Tag: waste

Blog for Choice

It’s that day again.

As it turns out, “abortion foes have high hopes for new Congress.” And their hopes do not stop with overturning Roe V. Wade.

If the So-Called Pro-Life movement gave a darn about life, they would not have accosted this man and his wife, who were arguably having the worst day of their lives already.

If the So-Called Pro-Life movement gave a darn about life, they would already have tossed out the minority among them that think it is acceptable to enforce their opinion with terrorism: vandalism, violence, and murder in the name of politics.

If the So-Called Pro-Life movement gave a darn about life, they would embrace reforms that benefit children, such as universal health coverage for minors, and programs that would promote family stability (such as, oh I don’t know, jobs??) for born-already-Americans.

If the So-Called Pro-Life movement wanted to reduce the number of abortions — and even somebody like me has to think there are places and populations where it might be to high — they would take steps to ensure that unwanted pregnancies and birth defects are prevented. They would try to prevent sexual assaults in their community. They would support widely available birth control. They would want to improve the environment. They would want to make healthy food more available than junk food.

The truth is that the “It’s A Baby!” crowd is anti-sex, anti-woman, anti-free-will.

In Closing: standards; mindfulness; multi-layered WTF; and where will they find the money?; ok we agree; Howard!; maybe, maybe not; lies revisited; scanners.

Bed, Bath, and Way Beyond This Nonsense

Yesterday, we decided it was high time to purchase a particular item for our kitchen. And not particularly wanting to pay Williams and Sonoma prices, we headed to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Let me begin by saying that this is not a particularly strange item. 20 years ago, any quality cook’s supply would have had probably two different models and a few accessories for it too. I’ve seen it used in both Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen multiple times. In short, I expected this to be a quick dash in, head to the section, get one off the shelf, and be paying in a matter of moments.

Wrong.

The first thing we had to do was park at the sprawling complex of large specialty retailers while avoiding idiots in other vehicles.

Once in the store itself, we had to figure out where this item would be. After wandering around for a little while, we found one that would hook on to my stand mixer. Now, I like my mixer well enough, but why should I power it up when all I need is a gadget, patience, and a little elbow grease? Surely the non electric powered one was around here somewhere?

We wandered around. We found electric juicers and electric rotisserie machines that take up loads of countertop space, we found mini-keg coolers and poorly made toaster ovens, we saw silicone cake pans and handheld battery powered milk frothers. There were probably a dozen ways to make coffee. I can live without all this junk, and I bet you can too. Heck, I haven’t even had the food processor on the countertop in over 3 years. Who is buying this stuff?

However, no sign of the one thing we had come in to get. So my husband did what seemed like the only sensible thing to do: he pulled out his smart phone, went to Amazon.com, and ordered the darn thing, while we were standing in Bed Bath and Beyond. It will arrive later this week.

Maybe BB&B is the place if you need overpriced kitchen and bath crap or Need New Sheets Right Now, but for the rest of us, there is a better way to get exactly what we want for our homes. That’s why Linens and Things and The Great Indoors both failed: wrong merchandise, wrong price, and too hard to shop there.

In Closing: it turns out that grouping kids by ability levels (“tracking“) helps them learn (duh); a little song about CPR from MC Lars; obligatory health insurance reform items; big banking already had it’s shot at ruining our society, get ready for Monsanto to finish the job; contrariness is not a good foreign policy; “If you let gays marry then we’ll stop doing that serving the poor thing that Jesus told us to do!”; watch less TV and you’ll do things that burn more calories, duh; “Maybe we could fix the economy by all taking starvation wage jobs. Well not me, of course.”; banking behemoth; and dumbest business moments of 2009.