From Puce...: Community Project?

[danviento]

I don't know how many of you are NRO readers (found here: feed://www.nationalreview.com/index.xml), but lately Mary Eberstadt has had literary strong of what she calls The Loser Letters, a modern take on C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters featuring the "championing" of atheists and atheism. While I don't find them as entertaining as the original, the whole concept of knocking down false credo by offering their own advice has always struck me as ironic genius.

With this in mind, I've been thinking: why not try and pull something off of similar means, but with the whole "green" movement as the subject at hand? English and writing was never my strong point, but I'd love to give this a shot. Someone asked if I blogged, and I can honestly I don't currently and haven't in the past. However, I do have a website to promote sideline work I do outside of work (needs updating), and it would be just a simple matter of adding a new page link to have a blog there, or at least a posting of these letters- Now isn't that gutsy? ...professing a disbelief of MMGW and its ilk right there next to a source of business. I'll have to work the details of that part...

In any event, I'm here to ask for ideas, brainstorming. devil's advocates, what have you. Mary had enough sense of style to pick up on Lewis' amusing use of labels. For example, in her pieces she refers to the evangelistic atheists as "brights," and all others as "dulls," or picks up on the usual Christian capitalization of the 'G' in "God" and transfers it to the narcissistic "You." It's ironies like this that aren't spelled out, but always have me chuckling.

To me, the cult-like fanaticism of the greens makes a project like this wildly appropriate. As I've noted before, I used to buy into it myself, and even took classes on how to use some of their proposals and apply it to building and site design- basically guilting/deceiving the owner into wasting money for returns they'll never see. Part of my daily news includes tech columns, some of which propagandize 'green' in tech, which I often take the time to refute in the effort to blunt our nation's most expensive commodity (when I'm not working, of course). NRO, IBD, Planet Gore (feed://planetgore.nationalreview.com/planetgore.xml), American Thinker, among others, give excellent coverage of the latest and greatest in green federal advocacy. Rush usually has some interesting tidbit for us to pick up on too. With all of this near daily influx of info, what better pool of material is there to draw on?

At this point, I'm looking for labels. They've got to pull from the usual mantra: Green, climate criminal, holocaust denier, ego-conscious, etc., and have the ring of 'righteous' zeal, but yet have that ironic twist. By using new expressions that play on the original words or ideas, you can instill initial curiosity, and add a punch-line shortly thereafter. If they amuse me enough, I believe it will summon up the desire to see these through.

At this point, it's just a weak starting point. Thanks to yet another CNET 'green article,' and a recent reading of the latest Loser Letter, I started to refer to the whole 'green' ideology as the 'puce' ideology, or speak of that group of howling fanatics as "pucepeace," mainly for the obvious reference to puke. After a quick check, I learned that my long-established understanding of puce as a green color is incorrect- it's actually more of a muddy, dark pink. However, the image of us having to slowly bleed into the dust to save mother earth (making said puce color) struck me as a weak version of the type of irony I'm looking for (not to mention I'm wondering how many won't correct me in the comment strings).

So please, send me your thoughts, comments, suggestions, derision, or whatever commentary you want to contribute. I'll be certain to note it at the end of the work.

P.S.-   Does anyone know of an online source for the text of the Screwtape Letters? I'd like to have a version I can have my machine read to me when I can multi-task.

[paleocon]

Synonyms for the color "green" - aeruginous, greenish, ultramarine, verdant, verdigrisy, verdurous, virescent, virid, viridescent.

Try this too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_green

Alas, there does not seem to be a color named "seasick green."