Seriously, what the hell?
I’ve been meaning to take a picture of this bull for a long time. It’s about 2 blocks from our house, in a normal, wooded suburban area – this bull is on a corner, on some guys lawn. It’s so random, and scary when you’re taking a walk in the evening and don’t expect it.
I don’t tend to have the type of friends that send me stupid forwards, but the workplace is a different story. People here delight in sending out junk to everyone, each time I delete it and send a polite email back to them asking not to send forwards to me.
But one boring afternoon I decided to read one, the subject was: “A good idea”
For some reason, instead of deleting it, I filed it into my miscellaneous folder. I’m glad I did, this stupid mail has stuck with me. Not because it’s a good idea, but because it’s such a horribly perfect example of the misplaced sense of entitlement that so many middle-class Americans have.
And so I proceed with my sarcastic, liberal response to this. I didn’t send it back to the person who sent me it, but perhaps I should have.
Oh and I’m not going to mention that the woman who sent this to me has a signed photo from Laura Bush in her cubicle because this really is a non-partisan issue and I don’t entirely blame our inept president.
Oops.
From: Co-worker
To: Everyone, in, the, office
Subject: FW: Fw: A good idea re: Gas Prices
> This is certainly worth a shot and it helps protect
> the troops in Iraq at the same time.
I’m sure.
> I heard we are going to hit close to $4.00 a gallon
> by the end of summer. Want gasoline prices to come down?
> We need to take some intelligent, united action.
I agree, let’s stop buying popular grocery-getting giant SUVs!
> Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea:
Let’s hear it Phillip, no let me guess. We rally to make the government and corporations pass energy policies that actually encourage conservation and development of new technology that doesn’t depend on a non-renewable natural resource!
> This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the “don’t buy gas on a
> certain day” campaign that was going around last April
> or May!
Gosh I hope so!
> The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew
> we wouldn’t continue to “hurt” ourselves by refusing to
> buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it
> was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea,
> has come up with a plan that can really work.
I don’t know about the oil companies, but I laughed because this is extraordinarily short-sighted. The fact there were 2432 different versions of this forward, each with a different no gas day, aside.
> Please read it and join with us!
OK Let’s hear it!
> By now you’re probably thinking gasoline priced at about
> $1.50 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $3.19 for
> regular unleaded in my town.
$1.50 is super cheap. The demand world-wide has increased dramatically over the past decade, and gas prices go up in that model just like everything else.
I’m quite sure $3.19/gallon is still the cheapest gas in the world.
> Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have
> conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas
> is CHEAP at $1.50-$1.75, we need to take aggressive action
> to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace…. not
> sellers.
Oh, I’m conditioned by the oil companies and OPEC nations? Sorry, I thought it was basic economics – supply and demand. I don’t deny that the oil companies do things to exaggerate this model, but they aren’t entirely to blame for gas prices doubling. This rate that you give is quite reasonable.
But I agree that we do need aggressive action, make your next car a fuel efficient car, you’re just commuting to work everyday after all, why do you need a Hummer? Cutting your gas consumption by more than half would drop demand, prices will come down. You know who else this will teach a lesson? The car-makers, we want fuel efficiency, not giant SUVs that get 8MPG.
> With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we
> consumers need to take action. The only way we are going
> to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in
> the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas!
Yeah, that’s what I said.
> And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.
Bu
ying a more fuel-efficient car doesn’t hurt yourself. Crash tests have shown that those giant SUVs aren’t more safe than a safe car. Do some research into safety tests and then buy accordingly.
Additionally, there is no risk in raising the awareness about the lousy energy policy in this country. Contact your local representatives and tell them you want your state to pass stricter policies when it comes to fuel efficiency and vehicle emissions. Several states already done this. It might lead to a short-term rise in how much it costs to get your car inspected, maybe you’ll need to put a few bucks into the vehicle for it to run better, but in the long run it will help.
> How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can’t just stop
> buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if
> we all act together to force a price war.
“War” seems like a strong word, but alright.
> Here’s the idea:
I can’t wait!
> For the rest of this year, DON”T purchase ANY gasoline
> from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON
> and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be
> inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices,
> the other companies will have to follow suit.
Wait, what? This sounds as silly as the no-gas thing. Do you work for a competitor to Exxon/Mobil? More importantly, do you seriously think this will work?
[EDIT] I don’t deny that Exxon/Mobile is evil, I just don’t agree with the reasons outlined in this email
> (Tony’s words: I already don’t buy gas from Exxon/Mobil because
> they get their crude oil form the Middle East and some of that
> money ends up supporting terrorists to help them kill our troops
> and I’ll be damned if any of my money goes to terrorists even
> if it’s unintentional because my son is a Marine, so I buy
> gas at either Gulf or Sunoco because they get all of their
> crude form the US or Venezuela.)
Holy crap. Tony, I’m sorry, you just totally threw me for a loop. Do you know what else indirectly supports terrorism? EVERYTHING! Especially that Ford Explorer in your driveway.
Maybe I was harsh, I just got myself labeled a liberal who doesn’t support our troops. Everyone knows that Venezuela is our buddy, just ask Pat Roberts. We certainly should buy from them instead, there haven’t been any whispers about us invading them too if we had the resources *cough*
> But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of
> Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It’s really simple to do!! Now,
> don’t whimp (sic) out on me at this point.. keep reading and
> I’ll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!
Please don’t, or I’ll be forced to degenerate further from a liberal political commentary to “Email Cartoon” sarcasm.
> I am sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you
> send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)… and those 300
> send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) … and so on,
> by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people,
> we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers!
(Now you’ve done it!)
And if you don’t forward this you’re not a patriot and maybe you are a terrorist and hate america and you’ll never get a boyfriend!
> If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten
> friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!
> If it goes one level further, you guessed it…… THREE HUNDRED
> MILLION PEOPLE!!! Again, all you have to do is send this to 10
> people and DON”T purchase ANY gasoline from EXXON and MOBIL.
> That’s all.
MATH IS NEAT!!!
> How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out
> to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION
> people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!
> I’ll bet you didn’t think you and I had that much potential,
> did you! Acting together we can make a difference.
OMG LOL LOL LOL!!!!11 THAT’S AMAZING!!!
> If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.
i don’t understand all ur math :( but u sound smart i will forward it to every1 in my addre
ssbook kthxbye!
> PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30
> RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN.
ALRIGHT BECAUSE I AM ENTITLED TO CHEAP GAS BECAUSE I LOVE AMERICA!
> THIS CAN REALLY WORK! It will work even FASTER if you send
> it to everyone in your email program. I just did.
OK MY EMAIL PROGRAM AOL CAN SEND EMAIL SO FAST LIKE ASAP BBQ!
I’m done now.
Mmmm turkey on rye is the best.
That’s all for now.
I don’t feel so good this morning.
My stomach has actually been doing really good these past few months, I think switching from regular milk to soy milk has helped a lot, and I’m not eating as much chocolate as I was this past winter. I wasn’t drinking beer and coffee for a while either.
But since Friday morning it’s been feeling bad on and off again. I guess I haven’t been very kind to it these past few days, I really have to be careful about that.
So today, unless I start feeling better, I’ll probably spend the most of day snuggled with some blankets and books. Mmmm.
Yesterday was fun though. We had planned on going down to South Street in Philadelphia, we were going to try to meet up with
I wrote about this store in this entry. I certainly didn’t stress enough that this is a SUPERmarket, as all the comments on it from people were “oh yeah we have asian/int food markets here too.” Indeed, that’s the same thing Michael thought. But really, this is a supermarket, like any other big grocery store that you’d normally shop in, except it has different food. And dishes, and rice cookers, and a food court. So he was somewhat skeptical when we first went in.
I left him in the store for a few minutes when my cellphone rang and I had to edit our plans with
Mostly we just got aquainted with the store. Browsed the snack aisle, which is always fun. Picked up some Koala Cookies, Pocky, and Gummies. Got some wasabi mayonaise and wasabi paste, some Ginger salad dressing, a couple cans of canned coffee drink (and I discovered this morning that Michael drank mine!). We then walked into the food court and Michael said “Oh, we have to eat here.” We did, it was delicious, and I managed to eat noodles with chopsticks, yay me! But the food was spicy hot, and probably not the best thing for my stomach.
I think it’s safe to say that Assi Plaza will be a frequent shopping place for us now, even if it doesn’t have the most convenient location.
After lunch we drove down to
The hiking felt good, but it got tiring quickly because of how warm it was out. We left the park around 6.
We then headed to Media, where we stopped at the Harvest Books Outlet there – 5 minutes before closing, d’oh! I love that used bookstore, all the books are $2 or less, and when we have 45+ minutes to spend there I always leave with a bag or two full. This time we only had time to pick up one book.
After that we headed over to Iron Hill to have a couple beers and some appetizers (again, bad news for my stomach, I am so bad!). After that we went to Trader Joe’s, which Michael had never been in.
Man, I’m glad I don’t live in Media, that boostore, Iron Hill and Trader Joe’s are with
in 1000 feet of each other. Such temptation every day!
After Trader Joe’s we drove back to
Arount 9:30 we went home. My stomach was hurting and I wanted to go to bed.
And now it’s today. We got our copy of Shamanic Journeying: A Beginner’s Guide by Sandra Ingerman yesterday. It’s an excellent book, really gets straight to the meat of Shamanic Journeying, and answers a lot of questions. Of course Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner is THE CLASSIC in this field, but it’s nice to get descriptions on methods from different teachers. I managed to read half of Shamanic Journeying: A Beginner’s Guide last night (it’s only 80 pages), and I’m really impressed, I’m gonna go finish reading it now. *Yawn*
After much hard work, it’s now up:
http://shaman.princessleia.com
It’s a site for both Michael and I to spout our shamanic journeys and thoughts. It’s a work in progress, we’ll be adding and expanding pages probably forever.
It has an RSS feed:
http://shaman.princessleia.com/?feed=rss2
I’m not doing a LJ syndication though, I’d hate for people to comment on these things and never have me see them, heh. I know there is a wordpress LJ plugin, but I don’t feel like making a new user for us and setting that all up.
And I can’t accept compliments on the design, it’s not mine at all. For the first time in a long time I am using someone else’s theme, I just haven’t had the time to make my own. This one fits nicely anyway %)
“I feel like I can’t relax and concentrate, like you’re going to walk through the room, or the cat is going to come bother me.”
“Yeah, we need a room for this.”
We’re referring to our meditation and journeying practices.
That’s when we thought of the space above the garage. We get to it via an outdoor stairway along the side of the garage.
It’s an unfinished room that we currently have some spare household things in, a couple tents for camping. It is not insulated so it’s very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. Although it has a light, there are no electrical outlets up there.
It has potential. We need a room that’s detached from our normal house life. Somewhere where we can close the door and shut out the world. While in our Magic Room we are not disturbed. With a little bit of work this could be the perfect place.
As if we weren’t convinced, Michael reminded me of something I had completely forgotten. When we bought the house, there was a dreamcatcher on the door. I thought we had gotten rid of it, but we didn’t. It’s still there:
If that’s not some sort of sign staring me in the face, I don’t know what is.
We got a new coffee maker here at work. It’s got a digital display, menus, and is all sleek and new looking.
I strongly dislike it.
The old one we had just had three mechanical buttons: Coffee/Tea, Espresso, Hot Chocolate. Each morning I hit the espresso button twice, to fill my cup halfway with hot chocolate and half with coffee – which makes a relatively yummie mocha drink.
I guess what I liked most about it is that it wasn’t something that would break like a computer might, no digital display to go bad. Broken coffee machines are horrible things. The old coffee maker was very simple.
Simple is good when it comes to coffee.
The best strong coffee I drink is right out of our french press. No buttons, no complexity, you just put the ground coffee beans in, add hot water and push down the filter thingy.
Mmm french press coffee.
But the new coffee machine has more buttons and a digital display explaining that it’s making my coffee, tells me to enjoy it, and warns me that it’s very hot. Plus the espresso button is on a submenu rather than being on the front *sigh*
I’ll admit though, it’s fun to play with. Our office computers were down the better part of the morning (arg) and I spent some of that time playing with the new digital coffee maker.
Only trouble with playing with a coffee maker is that it makes coffee. I had a Mocha AND a Cappuccino this morning. Yeahyeahyeahyeah! %D
The week has been going by quickly for me.
I’ve been doing a lot of deep thinking. Too much deep thinking. My brain hurts. All those philosophical questions that float around your head and invade your dreams when you’re studying a new form of spirituality.
I’ve felt disconnected, and not much like myself.
Writing about it helps, but that’s all in a notebook for now (you know, a notebook, made out of paper).
What I need is a good beer and a good chicken sandwich. Maybe I’ll drag Michael out for these things tonight.
And friends, I’ll definitely need to hang out with friends this weekend.
Good friends are so wonderfully grounding.
Tired today.
Around 3am last night I woke up sneezing. I got out of bed to blow my nose, and sneezed about a dozen times in the bathroom. This was weird, I have never had such a sneezing fit before. I tried going back to bed but kept having to blow my nose and I didn’t want to wake up Michael. So I curled up on the couch with my blanket, a glass of water, and the box of tissues. It spent about an hour relaxing on the couch, Caligula came up and joined me. I considered taking some Benadryl, but with it being so close to wake-up time I knew it would make things worse for my work day today. Around 4 I figured my nose had stopped running enough to sleep again, so I went back to bed. I didn’t sleep well, and I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning.
Stupid allergies, they’ve never been this bad.
Which reminds me of pharmacies. For a while I didn’t have health insurance, and without health insurance prescription medication is outrageously expensive. So I shopped around for my medication, ended up going to Skippack Pharmacy. It was a bit out of the way, but I was supporting a local business and paying less.
Now I have prescription coverage in my health plan, so it doesn’t matter where I go. I fully intended to continue going to Skippack Pharmacy, fighting the traffic on 73 to get there. But I keep getting bad vibes from them. The last time I called to ask about a prescription, both women I spoke with were short with me, even though I was very nice. In the past I’ve been waited on by clerks who were taking a personal calls while ringing up my sale, or chattering with a co-worker the whole time. This sort of thing bugs me, and makes me feel like I’m wasting my time trying to support a local business if they’re going to treat their customers with such indifference.
I should just use the prescriptions by-mail program that is included with my insurance, then I wouldn’t need to leave the house at all (and buying 3 months at a time is slightly cheaper).
Now I’m going to the soda machine to get a Coke before I fall asleep.