'Have you ever noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?' - George Carlin

Ah, Carlin... of course, he also said, "The planet is fine. The people are fucked."

Speaking of which, I interviewed eco-activist Annie Leonard this week--you've heard of her, right? She's the lady who did this very cool, short film on YouTube called, "The Story of Stuff." (If you haven't seen it, you really ought to. Seriously. It's only 20 minutes and she also breaks it up into even shorter segments and it's very easy to understand and comes with really cute animation and it's very important, uh, stuff so don't be a pansy about it--just WATCH IT! That is all.)

Anyway, I met her in Berkeley and she was very nice--we bonded (for a half-second) because she's from Seattle and I had just flown in from a wedding there a couple hours before (more about that later...if you're lucky). She's also going to be speaking at this weekend's Bioneers conference, along with Michael Pollan, Andrew Weil and others. I'm thinking about going on Sunday, if I'm not too book-and-booze hungover from the previous night's LitCrawl--last year's was so very inspirational (OK so I'm talking about both events now).

Here's the rather lengthy Q&A that resulted: "The Story of Annie Leonard--All the 'stuff' and more..."

[PHOTOS: PS cover w/Annie Leonard by James Hall; Bioneers earthy by Tim Porter]