But I have to say, I’m so fucking sick of all this “green” shit. First, “green” is not a verb. Stop greening your home, your house, your office, your building. It’s a nice color coded way to say, “i’m trying to be conscious of what an environmental douchebag I am, and maybe mitigate some of the incredible guilt I may feel for living in the USA, which, in terms of world energy consumption, is like glutton at the all-you-can-eat buffet.” Seriously, all this moral superiority wrapped up in the word “green” makes ME turn green, and not from envy, either. The cumulative effect of all this bullshit “Greening” is circling around to bite us in the ass, and yet we’re all bellying up to BUY MORE SHIT that COSTS ENERGY to PRODUCE because it’s been labeled ‘GREEN.’ At the energy buffet, the US and all its denizens need to be told, “YOU BEEN HERE FOUR HOURS. YOU GO HOME NOW.”
1. Corn based fuels? Bad idea jeans. Because once again the production of food for fuel as opposed to feeding people elsewhere who don’t have any fucking food will trump any logical humanitarian concerns. We must drive! All of us! Everywhere we want!
2. All these reusable grocery bags in the stores, with pretty flowers and whatnot? MADE IN CHINA. PROBABLY BY AN EIGHT YEAR OLD. MAKING EIGHT CENTS an HOUR for fuck’s sake. And then flown over here en masse so that we can feel superior for using them over and over until they fall apart and we buy another and throw the first one into a landfill - but it was mass produced so who cares about quality? Then I’m given the dirty look for grabbing extra plastic bags from the store, when I reuse them consciously as many times as I can, for wet clothes, cat litter, dog poop (oh! Look at me! I’m a good person! I pick up my dog’s poop, unlike some other green-loving tree-humping assmonkeys out there who let their dogs take mammoth craps all over the place and DON’T PICK IT THE FUCK UP), storage, etc. But no, my conscious reuse of plastic bags is nowhere near as special and important and self-congratulatorily smug as a shitful, also plastic, allegedly reusable not-for-profit-foundation backed bag.
3. Organic cotton clothing? Great! Made in sweatshops by four year olds earning less than a liveable wage? Oh, don’t look at that part. Look at the pretty organic part of the label, not the “Made in Taipan” part that allows people to skirt the whole “Made in the USA” thing while not paying for US-based union labor to make that there garment.
So, you wondering who stabbed me with the tazer of crankass?
Here in Jersey, we’re having a bit of a budget crisis, and the Gov. wants to raise tolls, but says he won’t raise the state gas tax. Bull fucking shit, sir. Raise the tolls. Raise ‘em hard. Go for it. Spank their asses till they yell for more toll raising. And while you’re at it, grow a goddam pair and raise the gas tax. If greening is so goddam fucking important, then decrease the number of drivers by forcing people to consider their consumption of fuels and their use of the roads which creates more pollution. Mass transit might actually fucking improve if it becomes the only viable option for people who are faced with the requirement that they think before they drive, and before they consume.
But no, “green” is a trendy concern, and people want to choose what green items they spend their green cash on. To be told to spend more green cash on things like gasoline or over traveled toll roads, which, while ameliorating the budget crisis would also go a long way toward LOWERING the POLLUTION LEVEL FOR GOD’S FUCKING SAKE, that makes people grab green pitchforks and light fire to things with green eco-friendly lighter fluid because goddamn it, this is about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of driving aimlessly wherever the fuck we want, which is probably over to Whole Foods so we can pat ourselves on the back for buying an organic papaya that was flown in from Uruguay.
It’s not always going to be like this. It’s not always going to feel like you’re drowning in work. It’s not always going to feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. It’s not always going to be so hard to relax. It’s not always going to be like this.
And the reasons that it is like this are good ones. Keep swimming.
]]>Which is what I said: “I am very happy, and I love my life.”
]]>I can board plane now? Thx.
]]>You could not pay me to care about the papal visit to the US. Try to find some real news. Isn’t there a pregnant celebrity you could harrass instead?
Morag
]]>I’m fundamentally a shy person, which is laughable if you know me in real life but it’s true. I do not know what to do with people outside the regular venues in which I normally encounter them. Work people are at work. I rarely run into them outside of work. Home people I see near my home. Everyone operates in separate spheres in my world. I’m compartmentalized like the Container Store lives in my brain (and oh, if it did, maybe my house would be better organized).
]]>NO!
I’m twitchy, I’m telling you. It’s hard to keep a good Bitch silent.
]]>I am seriously exhausted. Baba woke up between 12:30 and 2am, and half the time he was cooing in his sleep, which required Hubby or myself to rush in there and shove a pacifier in his mouth, simply because if he keeps up the sleep-cooing, he’ll wake himself up and be majestically put out. So we’re both tired.
But on the whole we had a good weekend at home, which for us has been a rare thing lately, because our home, in the midst of renovation, is not always pleasant. I bought Freebird a much-adored toy on eBay, so his weekend was made extra more awesome by the electronic stylings of the Wiggles play along guitar. Baba was happy to practice sitting up and playing with his baby toys - he’s of an age where he’s into toys. Oh, the long slide that begins now.
But soon our weekends will be filled with one or the other of us traveling. I go to a conference in a little under a week; Hubby takes a long weekend in Vegas at the end of the month. In the middle is Passover, which, dammit dammit dammit, is on a weekend this year (BOOOOOO!) and through all that I have a mammoth writing project underway.
I’m looking into ways to train my body to need less sleep, but so far, my solutions are chemical, and too much caffeine tends to make a strung out nutcase out of me. I need to need less sleep, even as I need more sleep.
]]>
Anyway, I was asking Freebird about what we were watching, and I said, “Is
that bubbles, or is that goo?”
Hubby: “Bubbles or goo?!”
Morag: “That is a perfectly acceptable question to ask when one is watching
Baby Einstein.”
Morag: Shhhhh. Shhhhh. *contemplates whether the pacifying effects of Baby Einstein: Baby Mozart are a good idea at 3am. Probably not.*
Baba O’Riley: I AM MAD. I DON’T FEEL GOOD. I AM HOT. I AM MAD. BLEEEEEAAAAAAT. BLEEEEEEEEEAAAAAT. AND I DON’T WANT YOU TO SIT DOWN. I WANT TO WALK AROUND AND BE HELD UPRIGHT AND LOOK AT EVERYTHING. I AM MAD! MAD, I TELL YOU! WAAAAAAAAAH!
Morag: OMG. It is 3 am and I’m carrying around a ~20 pound baby. I will probably not get any more sleep. I wonder how badly I’ll function tomorrow having started my day three hours early? Dude, you are heavy. SHHHHHHHHHH!
Baba O’Riley: WOMAN I TELL YOU AGAIN! I AM HOT! I DON’T FEEL GOOD! I AM HOT! BLEEEEEAAAAT! NO! NO SITTING DOWN! I WILL START TO FALL ASLEEP AND THEN I WILL KICK YOU IN THE ARM! WHAT A GREAT IDEA! KICK KICK KICK BLEAT BLEAT BLEAT KICK KICK KICK BLEEEEAAAAAT!
Morag: This sucks.
Eventually Baba passed out, Hubby put him in the crib successfully without waking him up, and we all went back to sleep. Six am arrived way too damn soon for us, and Baba, the lucky boy, slept until nearly 7.
I hope he does that sleeping thing, minus the bleating, tomorrow morning.
]]>Over at the other site we’re running a prank that’s part evil, part tribute. We’ve been “merged” with our biggest online competitor, Dear Author, and now we’re writing letters as reviews for books, under the names “Jandy” and “Jarah” (A play on the fact that everyone who blogs at DA has a pen name starting with “J.”
I’m so pleased with how the April Fool’s site turned out. Candy - Jandy - did a great job. I love it.
]]>And now I have ideas about the multitude of glass platters in the shape of giant vagina flowers that hide in my china cabinet.
]]>Hmmm, I think to myself. Perhaps there is a train service that goes somewhat express-ly to Montreal? So I Google “express train to Montreal.”
There is one! Via the Harlem Railroad. Huh. Harlem Railroad? Never heard of it. Lemme look.
New York Times! It’s from the NY Times! How cool!
Oh.
Article date: May 22. 1870.
Never mind.
]]>If you use Lowe’s Home Improvement to do something to your home, and by “use” I mean “buy” the materials at the store and then “hire” their contractors to do the job, you are not, in fact, doing it yourself. You are not “building something together” with Lowe’s or Home Depot or any of those types of stores. You are also not saving much money over hiring a contractor and getting an estimate, explaining to the contractor your absolute limit in money you can spend, and having the contractor procure the materials and the labor him- or herself.
In fact, just because you went shopping for the materials in a very dirty and dusty store does not mean you have any ownership over the actual work being done. You’re shopping and hiring a contractor.
And you’re hiring a contractor, and this is the important part, that you are not interviewing yourself. You’re relying on a giant conglomerate to hire and vet a contractor who will then come to your home and do work with little notice and zero inspection of the premises where the work will be done.
So you’re shopping for an item, then handing over the installation - of a counter, a floor, blinds, windows, a door, whatever - to a total stranger who you didn’t select to do work that that stranger is ill prepared to do.
Nine times out of ten, that contractor whom you don’t know and didn’t vet personally will not do the job you wanted. And it’s not like you have any follow up because tomorrow they’ll have another job to go to, far far away.
So when you go to a big box store and hand over so much of the responsibility for installation and follow-through to a total complete freaking stranger who you don’t even hire or of whom you can approve or reject, it’s not about you. It’s about them getting the job done quickly, easily, and allegedly cheaply. Except when it has to be done over again because the first time wasn’t nearly good.