the weight

take a load off Annie and put the load right on me

if you wanna see the insanity of a consumer driven free market society, take a trip up to Tajiguas landfill..it's up towards Gaviota, back in the hills....I used to drive up there and dump some stuff every now and then...a lovely drive past old California...an old outpost..an old restaurant that was boarded up...it's a landfill you know...it's place where you dump things you no longer want, or can use like garbage..and other stuff...like dead horses...I saw a dead horse up there once..it had a nice and shiny brown coat but was on its back and four big legs sticking straight up in the air like tree trunks..got any missing relatives? they're probably buried in Tajiguas! and there's hundreds of GIANT sea gulls rumaging through the trash...your trash...

so you go there and weigh your load and travel up the hill..big garbage trucks are coming down while you're going up..they are moving pretty fast so watch out...you got to the top and follow the safety cones and you see a bunch of GIANT earth moving equipment said to be operated by ex-cons..big burly Crazy Chesters who look like they eat dogs for lunch...anyway they don't really like to stop and wait for you, so you better hurry, dump your load and get the hell outta there!! what they do is spend all day covering trash up with dirt and more trash... digging and dumping...a never ending routine

I swear they will run you over if you hesitate or show fear...after I dumped my load, I left so fast a trail of dust covered their John Deeres!! they couldn't catch me no matter what...I drove like a maniac keeping the bed up, a la Cool Hand Luke, in case they wanted to take some target practice..out here, who's gonna know??? then I hightailed it down to the main road...and back into Santa Barbara...

but the thing that struck me was the huge number of white plastic bags flying around even back then...I don't think things have changed much except the volume of trash..and the plastic bags...they're up there and they are flying around like seagulls, like dust, like litter...

and landfills are where most plastic bags end up..until they blow away onto the roadsides and oceans...from the store, to your house, to the landfill....the cycle of life