So it turns out I’m a cancer on the butt of the earth.

I didn’t know I was a cancer on the butt of the earth until just recently. But isn’t that what on-line quizzes are for? It used to be the “Cosmo” quiz, but that’s so 1995. We’re moving into the electronic age of self-loathing now, baby.

I thought I was – if not a great little liberal – at least a passable one. And that includes all of the prerequisite environmental stuff. I wrote letters to my senators over the whole drilling-in-the-Alaskan-Wildlife-Refuge thing. (Yes, really.) I remember to recycle my pop cans about fifty percent of the time. I drive a car with good gas mileage, although not a hybrid. (In my own defense, they didn’t make them the last time I bought a car.)

But that, in turns out, makes me only slightly better than the guy who drove the Exxon Valdez into the reef.

I was tooling around my liberal websites and happened upon a conservation organization that I hadn’t heard of before but that appears to be doing some good work. (At the same time, I was waiting for the bleach to work on the Night-of-the-Living-Dead fungo stains on my bathroom grout work, so I had some time to kill.) And the website had a “how eco friendly are you” quiz, so I took it.

I think the results are pretty clear.

And now I’m willing to take my punishment like a woman. So here goes. In repentance for my evil doings, I invite all the furry creatures I have spewed toxic waste at over the years to line up with the large tree branch of their choice and take a swing at me. I deserve it. Go ahead. I’m ready to take my monkey beat-down. And my lemur beat-down. And the dolphins. The rhinos, the pandas, the giant squid. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Yes, I’ve spit on them all.

I don’t recycle ten percent of what I could. I leave lights on. I don’t print on both sides of my computer paper. I use the really toxic stuff to keep the powdery mildew off my roses. (I tried the green stuff, but it didn’t work.) Oh, the list goes on.

So after my monkey wounds heal, I’m going to do better. Really. I am. I swear.

Excuse me now, I have to go recycle something.