Coverage of me and other train wrecks: my mama, subway nut jobs, sex and the environment.
11.15.2007
Mushrooms and Hair!!!
If you've been living in a bubble, you should know that there was a big fat oil spill in San Francisco's Bay recently. Well, to cut to the chase, volunteers are using mats made of human hair to soak up the oil. The mats then will be seeded with oyster mushrooms, which will grow on the mats, absorbing the toxic gunk and turning the pile of hair and oil into compost. Isn't that the best news you've ever heard?!
How exciting that this is even possible. How exciting that there's a non-toxic solution to the spill! Rather than spray the water and beaches with oil-absorbent chemicals, which is like using poison to clean up poison, there's this better way of cleaning spills. Oh I'm so rooting for this method to become the standard when cleaning oil spills and for people to figure out other healthy ways of dealing with toxic messes.
If you don't watch the video above, the gist is that the producers aren't giving the writers of TV shows and films their fair share of DVD sales and Internet Downloads. The DVD percentage that the writers currently receive has not changed in about twenty years.
Enter the New York Times, whose liberal facade is a joke to anybody who still reads it. NYT just ran a piece today that offers readers alternatives to their favorite cable shows while the Writers' Strike continues. Are your favorite shows going into reruns because of that pesky strike? Then here are some other shows you should check out (these may also be on reruns, but you may have never watched them before). If you like 24, they suggest you try LA Ink.
Okay, NY Times--or more specifically NEIL GENZLINGER, the "article"'s writer--keep digging your own grave. Rather than tell readers--"hey, this writers' strike is going on, here are the issues at play, here's how you can take a stand," you're giving them more TV options? And you even joke about it in the title of the article: "Go On, Bold Couch Potatoes, Click Into the Unknown." Not only do you recognize the inaction of the couch potato, but you're encouraging it when you should offer the couch potato some options--sure, there are other channels to watch, but some of the couch potatoes out there may want to get involved in the writers' strike. The NY Times and Mr. Genzlinger, however, don't want to go down that road, they only want their readers to indulge mindless apathy. At this point, watching reruns or other shows is tantamount to crossing the picket line.
Day by day the New York Times--which incidentally is composed of WRITING, of WORDS, of the same matter as the scripts and screenplays of the members of the WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA--day by day that publication becomes less relevant and begins to sound more and more like Entertainment Weekly hosted by Bobby Bush. Fine. Let the Style Section become the standard for all other sections. When the old guard who continues to read the NY Times dies, you can be sure the members of my generation will not pick up the slack in readership. We get our news and entertainment from better outlets.
What happens when government and businesses mingle? Too much shit to fit on a web page, Alex.
Well here's another mutant child of such a marriage--disaster capitalism.
We've been seeing it in New Orleans and Florida, we've seen it in Iraq, and now we're gonna see it in Greece. Disaster capitalism is when a disaster clears the field of local competition so that big businesses can come in and take over. After the mega fires in Greece this summer, which destroyed communities and forests alike, government-ass-kissing developers of resort hotels and second-home suburbs are making headway into taking over prime (and now, charred) real estate.
Basically, the fires put the locals out of business, so they have no money and no way to rebuild their towns. The government isn't opening its pockets, so, enter big business, which has money and power. Unfortunately, big business doesn't help local economies, so the people most screwed over stay fucked. Fire charred their land....the government is burning their dignity and hope.
Out with the old in with the new=No justice, no peace.
John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, declares that global warming is a scam. The most memorable statement: "The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril."
Global Warming IS a scam. We don't need to rethink our relationship to the environment any more than we need to stop dumping pig shit into waterways or pumping carcinogens into the soil, or filling the air (and our babies' lungs) with industriul caca.
Global Warming is a hoax, so...relax. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Imagine a world where the air is pure, where forrests abound and coral reefs frolic under the waves as polar bears dance with northern lights. Keep your eyes closed and imagine.
Our cats, Yucky and Luna, have been begging for food since 2PM. Feeding time is still two hours away.
Yucky tends to be loudest in her demands. No, not demands, more like supplications. She begs. She whines. She pleads, "Pleeeeeaaase." Yucky uses about 5 different sounds to ask for food, all of them annoy me and I know if she just understood how to tell time from a clock or if she was sensitive to the complicated lives of humans, that she'd back off a bit. She'd foster patience and self-restraint. But then she'd be a human with an animal's life.
How simple to be an animal. Eat, sleep, run, hide, fight, mate. That's it. That's life in six monosyllabic words.
How much more complicated our lives seem to be in comparison. We all have the same basic needs as Yucky, but we've created intricate systems of communication and value by which to fulfill them. Jobs, promotions, money, investment, double-entendre, alcohol, computers, space missions, pharmacies. The list is as large as there are nouns in our language.
