Sludgie

Just posted a new entry in my recently-very-neglected environmental blog, Sludgie. If you haven't checked it out, check it out. The planet depends on you clicking on that link. If you don't, I can't be blamed when Antarctica melts and your beach house becomes an underwater hideaway. But if you do click over, then you can blame me, of course.

The other day I did a Yahoo search on my name ("ego-surfing") and now, as result of my recent notoriety, the top entry reads:

Filmmaker, writer, and environmental guru in the San Fernando Valley. Creator of God, Inc., a popular series on YouTube.

Which was actually meant to be a bit of ironic exaggeration, like Sludgie's tagline: "Saving the planet for the rest of you chumps." I mean, it's not like I'm living in the branches of a redwood tree threatened by logging. I don't have followers coming to my bucolic solar-powered commune to bask in the glory of my wisdom. I write a blog. It makes me think if I run into Ed Begley, Jr. he'll kick me in the shins. So, if you write a blog and there's a chance you could attain sudden web-recognition, I wouldn't recommend having the description be an example of your offbeat, self-deprecating sense of humor, like "Musings of a Complete Douchebag." Unless you want Yahoo to forever list you as "Blog writer and complete douchebag living in..."

While no angry gurus have emailed me demanding credentials, I did get one bit of environmental heckling from J. Neil Schulman, science fiction writer and apparent smartass, that was too good not to share. He wrote:

Mr. Stokes,

Recently a bunch of astronomers decided that Pluto is too small to be considered a planet. They're saying it's just a dwarf planet.

Let's be honest. There are really only four bodies orbiting the star we call our sun large enough to call a planet: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Earth, and Pluto are all, by comparison, dwarf planets.

So why should I knock myself out to save the environment on something that isn't even big enough to qualify as a real planet, anyway? You have some need to save a planet? Go save Uranus.

I replied:

Haha! Interesting logic. But those are the four gas giants, which I find a bit difficult to walk on, or breathe. (Although Jupiter's moon Europa is looking pretty good these days...)

Dwarfish or not, I live on Earth, and I'd rather save my ass than Uranus.