I'm not sure what to title this one. But that's what the bulldozer dude appears to be doing here. I like how he goes out of the shot. Good blocking, bulldozer dude!
Some new ideas, theories, and demands:
1. I'm trying to finish my dissertation. Someone recently suggested that I wasn't as stressed out as I need to be. As usual, anything is possible when it comes to my mental state. And... I HAVE been sleeping well. TOO well... I think I will try to get more stressed out somehow. I have too much malaise mixed in - that's probably fucking everything up. Caffeine might do it. I go a little bonkers on caffeine.
2. To everyone: please stop buying and drinking bottled water. It wastes plastic, is stupidly expensive, is possibly harmful as the plastic breaks down into the water itself, and commodifies a natural resource. It's driving me insane. For the love of god, people, stop the madness! Update: here's an article about the production of Fiji water.
3. In a regular day, how often do you actually see people produce things? We may come in contact with people in retail establishments but their work is consumed as soon as it is produced (a service). This hidden nature of work has consequences for the way we think of work, value, and effort. Consider the objects around you. Which of them were made by hand? (For many mass produced items, it does not require a human to touch them at all.) About two years ago, Old Navy put out a commercial which showed happy young people trouncing through a field and literally picking clothes as if they had been grown like fruit. This scared me. All stitched clothing needs to be touched by human hands. The hands of the worker may belong to someone you do not know and may never meet, but they do exist. How many other examples of this phenomenon can you think of? What else obscures the manufacturing from public view?
4. Check this out: did Goodling slip? Get to know what caging is.
5. When you watch TV, and see an ad for a show that is "next", what does that mean? Clue: it is different from "right now".
6. There's a lot of competition out there these days. Note the instances in which people work together for intrinsic motivations. Remember the good of the commons.
Examples of the commons:
a. natural resources (air, water, land, seeds)
b. things that are manufactured which we all need (food, medicine, housing, clothing)
c. information
d. human rights
What isn't "the commons" though? Urgh.
5 comments:
So what's the best way to drink water? From the tap, filtered? 'Cause if you drink it unfiltered, then the lead in the solder in the old pipe joints in your old house gets into your body, right? Or wrong? And if you're in the gas station and you have to get something and you would get some kind of drink in a can or bottle, is bottled water okay then? Sorry for all the questions.
Oh, and good luck with the dissertation. I say, stay with the sleeping well, and just keep up a steady pace on the writing/revising. Keep breathing. All that. Meditate. And good luck.
Thanks for the warm wishes, Elrond. I need to meditate. I'm not very good at taking care of myself sometimes.
I don't have one answer for the beverage dilemma. But I like my Nalgene bottle a lot. And I like my Brita water filter. So I use them in conjunction a lot. When I'm really in a pinch, I grab whatever I want at the gas station, frankly. Sometimes they have paper cups and a soda fountain station so that's cool but if you're in a car without a straw and cover for that cup, I understand that that's not going to fly.
Our "on the go" society contributes to single-serving madness. There are tons of examples these days. The single serving yogurt complete with crunchies for the top... the small can of tuna packaged with its very own crackers and packet of mayo... 5 baby carrots and its very own dip as a handy-type snack... the 6 slices of apple in a cellophane bag (now available as a "side" at Wendy's!!! lordy). This is a good example of a phenomenon that makes perfect sense in the moment but is absolute garbage in terms of sustainability and fucks over the consumer in two ways: (1) obvious marking up of the price (2) obscuring the bulk nature of the item. It wasn't so long ago that people used to make their own yogurt. (You still see those yogurt machines in the thrifts.) The single-serving phenomenon with regard to produce makes me absolutely insane though.
I'm not saying that we should be drinking water from the faucet with our hands but it just gets a little insane with all this crap.
[/rant]
Also, the single serving stuff promotes individualism and self-centered-ness.
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