Yesterday, Network World published a follow-up article to the Government Accountability Office’s report on electronics recycling and disposal of “e-waste.” Not worth reading if you don’t have the time (or just dedicate yourself to following even more depressing ecological/economic exploits transpiring the world over), but the report brings up some interesting points that make me a tad curious if my annual effort to collect and recycle personal electronics (cell phones, batteries, monitors, etc.) through various corporate-sponsored, city-wide events is nothing more than an indirect method of relocating my shit to uglier, more troubled parts of the world.

While I perhaps was naive in assuming that the recycling process was performed by dudes wearing lab coats [and listening to Kraftwerk] — and that’s an image I’ve never actually fully had, thanks to the internet, reading, and the works of artists like Edward Burtynsky (whose images of e-waste dumps in Chinese villages are beyond words) — I’d atleast suspended my own frighteningly vivid skepticism for long enough to amass a pile of monitors, dead computer components, cell phones, and batteries in my Brooklyn basement in anticipation of moments affording ecologically responsible disposal.

The article goes on to state that a good bulk of these “recycled electronics” from various sources end-up in China and India — contrary to the aforementioned naive, Kraftwerk-and-lab-coat-filled vision — where devices meet hazardous, open-air incineration or acid baths (to strip precious metals from circuitry). Mixed loads of working and non-working electronics alike are also reported to be dumped indiscriminately in Africa for scavengers to pick apart. Naturally the EPA turns a blind eye to these activities.

Is this forming a rich tapestry of post-apocalyptic landscape visions for anyone else? Fucking hell!

It’s been a long time coming — but after a great deal of deliberation and several hours-long, intensely-focused Google Image Search sessions, I’m pleased to announce that mountain goats are my new favorite animal.

[Note: I have positively no idea what my previous favorite animal was.]

Break out the Louis Roederer Cristal Brut, pop the cork, and slowly pour it into the long flowing coat of Jasper, the Official Mountain Goat of blog.josephx.com, where all August is “Epic Mountain Goat Image Month.”

I decided to go against my Mantra of Yore and say “Fuck it, make an inaugural post.” After all, it seems like the proper thing to do, especially since this blog is the figurative Winchester Mansion — stairways leading this way, doors in the ceiling, ghosts on the lawn. The design is a derivative, the concept of a blog isn’t original in the least, and a disclaimer [as a statement of intent] declaring such at least makes me more comfortable telling you, the reader, that you should expect nothing more than the pedestrian and trite.

That said, a list of resources that made this horseshit possible: 

• WordPress
• The Journalist Template (modified, naturally)
• Eric Martin’s Blog on “Conditional Navigational Links” (don’t ask me why it’s not built into WordPress)
• Lightbox 2 Plugin
• CSSEdit (one of the greatest applications ever made, ever)
• The gorgeous PF Synch Pro Black by Parachute (for the header logo)

And of course coffee, music, blahblahblah. In the throes of sheer blogging ecstasy (imagine a soft-focus image of Fabio humping a silk sheet-wrapped keyboard), it should also be stated I was able to login and post words/photos/etc. using the new WordPress for iPhone app, which is no short of genius (and an excellent enabler of obsessive-compulsive disorder, if that’s your scene).

Okay. Cue fireworks, etc. See you around.