Environmentalism is just another -ism for a person to try on in between personas. A nice way of seeing which one fits best. But for beings coming here from distant worlds, they don’t have the time to waste. While we might think globally, we rarely think universally. And joyriding to the Red Planet doesn’t count. I’ve heard lots of discussion around the rising tides in Venice or forest fires on the West Coast, but very little about the rest of the galaxy’s concerns. We stick to what we know. The dew point in Delaware. The humidity in Hawaii. The snow drifts in South Dakota. From my experience, aliens usually possess a much more holistic view of things than your average member of Greenpeace. In my travels, I’ve certainly met aliens who enjoy nothing more than revving their pickup trucks in the parking lot of a Mickey D’s, chain smoking Marlboro Reds and packing the trunk with burgers and fries. But those types of extra-terrestrials are the exception. Here’s a Little Green Man who knows what it means to go green.
MTP: Thanks for doing this. You’re a hard alien to reach.
LGM: Don’t I know it. This is my busy season.
MTP: How’s that?
LGM: The Super Bowl brings in a lot of wagers from all over the universe. Most aliens are Raiders fans, something about the uniforms and Al Davis being one of us, but the Super Bowl is the Super Bowl. Ya know?
MTP: Right. You’re not that little, nor are you green.
LGM: People always say that. But it’s a moniker, like a rap name. It’s my brand and I can’t shake it.
MTP: So tell me, what are you doing for the environment these days?
LGM: That’s good question. Not much. I’m kind of retired from that type of activism. I could’ve gotten to earth in the early 1600s, but I took this rickety sailboat contraption that tacked centuries onto the journey. I had friends back home who thought I was crazy not using nuclear. I didn’t want to do that. It felt like cheating. So the way I see it, that’s contributed more than most people.
MTP: It helps to have your life span, I suppose.
LGM: That’s true.
MTP: But is there anything you do in your daily life that we should adopt?
LGM: Living in Vegas it’s not easy, I’ll tell ya that. When I arrived I considered not having an A/C. That experiment lasted a few hours and I’ve been blasting it ever since.
MTP: Do you recycle?
LGM: Only bad ideas.
MTP: What about space junk? I remember reading a paper you co-authored with Neil Degrasse Tyson for National Geographic entitled, “Junk with Power.” Do you remember that?
LGM: Of course, Neil’s a friend. But I’ve changed my tune on that and pretty much everything else.
MTP: I guess I have only myself to blame for the poor research.
LGM: Why not blame your assistant?
MTP: I don’t have an assistant.
LGM: But you could.
MTP: Maybe I do have an assistant. Might to have to fire them now.
LGM: Look, regarding the whole junk dilemma, space is a vacuum, okay? So who am I to demand someone clean things up? Seems like the system has it under control without my meddling. Unless we’re talking Dyson or Oreck, I just don’t see how anyone has a leg to stand on here.
MTP: You like living in Vegas?
LGM: It’s all right. But it was much better to do what I do for a living before the proliferation of legalized gambling.
MTP: How’d you get into this?
LGM: A friend of mine got arrested and I had to take over the operation for a weekend. He ended up doing twenty five to life and here I am, still running it today. Funny how life is though, huh? You’re sent here to do one job and you find an entirely different calling. I don’t question it and I never will.
MTP: Does going green still matter to you?
LGM: You bet it does. Though to be fair, when you say green, I think of the stacks of hundred dollar bills I keep under my bed at Caesar’s Palace. Living in a hotel is good for the environment. I’m not asking anyone to build me a new residence or whatever.
MTP: Quite the logic there. Any last thoughts before I let you go?
LGM: Take the Bengals and the points.
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