Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Watching Jack Reacher

"I'm working on climate change now," I told Mike as we sat on the couch in front of the Jack Reacher movie.

I used to love Tom Cruise movies until that whole thing with Katie Holmes trying to escape Scientology with her daughter Suri and the time I watched Cruise dance on Oprah's couch shouting stuff about how much he loved her. Now, watching him perform is tainted somehow, not completely ruined, but tainted. It's hard when you realized that your revered Hollywood types are actually human.

 Climate change. Right.

I felt I needed to tell Mike along with a couple of friends that I'm trying to see how long I can keep a New Year's resolution going regarding climate change.

See, I've wanted to quit already. We're not even in double digits for the new year. It's pathetic. My answer to that is to tell people what I'm trying to do so I feel some obligation to do it. By the time I'm done, I'll be ridiculous and pathetic. But we'll see how it goes. Maybe there is hope against climate change yet.

"Yeah? Climate change? " Mike said after he typed some stuff onto his work computer. He's on a tight schedule this week. It's stressful. It would be nice if I just sat and watched the movie, but I get fidgety on the couch.

"Yeah. I picture myself as the angry housewife who fights climate change."

He laughed.

Bingo. I nailed it. That is exactly what I wanted to hear from him. I rambled on.

"I wanted to address inertia, you know."

"Inertia?" he said. His eyes were back to his work. He really needed to get his work done.

"Yeah, like what could I say to you that would get you to make one change to reduce your carbon footprint?"

"Nothing."

He looked me in the eye.

"Exactly. That's why we're fucked. I couldn't even make it five days without buying my big plastic container full of one serving of greens. I bought five servings of romaine lettuce at Costco in a lightweight plastic bag instead of the clamshell last week but then I had to throw out three of them because of this whole e coli thing. The CDC won't even say where the romaine might have come from, so I had to throw it all out without knowing if it could be tainted. I can't even make myself stick to my own New Year's resolution for a whole week, not even to save the world."

"Unless some scientist solves the problem, we're fucked," he said.

"Yeah, fucked."

And I sat back on the couch and watched Tom Cruise shoot the eye out of a target with a sniper rifle at Robert Duvall's gun range.

Thank you for listening, jules

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