It's no great secret that I'm fairly liberal. I don't even feel the need to hide behind the label progressive. I occasionally refer to people who do that as chicken liberals, in the same way that agnostics often end up called chicken atheists.
I'm also something of an environmentalist, or at least which I like to think of as a sensible environmentalist. I accept that we will practically always have to have mines of one sort or another, and the best you can do with mines is make sure the mining is done responsibly and proper reclamation takes place afterwards. I accept that we will from time to time have to build flood control and water reclamation projects that will involve a good deal of environmental disruption. But I'm not so sure that we need to tear up another fifty square miles of desert just so we can put in more suburbs, strip malls and golf courses, as though we don't already have a great plenty of them already (and please, God, if they do put in more subdivisions, and someone names them stupid things like Whispering Timbers or Eagle Creek - in a goddamned desert - please to smite them with lightning).
That paragraph got totally out of control, but its main thrust is that I'm an environmentalist and I think that the more we do now to limit the damage we inflict on the planet, the better off we'll all be in the future. But there is one area where I have to part ways with my uber-environmentalist friends and dig in my heels. I can't - I won't - watch that business involving Tommy Lee and Ludacris on Planet Green. I just can't.
Why? It's not that I don't approve of the spirit of the thing. It's not that I disapprove of the individuals involved. No. My complaint is based on the number of limp, meaningless, and completely out of place metal-horn salutes that are thrown around on the show. Abuse of the metal horns is already widespread in our society. It's as though they want to make the touchdown sign, but doing it with one hand is easier than throwing up one's arms. It's bad enough to watch some numbnuts sans clue making the metal-horn sign with his thumb hanging out, as though he can't decide if he's a devil-rocker or the Big Kahuna. It's bad enough to see the metal-horn sign become part of suburban life, where guys wearing Crocs get the lawnmower started on the second pull and flash the horns - "Score, got it running, yay me!" But when the metal-horns morph into an environmentalist symbol, oh, that's just too much.
Stop it already! Here's a proper metal-horn evil-eye deal as delivered by Dio.
If you cannot manage this level of intensity, don't bother making the metal-horn sign. Period!
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