New Poll about the environment at left--please vote!

What are the 2 biggest environmental issues do you think? I've posted a poll at the left and I'd like you to vote. There are 10 choices, you may choose 2...I know they're all bad, but just choose the 2 that you think are the worst, most harmful, most egregious.

What makes you go "Oh shit!" Is it climate change, with all of its retreating glaciers and increased erratic weather and flooding and (seemingly contradictory) drought? How about bee colony collapse disorder or factory farming with GMO's and antibiotic use that leads to superbugs and their resistance? Deforestation? Air pollution? Acid rain? Nuclear waste? God, just how many ways can we screw with a good thing?

Please vote and next week I'll post the results.

I have to think about it myself. Just where are we mucking it up the worst?

Off to do some reading...

Meme--Tag You're It!

Siobhan all the way over in Turkey has tagged me. Hi Siobhan! So, I will comply and give her what she wants...I'm amenable that way.

The Rules

1. Link to the person that tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Share 6 non-important things/quirks about your kid
4. Tag at least three people at the end of your post and link to their blogs
5. Let each person know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
6. Let the fun begin!

These things apply to both of my kids...or they don't. Maybe it's just one of my kids who does/has said these things.

1. A couple of years ago, one of my children at a packed local library asked the Benjamin Franklin impersonator, during the question/answer period at the end of his one man show, if Benjamin Franklin farted... "Yes, Benjamin Franklin did write a witty treatise on gas..." Nice recovery Benjamin Franklin impersonator guy.

2. My kids have routinely taken their Superman and Super Girl capes respectively and have wrapped them around their groins fashioning a crude diaper-like wrap so that they could leap and crawl and howl through the house playing "Wild Men"--naked otherwise. (When they were even littler, they would just run around naked)

3. One of my kids says "Ridiclious!!" with a big grin, and doesn't realize that he/she is mispronouncing it. Shhh, don't tell. It is so cute! On this same note, another kid used to say hosible for hospital. I love when kids mispronounce words. Especially when they're very earnest.

4. One of my kids would keep their top leg up and resting on my chest whenever he/she nursed. It was like the flag that goes up on a mailbox. Obviously he/she was very comfortable.

5. Both kids like: The Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton...what decade are they in?!

6. Both kids like to play "Harry Potter". I'm McGonagall, my son is Dobby and my daughter is Hermione. Good times.


I tag:

Neo-Agrarian, or SwimmerMom, at The Suburban Agrarian
Steph at ~Peace Love Yurt~
Green Black Sheep
and
Lara at The Lazy Organizer

It would be fun to tag others, but I completely understand if you guys don't want to do this. I hate feeling compelled to do anything...real mature, eh?

All you readers have not been tagged by me. You don't have to feel compelled to do anything. Although, it would be fun if you left a comment relaying what quirky things your kids do or have done. Any embarrassing Benjamin Franklin moments out there? I can't be the only one...

Google Searches

NOTE: Click on each google search to see it better.

I've spoken about this before. You know that many people stumble across this blog because of google searches. With my trusty Stat Counter at my disposal, I can track where in all of cyber space they've come from and where they thought they were headed. Some searches reasonably drop them off in We-Don't-Buy-It land. It makes sense. Like, for example, look at all of these kefir searches:


I actually wrote about kefir. Kefir was the subject. I linked to Dom's kefir site which will tell you anything you could ever want to know about kefir. I feel relatively well assured that the people who came here with all of their kefir questions found something worthwhile. They found something they could use.

And, here, although I was critical of Trader Joe's organic frozen strawberries cross Atlantic voyage all the way from Turkey, still those people interested in frozen strawberries would maybe be able to glean something useful from my little rant. Here they are searching for information about strawberries:



Here, someone was looking for where to go to buy the stupidest thing he/she could. I think it's fun that someone else, somewhere else in the world is even interested in the concept of stupid stuff! It's like they get it...unless they weren't being sardonic and they really WANT to get stupid stuff...



After reading about a family in St. Louis who are working very hard to reduce their waste and have put themselves on a "waste diet", I wrote a post and asked about handkerchiefs and whether there even is a handkerchief etiquette. (My friend Neo-Agrarian discovered that there is.) Someone else was curious about this,


Another person was probably looking for something along the lines of this,

not this,
when they had this google search for McGill castle

Someone in Adelaide, Autralia was curious about Cheap Trick.

All of these previous searches are interesting, but it is these following searches that I find the most compelling.

I've written, really confessed, about purchasing new ballet shoes for my daughter right in the first month of our year long compact not to buy anything new. I didn't buy her used ones, I just shot right out and got her a new pair. Ultimately, I'm OK with that. We are not going to be perfect in this quest of ours and that was OK to do. Also, I wrote about how the Republicans in our township tried to get me to vote their way by sending me a sample ballot. Mass mailings are funny creatures--like those giant fishing nets that inadvertantly catch dolphins when they're trying to get tuna--they are just sent out all over the place and they will hopefully snare a Republican or two and don't even care that the rest of us Democrats or Independents or Greens or Libertarians or Socialists are flopping around on deck frantically gasping for breath. I wrote about it in a post called, Republican Sample Ballot, or Barking up the Wrong Tree.

So in the mish-mash, crazy, topsy turvy world that is the internet and google searches, those two ideas, "ballet" and "republican sample ballots" converge here at We Don't But It. The search engines know this. No sane human would know this because we can think and discern. We are not cold electronic computers like HAL. We can know what people are TRYING to say, even when they're saying it wrong. So...when the good Republicans around this nation were looking for a Republican Sample Ballot, and they mistakenly typed in, Republican Sample BALLET...well, they got dumped right here. Ball-OT. Not Ball-ET. Ballot. Ballet. Ballot. Ballet. I can see it. Kind of. I'm not perfect in my writing either. I'm sure I make goofs all of the time. Even so, I can't help it--I think these searches are funny. Look:

I think it all just comes down to the fact that I'm easily amused, which frankly bodes well for my family...

Like Hope but Different

I just saw a funny satire of the Yes We Can video. That's the video that matches Obama's words with various singers singing and actors speaking his words simultaneously on a split screen. It is inspiring and very hopeful.

This other one has people singing and speaking in unison with McCain.

12,008? That's a loooooong time...

Like Hope but Different.