An essay on the environment
At first, it just looks like a statement of conservation. A fragile little seahorse carrying away a dirty Q-tip. It’s somewhere exotic- maybe the South Pacific, maybe the Cook Islands. So it says a lot that an ordinary, offensive little piece of plastic pollution has tentacles into the most remote places on the earth. But really, it says more about the story of our species and how we went off the rails.
It’s a Q-Tip. A Q-tip. I would be less angry if it were a piece of plastic, say a plastic surgical glove, that actually saves lives. But a Q-tip? Don’t most doctors highly recommend against putting things into your ear to clean ear wax? So what we’re talking about here in this picture is of one of the most useless, extraneous products on the planet intruding lecherously into one of the purest environments in the world. Look at it- all white and chemically, standing out like an insult against the pure, plum-colored backdrop of deep sea blue. It shouts that we’ve reached some sort of rubicon with this picture. We screwed up the earth so bad it’s perverse. It’s pornographic.
We’ve gone from a species that worships, respects and lives off the land, not even thinking about cleaning our ears, just letting that ear wax fall by the wayside, to producing a little poisonous chemical stick that never biodegrades. We…
