pollution

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
1d3c16b	This was a normal town once, and we were normal people. Most of us worked at the plastics factory on the outskirts of town. Then one day there was an accident... something escaped from the factory, a yellow gas. It floated over the town so fast that we didn't see it, didn't realize... and then it was too late, and Dark Falls wasn't a normal town anymore.	grief murder people death dark-falls factory living-dead plastics townsfolk yellow gas creepy pollution small-town zombie normal poison	R.L. Stine
a77283a	And so Mort came at last to the river Ankh, greatest of rivers. Even before it entered the city, it was slow and heavy with the silt of the plains, and by the time it got to The Shades even an agnostic could have walked across it. It was hard to drown in the Ankh, but easy to suffocate.	religion pollution	Terry Pratchett
a81de9b	"We are told that "the meek shall inherit the earth." It follows that the meek are chosen of God. I shall try to be meek, not because I want the earth - you can keep it, after the way you've fucked it around it's not worth having - but because I too should like to be chosen of God. QED. Besides, I like animals better than you bastards."	pollution	John Brunner
4440d30	"Yeah, you're right about having entire rooms full of film and photos... in that Sydney Mines house I have a darkroom, I have boxes of film and home movie footage... I have a few projectors, I have piles of Kodachrome slides... I like photographs. The world is always running away from society and the only way to keep the stuff that's happened in the past is by taking photographs, I can keep memories of things alive with photographs," Alecto responded. "People say that a time machine can't be invented, but they've already invented a device that can stop time, cameras are the world's first time machines... The steel mill, the coal mines, the train tracks, the smog in the sky, I've been able to rescue it on super-8 and Kodachrome, and no one can remediate those photographs, I can keep them as long as I want to."	memories industrial polaroid steel-mill kodak coal-mine darkroom kodachrome cape-breton super-8 nova-scotia photograph smog photo digital coal pollution train capture film nostalgia	Rebecca McNutt
a3c460e	I asked the feedlot manager why they didn't just spray the liquefied manure on neighboring farms. The farmers don't want it, he explained. The nitrogen and phosphorus levels are so high that spraying the crops would kill them. He didn't say that feedlot wastes also contain heavy metals and hormone residues, persistent chemicals that end up in waterways downstream, where scientists have found fish and amphibians exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics.	manure feedlots factory-farming pollution	Michael Pollan
545d7f3	"She recalled him as a forceful and witty speaker with a ready repartee and a penetrating voice. He had once, for example, put down a spokesman for the pesticide industry with a remark that people still quoted at parties: "And I presume on the eighth day God called you and said, 'I changed my mind about insects!"	pesticides pollution	John Brunner
d985d4f	Mandy loved the smell of a sunny day after a night of rain. The sun hit the orange puddles, the overgrown, soft, green grass on her lawn, and it beamed down through the orange steel mill smog, sending otherworldly, bizarre shadows across the concrete sidewalk.	dream science smog nuclear rainbow pollution surreal girl storm teenager	Rebecca McNutt
3db89af	Mandy smiled cheerfully at an overweight kid in a gold sweater and pink skirt who was chasing her little brother around along the boardwalk. When she was that age, on sunny days she'd be out on the boardwalk with Jud and Wendy, buying rainbow sorbet from the ice cream shop and placing paper boats into the harbour. She felt like a ghost, drifting past the shell of her own childhood.	kids rainbow-sorbet ice-cream pollution sea children childhood nostalgia	Rebecca McNutt
b4dbfa8	"Kipster is a perfectly valid word," Wendy argued, about to write down her score on the little notepad that had come with the game. "Okay, so what does it mean?" Mandy wanted to know. Wendy struggled to come up with an answer, and finally just changed the subject with school gossip. Mandy found herself just ignoring it... it always sounded the same, the same events, same rumors, same secrets, same affairs, but never anything of interest to her. "Well Sarah's on drugs again and that's why she did it in Mario's backseat, but now she might be pregnant, oh, and that messed-up Seth kid's been cutting himself again so he was sent away to Halifax last week, and there's a festival in Wolfville but Kathy won't go because Audrey-Rose is going to be there and they hate each other, and...." Mandy had learned two years ago to detach herself from gossip; she'd learned it from Jud's death. Wendy may have been eighteen years old but she could be immature on the best of days."	suicide words funny 80-s argue kipster cape-breton nova-scotia boring eighties drama-queen scrabble maturity coming-of-age canada pollution growing-up baby teenage fighting eating gossip bullying scary game drama self-harm nostalgia rumors	Rebecca McNutt
5900aae	"I've seen a lot of stuff... maybe I've seen too much. I see most humans in a bad light because I've seen what they can do, how evil they can be... I've seen the Holocaust and I've seen Jonestown, I've seen the Vietnam War and I've seen Hiroshima... I've seen the Chernobyl disaster... I've seen the World Trade Center attack... I've been alive too long, over a hundred years is a long time to be alive," Alecto sighed, staring at the cigarette he was holding."	earth grief nature human death chernobyl hazardous hippie alive smog nuclear jonestown personification kami disaster steel pollution holocaust vietnam-war lonely sad dying evil	Rebecca McNutt
99c5c19	"I've seen how cigarettes went from being advertised in every type of media to being something found to be deadly... they can't kill me no matter how many of them I smoke but I've seen humans die from smoking them... if I were you I would stop smoking them." "Why should I? You smoke 'em all the time, you chain-smoke cigarettes," Mandy pointed out. "Yeah, I started doing that back in the Sixties... for reasons you likely saw on those VHS tapes... but I'm not a person, I'm Pollution, things like that aren't dangerous to me but they are to you," Alecto told her. "It's not a good idea."	grief loss depression past education cigar blast-from-the-past chain-smoke no-smoking vhs-tape retro depress deadly times disturbing smog haunting gray cancer spooky video creepy smoke cigarette tobacco pollution attack health eerie scary sick knowledge trapped self-help horror	Rebecca McNutt
0b054f6	Indeed Christianity passes. Passes--it has gone! It has littered the beaches of life with churches, cathedrals, shrines and crucifixes, prejudices and intolerances, like the sea urchin and starfish and empty shells and lumps of stinging jelly upon the sands here after a tide. A tidal wave out of Egypt. And it has left a multitude of little wriggling theologians and confessors and apologists hopping and burrowing in the warm nutritious sand. But in the hearts of living men, what remains of it now? Doubtful scraps of Arianism. Phrases. Sentiments. Habits.	churches arianism cathedrals crucifixes intolerances sea-urchin shrines outdated litter harmful toxic prejudices theologians pollution plague egypt	H.G. Wells
859c925	"The days were brief and attenuated and the season appeared to be fixed - neither summer nor winter, spring nor fall. A thermal haze of inexpressible sweetness, though bearing tiny bits of grit or mica, had eased into the Valley from the industrial region to the north and there were nights when the sun set at the western horizon as if it were sinking through a porous red mass, and there were days when a hard-glaring moon like bone remained fixed in a single position, prominent in the sky. ("Family")"	pollution sun	Joyce Carol Oates
5322620	"Oh, I'm Chrissy Mackenzie, I'm from Vancouver but I came here to study environmental journalism," the girl exclaimed with way too much enthusiasm. "You got any advice?" "Search me," Mandy muttered, spooning another ice cube from the empty glass on the table in front of her. "I like pollution, I write in favor of it, and environmental journalism most often implies that it's in favor of all that "go green" hippie crap." "Oh, well...." Chrissy seemed taken aback, offended, and Mandy sighed a fourth time. "Damn it, I'm really sorry," she apologized, smiling dismally at the aspiring writer. "It's just been a really lousy day for me and I wasn't really thinking. My advice? Find your own cause to represent, not one thrown out into society by a ton of environmentalist dopes. Find something new, something you think could be improved, and work from there." Chrissy smiled with a look of total ecstasy as if the words of some nobody woman were important. Mandy momentarily noticed the groups of laughing, drunk, giggling people, all acting childish... and for a moment she wished she could be them."	world joy change hope drea environmntal gol ice-cube vancouver cape-breton nova-scotia hippie journalist pollution improve friend peace drunk sad	Rebecca McNutt
1adb6c9	People never like pollution, it has become very wrong to like pollution at all. But just like there are good and bad things about people, there are good and bad things about pollution. If people were pollution we would get rid of anyone who was different, anyone who was considered an inconvenience... but we'd be getting rid of a life, a lot of lives... because we didn't like them. If pollution was a person would we still be trying to get rid of it? Would we have environmentalists still complaining and protesting and trying to get rid of all pollution?	earth people human death hope life hippie litter plants smog environmentalism garbage environment canada pollution animals help scary water dangerous mental-illness evil	Rebecca McNutt
0b2141c	I might be the hazardous waste site that polluted it, but Cape Breton Island is still my home.	living life canada-day hazardous sydney-tar-ponds cape-breton nova-scotia toxic country coal patriot steel pollution home	Rebecca McNutt
5ac577c	"With Pollution, emotion is irrelevant, it is not their nature," Mearth sighed, making a face as if she were talking to an ignorant small child. "I didn't create them, humans created the Pollution. Cheryl Nobel, Alecto Steele, Albert Sanders, Olivia Campbell, all my pretty little Representations, there aren't many of them left these days but they're still very dangerous! They're here to tell society all about its mistakes! You don't understand the world of Representations."	suicide earth grief loss nature fear death imagination chernobyl entity hazardous love-canal tar tar-sands toxic-waste sydney-tar-ponds cape-breton nova-scotia recycle hippie disturbing smog mother-earth imaginary chemicals representation coal green steel environment canada pollution storm dying scared	Rebecca McNutt
c6d85ed	"The prints shop manager, a balding man of about thirty years old, dressed in a plaid work shirt and faded jeans, looked very shocked when he saw the headline text. "Sydney Tar Ponds, Is It As Dangerous As People Say? Well," he exclaimed, glancing at the front photo, which featured the Sydney Steel Corporation, along with its plumes of orange smog. "You know, most people your age are really against that mill, as if it's a disease. We have university students protesting every few weeks or so... strangely enough, the ones who have parents who rely on that steel mill to pay the bills." "What about the pollution?" Wendy questioned, almost accusingly, as if it was his fault. "What if dangerous chemicals are in the environment?" "Hey kid, I don't even work at the mill, never have, but my father, my uncle, their father, cousins, all worked there," the prints shop man argued, placing the newspapers in a cardboard box and taping it shut. "When it comes down to all that 'go green' crap, you have to ask yourself, is it worth risking a person's income, their job, their family... their life? I'm not saying you're wrong, but these newspapers might have a point."	earth earth-day go-green industry-decline manager print recycle hippie smog newspaper environmentalism shop career green pollution job nostalgia	Rebecca McNutt
b42e34b	Alecto isn't a person! He's just something that society made and then threw away, a memory that refuses to die.	death created threw kodak-moment cape-breton super-8 nova-scotia coal mining steel canada pollution society person dying memory nostalgia	Rebecca McNutt
5671c40	If you wish to view this as a cautionary tale, be my guest.	evolution microbes pollution	Philip C. Plait
b2e5d7c	I could see, in the haze to the north, the tall stacks of the mighty Borden phosphate and fertilizer plant in Bradenton, spewing lethal fluorine and sulphuric-acid components into the vacation sky. In the immediate area it is known bitterly as the place where Elsie the Cow coughed herself to death. I have read where it had been given yet another two years to correct its massive and dangerous pollution. Big Borden must have directors somewhere. Maybe, like the Penn Central directors, they are going to sit on their respective docile asses until the roof falls in. There are but two choices. Either they know they condone poisoning and don't give a damn, or they don't know they condone poisoning and don't give a damn. Anybody can walk into any brokerage office and be told where to look to find a complete list of the names of the directors and where they live. Drop the fellows a line, huh?	pollution	John D. MacDonald
48e1de8	It was immediately clear that the book had been undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even since it had been laid to rest. The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts.	library books dust pollution victorian library-books london librarians	A.S. Byatt
733cf38	"...Look, I'm real sorry about Cheryl, I know you loved her a lot," Mandy apologized gloomily. "It's wrong that people have to keep killing off Pollution." "It's alright, I think she wants to be remediated," Alecto told her calmly, though his grief-stricken and depressed expression said more to Mandy than his words did. "You don't have to forget Cheryl, no matter what Mearth said to you," Mandy pointed out. "People shouldn't be forced to forget what they love, or to just get over the death of what they love. Cheryl was your friend and nobody can make you forget her if you don't want to."	grief loss depression fear death friendship hope love grief-stricken removal remediation confusion lonliness pollution help uncertainty memory	Rebecca McNutt
b30f0bc	"...So, um, you're from Rochester? Like, New York?" Jersey asked. "Yup, we used to live out there," Rudger confirmed, nonchalant. "You ever been?" "Naw, the closest I've ever been to there would be... well, believe it or not, New Jersey, the place where my parents named me after. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime... I loved it."	travel love angst urban pollution new-jersey teenagers crime crowd city	Rebecca McNutt
8235210	"I think we ought to find something else to do," said Mandy. "But Alecto my love, you're the first person to notice my retro diner kitchen. When my parents saw it, they thought I was creating a weird art project." "I like it. It's got that let's-drown-ourselves-in-better-days type ambiance," Alecto declared, his gray eyes narrowed."	funny friendship love ambience better-days fifties retro cape-breton nova-scotia diner drowning pollution art parents kitchen nostalgia	Rebecca McNutt
15104fe	Typical Pollution, they're always living in the wrong place at the wrong time.	time wrong living typical pollution place	Rebecca McNutt
a690594	"Oh, trust me Sydney Tar Ponds, you aren't the first Personification to be forgotten by somebody ordinary," Mearth sighed with a falsely-reassuring smile. Alecto stepped back from her, glaring hatefully. "Sydney Tar Ponds," Mearth added, "I've had so many ordinary people as friends in my life that by now I've forgotten all their names. At first it was difficult... very sad... to see them always leaving, dying, disappearing, ignoring, but after a while I realized that they weren't worth the trouble. I'd rather be in the company of other Personifications. At least they aren't always dropping dead like houseflies or sailing away to parts unknown. Nil sa saol seo ach ceo, i ni bheimid beo, ach seal beag gearr. Wouldn't you agree?" "No," Alecto told her. "I think you're insane."	loss human death friendship housefly mother-earth personification ordinary pollution friend irish forget sad insane dying memory	Rebecca McNutt
91faff9	In keeping with your policy of bringing Pollution the latest in death and violence, and in living colour, there's going to be something entirely different... death without remediation.	violence television living death christine-chubbuck remediation policy pop-culture colour pollution	Rebecca McNutt
899eef4	"Tell yourselves whatever you'd like, but I'm afraid it doesn't make it true," Mearth sighed, beginning to look impatient. "Step aside Mandy, I have to remediate him, otherwise you'll find yourself in a whole mess of trouble." "You can't do this, it's wrong," Mandy insisted. "You don't have a choice, Mandy! Either you let his life compromise the lives of everybody else in the world, or you let me remediate him and get it over with," Mearth icily declared. "...Do what she says, Mandy Valems...." Alecto added, standing up and staring with glazed eyes at Mearth. "I can't," said Mandy. "...Go away!" Alecto shouted at her suddenly, glaring with narrowed eyes, speaking in a voice that hardly sounded like his own. "Get out of here, Mandy Valems! I hate you, I want you to leave me alone! Go home and don't ever come back here!" "I...." Mandy started, looking totally shocked. "I said I hate you, don't you understand anything? Go away, get out of here!" Alecto repeated menacingly, stepping forward in a threatening manner. He looked like a mad dog, shivering as he chased her away from his site. She tearfully took off running, seeming both shocked and horrified, and he watched her leave for a moment with a blank expression, his dark eyes hollow. He looked like he was going to black out, but Mearth walked quickly towards him, for once not smiling at all. If it weren't for her eyes, she would've looked like a person. "That was very cruel of you to do, Sydney Tar Ponds. I thought you loved her," she disappointedly exclaimed. "I do love her, she's my friend, and that's why I said that stuff to her," Alecto replied forlornly. "None of it's true, I don't hate her at all... but I know what's going to happen and I don't want her to see it, so I lied to her and told her I hated her... can you explain to her after... why I said all that to her?"	illness earth grief loss depression faith death friendship hope life love nova-scotia environment rescue pollution help dog dying	Rebecca McNutt

1d3c16b

This was a normal town once, and we were normal people. Most of us worked at the plastics factory on the outskirts of town. Then one day there was an accident... something escaped from the factory, a yellow gas. It floated over the town so fast that we didn't see it, didn't realize... and then it was too late, and Dark Falls wasn't a normal town anymore.

grief murder people death dark-falls factory living-dead plastics townsfolk yellow gas creepy pollution small-town zombie normal poison

R.L. Stine

a77283a

And so Mort came at last to the river Ankh, greatest of rivers. Even before it entered the city, it was slow and heavy with the silt of the plains, and by the time it got to The Shades even an agnostic could have walked across it. It was hard to drown in the Ankh, but easy to suffocate.

religion pollution

Terry Pratchett

a81de9b

"We are told that "the meek shall inherit the earth." It follows that the meek are chosen of God. I shall try to be meek, not because I want the earth - you can keep it, after the way you've fucked it around it's not worth having - but because I too should like to be chosen of God. QED. Besides, I like animals better than you bastards."

pollution

John Brunner

4440d30

"Yeah, you're right about having entire rooms full of film and photos... in that Sydney Mines house I have a darkroom, I have boxes of film and home movie footage... I have a few projectors, I have piles of Kodachrome slides... I like photographs. The world is always running away from society and the only way to keep the stuff that's happened in the past is by taking photographs, I can keep memories of things alive with photographs," Alecto responded. "People say that a time machine can't be invented, but they've already invented a device that can stop time, cameras are the world's first time machines... The steel mill, the coal mines, the train tracks, the smog in the sky, I've been able to rescue it on super-8 and Kodachrome, and no one can remediate those photographs, I can keep them as long as I want to."

memories industrial polaroid steel-mill kodak coal-mine darkroom kodachrome cape-breton super-8 nova-scotia photograph smog photo digital coal pollution train capture film nostalgia

Rebecca McNutt

a3c460e

I asked the feedlot manager why they didn't just spray the liquefied manure on neighboring farms. The farmers don't want it, he explained. The nitrogen and phosphorus levels are so high that spraying the crops would kill them. He didn't say that feedlot wastes also contain heavy metals and hormone residues, persistent chemicals that end up in waterways downstream, where scientists have found fish and amphibians exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics.

manure feedlots factory-farming pollution

Michael Pollan

545d7f3

"She recalled him as a forceful and witty speaker with a ready repartee and a penetrating voice. He had once, for example, put down a spokesman for the pesticide industry with a remark that people still quoted at parties: "And I presume on the eighth day God called you and said, 'I changed my mind about insects!"

pesticides pollution

John Brunner

d985d4f

Mandy loved the smell of a sunny day after a night of rain. The sun hit the orange puddles, the overgrown, soft, green grass on her lawn, and it beamed down through the orange steel mill smog, sending otherworldly, bizarre shadows across the concrete sidewalk.

dream science smog nuclear rainbow pollution surreal girl storm teenager

Rebecca McNutt

3db89af

Mandy smiled cheerfully at an overweight kid in a gold sweater and pink skirt who was chasing her little brother around along the boardwalk. When she was that age, on sunny days she'd be out on the boardwalk with Jud and Wendy, buying rainbow sorbet from the ice cream shop and placing paper boats into the harbour. She felt like a ghost, drifting past the shell of her own childhood.

kids rainbow-sorbet ice-cream pollution sea children childhood nostalgia

Rebecca McNutt

b4dbfa8

"Kipster is a perfectly valid word," Wendy argued, about to write down her score on the little notepad that had come with the game. "Okay, so what does it mean?" Mandy wanted to know. Wendy struggled to come up with an answer, and finally just changed the subject with school gossip. Mandy found herself just ignoring it... it always sounded the same, the same events, same rumors, same secrets, same affairs, but never anything of interest to her. "Well Sarah's on drugs again and that's why she did it in Mario's backseat, but now she might be pregnant, oh, and that messed-up Seth kid's been cutting himself again so he was sent away to Halifax last week, and there's a festival in Wolfville but Kathy won't go because Audrey-Rose is going to be there and they hate each other, and...." Mandy had learned two years ago to detach herself from gossip; she'd learned it from Jud's death. Wendy may have been eighteen years old but she could be immature on the best of days."

suicide words funny 80-s argue kipster cape-breton nova-scotia boring eighties drama-queen scrabble maturity coming-of-age canada pollution growing-up baby teenage fighting eating gossip bullying scary game drama self-harm nostalgia rumors

Rebecca McNutt

5900aae

"I've seen a lot of stuff... maybe I've seen too much. I see most humans in a bad light because I've seen what they can do, how evil they can be... I've seen the Holocaust and I've seen Jonestown, I've seen the Vietnam War and I've seen Hiroshima... I've seen the Chernobyl disaster... I've seen the World Trade Center attack... I've been alive too long, over a hundred years is a long time to be alive," Alecto sighed, staring at the cigarette he was holding."

earth grief nature human death chernobyl hazardous hippie alive smog nuclear jonestown personification kami disaster steel pollution holocaust vietnam-war lonely sad dying evil

Rebecca McNutt

99c5c19

"I've seen how cigarettes went from being advertised in every type of media to being something found to be deadly... they can't kill me no matter how many of them I smoke but I've seen humans die from smoking them... if I were you I would stop smoking them." "Why should I? You smoke 'em all the time, you chain-smoke cigarettes," Mandy pointed out. "Yeah, I started doing that back in the Sixties... for reasons you likely saw on those VHS tapes... but I'm not a person, I'm Pollution, things like that aren't dangerous to me but they are to you," Alecto told her. "It's not a good idea."

grief loss depression past education cigar blast-from-the-past chain-smoke no-smoking vhs-tape retro depress deadly times disturbing smog haunting gray cancer spooky video creepy smoke cigarette tobacco pollution attack health eerie scary sick knowledge trapped self-help horror

Rebecca McNutt

0b054f6

Indeed Christianity passes. Passes--it has gone! It has littered the beaches of life with churches, cathedrals, shrines and crucifixes, prejudices and intolerances, like the sea urchin and starfish and empty shells and lumps of stinging jelly upon the sands here after a tide. A tidal wave out of Egypt. And it has left a multitude of little wriggling theologians and confessors and apologists hopping and burrowing in the warm nutritious sand. But in the hearts of living men, what remains of it now? Doubtful scraps of Arianism. Phrases. Sentiments. Habits.

churches arianism cathedrals crucifixes intolerances sea-urchin shrines outdated litter harmful toxic prejudices theologians pollution plague egypt

H.G. Wells

859c925

"The days were brief and attenuated and the season appeared to be fixed - neither summer nor winter, spring nor fall. A thermal haze of inexpressible sweetness, though bearing tiny bits of grit or mica, had eased into the Valley from the industrial region to the north and there were nights when the sun set at the western horizon as if it were sinking through a porous red mass, and there were days when a hard-glaring moon like bone remained fixed in a single position, prominent in the sky. ("Family")"

pollution sun

Joyce Carol Oates

5322620

"Oh, I'm Chrissy Mackenzie, I'm from Vancouver but I came here to study environmental journalism," the girl exclaimed with way too much enthusiasm. "You got any advice?" "Search me," Mandy muttered, spooning another ice cube from the empty glass on the table in front of her. "I like pollution, I write in favor of it, and environmental journalism most often implies that it's in favor of all that "go green" hippie crap." "Oh, well...." Chrissy seemed taken aback, offended, and Mandy sighed a fourth time. "Damn it, I'm really sorry," she apologized, smiling dismally at the aspiring writer. "It's just been a really lousy day for me and I wasn't really thinking. My advice? Find your own cause to represent, not one thrown out into society by a ton of environmentalist dopes. Find something new, something you think could be improved, and work from there." Chrissy smiled with a look of total ecstasy as if the words of some nobody woman were important. Mandy momentarily noticed the groups of laughing, drunk, giggling people, all acting childish... and for a moment she wished she could be them."

world joy change hope drea environmntal gol ice-cube vancouver cape-breton nova-scotia hippie journalist pollution improve friend peace drunk sad

Rebecca McNutt

1adb6c9

People never like pollution, it has become very wrong to like pollution at all. But just like there are good and bad things about people, there are good and bad things about pollution. If people were pollution we would get rid of anyone who was different, anyone who was considered an inconvenience... but we'd be getting rid of a life, a lot of lives... because we didn't like them. If pollution was a person would we still be trying to get rid of it? Would we have environmentalists still complaining and protesting and trying to get rid of all pollution?

earth people human death hope life hippie litter plants smog environmentalism garbage environment canada pollution animals help scary water dangerous mental-illness evil

Rebecca McNutt

0b2141c

I might be the hazardous waste site that polluted it, but Cape Breton Island is still my home.

living life canada-day hazardous sydney-tar-ponds cape-breton nova-scotia toxic country coal patriot steel pollution home

Rebecca McNutt

5ac577c

"With Pollution, emotion is irrelevant, it is not their nature," Mearth sighed, making a face as if she were talking to an ignorant small child. "I didn't create them, humans created the Pollution. Cheryl Nobel, Alecto Steele, Albert Sanders, Olivia Campbell, all my pretty little Representations, there aren't many of them left these days but they're still very dangerous! They're here to tell society all about its mistakes! You don't understand the world of Representations."

suicide earth grief loss nature fear death imagination chernobyl entity hazardous love-canal tar tar-sands toxic-waste sydney-tar-ponds cape-breton nova-scotia recycle hippie disturbing smog mother-earth imaginary chemicals representation coal green steel environment canada pollution storm dying scared

Rebecca McNutt

c6d85ed

"The prints shop manager, a balding man of about thirty years old, dressed in a plaid work shirt and faded jeans, looked very shocked when he saw the headline text. "Sydney Tar Ponds, Is It As Dangerous As People Say? Well," he exclaimed, glancing at the front photo, which featured the Sydney Steel Corporation, along with its plumes of orange smog. "You know, most people your age are really against that mill, as if it's a disease. We have university students protesting every few weeks or so... strangely enough, the ones who have parents who rely on that steel mill to pay the bills." "What about the pollution?" Wendy questioned, almost accusingly, as if it was his fault. "What if dangerous chemicals are in the environment?" "Hey kid, I don't even work at the mill, never have, but my father, my uncle, their father, cousins, all worked there," the prints shop man argued, placing the newspapers in a cardboard box and taping it shut. "When it comes down to all that 'go green' crap, you have to ask yourself, is it worth risking a person's income, their job, their family... their life? I'm not saying you're wrong, but these newspapers might have a point."

earth earth-day go-green industry-decline manager print recycle hippie smog newspaper environmentalism shop career green pollution job nostalgia

Rebecca McNutt

b42e34b

Alecto isn't a person! He's just something that society made and then threw away, a memory that refuses to die.

death created threw kodak-moment cape-breton super-8 nova-scotia coal mining steel canada pollution society person dying memory nostalgia

Rebecca McNutt

5671c40

If you wish to view this as a cautionary tale, be my guest.

evolution microbes pollution

Philip C. Plait

b2e5d7c

I could see, in the haze to the north, the tall stacks of the mighty Borden phosphate and fertilizer plant in Bradenton, spewing lethal fluorine and sulphuric-acid components into the vacation sky. In the immediate area it is known bitterly as the place where Elsie the Cow coughed herself to death. I have read where it had been given yet another two years to correct its massive and dangerous pollution. Big Borden must have directors somewhere. Maybe, like the Penn Central directors, they are going to sit on their respective docile asses until the roof falls in. There are but two choices. Either they know they condone poisoning and don't give a damn, or they don't know they condone poisoning and don't give a damn. Anybody can walk into any brokerage office and be told where to look to find a complete list of the names of the directors and where they live. Drop the fellows a line, huh?

pollution

John D. MacDonald

48e1de8

It was immediately clear that the book had been undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even since it had been laid to rest. The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts.

library books dust pollution victorian library-books london librarians

A.S. Byatt

733cf38

"...Look, I'm real sorry about Cheryl, I know you loved her a lot," Mandy apologized gloomily. "It's wrong that people have to keep killing off Pollution." "It's alright, I think she wants to be remediated," Alecto told her calmly, though his grief-stricken and depressed expression said more to Mandy than his words did. "You don't have to forget Cheryl, no matter what Mearth said to you," Mandy pointed out. "People shouldn't be forced to forget what they love, or to just get over the death of what they love. Cheryl was your friend and nobody can make you forget her if you don't want to."

grief loss depression fear death friendship hope love grief-stricken removal remediation confusion lonliness pollution help uncertainty memory

Rebecca McNutt

b30f0bc

"...So, um, you're from Rochester? Like, New York?" Jersey asked. "Yup, we used to live out there," Rudger confirmed, nonchalant. "You ever been?" "Naw, the closest I've ever been to there would be... well, believe it or not, New Jersey, the place where my parents named me after. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime... I loved it."

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Rebecca McNutt

8235210

"I think we ought to find something else to do," said Mandy. "But Alecto my love, you're the first person to notice my retro diner kitchen. When my parents saw it, they thought I was creating a weird art project." "I like it. It's got that let's-drown-ourselves-in-better-days type ambiance," Alecto declared, his gray eyes narrowed."

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Rebecca McNutt

15104fe

Typical Pollution, they're always living in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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Rebecca McNutt

a690594

"Oh, trust me Sydney Tar Ponds, you aren't the first Personification to be forgotten by somebody ordinary," Mearth sighed with a falsely-reassuring smile. Alecto stepped back from her, glaring hatefully. "Sydney Tar Ponds," Mearth added, "I've had so many ordinary people as friends in my life that by now I've forgotten all their names. At first it was difficult... very sad... to see them always leaving, dying, disappearing, ignoring, but after a while I realized that they weren't worth the trouble. I'd rather be in the company of other Personifications. At least they aren't always dropping dead like houseflies or sailing away to parts unknown. Nil sa saol seo ach ceo, i ni bheimid beo, ach seal beag gearr. Wouldn't you agree?" "No," Alecto told her. "I think you're insane."

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Rebecca McNutt

91faff9

In keeping with your policy of bringing Pollution the latest in death and violence, and in living colour, there's going to be something entirely different... death without remediation.

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Rebecca McNutt

899eef4

"Tell yourselves whatever you'd like, but I'm afraid it doesn't make it true," Mearth sighed, beginning to look impatient. "Step aside Mandy, I have to remediate him, otherwise you'll find yourself in a whole mess of trouble." "You can't do this, it's wrong," Mandy insisted. "You don't have a choice, Mandy! Either you let his life compromise the lives of everybody else in the world, or you let me remediate him and get it over with," Mearth icily declared. "...Do what she says, Mandy Valems...." Alecto added, standing up and staring with glazed eyes at Mearth. "I can't," said Mandy. "...Go away!" Alecto shouted at her suddenly, glaring with narrowed eyes, speaking in a voice that hardly sounded like his own. "Get out of here, Mandy Valems! I hate you, I want you to leave me alone! Go home and don't ever come back here!" "I...." Mandy started, looking totally shocked. "I said I hate you, don't you understand anything? Go away, get out of here!" Alecto repeated menacingly, stepping forward in a threatening manner. He looked like a mad dog, shivering as he chased her away from his site. She tearfully took off running, seeming both shocked and horrified, and he watched her leave for a moment with a blank expression, his dark eyes hollow. He looked like he was going to black out, but Mearth walked quickly towards him, for once not smiling at all. If it weren't for her eyes, she would've looked like a person. "That was very cruel of you to do, Sydney Tar Ponds. I thought you loved her," she disappointedly exclaimed. "I do love her, she's my friend, and that's why I said that stuff to her," Alecto replied forlornly. "None of it's true, I don't hate her at all... but I know what's going to happen and I don't want her to see it, so I lied to her and told her I hated her... can you explain to her after... why I said all that to her?"

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Rebecca McNutt