaver was Beaver Cleaver’s mom on ‘Leave it to Beaver.’  The quintessential American mom, June kept the Cleaver ship floating safely over life’s frothy seas without any major catastrophes. Here are just a few of the ways June kept it retro-green.  Any fans of June should feel free to jump-in and add to the list.

• Like many moms of the 50’s and 60’s June was all about DIY.  She sewed, crocheted, did needlepoint, and could whip-up a mean angel food cake or meal, from scratch.  No fast food for the Cleavers.
• She never, ever, bought bottled water.  Every ounce of the Cleaver H2O came right out of the tap.
• June was a class act and even wore a pearl necklace when doing her very green gardening.
• The Cleavers went strictly local when shopping for food and supplies and had their milk delivered from the local, free-range dairy.
• June was low emissions.  She rarely drove the family’s Ford Fairlane.

• The man was a freeballing sandal wearer.
• He walked everywhere – or rode a low emissions donkey.
• He shopped only at local bazaars and farm stands.
• Consumed only organic food – nothing containing man-made fertilizers or pesticides.
• Slept on an all-natural eco-mattress – hay.
• The man could stretch his food dollar. Once turned 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish into a repast for 4,000.
• Was an early proponent of Zero Population Growth, having himself been born via immaculate conception, and not reproducing himself.
• Like many environmentalists (exception Greenpeace) he often utilized non-violent protest (turned the other cheek) to manifest change.
• Often struggled against the man (Herod/Bush) to raise environmental awareness.
• As a conservationist he wore the same threads for something like 20 years.

• Use a solar cooker to roast all your barbecued goodies.  Check the weather forecast and start cooking on July 3rd.
• Invite Al Gore over for a barbecue – make sure you have plenty of potato salad and corn relish.  Al’s such a big eater you may want to invest in carbon offsets to counter-balance his food intake!
• Take the heartfelt advice of my neighbor, Four Fingered Tony – lock-up any explosives or fireworks before you start guzzling any organic wine, vodka or tequila.
• Keep your event’s size manageable.  Invite only guests descended from countries that have adhered to the guidelines of the Kyoto Agreement.  This will guarantee plenty of room on the dance floor and ensure tons of leftovers.
• Create a menu of strictly local fare.  Avoid this approach if your patio is located next to a Nebraska cattle feedlot, your vegetable garden is regularly irrigated by run-off from the local coal mine, or your neighbor’s cloned sheep are known to sport a couple of extra, calorie-rich appendages.

My Space, Facebook and the current crown prince of social media, Twitter, are sucking up bandwidth left and right.  Between blogging, texting, tweeting and emailing I’ve developed a serious vitamin D deficiency.  Is Twitter bringing us all together?

Is the 140 character tweet a cultural step forward, the next mile marker in the transmutation of our culture into one giant organism of instant mass communication?  Is Twitter a global catalyst for social activism and digital communal living, or is it another mutation of a behavior that’s undermining our social fabric and weakening our interpersonal connections?  I’m just asking.

And don’t get me started on texting.  (more…)

I admit it, I’m becoming a green corner cutter.  I’m in Florida this week and I need to get some eco-indiscretions off my sweaty chest.  Perhaps it’s the cookie-cutter sameness of this environment, the heat or the humidity, or just a congenital deficiency in the moral fiber department, but I’m losing it.  Anyhoo, today’s green shame list:

• Took out the in-laws recycling to the curb.  Hopped into my rental car, a fire-engine-red Dodge Charger.  Headed to Dunkin Donuts to get NY Post and coffee.  Three strikes.  I’m out.
• Got back to the hacienda.  Turned up the AC a notch.  I’m can feel the bad karma building-up…
• Didn’t fight with the lady of the house over the use of a paper plate (no it wasn’t made of recycled paper).  Damned convenience.  I’m losing my grip…
• Left the laptop on all night (was in sleep mode).  A minor indiscretion but they all add up…
• Forgot the reusable bags in the car when I went into the local Publix for supplies.  I can feel myself slipping away…

More later as the struggle for redemption begins…

• Trim some fat off your carbon footprint by stuffing less raw material in your mouth.  Eat less beef – those cattle pump out methane and the process of raising cattle and livestock is an energy intensive endeavor.  Don’t eat foods shipped to your local grocery store from Bimini, Guam or some other exotic locale.  A lot of fossil fuel is burned getting that kiwi into your belly.  A thinner, more compact ‘you’ will also take up less space, (more…)

Ponds, lakes and oceans should be serene settings where no gas or oil is spewed on waterfowl, swimmers or beer swilling boaters.  Hence, the beauty of the electric boat.  Here’s a quick look at a ragtag fleet of solar-powered craft propelled by renewable energy.  Some may not be pretty but they are a beginning.

• The folks at SolarWaterWorld have designed the 20 passenger SunCat 2000 to reach speeds up to 6.5 knots.  This baby will run for an unlimited amount of time with sunlight, and 10 hours without.  Better have a paddle ready. (photos below)

• Perfect for solar boaters with no friends, The Solar-Powered Personal Boat will only cost you around $10k at Hammacher Schlemmer. (photo below)

(more…)