It’s weird to be back to the regular old grind of school and pretending to be looking for an after-school job. I wish someone would pay me for that. Or better. I wish Jerry would pay me to look after his stupid truck, which I have to do all the time for free.

However, it is cool to know all about making biofuel and running a biodiesel vehicle. The conversion isn’t actually hard, because you can put biodiesel through a regular diesel engine. In fact, the guy who invented the engine, Rudolf Diesel, ran his original prototype off peanut oil.

Rumor has it that Diesel, the man, was killed by Big Oil to keep his engine from catching on, and after his death, the oil companies made a petroleum derivative, called it diesel fuel, and hushed the whole thing about biofuels up.

If you are switching the engine out of an old vehicle, the important thing is to convert your fuel lines and filters, too, because biofuel will react differently with them, as I recently discovered.

In terms of the fuel itself, there’s all this controversy right now, because people are saying that we’re in the middle of a food crisis, and turning crops and land that are needed to feed people into fuel for vehicles is not the solution.

But, uh, hello, who ever told you to use food crops to make biofuel? The way most people, like Jerry, have been doing it since the sixties, is by recycling used vegetable oil, of which there is tons and tons going to waste in landfills every year.

What Jerry did was go around Ring City and strike deals with restaurants that normally throw out a buttload of used cooking oil. Some of them let him pick it up for free, some of them charge like their deep fryers are crapping gold.

Either way, the whole point is to take something that would normally be waste and turn it into something useful again.

The idea is not to turn corn crops into fuel. That is totally insane. Oh, the media. You so crazy.

Anyway, once you’ve got your fuel, you just need a processor set up in your backyard so that you can clean and thin your dirty old vegetable oil and make it into fuel. This process is called transesterification. One of the best resources online for learning how to do this here.

Just be careful. You’re going to be working with flammable materials and fumes, so explosions are possible.

On a brighter note, you’ll be sending about 60% less CO2 into the air with your fuel, and you won’t be supporting Big Oil – one of the most destructive forces on the planet.

I went to bed last night depressed and thinking it was all for nothing. The story of the mess in the river came to nothing. I was going to have to start all over again. Then I woke up to Jerry screaming at me to come see the early news.

Turns out someone – a nameless informant – came forward and linked the dumped recycling directly to JoyTech!

Woot! Who’s your daddy?

It’s me, JoyWreck. I’m your daddy.

As if it wasn’t so obvious, but with this guy or whoever coming out and saying that he drove one of the dumping trucks, no one can deny it any more!

At least the media can’t. JoyTech certainly can. They released an official statement today saying they had no idea what was going on at the recycling plant.

They claim to have hired outside contractors who were trying to cut corners, and that this ‘tragedy’ was “completely outside the scope of their awareness until today.”

Yeah right. That’s the same thing they said about the whole water treatment scandal in 2006, AND about the huge waste management lawsuit against them in 2002.

Hey Global Improvement Company, maybe it’s time to stop hiring those “outside contractors.”

Anyway, obviously things aren’t so friendly between JoyTech and the Conurban Council now, because the Council made a special announcement on the news tonight that they’re putting together their own group of independent overseers to “monitor standards compliance” at the recycling center for the foreseeable future.

I have to admit that I was hoping for something a bit more spectacular, something along the lines of the entire company crumbling to dust and blowing away on a puff of breeze. But I’ll settle for SO BUSTED.

Not in my city, JoyTech. I’m watching you.

Sorry about the lack of updates over the last few days. I decided to get out of town for the weekend, do some camping, and hide my freaked-out head.

Not very superhero-like, I know, but I figured it was a good idea to disappear until the heat died down a little.

I took my car because it’s probably the last time I’ll drive it before I sell its gas-guzzling ass.

I thought when I got my license and the car a couple of years ago that my life was complete. Then, I could never have guessed where I’d be right now.

Camping was alright. I hiked to the base of Mount Tar, where Jerry used to take me when I was little.

I spent all Saturday getting up the mountainside, only to find a condo development going up to the west, and to the north, a really spectacular view of some heavily deforested land!

Not the landscape I remembered.

I did see about eight eagles circling the mountain around me, which was amazing. I never knew they flew in groups. Apparently, it’s called a convocation of eagles when they all fly together like that.

If you’re life ever seems crazy or overwhelming, I highly recommend climbing a mountain.

Seeing the eagles made me feel really optimistic, because eagles used to be endangered. In the 1950s, there were less than 1000 left in all of the US. But we stopped hunting and poisoning them with DDT, and now there are over 100, 000 across the country, and they’re off the endangered species list.

I figured that kind of means that even when things are really bad, it is possible to fix the problem, and make the future better, instead of worse.

And believe it or not, things kept getting better from there. I thought I might come home to a mess, but when I got back yesterday, Jerry was all cool, and he said Aurora had dropped something off for me.

It turned out to be a copy of the school paper, except we don’t have a school paper, or we didn’t, until yesterday.

Aurora started it, I guess, because her name is on the front page under editor-in-chief, and all the photos are toonified, and who else would do that?

It’s called the Ring High Righter. And the very first front-page headline:

VIGILANTE RECYCLER EXPOSES JOYTECH BLOOD RIVER DUMP!

I guess on Friday, when I was mysteriously absent, some JoyTech thugs showed up at school asking a bunch of questions about the ‘vigilante recycler.’

Aurora asked them if it was true that the recycling was actually being dumped in the river, and they dragged her off and questioned her the whole day!

I haven’t talked to her yet, but the scene must have been bad enough to get her to start a school paper, and report the whole thing on the front page!

I don’t know if anyone will take the report seriously yet, but I’ve had a stupid grin on my face ever since I saw it. Did I ever mention that Aurora is the most perfect, wonderful person on the planet?

Yeah. She is. She’s perfect, and anything can be fixed.

Over the weekend, Aurora wouldn’t shut up about explaining to people that you have to do more for the environment than just recycle. She’s mad because JoyTech wouldn’t give her a straight answer about their waste creation problems.

Normally, I just nod while she goes off about this stuff, but even I have to admit that there’s something seriously messed up going on. Plus, Aurora’s usually too busy on the weekends to hang out, so how could I resist when she asked me to help her make some pamphlets, and hand them out at school?
Jerry said it was useless, but we’ve got a secret weapon.

I thought that if we could show people what’s going on, by telling a story, like they did with Jericho, or like Alan Moore did with V, then they’d understand, so I used this program called Toon-Photo to turn Aurora’s writing into a kind of mini-comic. All you have to do to get people to listen is make the information entertaining, right? It took me all weekend, but it was worth it.

Wish us luck!