strawberries and methyl bromide

It says right here that the Bush administration has convinced a bunch of other countries that we really, really need methyl bromide, a pesticide that depletes the ozone layer and causes neurological damage. Completely ignoring the ozone problem, this is why we don't live near conventional agriculture.

Key quote:

Once a conventional farmer, her epiphany came one day when she donned protective gear and locked her dog in the car so he wouldn't inhale methyl bromide leaking from a nozzle.

"I thought this was an insane way to make food," she said.

Since this article made me kind of nervous about the future of the US, seeing that cheap produce is more important than banning nasty chemicals, here's a picture of a sunset from three weeks ago, not that this really helps:

burning things

Arizona became the 48th state in 1912. I understand it happened so late because Arizona was viewed as a lawless, backward frontier, and so you know, I am right now sitting roughly 62 miles as the crow flies from the OK Corral.

I suppose, given Arizona's background, that I shouldn't be surprised by the attitude of James Scott, of the Northwest Side of Tucson, who figures we should all drive electric cars so he can burn as much wood as he wants whenever he wants. To be completely fair, Mr. Scott said he could skip burning things when the pollution is really bad, but this is from a man who said the pollution warnings are ridiculous.

He's not the only one who likes to burn things, but now I want to call him up and ask him if he drives electric cars.

forgotten college courses

It says here , at the bottom: "In addition, for the first time in its 15-year history, the Wall Street Journal-NBC poll this year showed that the public's negative feelings exceeded its positive feelings about both political parties at the same time."

I took a Religion & Politics class in college about how various religions voted in blocks and affected politics. One of the things we learned was that when everybody gets really fed up with the current parties, third parties begin to appear, and then they reorganize back into two parties, but they're different. An example is around the Civil War, when the Whigs, who used to be Republicans who split from the old Democratic-Republicans, fell apart and joined the new Republicans and the Democrats, the other half of the old Democratic-Republicans. (I think I got that right, and yes, politics were always screwed up.)

So ever since Ross Perot (1992), I've been waiting for a sea change, which I think I remember takes about twenty years. I mean, we have Catholics who can't agree on abortion, and Republicans are voting Democrat over the same issue, and Democrats were all set to vote for John McCain (R-Ariz.) a few years ago. So come on, where's my entertainment? I have to wait all the way until 2012?

more warm spots, and not from politicians

According to the (US) National Weather Service, we're going to be warmer than normal through December, January, and February. Since I have gas heat (no EIs tolerate gas heat) with a little residual perfume in the system, I'm getting space heaters, and I care deeply about it being warmer than normal. Especially since it was pretty cold today.

Besides being colder than normal today, the traffic was much worse than normal, it turns out because President Bush came to town.

The reason I know about the traffic is because I tried to get to a doctor's office to get some blood sucked. I was ten minutes late, the air in the building was completely unbreatheable, and they couldn't make the paperwork line up, so I didn't even get my blood sucked. The whole experience sucked.

Since I had a crummy afternoon, here's a picture of a neat ruin at Wupatki National Monument north of Flagstaff:

junk mail

Most of us are aware of the Direct Marketing Association's Mail Preference Service, which gets you off national mailing lists. However, if you do anything like get married, buy property, have a baby, etc. that shows up in public records, you get a whole bunch more mail.

This morning I learned here, under Public Records, that if you get mail you know you don't want that's marked 'Address Service Requested' or 'Return Postage Guaranteed,' you can send it back, unopened, by writing 'Refused--Return to sender' on the envelope, and the company will have to pay the return postage.

On a slightly different note, I'm just pleased I'm off the list that followed me through three states and had my first name as Chisty. If they'd had one more wrong letter, I'd be a porn star.

language update

If the San Francisco Chronicle can spell 'back yard' as 'backyard,' I guess I can, too. Apparently people have coyotes in their backyards around there. We've got them here, but we live in the Wild West.

not much to report

I learned boring things today, like where Marana town hall is, so I'll report something I learned last night: paper money is not worth having. I routinely keep it in plastic because it absorbs perfume and laundry smells, but last night, I had a bag with eight dollars in the car with us, and whatever chemical was in there permeated the plastic. To keep the air inside the car ok, I had to hang the bag out the window.

Just picture a lovely drinking-age BMW driving around at nine at night with a little bag of money flapping from the passenger-side window.

hot air

If you're going to fly a hot air balloon around Phoenix, there are some places you shouldn't land. No landing allowed at the juvenile correctional facility, the shooting range, the model airplane landing strip, on the livestock at Rawhide (whatever that is), or at Universal Propulsion, where they make explosives.

No word on exactly where good places to land in the desert are, but I'm betting that cacti and Africanized bees aren't too good, either.

the best Thanksgiving ever

Today I learned that when the traffic is very, very thin, I can ride my road bike. I rode it up Sabino Canyon at the crack of dawn, and it was fantastic. Then I rode it around Saguaro National Park before lunch. I'd go out again this afternoon, but there appear to be limits to even my enthusiasm.

warning: bored engineer on perfume trip

The exhaust went away, apparently because peoples' perfumy guests arrived and are hanging around in everybody's back yards. So I've been inside all day, spacily surfing the web, and I have had a great insight. Ready for this? Here goes:

1. Candy isn't good for you, but the artificial flavors and unpronounceable preservatives are really bad for EIs.
I tried some leftover Halloween candy weeks ago and got away with it. I tried it again last week, and I got sick. Sick enough I don't really remember what happened (confusion is a common reaction), but I will remember to never eat candy again. A friend of mine explained it like this: The first time you try something like that, your body takes the hit because it can't believe you did that. The second time you try it, it's ready, and you pay.

2. Soda is essentially candy with caffeine in it, and it won't necessarily only hurt EIs: some countries think it'll make everybody sick.
Soda is morphing into energy drinks, and France, Denmark, Norway, and Argentina have banned them based on caffeine levels.

Here's the important part: I can only assume that the teenagers who drink that stuff and wear those highly-scented body sprays will be to environmental injury what my generation is to deafness, ie, the walkman generation made itself deaf, and these people will end up with major chemical sensitivities, so...

3. The population of Connecticut in the year 2055 will consist entirely of undead zombie monsters.
There's a whole article about radioactive goat milk near New London, CT. This doesn't come as much of a surprise to me since I got really, really sick in Connecticut last year from the mold and pollution from old industry. I didn't expect the radioactivity part, but it's still not a huge shock. So, that 'EI generation' will eventually vacate the state of Connecticut, and the only people left will be the radioactive zombies.

spelling and smelling

Spelling was always my weak spot: 'backyard' is an adjective, and I used it like a noun. If you sew in your back yard, you have to use the noun, 'back yard.'

So anyway, on the busiest (American) travel day of the year, my sewing room has exhaust fumes in it and has for the last two hours. I don't live that close to the big road, and the neighborhood is dead, except for the trash truck, and I know it's not responsible for all the fumes.

You normies* out there can't even smell this, can you? Like the ever-popular Sunday Afternoon Laundry Fest**? This is even worse than the Laundry Fest.


* not environmentally injured
**every Sunday, 1 to 10:30 pm; may resume at 6 am Monday morning if somebody started late.

Sam, the ugly dog

Sam, the very ugly dog, has gone to the doghouse in the sky. I can't imagine his equal will be seen for many years.

Our condolences to his person, Susie Lockheed.

full metal jacket

The Times of London knows how to cover style. There's an article about a shiny silver jacket that is supposed to conduct away static electricity, making the wearer better able to concentrate.

This sentence most likely came straight from the marketing people, and it's enough to make a physicist cringe:
"The fabric of this jacket is made with 11 per cent steel, which creates a non-conductive outershell that neutralises static charges."

This came from the guy who tried it out:
"The pub was the scene where the jacket came into its own, as the improved bar presence a large hooded silver coat lends a man should not be underestimated."

800 calories of ice cream

I got lots of chemical sensitivities from the mold, but my husband developed worse food allergies. He only has 18 'safe' foods, and when he tried to stick to just those, he lost 15 lbs. So now we're trying to feed him up, and he just told me how many calories there are in the pint of ice cream he just consumed. Now I feel compelled to figure out exactly what he ate today, so here goes:

Buckwheat pancakes......... 460
Agave syrup............... ~240
Safflower oil............. ~480
32 oz pineapple juice...... 480
1/2 lb ostrich meat........ 160
0.8 lb lamb chops......... 1100
1 acorn squash............ ~100
1 pt Ben & Jerries......... 800
-------------------------------
Total:                     3820 calories

So you know, he only rode his bike 45 miles today.

giant trees and fairies

It says here that loblolly pines grow really fast in a CO2-enriched environment, like the Earth will be if we keep burning everything. Researchers are worried that they'll shade out all the other trees, but when we've all croaked from pollution, the atmosphere will recover and the trees will go back to normal, so why worry?

In unrelated news, I found this article about fairies impeding development, although it may be more about people just not wanting big rocks moved. I like rocks; I'll side with the fairie people.

I turned up a link to the fairie article when I stumbled across FreeRepublic.com, a conservative news site. My question is: if I oppose change, does that make me conservative?

for those of you with kidney failure

Anybody can find the high-phosphorus foods to avoid list (boring and general), but it doesn't point out that Vegemite is off the chart, so I assume the (American) National Kidney Association is out to get you.

I have two things to say about this:
1. According to Wikipedia, Americans think Vegemite is no big loss, so I expect you'll be fine.
2. If you look at the url for the boring list, you see that they labeled the page 'A to Z' as 'atoz.' You remember that Star Trek episode where the last librarian on a doomed planet sends Spock and Dr. McCoy to the Ice Age and Captain Kirk to... never mind. The librarian's name was Mr. Atoz, and I only noticed the pun today, even though it's all over the web, and I have known his name for roughly twenty-five years.

starting early

The sun has only been up for ten minutes, and already I learned a great new verb from Hank Stuever: to muffin-top.

Here's how he used it: "They pose sexily by the harbor, giggling, their little rolls of fat muffin-topping out from their lowrise jeans."

warm spots

If you read enough Louis L'Amour as a kid, you know that camping on the side of the valley instead of at the bottom is warmer. Today I learned that the same holds true with little hills in Saguaro National Park. I was hiking just after sunset, and I managed to get a little chilly in the gullies, but I warmed up again when I got onto those little hills. So there you go: heat rises, and it makes a difference.

Transylvanian armadillos

Some people have rats in their houses. Count Dracula's got 'possums and armadillos in his.

wha???

Today I watched Wednesday's South Park episode, Trapped in the Closet, and I learned that the Church of Scientology makes its members achieve some upper level of Scientology before revealing secret church information: that 75 million years ago, Xenu, an alien ruler of 76 overpopulated worlds, paralyzed a bunch of his extra subjects, and transported them to Earth using DC8s with rockets instead of propellers. Then he killed them by blowing up volcanoes, and he brainwashed the resulting souls in movie theaters and, uh, I can't really keep track of all this since it doesn't make any sense. I think the upshot is that there are extra souls, and they're bad, and Scientology can help you remove them or something. Similar versions of the story can be found here and here.

It's one of those things that if you had read it in a science fiction novel* would make perfect sense and you could remember it, but when you put the book down, you'd be ok again.


*Everybody here knows L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction author, started Scientology, right? Probably to make money?

crime and birds

It says here that a Hummer H2 SUV painted like a police car is good bait to get people to come out and hear that they should lock doors to prevent theft.

In other news, ornithologists are pretty sure they lead predators to the birds they are studying, and predator repellent doesn't seem to work. Here's the article (it's a PDF).

Both of these articles have to do with keeping something safe from predators. One uses less than compelling bait, and the other uses ineffective repellent. Food is good bait, and force is a good repellent. Don't any of these people have pets to teach them this?

boating in the desert

In response to seeing a couple of jet skis for sale on the side of the road today, I decided to find out exactly where you could actually use them, here in the desert.

According to this site, the closest lake, Patagonia Lake, is sometimes not very full, depending on recent rainfall. Also, it's probably at least an hour and a half away from Tucson, but I suppose if you're an avid jet skier, that's not much of an impediment.

homemade grout

Grout is just sand and Portland cement mix and water, if you don't want the oil-resistant, fungus-resistant, God-knows-what-else additives grout makers put in there to make it more poisonous, uh, I mean, better.

We are adding AFM's grout sealer or safe seal for some of the water, but neither one hurts me. Go AFM.

Other exciting information: local sand hurts me. Silica sand doesn't. It just follows one of the Great Rules of Environmental Injury (EI): if there's a more expensive option, that's the only thing an EI will tolerate.

warning: missmolly whines

Here's something I didn't learn: I don't really have any control over things like, say, my gallbladder. You can't make these things work by telling them: get your act together.

So today, when I talked to the doctor, and he assessed my current situation and told me my immune system needs shoring up (he can do that), I was freaking disappointed in it.

What the heck is its problem, anyway?

where has all the cement gone?

Gone to New Orleans, every one. When will they ever learn?

This is only interesting if you need some to make additive-free grout so you can put down tile before the #$&*@ carpet kills you.

if you don't have access to a phone

You could use semaphore.

cold water and light bulbs

I was told years ago that the water was warm in Southern California. I see here that it is not.

Speaking of cold water, you can turn out incandescent lights rather more messily than most of us would like by squirting them with water so the bulbs break. If you decide to try this at home, let me know how it goes. It looked entertaining on tv.

it looked better last night

Here's how you stuff it, and it gets in your eyes, never mind your nose:


Here's a lousy picture of the giant pillow, and this is probably not what people expect when they see someone's bedroom on the web. Bedroom, living room, who cares anyway, right? (The bedroom still smells a little like the previous occupants of the house.)

kapok futon

Today we made a futon and I learned:

1. You can't make a covered zipper in a futon case. There's too much fabric for trying to stitch on the outside of the thing.
2. Kapok feels like fluffy dog undercoat. Imagine naturally occurring, blondish, very soft, good-quality polyester pillow fill.
3. If you finish stuffing the thing at, say 10:30 at night, so you don't feel like tacking the thing together, you end up with essentially a pillow the size of a queen-size bed. I'll post a picture tomorrow, because a giant pillow is not something you should miss.

seamstress at work

Today I'm making a futon out of kapok and some amazingly unwieldy mattress ticking. I'd love to finish it tonight, but there are laundry fumes blowing through the sewing room, aka, backyard, so instead of working, I'll tell you what kinds of comments you get from my husband when you're working with zippers:

1. When sent to the store, and imagine the tone he used: "You want an invisible zipper foot?"
2. While trying to understand regular zipper installation: "You baste the seam? What do you baste it with, butter?"

While we're on good quotes, keep in mind the machine has never been in the house:
Important Safety Instruction #6 in the manual is "Do not use outdoors."

one more thing

I have it on good authority that this is what firefighters call 'fully involved.'

trail runners

This weekend the local paper had an article about the trails in Saguaro National Park. It mentioned this site, which has a map. I was surprised there was a map anywhere on the web because I looked all over the place six months ago and didn't find it. I bought one, and it's been handy.

Anyway, now that everybody else has the map, the park is crawling with runners. I'm wondering if this will be like New Year's and the gym, where they all disappear in a couple months, or I hope sooner, because a lot of them leave a laundry-chemical/sunscreen smell contrail behind them.

That was more of a 2+2 type of discovery, as opposed to something I learned, so here's what I actually learned today: Scooter Libby wrote a book with a sex scene about little girls and bears.

I know, everybody else learned that last week, but my mother-in-law was here, so I'm behind.

loud cycling jerseys

Today I definitively determined that the only way to get non-synthetic cycling jerseys is to make them yourself. Toward that goal, with great foresight, last week I purchased the loudest yellow and orange cotton knits found at the fabric store. The end result will still be relatively uninteresting because I'm not going to embroider logos or swirly things or Spiderman or any of that stuff that normally appears on cycling jerseys. So in lieu of a loud jersey picture, here's a picture my husband took last November at the Petrified Forest:

biodiesel

According to this, you can put biodiesel in any diesel vehicle newer than 1985 with no modifications, and you can get your own refinery for $3000, but there may be a retailer near you.

former Supreme Court nominees and miracles

Today I learned that Harriet Miers is perfectly capable of writing coherently, but sometimes doesn't, and there is more than one way to make a statue weep.

this just in

Pirates attack cruise ship!

In other news, Air Force One was named that after they got Air Force 8610 mixed up with Eastern Airlines 8610 in 1952. Eisenhauer was the first president to use a helicopter, and the first President Bush was the first one with a 747. You can walk through President Kennedy and President Johnson's Air Force One at the Pima Air and Space Museum. Just so you know, 'cause I learned it today.

toys, news, and grout

1. Here's what Patrick is getting for Christmas. This is one of the best uses of blog space I've ever seen because:

a) he won't get duplicate gifts.
b) we get insight into an 18 month-old's personality, which is tough from 1000 miles away.
c) this is as close to shopping as I get, and I miss that girly 'isn't this cute!' show and tell thing.

2. Alaska's bridge to nowhere could open up real estate development around Ketchikan's airport, which reportedly has flat, buildable land, as opposed to Ketchikan, which is limited by geography and really can't expand. This is why Senator Stevens had a conniption fit when people tried to take away his bridge, although I'm missing some details, like why, since everything comes in by ship or by air, they can't just ship building materials to the airport. It could be that the ferries won't stand up to the projected traffic in twenty years, but that I can't find out. Also, I'm not clear on the price problem people have. My understanding is that everything costs a million bucks in Alaska, so how bad is this bridge, anyway?

3. Grout is really just tile poop.

washing machine wrangler's day off

To my dismay, I woke up about 4 am to learn that you can get very sore shoulder muscles from wrestling washing machines. Who knew? So today I'm going to sit quietly and take bets on how long four of these will last in this household:


They're much prettier than the ones they're replacing, so I'm betting they don't make it two days.

scummy used washing machine

Taking a washing machine apart is pretty easy, as long as you don't care about getting too far into the drum.


Here's the thing about used washers: you get other peoples' stinky laundry products.


So anyway, yuck.

old people and comics

I found out I'm officially an old people. I have the old people time warp, whereby if you get one thing done in a day other than eating and sitting, you've accomplished something, even though I'm fully capable of hiking five miles without much trouble. I learned this because my mother-in-law is visiting (we have a visitor!!), and I can't keep up with her at all, even though she has something like thirty-five years on me.

Anyway, I was reading the comics, and this one reminded me of a great quote from the July 5 Roadshow column in the San Jose Mercury News about throwing cigarette butts out the window. A man threw one out the window of his Ford Expedition on the Bay Bridge, and it blew back into the car, which caught fire and "burned to the frame."

Illinois was icky anyway

Illinois is the only state that taxes prescription drugs. (They also grow a lot of mold there.)

English as a second language

This is why spammers won't catch anyone who is paying attention, ie, people who read their spam for entertainment:

Dear US Bank Member,

You have received this email as part of a Verified Visa campaign meant to increase security for your credit card against online credit card fraud.

Verified Visa has detected that you have been using this email address for online purchases and in order to protect yourself against online credit card fraud we would like to introduce you to a new system that will protect you against frauds.

You can associate your email address to your credit card and receive a password that you will use for any online purchase. Also you will be notified by Verified Visa when an online purchase is made.

Follow the below and go to Verified Visa. You can join the Verified Visa system or learn more about this.
[nicely chosen link to Poland]

I only found five moderately annoying grammar/usage/punctuation mistakes, so apparently their grasp of English is improving over there, but it still doesn't make up for the fact they forgot to sign it.

olive oil

There's an International Olive Oil Institute. I suppose I should have assumed it. There's probably an International Garage Door Opener Institute out there somewhere, too.

The question was raised at dinner tonight what the alternative to cold-pressing olive oil is. It turns out you can refine it, but apparently cold-pressing makes a fruity, low-acid product. However, if you fry with it, it's a waste of money because the flavor breaks down at high heat. Also, that light olive oil stuff is just filtered, so the smoke point is higher.

This is all kinda boring, when you get down to it, so here's a picture of a sunset on the far side of Mt. Lemmon: