Which way the path wynds... or, less pretentiously, B's journal.

A friend of a friend is trying to rescue a bunch of kitties from a hoarding situation. She thinks they're pretty likely to be put down if animal control gets to them first. If you are willing to foster (even for a short period of time) or adopt, please comment on her call for help.

If you have even one person in SoCAL reading you, please repost ASAP. Apparently, this situation is likely to come to a head sometime on October 29.

This is a video trailer for a book coming out next year: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism.

Although this contains some potentially offensive material (ethnic family used to introduce the idea of eating animals Americans consider pets, and also images of cows about to be killed as well as dead cows), I am posting it because I really believe everyone needs to think about their food. I do not support the strategy of "just don't think about it because thinking about it is hard and might mean we'll have to change and that's hard."

Did y'all know that Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize?

I think it must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm hearing from more and more mainstream sources that it is NO GOOD.*

This is the most recent article I've seen, which cites not only the resistant-bacteria reason for not using it, but also says that it may be both harmful to wildlife as well as we humans.

When you combine such possibilities with the fact that antibacterial soap (almost always sold as a liquid) is more expensive and has more environmental costs in terms of packaging (thick plastic vs. thin plastic, paper, or nothing) and shipping (liquid soap is essentially solid soap diluted with a bunch of water weight- why ship water across the country when it comes locally out of your faucet?), I have to wonder how it got (and stays) so big, anyway. I think it is all part of some sort of cultural phobia of germs, dirt, and bodies (especially other people's bodies- rubbing soap on your hands that someone else rubbed on their hands, you know?). But hey, facing fears is good for us!

*This may or may not be so for medical personnel, grade-school teachers, and other professions where you're exposed to tons of bacteria on the job. I'm speaking here strictly of what I know, which is at-home use.

Apparently, Reading Rainbow is obsolete, and no one is willing to pay to renew it.

Article from NPR news is here.

I mean, I can't exactly say I was watching it anymore, but....awwww...sad B.

Turns out it was bad after all. So, no patriarchy was at play in that incident. Which makes me happy, despite having to replace the battery.

Something I just heard in a daily environmental e-mail about decoding the codes on produce:

Look for the PLU codes on the labels stuck on your fruits and veggies.

* A four-digit number means it's conventionally grown.
* A five-digit number beginning with 9 means it's organic.
* A five-digit number beginning with 8 means it's genetically modified.

Wow, that's...so easy. I knew the organic one, but not the GM one. Good to know.

I know I've been posting a lot lately, but it's early, and I can't go back to sleep.

I've been dreaming on a common them for months now, and it's starting to unsettle me.

The theme is graduation. I'll keep being back at my high school, or, more commonly, my college at or around the time of graduation. Sometimes the ceremony happens in my dream, but when it does, it's always some graduation ceremony of my own invention- not what we actually did for graduation.

Usually either some friends or some family member are present, or sometimes both.

I should also mention that neither graduation was a happy time for me. I enjoyed both high school and college, but I didn't feel particularly proud of what I had done, and I don't think I wanted to see either of those phases of my life come to a close.

With high school, I remember feeling like everyone was proud of me, but I hadn't made any special effort, and, more importantly, I had the presentiment that I was about to lose connection with all my friends from high school as we went our separate ways- which we did.

For college, I knew I had just barely gotten through college, and the ending of it felt so arbitrary- what made four years a degree? Why not three, or five? I hadn't written a thesis or had a senior research project (that that wasn't required was a quirk of my major) and I think that that must have contributed to that sense of not being done. And, just as before, I didn't WANT to graduate. I didn't want to celebrate me, because I knew I could have done better. I survived, and that was something, but I wanted to do better. And, just as before, I didn't want to leave that place, and that phase of life, and those people.

So, now I'm asking myself, why do I keep dreaming about this? I'm open to hack interpretations, and I'll be kicking around the idea myself.

I'd ask that if anyone comments, please do not mention my schools or friends by name. I usually use abbreviations or allusions to such places and people that, if spelled out, would make this journal less anonymous.

Okay, so maybe this isn't exactly what Tori Amos was talking about, but sometimes I can't resist pointing out stupid things. To wit, this website.

Now I have my doubts about the product, which initially seemed like a good idea, then seemed to have the potential to get a kid teased mercilessly. But, the actual stupid thing? Try to read the text on the home page. I think you'll see what I mean.

Here's something I've been wanting to talk about lately, and I would appreciate hearing others' thoughts on.

It should come as no surprise to many of you that I have begun to grow dissatisfied with my job in the past few months, and I have begun to reflect on why, to discover if it can be remedied, or whether it is time for me to seek a new job.

One of the things that came to me in my reflection has to do with how I am expected to spend my time at work. Since I do technical support, there is always a flow of problems that need solved, and fires that need to be put out. Beyond that, there are things I can do to help prevent such problems and fires in the future. However, I've had some unhappiness lately because I've started to feel that we're implementing new policies and programs and upgrades, not so much because they will improve anything, but just for the sake of doing something new. Just so we can point to something and say "this is how we've been spending our time."

I believe there is an attitude behind this that has something to do with the fact that we are paid for our time, and not for our work. (And I think there's also an attitude at work there that I'd wager is very American, and can be articulated as something like "maintaining status quo is not good enough, we must always be improving things!" but that's not really the focus of this post.)

Thus, since we are paid for our time, it is not acceptable to run out of work. When all the work that needs done today is done, I may not just play on the Internet or go home. Rather, I am expected to find something else useful to the company to do (which often leads to needless work, and, unfortunately, sometimes leads to utterly useless work).

But truthfully, that makes some sense to me, since I am still being paid. However, herein lies the rub: since I am salaried, rather than hourly paid, I am not paid any overtime except in extreme circumstances, AND, if I have work to get done that has a deadline and it is not done yet, I am expected to either stay late, come in early, or put in some time on it while I am at home to get it done. I would not be paid for that extra time.

And, taken all together, this has me feeling like there's something of a double-standard operating here. When I get my work done "early," I may not go home early or use my time for personal tasks. However, if I am getting my work done "late," I am expected to stay late. It's like I'm being paid for my time as long as my time is exactly 35 hours, but paid for my work if I should need more than 35 hours.

Does this seem unfair to anyone else? Has anyone else ever thought something like this?

It makes me think sometimes that I should seek employment where I am paid for my work, not my time, and I realize I have a bit of a moral issue about this, too. It seems to me more natural to be able to put a value on a product I produce or a service I can provide, but to put a value on my time? On anyone's time? I don't think it's too much of a stretch from there to extend time to the span of someone's life, and then say that you can put a dollar value or worth on their very life (and many of us, myself included, have great horror of this when forced to weigh the costs of expensive medical procedures against the potential they have to extend our lives), and I also think that this sort of system of compensation and valuation starts setting up really nasty dynamics of "my time is worth more than yours."

I know this post if pretty rambling, but, thoughts?

So, yesterday I actually took my car in to work, because I was going somewhere afterward that required it.

I put it in a garage, and did something dumb. I left the lights on. When I came back to my car, it of course had a dead battery.

No problem. I have AAA (though I think I may switch to A Better World Club sometime in the future), so I made the call, and someone was there shortly.

He hooked some sort of diagnostic machine to my battery, which, unsurprisingly, said it needed to be charged. He then gave it a jump-start, and, after running my engine for no more than 90 seconds, had me turn it off and tested it again. He then pronounced that the battery was bad, because he said that it was now fully charged, but was holding only about half the charge it should, and offered to put a new AAA battery in for about $125. He had me try to start the car again to prove his point, and, of course, it wouldn't start.

I declined the new battery though, and just had him jump-start it again, because I couldn't believe that the battery was bad- having had no problems with it until now, and this was certainly my fault- and because I recall from my past experience with car batteries that, after you completely drain them, it takes a little while- something like at least a half-hour of driving- for the battery to recharge, and I though it was weird that he so quick to tell me it was bad and push a replacement when I had clearly told him that I had never had problems with it before, and that this problem was because I had left the lights on.

So it leaves me wondering- did someone just try to swindle me? And if so, I wonder if the fact that I'm a young woman came into play in his decision to try and do that, or if he would have tried it on anyone?

PS- No problems starting my car later that night after driving it for about half an hour, or this morning.

A friend of mine posted links to this blog so much I eventually began checking it on my own. I'm a bit behind on it just now (actually, I'm a bit behind on everything online just now), but I came across this post and wanted to hold it for future reference. Comments screened for now. Although it doesn't relate to anything current in my life, it is nonetheless emotional for me, and I don't want that to play out in public just now.

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/08/terrible-bargain-we-have-regretfully.html

My dad forwarded this to me today. Thought I'd inflict it on all of you.

Warning!

If you receive an email from the Department of Health telling you not to eat canned pork because of swine flu, ignore it.

It's just Spam.

Today is about food and saving energy, apparently.

This article suggests that we can all save some water and energy in cooking pasta if we're only willing to stir it a bit more. Something I will definitely consider, as I do tend to hover over the cooking and over-stir anyway.

Reposting from a friend, an article on how moralizing bad habits and health and the accompanying shame that produces is 400% counter-productive insane f***ing stupid.

Features such gems as:

"There’s an increasing and unscientific belief that if you have poor health outcomes, it must be because you did something wrong and you don’t deserve help."

"On top of that, there’s an increasing tendency, if you do get sick, to start looking for what you did to deserve it. The problem with this, besides being inhumane, is a lot of people do the same things and get away with it."

and

"That this sort of idea has any traction at all concerns me, because we should be going in the other direction, trying to find ways to both encourage better health habits and understand that people are not perfectible."

It talks a lot about weight, smoking, health, and shame, but also touches on the anti-vaccination movement, compassion, and an idea I've been reading a lot about lately (in the excellent book My Ishmael) that a lot of systems in our culture (including our systems of of crime and punishment, birth control, education, government, and commerce) don't work because we expect people to be better than they have ever historically been.

So. Highly recommended.

My daily green e-mail today encouraged using aluminum foil over plastic wrap or waxed paper, as aluminum foil is not petroleum-based and is recyclable.

It included the following stats:

"If 10,000 people opt for a box of aluminum foil instead of plastic wrap (and later recycle the foil), we'll avoid using enough nonbiodegradable material to cover all the floors of the White House nine times."

and

"Americans toss out enough aluminum every 3 months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet."

I received this link in an e-mail today from Living Compassion, which I'm sure you've all heard me talk about by now.

Anyhoo, this is a video detailing their progress in the African village they've been working with for the past four years.

It's not too long (less than 10 minutes), has good music, and is inspirational.

I really liked something they had to say around the middle, about how the slow pace of progress there has really allowed residents to integrate, celebrate, and receive new joys (such as new roofs) in their lives. It is something I will keep in mind.