Sidewalk recycling stations - yeah, but who’d actually use it?

This news item about sidewalk recycling bins in Kansas City got me thinking about the same idea here in Des Moines. But then I wondered - would the bins be for returnables like pop cans? Because I can certainly hear the bottle- and can-retailers crying for the opporutnity to get out from under the bottle return obligation.

And if returnable pop cans are included, would the bins make those items inaccessible to those who retrieve them from trash cans?

There are three reasons I haven’t historically recycled my pop cans:

1. Returning them is inconvenient and disgusting. I refuse to spend my time counting them, rinsing them out, waiting in line at the grocery store courtesy counter, or stuffing them into one of those machines that are always - ALWAYS - located in a dank, garbage-smelling enclave.

2. The money is not worth the effort. If I liberally estimate that I buy two 12-packs of Diet Coke per month for consumption at home, that’s 24 cans a month x 12 months or 288 cans. At a nickel apiece, that’s $14.40 a year or $1.20 a month. See #1 above.

3. There are others who could use the money. By leaving them where can collectors can easily find and retrieve them, I allow someone else to benefit who really needs the money. And if no one returns them, it’s money the state can use rather than forcefully keeping a lesser amount. (Pretty magnanimous of me, considering how devoted I am to #1 above.)

I guess my problem is I can’t really think of any recyclables I carry with me when I’m walking - the very occasional paper cup of soda from a fast food place, maybe, but it’s not like I’m out there walking around with empty household plastics, looking for a way to discard them.

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Add comment February 11th, 2008

Iowa Democrats peeking in your wallet despite claims of ‘having plenty’

I was reading some backposts in Shane’s blog recently and came across this tidbit from January 15, where he previewed the State legislative session. At that time, the Register reported:

“There’s enough money for Iowa lawmakers to keep the promises they made last year, even though ‘naysayers out there’ are casting doubt, Democratic leaders said Monday, the first day of the Iowa Legislature’s 2008 session.”

In just under a months’ time, however, these Democrats have made it clear they were completely full of crap, as they’ve tried at least three different ways to raise our taxes despite having “plenty of money.”

Here are Iowa’s Democrats “keeping their promises”:

First, they wanted to double the “deposit” on returnable bottles, but then only give you part of it back upon redemption.That pretty much turned the deposit into a ‘tax.’
 
Then, Governor Culver said he’d be happy to review any proposals for raising the sales tax - which Democrats have always argued is a regressive tax that hits low income Iowans the hardest. 

Now, Democrats have proposed a comprehensive road plan that raises the fees on virtually every vehicle transaction in the state, from new-vehicle registrations to license fees - all in the name of finding money for the shortage in road maintenance funds. What’s especially sad is how transparent they are about the political aspect of passing their massive plan: knowing how unpopular it would be in an election year, they’ve made it clear they need Republican support:

“Democratic leaders have made it clear they won’t force the issue on their own and need Republican support to avoid being labeled as tax-and-spend liberals in the next campaign.”

Republicans should exercise what little power they have and refuse to cooperate. This entire session (led by this governor) is quickly becoming the shining example of how Democrats claim to be the party of “the American People,” but then take every opportunity to squeeze every Iowan for every dime they can get. 

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2 comments February 8th, 2008

Notes from the Super Bowl

Why are we not allowed to say the phrase SUPER BOWL?? Did you notice how so many promotions leading up to it used the phrase “The big game”? WTF is up with that?? Is the National Football League the only entity allowed to say the phrase THE SUPER BOWL? Well guess what, the game is called The Super Bowl. I watched the SUPER BOWL. The “big game” is called THE SUPER BOWL. And I don’t mind saying it!

SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL

So sue me!

Hey we really did watch the SUPER BOWL, even though we are not very big athletic supporters. And frankly the SUPER BOWL only served to remind us why we don’t watch much sports. We were bored to tears until the last five minutes. Do they do this on purpose? I did feel bad for the Patriots, I hate to see them work that hard all year and then have the only game they lose all year be the SUPER BOWL, but hey, the Giants just dug down deeper and found some heart, so they deserved the win.

Like a lot of folks, we were also looking forward to watching the commercials during the SUPER BOWL, if only to see what America’s major marketers would slap up there for $2-plus million per spot. Personally, I was disappointed overall. There were a few stand-outs - my favorites were (counting down to #1):

3. Bridgestone Tires “Critters Scream”
2. Brdigestone Tires “Alice Cooper & Richard Simmons” - I mean, WHO would put those guys together in the same commercial? Just oddball enough, and yet still focused on the product.
1. E-Trade with baby and clown - “I under-estimated the creepiness factor” - that’s classic!

I absolutely didn’t get the Salesgenie spot with the Pandas. It felt like that spot was translated directly from the Chinese version and just hoisted up there. Maybe it was meant to be quirky-weird, or uber-cool (like that “Hello Moto” crap from Motorola a couple years ago - ecchh) but for me it really missed the mark. I’m also a little tired of Will Farrell in sports attire… he needs a new schtick. I liked the one with Shaquille O’Neill as a jockey, and the Coke spot with James Carville would have been my run-away favorite had I recognized the Republican. (Apparently it was Bill Frist??) The spot would’ve been funnier if the right-wing guy had been Karl Rove.

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Add comment February 4th, 2008

Minor Annoyances #1

When did I start walking splay-footed? Is it a by-product of having gained weight over the years, where my weight has been redistributed somehow? Is it a sort of sub-conscious laziness like my bad posture? Or am I really, truly trying to morph into my mother??

Our state government leaders have gone stark raving mad. Since last fall they have a). tried to tell us that pumpkins are decoration, not food, and therefore taxable; b). tried to sell us on the idea of doubling the deposit we pay on returnable cans and bottles with the added bonus of only giving us back 80 percent of that deposit when the bottles/cans are actually returned; and c). actually debated the notion of making businesses forfeit their gift-card sales money to the state if the gift cards go unused - as if they have any… ANY… right to that money whatsoever. They are absolutely out of control.

Where in the @#$ is Al Gore with his global warming spiel, now that we’ve pretty much had temps below freezing for two months and counting? And you know what? While we’re at it I’ll just ask: who really gives a crap if the temperature on the polar ice cap drops an average of a half-a-degree in the next hundred years? Last I checked water freezes at 32 degrees. So if the temperature is an average of -20.5 instead of -21, is that REALLY gonna make a difference? And again, so what if it did. All that water coming down might move the oceans’ edge inland by a few hundred miles, but ultimately doesn’t that only shorten the time it takes me to drive to the beach?

Speaking of Mom, my mother used to be the “go-to gal” in our family for information on just about anything. You could ask her, “Hey Mom, what was the name of that guy who (name stupid human trick from 1940’s)?” And she would know it, and share it willingly. Well, Mom has been gone since 1996 and it seems that yours truly has taken over that role. The only problem is, I’m not nearly as full of information as Mom was, and I find myself increasingly annoyed at people who ask me questions to which I could not possibly know the answer. I used to have a room-mate who would ask me things like, “Do you think (her boyfriend) will get mad if I wear a red skirt?” As if I had any notion whatsoever of said boyfriend’s psychotic health as it pertained to individual colors or clothing items. That used to make me chuckle. These days I think I would probably have to strangle her.

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Add comment January 22nd, 2008

Reincarnation and George Clooney’s Aquafina

Have you ever noticed that people who begin a sentence with “In a past life, I was…” always end that sentence with “…the beautiful daughter of deposed royalty” or “… a wealthy landowner,” but never with “…a malformed filth-covered peasant”?

The reason I’m thinking about this is that an interesting question popped up in Yahoo’s “Offbeat Questions & Answers” section today:

Is it true you can’t drink any water that someone else in history hasn’t drank first?

It says a lot about me, I suppose, that my first reaction to this question was not “Wow, that’s an interesting scientific query I had never considered.” No, my first thought was that it was just one more way people could claim to have some pseudo-connection to their favorite celebrity or historical figure:

We’ll probably see “I DRANK GEORGE CLOONEY’S AQUAFINA!” before we see “A COW PEED IN THIS RIVER AND NOW I’M DRINKING IT!!” I mean really, which would YOU rather boast about??

By the way, the answer to the question is apparently yes, in the sense that we live in a closed ecosystem where no new water is ever added and no existing water ever escapes.
 

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Add comment January 19th, 2008

God’s most annoying creature, part 1

At first I was going to say, “the deer” - the deer must surely be God’s most annoying creature, for it does nothing to serve humanity and is really just a link in the food chain for the lesser life forms - all of which, if pressed, could most certainly find something else to eat if need be. And besides, there is a dead one in my dad’s back yard this week, and I couldn’t really think of anything that might be more annoying than trying to dispose of an eight-point buck with its hooves (do deer have hooves?) in the air.

But after this evening, I’m going to have to vote for the kitten - specifically, the kitten pictured here, which is now a full-grown cat - as God’s most annoying creature. Here are a few of the reasons why:

1. This cat listens for the first beep of the morning’s alarm clock, then charges full-speed into the bedroom and jumps on your stomach. What this feels like - is being sound asleep until you are whomped in the gut with a rubber mallet.

2. This cat zooms through the house using its claws for traction and leaps onto high-up surfaces such as the dining table and, as of tonight, a bookshelf which was teetering precariously even without a 20-pound cat barreling into it.

3. This cat routinely takes a slotted spoon and scoops out his own litter, sprinkling it all around the bathroom floor so it makes a fine layer of general uncleanliness and sticks to the humans’ feet. Until tonight, when I think he must have uprighted the entire litterbox to get enough litter out so he could pee on the floor and have plenty to cover it, thereby creating the single biggest and most annoying cat litter mess I have ever personally had the pleasure of walking through. Perhaps I would do the same if I were forced to poop in the same room in which I took my kibble; annoying nonetheless.

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Add comment January 16th, 2008

The elderly, the homeless and the environment are pawns in my scheme to beat the State out of 15 cents

Dear Governor Culver,
Today I took proactive steps to prevent an old woman from purchasing her prescription medicine. I purposely prevented a homeless person from buying a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. And, I did irreparable damage to our state’s delicate eco-system.

How? I threw away three pop bottles eligible for the State bottle deposit.

I did this because your ridiculous notion of “bi-partisan support” for doubling - DOUBLING! - the deposit on cans and bottles, and then only giving back 80 percent of the deposit to the consumer, quite frankly annoys the shit out of me, and I hereby refuse to play along.

So guess what: I’m takin’ my bottles and heading to the landfill. Catch me if you can, ya big lug!

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Add comment January 15th, 2008

An annoying linguistic habit we should break

I’ve written about annoying linguistic habits before in other venues: I’ve lamented the erosion of our language due to unchecked political correctness, and I once picked on some poor slob blogger who used the word “pension” when he clearly meant “penchant.”

The erosion of real communication, however, is not the only problem I have with language these days. One of the most annoying habits I’ve seen, eclipsing even the infiltration of rapper-words into our everyday speech (”Fo’shizzle, Ted, I’ll get that report to you right away”), is the overuse of clever prefixes and suffixes added on to words as linguistic short-cuts.

Folks (and by “folks” I mean media types), it’s time to stop adding “-gate” to the end of the name of every political scandal. Why? Well not for the reason you’d think. Not because it seems on the surface to be the liberally-biased media’s thinly veiled attempt to continually malign Richard Nixon, who’s been dead for quite some time… but because - to be honest - the new generation of news hounds doesn’t even know what it means.*

This notion first occurred to me a few years ago, when I had the rare opportunity to go to a movie by myself. I picked a movie that I knew the rest of my family would have had no interest in - a small-budget and utterly charming flick called “Dick.” This promised to be the kind of movie I knew instinctively I would love, because it broached the subject of one of my childhood’s pivotal events (the fall of Richard Nixon) with obvious humor and the awkward premise that the goings-on in the Watergate Hotel were perpetrated by a couple of teen-age girls with crushes on the President.

Of course it figures that the two people who sat behind me in the theater were the type to talk all through the movie, but what I heard from those rear seats astounded me: the woman, who sounded like she was at least in her 30’s, didn’t know who Richard Nixon was or anything about Watergate! Her husband/date/boyfriend, obviously a little older, was having to explain it all to her, pointing out which of the movie’s comic bits were references to famous Watergate “clues” (like the duct-taped doorway and the 18 minutes of missing tape).

It occurred to me then, and it’s a sad fact now, that the significance of adding “-gate” to the end of the names of political scandals is already lost on the youngest pol-junkies in our midst, and will soon be lost altogether as our influence gives way to the Snoop-Dog generation. I’ll admit that sometimes the practice results in some clever hybrid words (Hillary’s “Travelgate” and John Kerry’s “Medalgate” are two that worked well), but more often than not it simply creates awkward hybrids that don’t trip easily off the tongue (”Monica-gate,” “Iran-Contra-gate”) and only succeeds in making us look like a bunch of hopeless squares who still think we’re the target market.

*important to note that the journalists still know what it means - they are taught infinite reverance for all things Woodward and Bernstein in Reporting 101. It’s the new generation of news consumers I’m talking about who don’t know what the hell -gate means.

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2 comments January 15th, 2008

Back-dated posts are really annoying

For the record, this blog began on January 12, 2008. Anything dated prior to that was carried over from a previous blog. Deliciously annoying, no?  

Politcal blogging is a really difficult thing to do. Why?

1. Very few people care about sound political arguments. So much of it is just pure vitriole and empty snarky comments. I’m not saying I don’t partake, I’m just saying that’s how it usually goes.

2. There are no un-spun raw facts to be had by the average blogger. I don’t care who your sources are - they have an agenda. And anything you hear and report comes through the filter of that source’s agenda. Any time I report on something, whether it’s first-hand knowledge or quoting the newspaper or some other source, I keep that in mind. And you should too.

3. Too many Americans admit to getting their news from comedians who think that the funny bits they used to do in their standup routines equate to “speaking truth to power.” And who, frankly, have no more interest in speaking truth than your average Congressman. And who, furthermore, hide behind the “I’m just a comedian” shield whenever someone challenges some particularly nasty or patently false thing they’ve said on the political stage. Here’s the deal with me and humor: I know I’m not a comedian. It doesn’t stop me from occasionally trying to be funny.

All of that said, there are certainly some very good political bloggers out there. I’m not one of them, but I’ve loaded a few of the most annoying posts from my old political blog just to plug a few holes I found in the woodwork here. I’ve even back-dated them so they’re extra-annoying (but at least in context in the time-space continuum).

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Add comment January 12th, 2008

The lunch post

Alrighty then, I figure if the goal is to make this at least one of the Internet’s most annoying blogs, the least I can do is post a completely pointless picture of my lunch. Here it is before I chewed it up; once it begins to digest, of course, it’s harder to discern the individual parts of it.

This is actually not just any lunch. This is my favorite lunch to have at work. In fact, if I conservatively estimate that I’ve eaten this same lunch twice a week for 50 weeks of the year, that’s 100 instances of this exact lunch. I order this lunch so often, the Chinese family that owns the food stand sees me approaching from 50 feet away and automatically begins to assemble it for me.

Yeah, I’m that consistent.

For the record, the lunch consists of “chicken strips,” mashed potatoes with chicken gravy, corn, and a Diet Coke. Because the “diet” Coke cancels out the calories in the frying oil and gravy.

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1 comment January 12th, 2008

Kucinich’s crafty ploy to impeach Dick Cheney

Simplified:
1. Kucinich bypasses the normal means to debate impeachment of Cheney in the Senate, because he knows his fellow Democrats are against it, and introduces the measure with “prvileged status.” (Here’s why)
2. Democrats immediately vote to table it so it will die without debate, expecting Republicans to do the same.
3. But Republicans force the hand by voting AGAINST tabling, which would mean that the Democrat fringe would have to actually present their case for impeachment and suffer the inevitable beat-down.
4. Democrats, in a panic over potentially looking like morons controlled by their own fringe again, propose to move the measure into Committee, from which they’ll ensure it never emerges.

Really simplified:
Q. How do you make the far left look foolish?
A. Force them to actually debate their ideas!

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Add comment November 7th, 2007

Man sues police over porn collection

A man convicted of secretly video taping female residents of an apartment complex in California, recently released from jail, is suing the San Rafael Police Department to get back his large collection of porn videos and magazines. The cops don’t want to return the material, for obvious reasons. “It’s a really good collection,” their Police Chief said.

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Add comment September 12th, 2007

Stall etiquette not just for men

In light of the “men’s room etiquette” schooling we all received last week courtesy of Sen. Larry Craig, I thought a brief round-up of rules from the ladies’ perspective might be in order. Here are some unwritten guidelines you might not be aware of:

1. Courtesy flush - yes, gals use it too… it’s only proper to flush the poo even if you’re still doing the paperwork. Little-known fact: women also sometimes use what’s called the “hailing flush,” which is where you flush as soon as you hear someone else enter the bathroom. Newcomers can pinpoint the stall from which the hailing flush originates, and will therefore refrain from trying the door to the occupied stall. Especially useful because it seems that making the two parts of a stall door latch actually match up is just too damn hard for the people who install stalls.

2. Sharing resources - It’s okay to ask the person in the stall next to you to pass some TP under the stall wall. It’s NOT okay to ask them to pitch your used tampon for you, even if the little discard bin in your stall is full.

3. Shoe-tiquette for women - perfectly acceptable to study the shoes of the person in the stall next to you to figure out who makes a lot of potty noise. NEVER cool to remark about it to them later.

4. Gals should always wear clean undies. Those who study shoes might inadvertantly also study the undies bunched at your ankles, and then you’ll be busted not only for the decibels in your drop but also for skidmarks. And trust me: no one wants to know what your “period panties” look like.

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5 comments September 4th, 2007

Shit Paper. No really.

From the in-house organ of a local print shop (see another classic print-shop tidbit here) comes the happy news that tree-free paper… long relegated to the realm of other plant materials like hemp, corn husks and banana peels (”Hey Cheech, does your Lillian Vernon catalog smell like weed?”)… is now being made of sheep dung. That’s right, a company in Wales called Sheep Poo Paper uses their product to make postcards, stationery and greeting cards.

Which leads me to wonder, what other documents might be suitable for this bona fide shit paper? A few that come to mind:

• Congressional bills

• Utility bills

• Supreme Court Dissenting Opinions

• Tax returns

• Eviction notices

• And of course, any book by Hillary Clinton (okay that was too easy).

Says the Sheep Poo website, “We take great care to collect super-fresh sheep poo from the beautiful (and rainy) mountains of rural Wales and take it back to the mill…” Which means, that they must actually employ people to collect the wet poo and transport it. You think your job sucks? How’d you like to be a Welsh sheep-shit schlepper?

It does make me wonder whether the job pays well… and whether it’s automated to *any* degree.

I’m always a little amazed at the sincerity of the “green” movement (see previous horrific response to the notion of sea sponge tampons). Being a typical self-centered resource-waster myself, it amazes me that people will devote their lives to the concept that even though the earth has been in existance for millions of years, little old humans have managed to fuck it up beyond repair in the 200 years since the industrial revolution. I’ll admit to being almost completely uneducated on this whole topic, but doesn’t that seem a little far-fetched, illogical, and … well, self-centered?

At any rate, I think the tree-free paper movement is something that Al Gore should really champion. And yes, I’m only saying that because I think the sheep-shit-schlepping thing would be a great photo opp for him.

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Add comment February 22nd, 2007

Chimps, tampons & Arianna Huffington

Now that Arianna Huffington has dismissed the plight of the Kurds as being irrelevant to any discussion about what we’ve accomplished in Iraq (”So what?” she rhetorically asked Bill O’Reilly when he reminded her that Saddam Hussein had persecuted and murdered Kurds prior to our arrival), it’s time to focus on truly meaningful issues. I’m talking, of course, about chimp equity and sea sponge tampons. These two pressing issues have only recently ventured onto my radar, so I’d like to deflect your attention away, temporarily, from Arianna’s new website, www.minimizethekurds-beforeconservativesmakeapoint.com, and have you take a look at these instead.

First, someone recently sent me a “Monk-E-Mail,” using a cute little interactive device employed by a popular resume/job-seeker database website. The idea is simple: type in some text, select an animated graphic of a monkey, and send the whole thing in an email to your friend. The message you type will be delivered in the form of a poorly animated talking monkey, using speech-reader software that sounds like it hasn’t been updated since it debuted on Stephen Hawking’s Commodore 64.

In reading a little about Monk-E-Mail, I was surprised to learn that some people actually oppose it. Their objection? That it exploits chimps for entertainment purposes. In following up, I learned that there is an entire movement afoot to abolish the use of apes, chimps, etc. in the entertainment industry altogether. I was astounded to realize that some people (oops, I mean some further-evolved apes) actually want to deprive future generations of that most hallowed of birthday traditions, the monkey card. Groups advocating this position probably thought their relevance would be forever tied to television showings of “Every Which Way But Loose,” or worse – re-runs of “Lancelot Link” over on TV Land. But their cause once again becomes newsworthy as the wildly popular Monk-E-Mail spreads like a virus across the Internet.

The second issue that might divert our attention – at least momentarily – is the campaign encouraging women to stick sea sponges into their vaginas in an effort to reduce the number of cotton tampons in our landfills and sewer systems. Apparently, sea sponge tampons are a “green” alternative to manufactured feminine hygiene products. They need be replaced no more often than the cotton variety, but they ultimately last longer and are environmentally friendly because they are reusable.

In addition to the inherent “ick-factor” associated with cleaning a tampon – any tampon – for reuse, I’m just not convinced that sending Spongebob up there is a good idea no matter how absorbent he is. What about bacteria? Parasites? The fact that they are living creatures? (Okay, formerly-living creatures. Still, would you stick any other dead animal into any personal orifice? I think not!)

In fact, the only thing that might persuade me to give them a try would be a television commercial featuring a talking chimpanzee in an Arianna Huffington costume, as long as he doesn’t use the words “green” and “vagina” in the same sentence.

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Add comment September 12th, 2006