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Month: September 2007

eh??

eh??

i don’t know if you’ve seen that commercial where the kids are talking to the tv telling their parents to talk to them about sex. and to save sex for marriage. oh, and it’s government endorsed.
i’m not so sure how i feel about the government telling people how to teach their kids about sex. first they give extra funding to schools that teach abstinence-only sex ed, now they’re hosting a website where parents can go to learn (??) how to tell their kids about sex, with terrifying facts like the fact that men can have different chlamydia symptoms.
you know, humankind has gotten along this far without government interference in teaching kids about sex; what’s the sudden motivation?
abortion rates are down.
teen pregnancy is down.
the only thing i can come up with is two things: the new HPV vaccine takes away some of the “scare factor” of having sex and STDs; and birth control usage rates are up, so the government is lowering funding for universities’ health services (including reduced-cost birth control), forcing some women to go without their preferred choice of bc. forced abstinence. but, given a choice, would the government rather subsidize safe sex or subsidize children born of not safe sex?
given that, time to tout the government-supported abstinence television commercials preying on parents’ greatest fear: their special snowflake might have sex before marriage. OH EM GEE!
if i have a kid, it’s getting gardasil the day she turns 11 (if it’s a girl) and i’m bringing out every contraceptive known to man the day we talk about sex. i ain’t deluded.

my late rant!

my late rant!

not even a rant, because believe it or not, i drove to work yesterday and was like, um, why are all the flags at halfmast? who died?
then i got to work and wrote down the date and realized it was sept. 11. no commericalization. no over hyped-ness of the anniversary. but then, it was the 6th anniversary, so i’m not sure if it can really compare to the 5th. i’m sure the 10th will be outrageous, but this year i saw no advertisements on tv for coins made from the metal from the world trade centers, i didn’t witness any over-the-top opinion pieces in the newspapers, nothing.
so what happened to never forget? huh?
on a totally unrelated note, britney’s new songs are kinda…techno-ish.

save your pennies

save your pennies

I’m a scanner.
I’m one of those people who scan the ground for loose change and when I find it, I pick it up pronto. Most people don’t bother with change on the ground. Not me. I don’t care if the penny’s tails up or if the nickel has seen better days, that is money sitting on the ground.
Believe me, it’s not my frugal ways that prompt me to notice grubby Abes and FDRs among the concrete and asphalt. I am not frugal by any means. I do think it has something to do with my aunt Colette.
My aunt Colette split her time between living in Rochester, where she held a job at one of the high schools as head librarian, and Austin, where her family lived. Having no husband or children, I can see why she would want to come to Austin on the weekends to spend time with her loved ones.
But on one of those rare and highly anticipated weekends where I would go visit her in Rochester, that was something worth looking forward to.
We would walk downtown and visit the fountains and shop at the galleria and eat the best, cheesiest, greasiest pizza I remember ever eating at a little Italian place called Bilatti’s. Then the night would end by her telling stories by lamplight in her tall bed that smelled like rose lotion.
But aside from that, I remember she always picked up a penny, nickel, dime, and on lucky occasions, a quarter from the sidewalk, parking lot, grassy hillside, wherever. She was a scanner.
And her scanning was rewarding. When you walked in her house via her laundry/basement, she had a mug rack hanging from the wall, and on each hook hung a red mug with a pristine white inside. And each mug was full of coins she had picked off the ground – always divided by coin. There were no pennies in the nickel mug, no dimes in the quarter mug. She must have had 10 mugs full of coins and a few left to fill. One mug was reserved for bills she found – mostly tattered ones and an occasional five. This was fascinating to me to see all this money she had found.
So I made a pact with myself the first time I saw those mugs – I would start picking up money I found on the ground. I don’t save them to sort by coin into mug, but they do go into the change jar where they will eventually go to the bank and fund some fun activity I otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford. One time, I found a twenty on the ground at the MOA and another time there was a twenty staring at me from an ATM money well.
But twenties or pennies, I pick them all up. And if I’m really lucky, the penny will be heads up.

did you know…

did you know…

…in california and the eastern states where pollution laws are strict, you can buy cars that put out tons less emissions than normal gas-burning cars? they run the same, use the same gas, get the same mileage, but there is a $400 part the manufacturers stick in the car to reduce emissions.

and, did you know that it is illegal to sell/buy this car in states where the pollution laws are not so strict? even if i go to CA and buy this car, i can’t because i don’t live in CA.

linkage to more info

this is the dumbest, stupidest thing i’ve ever heard of. WHY ISN’T THIS DONE TO ALL CARS EVERYWHERE??? global warming would be fixed in no time flat!!

OMG, this irks me so much. one simple fix that costs $400 and it’s ILLEGAL. WTF is wrong with this country.