"We ask that you do."

So I just moved, right, at the beginning of June? I like my new house (rented) and my little yard and the fact that I'm in a much bigger community. Sure, it's nothing like what you guys who live in the internet are used to, but it's big to me. I lived in a town of 10,000 before this and now I'm approaching 100,000 or some such shit.

There's even crime here, kinda.

Anyway, my new place came with two dumpsters, a black one and a blue one. The black one is for garbage and the blue one is for recyclables. Groovy.

I want to recycle, save the planet, all that shit. On the dumpster itself it says: PLASTIC, GLASS, METAL, PLEASE NO WOOD CARDBOARD OR PAPER.

Shit, even I can figure that out.

So all month long I've been sticking my plastic, glass, and metal trash in the blue dumpster, but not my wood, cardboard, or paper trash.

But no one ever came to pick it up. Every week the trash dudes came by and grabbed the black dumpster and left the blue one.

I became perplexed. Often, I would stand out in my small yard scratching my bald head in pure, unadulterated perplexity.

So the other day I called up The City and said (I'm paraphrasing), "What's up with the whole recyclables thing?"

The lady who spoke to me was very helpful and talked to me like I was a special-needs kindergartner. She went through very slowly and carefully what could and couldn't go in the blue dumpster. Basically, she said: PLASTIC, GLASS, METAL, PLEASE NO WOOD CARDBOARD OR PAPER, just like the side of the blue dumpster itself. Then she explained in cooing, carefully enunciated tones how the blue dumpster was only picked up every other week and not, like the black dumpster, every week.

Had I been speaking to her in person, I'm sure she would have reached out and poked my belly and pinched my cheeks. I'm so cute.

Despite being talked down to by a woman who answers the phone for a living, I was pleasant and did not call her a fucking bitch. Instead, I said: "It's been almost a month. No one has picked it up. It's practically overflowing."

She then went over the 'preparation of recyclable materials', which, as far as I could make out, meant I had to wash my garbage.

"So you're telling me I have to wash my garbage?" I asked.

"Oh, no. It isn't garbage. It's recyclable material."

"But you're saying I have to wash it?'

"Rinse it."

"Excuse me. Rinse it?"

"We ask that you do."

"Seriously? I have to wash garbage?"

"Sir, no…"

"Whatever. So are they coming to pick it up ever?"

"They will in two weeks. Your residence was listed as unoccupied. I have now listed it as occupied."

"Thanks." I hung up.

Sorry, Planet Earth, but I'm not washing my fucking garbage. I went out to the alley and pushed the blue dumpster all the way down to a liquor store about half a mile away. There, I shoved it into some weeds.