The Trash Bag Manifesto

(Editors Note:  In the summer of 2013, I worked a course with Adam Swisher and Peter Nichols.  For some reason we became infatuated with our trash bags, its uses and misuses.  So in the spirit of Oscar Gonzales’ Tortilla Manifesto, we came up with our Trash Bag Manifesto.  Peter Nichols did the actual authoring of this and with its posting here, he achieves the distinction of being jaredspaulding.com’s first Guest Blogger.  Thanks Peter. )

The Trash Bag Manifesto

1) The Trash Bag is the first bag open and the last bag closed

2) When selecting the bag to become The Trash Bag always go with the biggest bag available.

3) The food bag, you know – the color-coded duffels with the busted zippers, should never be used as The Trash Bag.

4) When full The Trash Bag should be sealed with a knot tighter than a barnacle’s grip on a middle aged whale’s scrotum.*

5) Used plastic bags do not belong in The Trash Bag. They belong in the Void of Voids, shout out to Bruno Scholl, otherwise known as The Bag of Bags. **

6) Anything that might cause The Trash Bag to suffer a catastrophic hernia must be dulled or crushed prior to introduction (e.g. aluminum cans).

7) The trash bag is not the place for organics or recycling (see #6)  Each of those requires it separate bag.

8) When in doubt, double bag it.

*Whales, it should be noted, do not have a scrotum. They have internal testes. It is the earnest hope of The Author(s) that the metaphor nevertheless remains illustrative.

**The Void of Void deserves its own manifesto. Write it.