Put on a Coat...

So after a record 16 blogs for me last month, apparently I am slowing down this month. Either that or nothing noteworthy has been happening in my life. So Super Tuesday came and went and Obama had a great showing. He continues to surprise people by winning states he "shouldn't." I am hoping that Michigan decides to have another caucus here. There has been talks lately, due to the fact that the race is so close, that we will have a real caucus so our delegates can be seated at the convention. It would be nice if our state was recognized, mostly because for the life of me, I can't seem to figure out how an entire state (or two) can be ignored simply because of the date we cast our ballots. It would be unfair however to seat the delegates and not have another vote. Hillary was the only one on the ticket and therefore obviously won the state. I'm interested to see what is going to happen...














In other news, I'm getting tired of watching people "suffer" through the winter. There seems to be a disconnect between when you are a kid and when you are in college of how to dress for winter. It used to be that you put on 8 layers, then snow pants, boots, gloves, a hat, a scarf and an 8 inch thick winter coat to brave the elements of a Michigan winter. Then you get to high school and realize that since you aren't playing in the snow that much anymore that you can just wear a fleece or whatever. And that was okay, you're only exposed to the elements from the time it takes you to walk from your car into the school. But when you get to college things change. When you have to walk 15 or 20 minutes you need to dress like you should. Everyday I drive around and see all these kids trying to look hip with their north face fleece and no hat, or gloves or anything else. They hunch over and keep their head down with their feet shoved into their pockets in an effort to block the wind when all they really need to do is put on a coat.

News flash: A fleece is not a coat. It's an accessory. Sure it keeps you warm. In the fall. When there isn't a wind chill of -9 degrees. When the leaves start to change and the air is crisp. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of fleece "jackets." I have 4 of them actually. They are all wonderful when the weather is above 30 degrees or if I'm just going to Meijers. But if i see another person walking to class looking like they are gonna cry, shivering their balls off, I'm gonna kill them. I'm gonna strangle them with a scarf actually. I don't understand. When I go out I pretty much dress like I did when I was 6 and I'm toasty. I could play in the snow for hours and not be cold at all. My point is, if you live in a place where it snows, you need to wear a winter coat. Or get pneumonia. And die. Slowly.

Anyways, I didn't really have anything else to say but felt I needed to mention something. Go big and stuff...

-m, p, z & shredder

oh ps - my brother's birthday today so if you see him tell him he's old.

Can Indeed...

Anthony stole my topic over at Ibodera so I just thought I'd repost here...

Vote Tomorrow!!!!!!



-M, p, z & shredder

Drop This...

So yesterday, after 8 years of dropped calls and mysterious charges, I finally dropped Sprint. My plan was essentially $50 for them to poop in my ear. I only got 350 minutes and like 300 texts. And that's it. I switched to AT&T for a plan that is $55 and I get 450 minutes with unlimited emailing and internet and 200 texts. It's not bad. Much better than Sprint. It's strange but it seems like all cell phone companies don't give a damn about current customers. They only seem to care about bringing new people in. I say this because Sprint goes out of their way to make sure if you already have a plan that you can't get one of their cool new ones. It's kind of counter intuitive if you ask me. Give people good service and they will stay with you. But it isn't just Sprint, it's everyone. It's a vicious cycle of people switching servers. I know people who hate AT&T, but I still switched. I guess the trick is to find the lesser of all of the evils. I would have gone with something else perhaps but I am saving up for an iPhone which is sadly only compatible with AT&T. Sad no more.



















My new phone is pretty cool. It's very trendy. I am usually behind on phones. I get good ones but I always seem to get them right before the next generation comes out. My last phone wasn't even bluetooth compatible All of my phones have been tanks though. I never go for the flimsy RAZRs or what have you. I buy the ones that only break if you load it into a bazooka and shoot it into some dynamite. But this time around I got a brand new one, the LG Shine. It's pretty fab. It has a slide up screen which I give less than a year before it breaks because it's too cool to last very long. It's got a pretty nice camera on it and you hold it like a regular digital cam. It also alerts me when I get new mail and I cn surf the web and it can play MP3s. It's pretty much a poor man's version of an iPhone. All in all, it's cool but I can tell that it's on the verge of breaking already.

Anyways, that's what I've been up to. That and kicking ass. Go big...

-M, p, z & shredder

oh ps - I finally can also send and receive picture texts so if you got something funny, wend it my way. Sprint used to charge you 19 million yen for every kb you download.

Saving the World...

Feed Lot in California


Brown Guy sent me an article in the Times about meat and meat production that you should all read. Essentially it detailed the effect meat production is having on the world. It compared the crisis to the effect oil is having on the world. Both are unnecessary evils that are around purely because people are fat, lazy, selfish and greedy. I have tried to convince all of you to eat less meat for a while, though I'm sure it only made you eat more to spite me. But perhaps if not for my moral reasoning, maybe for the environment. Years ago I went to a PETA conference and one of the things they explained to us to help us convert to being a vegetarian was the effect livestock has on the environment. For example, it takes on average 4 or 5 servings of grain that are fed to livestock (it varies depending on the animal) to equal the amount of nutrition we would get by simply eating the grain ourselves. Now if you take the energy it takes to produce that grain (the amount of feul, processing etc.) and multiply that by the amount fed to all of the livestock in America alone, the energy wasted is jaw dropping. Aside from the obvious pollution factors that come from any plant, animal warehouses also have the ability to harvest antiobiotic resistant bacteria.

As most of you know I have already cut down my meat consumption in an effort to be a vegetarian some time in the future but did you know that by cutting it down just 20% is the equivalent of switching from a Camry to a Prius. It's only a couple of meals a week without meat, it isn't that hard...

Here's a good quote from the article: "If price spikes don't change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals."















After moving to New York and seeing the excess waste and pollution that you really don't see in Michigan, I became much more of a doer than a sayer. It's very simple to say that you are going to have less of an impact on the world but a very different and often harder thing to actually do it. One reason it was so easy in New York was because people are so conscious about it. I could go to Whole Foods and buy organically grown food and often free range chicken (with my canvas bags in tote and reused plastic bags for produce), I could recycle everything (our kitchen garbage was smaller than a normal bathroom garbage) and I could walk everywhere. It is a very easy place to get by being very low impact. That is one of the reasons returning to life in Michigan is much harder. The closest Whole Foods is over an hour away, there is no convenient place to recycle and the city doesn't do it. And you can't get anywhere without a car. It's a much harder thing to accomplish when there are no means to do it. Which is why I have had to try and put in a much more focused effort on doing what I can until June when I move back to NYC.

Here are some things I am trying to do to help the environment that maybe you can too: Re-use everything (bags, containers, jars). Don't leave unless you have to. Without any friends it's very easy for me to only leave my apartment to go to class and not drive anywhere else. Always try and buy things that are not just organically grown but low impact. As the word "organic" is becoming much more popular, the line of what it means it getting blurred. Sometimes it just means they don't use pesticides (which is still good) but other times is doesn't really have any effect on the food. Buying organic chicken is a good thing, but mostly for our bodies as opposed to the environment. A lot of times a box or label will say organic and then tell you how and those are usually the ones that have less of an impact. If you don't have a canvas grocery bag get paper or reuse your plastic ones.

Anyways just some thoughts on how to make this planet better for our kids/ferrets. Go big...

-M, p, z & shredder

oh ps - Tyson now does not use antibiotics or hormones in their chicken which is good for our health but they do have huge chicken farms and very inhumane methods of killing them so if you can buy another brand I'd say go for it, though usually if you are shopping at a store that isn't a Whole Foods type place you are shit outta luck.