<![CDATA[Gawker: living green]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: living green]]> http://gawker.com/tag/livinggreen http://gawker.com/tag/livinggreen <![CDATA[No Impact Man Blogs Greenly, Odorously]]> Act II and the curtain rises again on Colin Beavan, 43, the man gently shat on by a lengthy NYT H&H profile yesterday—you remember, the guy who doesn't use toilet paper in hopes of landing a book deal. Not content to have his exploits splashed across the newsprint carcasses of dead trees (plus he did NPR!), Beavan also has a blog to chronicle the gradual dissolution of his marriage and answer the "million" pressing questions readers are struggling to comprehend. These range in scope from, "Does your wife use tampons?" to "Was making the choice to leave academia easy or difficult?" [Answers: "Disposable culture is a problem" and "What a random and fun question," respectively.] Strangely, the germaneliest question went unanswered: If dude's so concerned about no impact living and disposable culture, why is he trying to write a book that hundreds will buy and in the process, kill thousands of acres of the rain forest. Or something. —Josh

No Impact Man Blog
Earlier: No Toilet Paper But Plenty of Ass [Gawker]

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=246573&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[No Toilet Paper But Plenty of Ass]]> Meet Colin Breavan, 43; Michelle Conlin, 39; and Isabella Beavan, 2, your cast in the hurlyburly tragicomedy that is today's Times' House and Home section. (And is also another exhibit in how House & Home is killing Thursday Styles.) Colin Breavan, a writer of historical nonfiction, had been cast adrift by the vagaries of publishing and was looking for a new book deal. His Faustian agent thought a book about living a year without wiping might sell well. FSG thought so too.

So Michelle, a tender hearted Business Week writer and wife of Colin, was roped into this yearlong experiment of "No Impact" living. Together the couple discard their lightbulbs, disposable razors and olive oil, vowing to live green. They even confiscate the cleaning lady's paper towels, though in a touching scene, lit only by flickering beeswax candles, the woman makes a plea to keep her beloved vacuum. Our munificent heroes relent. Slowly but surely, the couples friends drift away, repulsed by the "sour odor hover[ing] oh-so-slightly in the air... that is the mark of the home composter," and Colin's annoying mantra, "Oh man, this book is going to be so fucking killer."

Michelle's face, cleansed only with Fresh and Kiehl's product, her teeth caked in baking soda, begins to whither and fade without coffee. At one point, she Razor-scoots through a blizzard. But Colin won't be deterred. His book, he reminds himself, is going to be just so very fucking killer. And so as his family deteriorates, held together only by unbleached cotton and riven by his "ethically murky exercise in self-promotion," as one visitor puts it, Colin quietly weeps on the toilet, too moist to move and too proud to wipe. However will he countenance the fact that Manhattan's water comes from so far away? A draft snuffs out the candle. EXEUNT OMNES. —Josh

The Year Without Toilet Paper [NYT]

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