Christmastime always drills home the fact that American consumers, myself included, produce more trash unwrapping our crap than we probably do throwing the crap away at the other end of the craptispan.

    We succeeded, primarily, in convincing relatives and friends that our daughters would rather have clothes than toys this year, but even so the wraptermath was dismaying*.

    Piles of nearly unrecyclable and glossy four-color print boxes, tough and deadly pieces of twisted plastic blister-packaging, wee little metal twist-ties, and paper! Paper! PAPER!

    There has to be a better way, man. Like, why not have just one pretty display box per item of crap at the store and then just put the crap–a Microsofe Zune**, for instance–into a burlap sack at the check-out counter? I could re-use the burlap for a thrifty business-suit or several sets of underwear. Or, at least, I could use burlap for underwear easier than I could wear a razer-sharp fragment of the Zune’s plastic blister-packaging after I’ve torn it apart with a pair of depressed, short-lived scissors.

* only glossary hoverers will note the redundancy.
** I do not now, nor will I ever, own an actual Zune***.
*** Unless one is gifted to me, after which I will unashamedly sell it on eBay or something.