Random Rantings…..

Drive up window up selling….. Never MIND you have to deal with the totally annoying recorded monotone, sticky sweet  announcement…” Good Morning – would you like to try our Texas toast Breakfast?” before you get to talk to a live person!  Frigging gag – NO!  Then I order… A, as in  ONE, bacon egg & cheese biscuit and   a-l-w-a-y-s    add…”and that’s IT” (emphasis on the IT!) but they always ask “Would you like to make it a combo?”  Did I SAY I wanted a combo? No – I didn’t and I don’t feel like adding another thousand calories to my already fattening meal.

Pull ahead, please…. Sometimes there’s a snafu and you have to wait for your order so they ask you to pull up. Never fails….. some idiot thinks that pull up means to move up just far enough to get away from the drive up window.  Doesn’t matter that the guy behind you, or anyone else for that matter – can’t possibly get around you to get out.  This happened this morning.  The guy  two cars up, some old dude, just pulled forward about 5 feet and stopped.  The dumb ass in front of me obviously forgot that cars (usually)  come with HORNS.  A friendly tap would have let pops know he needs to move his Buick Roadmaster up another 10 feet.   The dude in front of me is just  sitting there and I’m ready to lean on the horn ’cause BOTH of these people left home without their brains!  ‘Course, Pops probably has an excuse – old age.  Could be stupidity, though!

WHY do we need 40 different kinds of Crest toothpaste? The next time you go down the toothpaste aisle, count how many different varieties of Crest there are.  Talk about trying to please everybody…. or -  trying to convince us that we NEED it.

We don’t.

It’s stupid!

We Are All LAB RATS

YOU and I are lab rats.  Your KIDS are lab rats, too. Unless you grow and consume all your food yourself, YOU are held hostage by the food companies.

Think about it.  Everything thing you eat -  e v e n   those so-called ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ foods probably are tainted in some way with something.

I know too much.  I have my roots in the local food movement, but they stretch way back to the environmental movement.  What I do here, and on my website an other blogs, is try to EDUCATE.

For the most part, the average consumer has their head up their butt when it comes to food and the environment.  They think it’s not their problem, that it doesn’t concern them and that it doesn’t affect them.

Do you send your kids to public  school? Do they play sports?  Do they eat school food?  Do you take them to fast food joints?  What do you buy for them at the  grocery store? Do you eat in restaurants? What DO you eat when you eat? What DO you drink when you drink?

What about your home life?  What products do you buy:  laundry detergent, body care products, beauty products, perfumes, lotions, hair dye, nail polish?  What do you paint your walls with?  Where did you get your furniture? Do you use any bug killing preparations?  What about your lawn?  Do you have a lawn care service and do you KNOW what they put on your lawn?  Have you had a pest company assure you their ‘chemicals’ are safe around kids and pets?  Do you go to Lowe’s or Home Depot and buy lawn care products to keep the nasty bugs away?  Do your KIDS PLAY ON YOUR LAWN?

Where do YOU choose to shop?  Is Wally-World your best buddy because you have fallen victim and been brainwashed by their  ‘save money, live better’  catchphrase?

Big business, especially the likes of Wal-Mart, does NOT give a shit about you.  Look at the way they treat their own employees?  They’ve been convicted on a vast array of charges in recent years of labor violations.  Going waaaay back, and I have a copy of the article in my files here…. they even wanted to move a Native American cemetery because they wanted to build a store!  Do you think, in this day of corporate greed, that it’s gotten any better, that they’ve become a kinder, more gentler Wally?

There are numerous links detailing environmental disregard -and- total disregard for human life on this planet BY food companies and agricultural chemical companies.  You and I and this planet are being POISONED by thousands of chemicals a day because the likes of Monsanto and Bayer… those kindly aspirin people.

DO THE RESEARCH.  Do it for your kids, your friends, your family, your friends and if you care enough – our planet.

Disposable Workers

Have you heard this fairy tale?

A long, long time ago, in a far off land called the United States of America, people had jobs with companies who treated them like humans.  They could get a job and work there for the rest of their lives.  Unless they did something really bad, like steal or go to bed with the boss’ wife and get caught -  they could be assured this job for as long as they wanted it. All they had to do was show up every day and work as hard as they could.

Then one day, an ogre appeared.  It decided it was best for the company if it acted in its best interests.  Too bad about the employees, they’re just numbers on a time card, aren’t they?  They can’t have any feelings!

If the company could hire  new workers and pay them less, that would make it better for the business.  They found a lot of ways to get rid of the good, but over- paid workers and keep those out who wanted more than they were willing to pay.

It didn’t matter if the bosses made their jobs miserable.  If the workers quit, they could get NEW ones!  It didn’t matter if the good ones left.  They could get NEW ones and pay them less.

These big companies didn’t care if workers tried to have a life outside of the workplace.  It was too bad if the scheduling wasn’t feasible for the employee.  It doesn’t matter if there is nobody to take care of the kids because both parents have to work the same hours.  Surely you can pay for day care, can’t you?

We have a New idea:  let’s have the COMPUTER make up the schedules!  That way we won’t have to pay anyone to do it.  The computer can do it a lot faster.  It doesn’t matter if the computer has no knowledge of the employee’s situation.  Oh – an employee lives too far to work till after 11 and be back on the job at 6 in the morning?  Oh that’s silly – people can function of 2 hours of sleep and still be a courteous customer service associate, can’t they?  You love your job, don’t you?  You need your job, don’t you?

You have a medical condition,  &  yes, we see that you’ve brought a doctor’s letter with his recommendations.  Well, we’ll take care of that.  We’ll just interpret it to our benefit.  We’ll take every line, word for word and tell you what it really means.  If you don’t like it – there’s the door!

We’re going to save money on medical insurance.  We’ve decided that you have to work 40 hours to qualify – but – sssshhhhhhh, don’t tell anyone – we won’t hire anyone to work more than 35!  Now we can get out of paying 95% of our workers medical insurance!  After all, don’t we want to give our customers “low prices, always’ and continue ‘improving home improvement?’  After all, ‘you can do it, we can help,’  isn’t that right? We know our employees will say ‘I’m lovin’ it’ because we let them work here. We can’t let them ‘have it your way’, can we?

Your TOASTER Could Burn Your House Down!

First off, I would like to WARN everybody to UNPLUG household appliances that make heat. Toasters, toaster ovens, coffee makers, irons with automatic shut offs,  electric heaters, curling irons and hair dryers.

My toaster almost burned my house down!

It was the day after Christmas a few years ago.  I’d gone out for my usual morning walk at 6am.  When I got back it smelled like I’d left the coffee pot on and it was burning.  Going into the kitchen, the room was filled with smoke. I looked all around the room to see what was burning.  The last object I got to was the toaster.  The top was melted!

I ran over to see that the coils inside were RED.  The damn thing was ON, but I hadn’t used it in DAYS!  Yanking the cord out of the wall I chucked the blasted thing across the room!  Then I pitched it outside.

I was really shaken.  Since I was a kid I’ve always been afraid of fire.  The thing which scared me most was, had this been two days earlier (Christmas Eve)  I would have already been out the door to go to work! Being that my house sits way back from the road, it is very unlikely that my neighbors would have seen any fire in time to save the house.  All the cats inside would have died!

The toaster was made by Black and Decker.  It was only THREE MONTHS OLD.

The next day I e-mailed B&D to tell them that their toaster almost burned my house down.  At the same time I went on the Consumer Products Safety Commission website and  filled out a report because I wanted everyone to know about what had just happened.

I got a phone call from the CPSC the next day and was interviewed about the toaster.  They wanted it.  They were even willing to send someone to where I worked to get it.  SURE !!  Anything I could do to let the public know about something that was defective.  The appointment was set for Monday morning.

Meanwhile, Black and Decker e-mailed me and wanted the toaster.  I told them – NO WAY, JOSE…, because I was reporting this incident to the CPSC.  I bet they weren’t happy.

The man from the CPSC took a full report on the toaster:  It hasn’t been used in 5 days.  No, the cats hadn’t pushed the toast lever down.  It wasn’t knocked over; nothing fell on it.  I told him it was right where it always sat.  He asked to see the receipt and verified that it was 3 months old.  Then he wrote me a check for the amount I paid and also filled me in on some info that I want to impart to everyone:

Everything that has a switch in it has the potential to fail.  If the device makes heat this makes it even more dangerous. (this is one reason why I’ve never liked the idea of Crock Pots!)  When a switch fails there is nothing to keep it ‘off.’  It will turn itself on.  He advised me to unplug everything that makes heat when ‘on’: coffee makers, hair dryers, curling irons, irons,  all electric heaters, toaster ovens and especially toasters, when not in use.  He said that toasters had gotten better over the years but they still pose a hazard.

I was lucky.  There were 9 fires reported from these toasters.  The CPSC  issued a recall for all that model of Black and Decker toasters.  (They should stick to making hedge trimmers!) Consumer Reports also posted it under ‘recalls’ on their site.

If you have an instance like this - REPORT IT, don’t toss the appliance out thinking it doesn’t matter. YOU MAY SAVE SOMEONE’S LIFE.

Oh – a few weeks later, I got a check from Black and Decker.

They got off cheap: $14.95

A lawsuit would have been much more!