Brett Berk

The Gay Uncle hates Earth Day. Not because he hate our Earf. In fact, he loves it. (It’s his main habitat!) And certainly not because he hates holidays. Any excuse to start drinking in the morning is good for him. He doesn’t even hate all the downering attention-to-wanton-destruction associated with this celebration: the stats on how many cubic miles of rain-forest trees have been chipped into toothpicks or Chinese packing crates, the number of baby bald eagle skeletons that have been discovered in the stomach of a voracious invasive species in Nova Scotia, the miles of new natural gas mining pipes that have been laid under our pristine national wilderness. No, he hates Earth Day because of the smugness: the grotesque perfomative sensibility that says if you spend a few hours picking up a teensy fraction of the shit you throw out each year, you’re somehow a saint. You want to do something to really help the earth? Gunc has heard that there are warehouses full of paper products that will be pulped (using extra dioxins and rings and rings of benzene) if no one steps up to adopt them. Now that’s waste! So do your part: buy a copy of The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting today. Links to booksellers–corporate and independent–over to the right, and an opportunity to purchase a personally inscribed copy right here. Honor your mother!