DNA Testing? No Thanks.

Last week while downtown, I saw that someone had dumped this sign in the wastebasket at the corner of 5th and Ali. Not sure whether they're making a statement against DNA testing, or whether they simply share my antipathy for plastic signs.

Ducky Derby Update

I received a nice email from Ashley Stroud regarding yesterday's post about the Ducky Derby, in which I expressed concern about the risk of the plastic duckies entering the environment:

As the Special Events Coordinator for Harbor House of Louisville, I was extremely pleased to see that you had written a blog about this year’s Ken-Ducky Derby. We are excited to gain publicity for our signature fundraising event, as well as gain publicity for the services that we provide to Louisville-area adults with mental disabilities.

In response to your plastic concerns, you will be pleased to know that we are sponsored by Heritage Environmental Services, who set up gates that serve as our “race track” and contain our ducks in one specific area on the river. All of our ducks are recovered immediately. You will also be pleased to know that all of our ducks are recycled from other duck races around the country. We receive them a few weeks before the Ken-Ducky Derby from other duck race locations, and after our race has concluded, we, in turn, ship them to other races that have yet to be held.

Thank you very much for adopting your duck! I would encourage all of your readers to adopt a duck (or a whole flock!). You can also adopt online at http://www.duckrace.com/louisville.

Ducky Derby

I'm not sure why there are two different "Ken-Ducky Derby" events each year, but what the heck, it doubles your ducky fun. Barbourville had theirs back in June, and Louisville will have its 6th Annual Ken-Ducky Derby at Waterfront Park on Saturday, September 26th, 2009.

Basically, here's how it works: you "adopt" a duck by going to one of the race's sponsor outlets and getting your adoption papers for it. It's $5 for a single duck, $25 for a "Quack Pack" of six, $50 for a "Big Quack Pack" of fourteen, and $100 will get you an entire flock of thirty ducks. Adoption sponsor locations include Kroger, Republic Bank, Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, Coach's Fitness, Bearno's Pizza, Pat's Steakhouse and Joe's Crab Shack. Then they turn at least 20,000 numbered plastic duckies into the river and you hope your quacker's number comes up the winner at the finish line.

According to their press release:

"The real winners of The Ken-Ducky Derby are the participants of Harbor House of Louisville, a not-for-profit certified development and training facility for adults with developmental disabilities. In addition to raising over $100,000 each year for Harbor House programs, the Ken-Ducky Derby helps increase the community's awareness of the agency and the critical need for the services that it provides."

As an anti-plastics activist who is especially concerned about plastics getting into our world's waterways, the idea of turning loose tens of thousands of plastic ducks into the river makes me cringe. But this year, I will experimentally adopt one of these ersatz mallards and will be attendance at this duck race to see exactly what happens to the rest of the ducks, and how they get them back out of the river once the fun's done. I would hate to see all this duck-dunking contribute to the already catastrophic armada of lost plastic ducks polluting the world's oceans, thanks to the Chinese Friendly Floatees company.


(I wouldn't object to winning the Ducky Derby's grand prize, a 2009 Honda Civic from Sam Swope, though.)

Signs Like This

What's worse than plastic signs littering our state?

Plastic signs that try to sell you MORE PLASTIC SIGNS.

Sorry about your signs, plasticmongers, but I took them all down. But hey, here's free advertising on my blog. No, no, don't thank me, it's all in a day's work.

They Put Them Up, I Take Them Down

A recent rant of mine from the Transylvania Gentlemen blog:

As you may know, I'm big on getting rid of plastics in our environment, since they have a bad tendency to slough off plastic molecules and in so doing, are poisoning our ecosystem.

So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I have been waging a personal vendetta against "guerilla advertising" corrugated plastic signs that glut roadsides all across our fair state. Not only are they ugly, but they're literally harming the environment. 99.9 percent of these signs are never retrieved by the people who disseminate them; they usually end up being taken down by city employees or, more often, they just fall down or blow away. I've found dozens of these things littering roadside gulches, laying flat and covered in mud and weeds.

Not only that, but the vast majority of these signs are illegally placed on someone else's property, usually public property. I'm not talking about a small business that puts a plastic sign out in front of their own store, or even in the median of the road nearby; I cut some slack for instances such as this, even though the plastic aspect still irks me. Nothing wrong with trying to advertise a sale for your store near your store, but most of the plastic signs out there are from businesses that chose to blanket the entire county and beyond.

And then there's the worst offenders of them all: national companies that cover the nation with the same stupid plastic signs. These are usually weight-loss scams, suspicious "job opportunity" announcements with toll free numbers, religious proselytizing, predatory lenders, and "We Buy Houses" real estate moguls. Then there's all the political campaign signs that never get taken down from all the places they were illegally stuck in the first place.

So, I've made it a habit of plucking these signs whenever I see them. Usually it's on an as-encountered basis, and I've often raced out of the car at a red light to snatch plastic signs off poles and from intersections, toss them in the back of the car, and throw it back into Drive with seconds to spare. Other times, when I'm feeling particularly onamissionfromgod, I'll drive around late at night and clean up the city of these wretched things.


Which begs the question, what the hell do I do with them now? I have a huge collection of signs, hundreds in a spare bedroom at home and hundreds more in storage. I don't really want to throw them away because they'll end up in the dump and pollute the groundwater. Most likely, I'll do the same thing I did with my leftover Project Egg eggs: when in doubt, turn 'em into art. Not sure what sort of art project I will come up with to incorporate these signs, but I'm sure I'll think of somethin'. Meanwhile, dear readers, I beseech thee to help keep Kentucky beautiful and help nip these signs in the bud whenever you encounter them yourselves.

This guy is my hero. So are these folks.

Elliott County Dumpsite

In the Weird Kentucky book, you may recall I urge my readers to take a greater interest in the relics of the 20th century buried all around us. Here's a prime example. This forgotten rural dumpsite in Elliott County contains mostly trash from the 1970s and 1980s on the surface, and likely has artifacts going back to at least the 1930s buried underneath.

You can see how little these plastic items, almost a half century old, have deteriorated. And what you can't see is the microscopic molecules of plastic being sloughed off by these items, and permanently entering the ecosystem. This is precisely why I am opposed to all modern plastics.