Waste
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Table of
contents INTRODUCTION Three Cheerleaders Take Out the Trash - Dan Reed Flash Flood Fate - Joe Higler Sewage Without Shame - A.j. Michel An Inheritance - Craig Kirchner Kill - Wayne Countryman Without Warning - Jeffrey L. Shipley Oh, You’ve Got Something on Your... - Angie E Oh, the Places You’ll Poo! - Matthew C. Terzi Buying Things from People You Know - Jonathan Gavazzi Pissed On - Fernando Quijano III Excerpt from “Eat” - Hanna Badalova Does a Nemetz Shit in the Woods? - Nemetz Homage to Colonoscopy - Ben Shaberman From the Estrogen Files - Sharon Goldner In Defense of Getting Wasted - Lisa Wiseman Wasted Nights - Alison Seay Disco Melancholy, or When You Realize You Have Become the Old Queen You Said You Never Would - Hai Anxieti Baltimore Bonapartes, Nurse Ratched Days and the Martin Gross Neglect - Earl Crown Sick - E. Doyle-Gillespie Open Letter - Alex Hewett Banana Gone Bad - J.T. Cassidy Talkin’ Trash - William P. Tandy Asphalt Cancer - Craig Kirchner Oh Mickey, You So Wrong, You So Wrong, Hey Mickey, Hey Mickey... - J. Gavin Heck A List of Unappreciated Whatever - Timmy Reed Wasted Opportunity - Tom Brown About the Contributors Not so long ago, city-motorists visiting Baltimore by way of Russell Street, just below the stadiums, would be greeted by a curious spectacle: a gray, two-story cylinder of sorts, firmly planted on the front lawn of the Baltimore Refuse Energy Systems Company (RESCO) facility, which powers huge boilers by burning the city’s solid waste, using the resulting steam to generate electricity. A nearby banner proclaimed it the “World’s Largest Trash Can”, and it came by its title on no lesser authority than Guinness World Records, that globally renowned keeper of such superlative feats as “Most Cockroaches Eaten” and “Largest Collection of Penguins”. Indeed, to behold the World’s Largest Trash Can firsthand was to know you were now entering the presence of greatness. It was all good fun, of course. Even RoadsideAmerica.com - “Your Online Guide to Offbeat Tourist Attractions” - duly noted Baltimore’s peerless monolith of waste-disposal. And while the Can was not likely the exclusive draw for most visitors, it nonetheless welcomed them with a reflection of local character befitting a city containing museums devoted to everything from outsider art to public works infrastructure. Hell knows, it said a lot more than the ridiculous slogans this cash-strapped city has commissioned in recent years with the intent of drawing tourists, conventioneers and any free-range lobotomy patient with disposable income. “The Greatest City in America.” “Baltimore: Get in on It.” And, most recently, “Find Your Happy Place in Baltimore,” for which the city paid $500,000 to the local advertising firm of Carton Donofrio Partners, after the slogan was rejected by every major fortune-cookie manufacturer. Ah, well - maybe it will finally help to fill the vacant luxury flats that sprang up around downtown Baltimore and the city’s waterfront in the early-Aughts, when conventional wisdom proffered that anyone in the market for a million-dollar condo would obviously want one in Mobtown. When bidding wars over empty shells in want of running water drove many people from the only place they’d ever called home. When the World’s Largest Trash Can - that pillar of global recognition - one day, abruptly and without ceremony, vanished. Indeed, today you’ll find no trace of that cyclopean receptacle, save for the odd cyber-conjured visage. Word circulated that it had deteriorated to the point of becoming a public safety hazard, which may have well been the case. Or not. Or perhaps a 20-foot trash can, world-class or not, was simply deemed an unsuitable dowry for an otherwise personable old gal who, they all insist, would improve her chance at marriage immeasurably if she’d only get her teeth fixed. Buy some of those fancy clothes with the New York labels. Maybe settle down in one of those nice luxury flats, where the price was just recently reduced. It shouldn’t be too hard to find your happy place in Baltimore. Just look for the “vacancy” and “for sale” signs. Or the foreclosed shells that still want running water. Or logon to RoadsideAmerica.com, where you’ll still find the entry for the World’s Largest Trash Can, albeit with the addition of a single word: Gone. But for Baltimore RESCO, it’s still “dirty” business as usual... WILLIAM P. TANDY Order now: |
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