The capitol of North Carolina is Raleigh, named after Sir Walter Raleigh. N.C. has a rich history from its roots as a British colony to the tobacco days to the present as a research and university hub (in the middle, anyway). Raleigh is located in the centre of the state. N.C. also is rich in natural resources and boasts mountains on one end and the ocean on the other.
The South has not in the past, been synonymous with progressive, but alot of things have progressed in it for a couple of decades.
Raleigh has decided to make it simple for its residents to recycle more items than most cities. Also they have doubled the amount of recyclables they were processing a year ago. New items to be added: milk cartons, cereal and other food type boxes, and even washed used aluminum foil. However, in the fliers they spent $1,000 printing to be distributed in the mail along with people's water bills, they left that info out. Oops.
When asked if they would inform people about this discrepancy, the city's spokesperson said, "No" and that her people are "educating you, we're telling you, we're giving you the information." (They now have psychic powers and they're sending the info out on the same bandwidth as a Ouija Board)
Oh well. Maybe she can recycle her job. To another person.
]]>
This beautiful girl, wandering around 2nd and San Fernando in downtown San Jose. She's very sweet, seems to be around 2-3 years old and is obviously well-cared for.
No tags.
No chip.
A friend has taken her home for the night, but probably can't keep her. We've notified animal services in the hopes that her owner can be found and an ad is going up on Craig's list. But if she ends up going to the shelter she's not likely to meet with a happy ending.
Do you know her?
Scientists have revealed a complete skeleton they dug up in Mongolia in 2006, is a young (approx. 5 yrs old at time of death) dinosaur from 70 mya (late Cretaceous). The species is related to the awesome T. Rex, and is called Tarbosaurus. It was laying in sandstone in the Gobi desert. It is 6 and a half feet long.
In the next day or two, I hereby solemnly promise to blog about the following:
But first...
It's been a while since I posted some book reviews. But I'm feeling really lazy as the list gets longer and longer, so here is a quick synopsis of what I've been feeding my brain:
Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet was the fascinating story of an autistic savant who clearly maps out what its like to live with his condition. My Rating: 8 out of 10 for being really interesting. The man can recite 22,512 digits of pi for goodness sake! I can't get past 3.14...
Bertie Wooster Sees It Through by PG Wodehouse is another fun romp by the incomparable Wooster and Jeeves, this time at Aunt Dahlia's house. When Wooster and Dahlia get together, it's pure hilarious magic! My Rating: 8 out of 10 for being such a good diversion from life. I want to live in a Wodehouse novel!
I listened to the audio version of this book -- the Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff -- and really wish I'd read it instead. It's the story of a girl who comes home looking for answers, and it is interwoven the stories of her ancestors. The main character, Willie, came off as whiny and immature. Grow up! But I did enjoy the stories of her family. My Rating: 6 out of 10, but that might be higher were I to read the paper version.
Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë -- the lesser-known Brontë -- was the story of a young woman who becomes a governess to help out her family, which is in financial dire straits. My Rating: 7 out of 10 for making me wish Anne was more prolific -- her writing was lovely. As a side note, the book could be renamed The Nanny Diaries: Kids Were Brats in 1847 Too.
Jasper Fforde's fifth book in his Thursday Next series is First Among Sequels. It's been several years since I finished the fourth book, so it took me a while to get back into his crazy literary world. My Rating: 6 out of 10 for being a little flat and harder to follow than the first four books.
I read Joan Didion's the Year of Magical Thinking for my June book club. I felt the retelling of her husband's death and her daughter's illness was very clinical and not emotional enough. But I can understand that's how she experienced it all. My Rating: 5 out of 10 because I was annoyed that she sort of named dropped. In random news, my old apartment was a block away from her childhood mansion (which was for sale for 1.2 million dollars, if you're interested).
In Notes from a Small Island Bill Bryson travels around England, Scotland, and Wales, complaining about the weather, hating modern architecture, but altogether loving Britain. My Rating: 7 out of 10 for being pretty funny, but somewhat competitive and a wee bit whiny.
The Gathering by Anne Enright was De. Press. Ing. It was my July book club book, and it was only for the book club that I finished the thing. It featured light-hearted subjects such as suicide, child molestation, alcoholism, child neglect, sexual repression, near-infanticide, attempted murder, affairs, deranged anger, and running away from your problems. Woo! My Rating: 5 out of 10 for being way too dark for my taste, although Enright's writing was very good. But it doesn't matter how good the writing is if I want to gnaw my own arm off while reading it.
]]>I am a hopeless daydreamer, seriously, sometimes it is such a problem. Like when the teacher is talking about synk flash and I drift off to a time long ago and reenact some embarrassing moment and start to relive it in a different way, one that makes me the victor rather than the idiot. Unfortunately my mother is so socially awkward and this is what I get from her. I watched and learned form a bad teacher. I am not quick witted, my best come back lines happen long after the offending statement. I often obsess over a days social networking and kick myself all over for saying certain things, and not saying other stuff. what was I rambling about? Oh yeah, daydreams...
I remember how many flies are dead in the fluorescent light covers in my classromms growing up, there was another wonderful world in those lights from my 3rd grade classroom. (this was the grade where my daydreaming became a problem, well it was called out as a problem then anyway, it has alwyas been there) I saw a different wonderful place in those lights, that is where the flies were trying to get to, but they were not allowed, flies are kind of annoying even for imaginary worlds.
It was a land where parents got along well, no yelling or screaming, no leaving me behind for a new exciting life outside of my mothers world. No laying in bed all day long and crying expecting me, to get my sister up and ready for school, clean a house that was out of control, no following around my mother in tears wanting someone to help me practice for the spelling bee, I just did not want to be the first one to sit down this year.
In the Fluorescent light world, I was good at everything, I did not even need to practice spelling words. My pants fit me instead of being too short, my socks had heels built into them instead of always feeling backwards, I was proud of who I was, my teeth were white, and I could jump rope double dutch style without getting tangled up in the ropes lined with painful plastic beads. I was not ashamed of having to explain for the 100th time that my religion does not celebrate this holiday, in fluorescent light world, I got to make a valentines box with glitter and the paste that always smelled so much better than it tasted. I got to open all the hand made cards and read of love and friendship rather than knowing that I was that one kid that everyone labled as weird. I was not strange in fluorescent light world, I was just like everyone else, normal. We had enough money to buy regular food, not the black and white labled stuff with the stars across it for some sort of attempt at decoration. My clothes were new, I could take the tags off of them with scissors instead of carefully removing the staples from the thrift store tags, hoping that the strange smell from the previous owner would wash away. Most of the time they stayed with me for a while. In fluorescent light world I had a regular lunch ticket, not the special manilla colored free lunch one, I wanted the pink one like everyone else, I would also have the cute pencils like the other girls had, with all that glitter and cute animals on them. I would have a sticker book filled with google eyes and sparkles, glitter and puffiness, pizza stickers that smelled much better than what we had to eat at home and grape ones that smelled like lip gloss, kitties and puppies. My real sticker book was 6 pages of lined notebook paper stapled together and filled with banana stickers and the ripped smile face ones I would tear off of my classwork, if I got one at all.
In Fluorescent world I was happy.
*SLAM!!!!* I look down slightly to see my teachers scornful eyes in front of my desk. Here I was, embarrassed again. I can hear the snickers of the other kids laughing because I was drifting off again and after having my name repeated several times, I did not respond. I was somewhere else. I begin to cry, because I was that girl. I cried a lot. I would be sent to the principals office again, he would threaten to give me a swat with the giant wooden paddle if I did not pay attention in class. He would start to lecture me about what I needed to do differently, then out of the corner of my eye I see it, the pattern of dead flies on the inside of the plastic light cover. I stare into it and I am embraced by all, I am again in fluorescent light world. Happy.
I am a farmer who raise ducks and cows. The animals have a total of 9 heads and 26 feet. How many ducks and cows do I have?
Submitted by The BlueTie.
4 Cows + 5 Ducks.
]]>I've just noticed that on my sidebar tag cloud, "friends", "fun", and "travel" are the Big Three. How great is that?
I'll be honest, nine months ago, I would've figured it would be more like "depression", "melancholy", and "OHGODWHY?!?!"
Life takes surprising turns when you're navigating the course on your own.
What stands out on your tag cloud? Besides "vox hunt" and "qotd"?
Anyone who gives a shyte, is trying to shop and live greener. However, do not be fooled by products that are on the hogwash level. I thoroughly enjoy exposing hogwash, whever it may reside. (quite unfortunate for those who are full of it) And, being your typical Aquarius (meaning self aware and self citical), I even like to bust on my own self, right in the middle of a conversation, if I detect the slightest inkling of it. This applies without a filter unfortunately in job interviews, on dates, and at dinner parties.
Green Weenie Award for no hogwash:
Newman's Own. ALL profits are donated to charities after taxes ($200 million so far). Anything that can be harvested and/or manufactured with a consciense is done as such. Packaging rarely contains plastic (bottles are glass). Example: Organic lemonaide is what it says: Pure Filtered Water, Organic Sugar, Organic Lemon Juice From Concentrate, Organic Lemon Pulp, Organic Lemon Juice, Organic Lemon Oil. (why do people capitalise the items in ingredients lists? I am so not going through that and changing it all to lower case. Sorry.) The Newmans make spagetti sauce, salsa, popcorn, steak sauce, chocolate, salad dressing, and more.
American Apparel: Not only do they manufacture their clothing in a sweatshop-free environment and not only do they offer organic cotton stuff, but they sell vintage sunglasses they recover. How cool is that?http://store.americanapparel.net/vintage-eyewear.html
Hogwash:
Seventh Generation. Products are packaged in plastic. That's not the only thing. For example, their maxi pads: "packaging is recyclable". In what universe? Do YOU know a place you can drop off plastic bag packaging (or mail it in, since driving it somewhere would defeat the purpose, unless you have a carload of it)? Also, their feminine pads are NOT made from organic ingredients. The only distinction is they're chlorine-free. In fact, the top layer is polyolefin. They can do better than this: organic paper, or recycled paper, and cotton layer, not polyester. (By the way, chlorine exists in nature. The ocean is chock full of it: NaCl. Cl = chlorine.)
Wal-Mart: "Live Green"! (Then do not shop at Wal-Mart). In their Live Green webpage, they feature Purex laundry products. "Smaller bottles...are better for the environment!" Om...laundry products made from petroleum and packaged in heavy plastic bottles are NEVER better for ANY environment. Make your own detergent from borax, baking soda and bath soap, or buy Dr. Bronner's soap or another veg oil based laundry soap, if you want to use green laundry detergent, dammit. (Yes, I know I misspelled damnit. I like it better with two m's. Picked that up from a friend. I think it's cute.) To give them a tid-bit of credit, they do sell recycled plastic t shirts and an organic cotton tote for $7. But...they donate a lot of money to Republican campaigns and this cancels out any good deeds (and puts them in the negative. They donated to Dubya TWICE).
Okay, four companies is enough for Thursday. Peace out. Piece out. Peas out. I know, shut the f*ck up.
]]>