Dipshits

I went to a housewarming/birthday party for a college friend of mine this past weekend, John Armstrong. John’s a good shit, and his circles and mine overlapped just a bit, but we always seemed to get along well. I bump into him in Montpelier every now and again and it’s good to stay in touch. So, at his party I knew there would be a few other college folks I knew, at least to some degree. Caught up with Adam Tarmey, still up to his old tricks. But the focus of this rant is this other dude I only knew by face, and who I remember as being a bit full of shit in college. I think he sold weed back then, or maybe glass pipes, or whatever, and thought himself pretty cool. Anyway, talk ran to my being in the apple business, and this dude mentions that he lives up in the Champlain Islands; we chatted a bit about local growers up there. Then he mentioned that the daughter of one prominent grower was buying an (already operating) dairy farm across the street from him, and started flogging her operation with the usual pseudo-environmental ‘I know more about this than you’ bullshit. “Industrial Ag” was coming in, global warming was going to advance further with their big tractors, and the manure was going to cause all sorts of health problems. “I know what you mean,” I told him regarding the smell, “I grew up on a farm.” I also work around a dairy farm, live up the road from a big farm’s crop fields, and even occasionally lend a hand when needed. But you know what? You move across from a farm and you deal with a couple of weeks, or even days, of shit spreading. Farmers know what they are doing nowadays or they aren’t in business, they don’t need some stoner dipshit telling them to use a methane digester because they read about it in an online forum. Armchair ‘consultants’, I find, rarely know what the guy with dirty hands has to do to produce the food they eat, often without turning a profit most years. So I dropped the conversation, and let him go on about how biodiesel is going to save the world and how the fish hatchery in Grand Isle needs to put in his solar collectors and such (I really doubt that he is an engineer).
Whatever. At this point I was just annoyed by the guy. What made me a bit pissed with him was when it was time to go and he hopped into his 10 MPG F250 to drive the 70 miles back home. Spare me the hubris, buddy. Spare me the hypocrisy. Spare me the bullshit.

TB