Guilt Free Littering
Friends, this is from The Onion. It is SATIRE; don’t go getting all worked up!
New Eco-Friendly Packaging Triggers Boom In Guilt-Free Littering
July 21, 2007 | Issue 43•29
ROCKFORD, IL—Nick Sundin used to be neurotic about littering. The 37-year-old pediatrician admits he kept trash bags in his car, and would even pick up and throw away garbage he found on the street. Since boyhood, Sundin said, he was keenly attuned to the environmental degradation littering caused, an attitude triggered by the famous Keep America Beautiful “Crying Indian” public service announcement he saw on television as a young man.
Not anymore.
“These ‘eco’ products are amazing—they’ve totally changed my life,” Sundin said. “Now, I just toss my used Seventh Generation–brand paper plates out the car window, knowing they’ll soon be absorbed into the earth.”
The growing “green” trend in product packaging, which emphasizes the use of recycled, biodegradable post-consumer paper-based materials and relies less on petroleum-derived polymers like styrofoam, has unleashed a spontaneous trashing of sidewalks, roadsides, and pristine wilderness by gratified consumers. Though some environmentalists and scientists were caught off guard by the movement, experts say it is here to stay.
“The stigma attached to littering is at long last being put to rest,” industry analyst Tom Schneider said. “As long as manufacturers are packaging their goods in unbleached paper and biodegradable, cornstarch-based plastics, more and more consumers will discard their refuse wherever they please, knowing it will safely decompose within 10 to 20 years. Call it the ‘New Compost.'”
From The Onion; click here to read the entire article.
My comment: What is so sad, is that this looks like places in Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, where people have just dumped stuff without any regard to the environment.
Spam and My Readers
My friends, most of the time if you comment and include url/web references in your comment, you will be sent to moderation, even if you are a regular commenter. You are welcome to include references, it will just take a little longer for your comment to show up.
If you haven’t commented here before, if you are lucky, your comment will go to moderation. If not, it will go to spam. I try to screen the spam, but it mounts up so quickly that there are days when I just delete it all.
Please, if you are legitimate, not a porn site or advertising some weight-loss program, not fake Rolexes or some idiosyncratic sex practice, keep trying.
I hate spam. And I love WordPress for weeding most of it out so thoroughly.
Seafair in Seattle
If you are planning a trip to Seattle, one of the very best times to go, in terms of things to do, is during the Seattle Seafair. Every neighborhood has a parade (The Chinatown Parade – ooops! politically incorrect! The International District Parade is my all time favorite, followed closely by the downtown Seattle Torchlight Parade, held at night), the Blue Angels perform their acrobatics overhead, and the festival ends on a bang – a day long hydroplane race (very very very fast speed-engineered boats) on Lake Washington.
One year, the Torchlight Parade, my Mom’s favorite, fell on her birthday, and we were able to rent a hotel room for the night, right over the street, from which she and Dad could watch the parade. To do so, we had to get on a waiting list, and then to sign a waiver that we understood that the room was just for THIS one night, and that we understood it gave us no rights to that room on any future Torchlight Parade nights. Families in Seattle have standing reservations, year after year, for these precious rooms.
Many people head for the lake for the hydroplane races. My very favorite race, favorite of all, was at my sister’s house, when her husband brought a big TV out to the pool, facing the pool, and we all spent the very hot August day floating on rafts in the cool pool, watching the races. We were SO burned, but oh, what fun.
August is a great month in Seattle, with blue skies and great warm daytime temperatures, cooled by the sea breezes at night. It’s a great time to go to the market (THE Market, the Pike Place Market) and to visit the huge flower farms, the beaches, and beautiful little towns on Puget Sound.
Supersize Me
Have you heard about this movie? It is a documentary, and you might think “Oh YAAWWWWWWNNN” but this one really kept going. I love visiting our son; I learn SO much.
The creator of this movie decides that for one month, he will eat every meal, three meals a day, at McDonald’s. And he has to try every entry on the menu at least once. And if the employees ask him to super-size, he has to do it. It appeared that he also made a rule for himself that he had to finish every meal. I don’t know how he did it.
Before he does this, he visits three doctors, a cardiologist, a gastroentrologist and . . .hmmmm, maybe an internal medicine specialist. He has health care professionals who will do blood readings every week and weigh him in. He starts at 185 lbs and very low body fat, and his cholesterol and triglicerides are to die for – excellent readings. His girlfriend is a vegan chef, so he has been eating beautiful meals, but not a lot of meat. (He is not a vegetarian.)
We watch him eat many of the meals. On the third day, his system rebels, as he is trying to finish, I think, a double quarter pounder, and he vomits. It isn’t pretty. At one point, his girlfriend says he has lost his sex drive, and has far less energy than before.
At the end of the first week, his weight has gone up to 203 – 12 lbs in one week! Worse, his cholesterol is rising rapidly. The second week, he is feeling sick and the doctor says he is developing a fatty liver, from digesting all the fats and sugars he is eating.
At the end of the month, he has gained 25 lbs, his system is in total rebellion against all the fats and sugars, and the doctors have warned him that he must stop now to reverse the damage.
Threaded through this adventure are sides, where we learn how much sugar the supersized drinks contain, and that even the SALADS at McDonalds have sugar in them. The calorie count for one of the salads exceeded that for the Big Mac!
I have to admit, there is nothing like a fast food hamburger every now and then – maybe once every six months or so – but this movie is a must see if you are eating at a fast food restaurant even once a week. The “food” they are serving is so processed, it barely qualifies as food.
The man who conducted this experiment went on a vegan diet for a while when he finished, and it took 8 weeks for his blood readings to return to normal, and 9 MONTHS for him to lose all the weight he had gained.
This was a fascinating movie, and a must see if we want to counter the rising tide of obesity spreading around the world. If it were an illness, people would be mobilized. As it stands, obesity is going to kill more people every year than smoking. The narrator says this is going to be the first generation of young people whose lives will be shorter than their parents, thanks to fast food. See this movie! Take your children!
There is a post script, and another reason I love this movie. As we were watching, my son said “Mom, thank you for cooking all those dinners for me as I was growing up.” He and his wife are very exercise and diet conscious, and I am proud to say, they live very conscientiously, trying to recycle, trying to eat fewer processed foods. What a gift that “thank-you” was!
Father and Son Find Viking Treasure
A father and son in England, who spend their weekends treasure hunting stumbled across a treasure buried in a farmer’s field, worth an estimated $2 million. Buried more than 1000 years ago, the treasure has remained hidden in the ground all these years.
You can read the story <a href=”“> at Viking Treasure Found.
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What I don’t understand is why they believe it was buried by the Vikings, rather than buried by someone trying to hide the wealth FROM the Vikings?
Blue Angels in Pensacola
Today the Blue Angels are performing in Pensacola, over Pensacola Beach. Reports yesterday said it is harder for them to perform over water, because there are fewer “marks” to help them orient themselves.
(No, I didn’t take that photo, it is a Blue Angels PR photo)
Aerial displays have always thrilled me. There was a team that used to perform every year in Doha, too, I think it was a French team. Imagine, having a career as a stunt flier, in one of these powerful machines. Oh, what fun.
Our first worker arrived well before seven in the morning yesterday; fortunately I am still jet lagging and had been up moe than an hour when he drove up. He was followed shortly by the contractor, who took out my range top, in preparation for the tearing out of the kitchen counters on Monday, and later by the tile guy, coming in to measure and give an estimate on what he will charge to put tile on the wall, once the new counter and cupboards are finished.
We are putting in a Silestone countertop in Blue Sahara. It isn’t really blue, it is a variety of sand colors, with some blue flecks, the exact colors of their wedding china.
I looked at granite, but didn’t like all the upkeep, the sealing, the stains . . . someday, when I have a grown up house, I might have marble, which I had in Tunisia and loved, but I always worry about red wine spills. 😉 Meanwhile, I think the Silestone is going to be a great fix. The current countertop is an old white streaky laminate, reminds me of a diner from the fifties. They liked it so much, they ran it right up the wall to the underside of the cupboards.
Dear old friends who live nearby came for lunch, and we went to the Oyster Barn. They loved it. Said “this is REAL Florida!” which I totally love. We had grilled tuna, which had a smokey deliciousness, and grilled grouper sandwich, also looked good. We talked about our days together living in Germany, travelling in France – oh, the fun we had!
Missing You, Adventure Man
I’m eating here, all alone, in a booth for one, surrounded by a million other customers. Son and his wife are at work, and Sonny’s isn’t their favorite place. It’s low brow, it’s folksy, and oh, how I miss southern barbecue when I am back in Kuwait.
The waitress, Tammy, is country and sweet and cares about all her customers, I have the fried catfish with Sonny’s baked beans and a side of cole claw . . .I have my non-sweet iced tea, I have my Sudoku . . . missing you too much, Adventure Man:
Maxx Adventure
Today, a break. Renovations are going fine, normal setbacks, above normal completion rate. Today, no workmen in the house and I run free, I am celebrating.
And how do I celebrate? Well . . . here I am at Barnes and Noble, where I can buy some wireless time to upload some photos, and oh yes, the new James Lee Burke / Dave Robicheaux novel is out so I had to buy that, too, for the next long plane ride.
Earlier, a trip to TJ Maxx. It is a TJ Maxx Home – I’ve never been in one of those before, and oh! what a thrill. I found a carry-on, just like the one I have only a little bigger and at HALF what I paid for the one I have now, and have loved, and don’t want to part with except that it is splitting in some places where I have had to pack it too full. 😦
And I also found what I was looking for. Remember I told you about the Misto, and told you where you could order one? I found it on the shelf at TJ Maxx, marked WAAAAYYYYY down. I love it. See if you can spot it.
I also thought of you when I saw this sign. Kuwait isn’t the only place with ambiguous, and very funny signage:
What’s in Your Toolbox?
What do you give a young adult, graduating high school, who has just about everything he wants? What do you give him that he doesn’t even know he wants?
It was Christmas, and we were trying to figure out what to give our son. We eventually decided on a tool box, and we had a lot of fun filling it – hammers, fasteners, screw drivers and Phillips screw drivers in various sizes, nails, putty, screws, a level, a measuring tape . . . he like it, but he was a little underwhelmed.
Until he got to college. At the end of the first week, when he called us, we could hear the joyful confidence in his voice.
“Guess what!” he said. It wasn’t really a question, he was going to tell us.
“No-one else has a tool-box here! All the other kids need help putting their bunks together (there was some smart entrepreneur who was marketing loft-like bunk beds and room-customizing kits to all the incoming students, making, I am willing to bet, a fortune) and I’m the one with the tool box!”
We could hear the smile on his face.
And isn’t that life? The more tools you have in your toolbox, the better equipped you are to handle what life throws at you? Even the unexpected – if you have the right tools.
For me, those tools have been varied.
• Reading books has introduced me to new ways of thinking.
• Learning foreign languages gives me different perspectives.
• Living in foreign countries helps conquer ignorant ideas about people of other cultures.
• I can eat a wide variety of cuisines without fear
• I can swim, use a rifle, cook, and speak in public without my voice quavering
• I can laugh. Thanks be to God.
All these tools have been acquired, some, like patience and kindness, at great price.
So what are your tools? What has helped you deal with what life throws your way? What tools have you grown to deal with life’s challenges?
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