Kevin Noble     Talkin' Trash Samuel L. Jackson said in Pulp Fiction that his girlfriend was a vegetarian, which pretty much made him one too. Well, there is a recycling bin outside my girlfriend's window which pretty much makes it outside my window too. At first I didn't think it would matter all that much, but it's the most intolerable offense since the wide-mouth hit the Mountain Dew can. And it's not the fact that it blocks half of the view from her, excuse me our, window. If it needs to be three inches away from the window to preserve the earth that extra 15 minutes, so be it. In fact, I dare say that the recycling bin itself doesn't cause much of a disturbance at all. It's those damn recyclers that pose the problem. I understand that recycling is the socially conscious thing to do these days. Everyone's heard the rhetoric a thousand times over: "Blah blah blah recycling is what you should do blah blah blah." The thing is, it's not the recycling that gets on my nerves -- it's the hour that people choose to do their socially conscious blah-blah recycling that pisses me off. I'll be awakened from my sleep at three or four in the morning by some recycling fanatic who is busily dropping can after can after bottle afteer bottle. What these people are thinking is beyond me. It will be a perfectly quiet, peaceful Saturday, and somebody will decide at eight in the morning that this is the perfect time for them to get the bulk of their recycling done. And almost every Friday and Saturday night, there is someone dropping beer bottles into the inverted cow that is the recycling container. I don't know, I guess they want to get rid of some of the guilt that they are about to, or just did, acquire -- but do they really have to recycle THEN? Once at the recycling bin these recyclers aren't content with just dropping in their bottles and cans and being done with it. They take their time, and god forbid they have anything made of glass with them. It turns into a game to see how loud a crash each bottle can make. I can't be bothered to get out of bed just to tell some zealous recycler that the person last night made the bottles shatter better, louder, and most importantly, longer. But when I think about it, I feel bad if I blame them for having fun breaking the glass. I know it's fun, it's just one of those things. I went to the dump one time with this friend of mine to throw away a refrigerator and there was this huge plate of plexiglass lying there. Needless to say, we spent the next 15 minutes throwing everything we could get our hands on at this thing. I don't know what it is, but there is just something liberating about being able to break things with no consequence. If you are ever going to go to the dump, bring along an aluminum bat just in case the urge hits you. But watch out, because there are some of the biggest speed bumps I have ever seen at the dump. I don't know who was driving so quickly that these giant speed bumps became a necessity, but there they are. I guess they figure that if you are going to trash your car, you might as well smash it up first. What's a few more dents if you're never going to see the car again anyway? In fact, they should install some Excitebike-style ramps, or something, at the entrance to the dump. How many people in their lifetime get to ride in a car that is going mid-air through a ring of blazing fire? I'm surprised that dumps don't have this kind of thing already. I mean, isn't it a rule that if you get a whole bunch of trash together, these kind of demolition derby things just happen? Oh, excuse me, that's if you get a whole bunch of white trash together. Except why stop at the dump? Why not just install huge ramps and complex systems of tunnels on the main interstates? Long road trips just get tooooo boring. Even the trip to and from U.Va. is extremely monotonous -- especially if you are one of the three fools who DON'T live in NoVa, or alternately, if you live in Northern Virginia but you don't take the spirally Route 20. There are only so many times someone can play Travel Battleship or the license plate game before it's no longer fun and games when the person sitting next to you says "PunchBuggy." And if big expensive ramps, tunnels, and canals aren't your cup of tea, then why not just a few oil slicks here and there or cars that spout clouds of fog a la Spy Hunter. "Oh, shoot, what was that?" "Just an oil slick, honey, keep your eyes on the road." But I digress; what I'm trying to tell everyone here is that there is absolutely no need to recycle at four in the morning. None. Getting the cans in the bin before sunrise is going to make no difference whatsoever. I mean, don't get me wrong. Go ahead and recycle, recycle to your heart's content -- just not when you can still see the moon. "If you recycle at night, kill you I might, 'cause if your clock reads three, don't recycle 'round me." And if you do feel the incredible urge to get rid of aluminum cans and glass bottles that early in the morning, just leave them next to the bin -- I'll take care of them later.

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