I, last year, rid my household of a really crappy house-mate ("Good Riddance!"). He apparently didn't bother to file a change of address form with the post office ( a block away)... nor has he asked for his mail - which is now in bags, probably weighing a few pounds - his junk mail, mail from friends/family (he has/had friends? Go Figure!) and loads of mail-order catalogues... Never mind that he has NO Money to buy anything with... why he would sign-up for catalogues... Idiot.
Anyway, my long-time house-mate has been keeping it for him... as it continues to pile up... I was dreading having to call Every catalogue 1-800 number to tell them:

A.) He doesn't live here.,
B.) He doesn't have any money to buy your stuff with.,
C.) Stop sending your glossy, virgin-paper, tree-killing crapalogues here.
and D.) He still doesn't have any money!
(Aaarrgghh!)

Ahem... Anyway, I'm definitely going to make use of the sites below that will help me put an end to the junk mail barrage and a few others. I hope you find some info that helps to alleviate some of the junk in your life, too... While protecting our environment.

Cheers!

Oh, and to you linear time-oriented people: Happy New Year!
L.




Environment: Easy to Be Green
Illustration by John Ueland for Newsweek



From: msnbc.msn.com

Related Stories :
.. Q&A: Energy Exec Calls for Green Power
.. Designing the Future: No Waste or Pollution

By Joan Raymond
Newsweek

Jan. 8, 2007 issue - You don't have to ditch leather or sell your car to help the environment. We've gathered 10 simple tips for living greener in 2007. Hey, it's a lot easier than losing those 15 pounds.

1. Feed the Bees: Pesticides, pollution and habitat destruction are taking a toll on the birds and insects that pollinate about 80 percent of the world's food supply (or about one out of every three bites of food we eat), says Rose Getch of the National Gardening Association. To lend a helping hand, plant a pollinator garden. Yellow, blue and purple flowers will attract bees, while red and orange will attract humming birds. For more information, go to kidsgardening.com.

2. Clean Up Naturally: Household chemicals (see: Clorox, TSP, paint/painting -related prods., etc.) contribute to both in-door and outdoor pollution. This year, use more natural cleaners like the Greening the Cleaning line at imusranchfoods.com. Or make your own using vinegar, baking soda and lemon juice. For some great tips on green cleaning, go to eartheasy.com.

3. Ditch Your Junk: Not only is junk mail annoying, it kills trees. Do yourself..and the forests..a favor by getting off the mailing lists of companies you don't support. You can contact the firms yourself, or check out subscription services like greendimes.com or 41pounds.org that promise to lighten your junk-mail load. For more information: thegreenguide.com.

4. Air Your Laundry: Make like Grandma and line-dry your clothes once in a while. It not only saves money, but also decreases your yearly carbon- dioxide emissions. Likewise, run your washer on cold whenever possible..and use it only when it's full.

5. Recycle Your Gadgets: Don't clog landfills with old electronics.(Yuck!) If you're dumping a computer, manufacturers like Dell (dell.com), HP (hp.com) and Apple (apple.com) offer recycling options. Or consider donating. The National Cristina Foundation (cristina.org) will hook up your old PC or Mac with a nonprofit organization. Drop off your old cell phone at your local Staples store as part of a Sierra Club recycling effort (sierraclub.org/cellphones/). To find a drop-off center for rechargeable batteries and cell phones, check out the nonprofit Call2Recycle program at rbrc.org. Take advantage of community resources like hazardous-waste pickup or e-waste recycling events.

6. Cut the Lights: Trade your old incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent ones, says Jenny Powers of the Natural Resources Defense Council. They use about 70 percent less energy than regular bulbs and last 10 times longer. For help in picking the best bulb for your needs, go to energystar.gov. Also, plug all your major electronics into a power strip, suggests eco-lifestyle expert Danny Seo, author of "Simply Green Giving" ($19.95; HarperCollins). Appliances and e-gadgets use electricity even when turned off, but flicking the switch on the power strip when you leave the house effectively unplugs them. Finally, check with your local utility company to see if it offers a "green power" option for its customers. Though that might cost slightly more, it's one way of supporting renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind power. The U.S. Department of Energy provides comprehensive "green power" info at eere.energy.gov/green power.
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7. Eat Your Veggies: Have a meatless Monday. According to the Cambridge, Mass., environmental-advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists, meat production is energy-inefficient, sucking up a lot of natural resources. In fact, it takes about 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. "You don't have to be a vegetarian..just take a break once or twice a week," says group president Kevin Knobloch. "If everyone tried to do something that simple, it could have a huge environmental effect." And when you're shopping for that food, think local. It's more fuel-efficient (your food didn't have to travel thousands of miles to get to your table), and you're boosting the local economy. Use the search engine at localharvest.org to find farms, markets and other food sources in your area. And, of course, bring a reusable cloth bag to the market so you don't have to take the plastic ones.

8. Save a Tree: According to the folks at stop globalwarming.org, the paper industry is the third largest contributor to global warming. If every U.S. household replaced one toilet-paper roll with a roll made from recycled paper, 424,000 trees would be saved. If every household in the United States bought recycled napkins instead of virgin-fiber napkins, we could save a million trees. If the thought of recycled paper doesn't do it for you, plant a tree. According to the National Arbor Day Foundation, the net cooling effect of one healthy tree is equivalent to 10 room-size air conditioners operating 20 hours a day. You can go to arborday.org to find out which trees will do well in your ZIP code. If you don't have any room to plant, hundreds of eco-organizations have tree-planting projects. All you have to do is donate money.

9. Turn On the Tap: Instead of spending big bucks on bottled water, drink the stuff that comes from your faucet. The reason? "It takes a lot of oil to make and ship those bottles, and once they're empty, most wind up in landfills or as litter," says Jen Boulden, cofounder of the online environmental community idealbite.com. If you're squeamish (Americans really do have some of the best tap water in the world), buy a water filter. For comparisons, go to waterfiltercomparisons.net.

10. Find an Eco-Date: There was the metrosexual. Then the retrosexual. Now there's the ecosexual. So if one of your goals is to find that special, ecofriendly someone in 2007, check out social-networking communities like Vegan Passions (veganpassions.com), Earth Wise Singles (ewsingles.com), Green Singles (greensingles.com) or Green Passions (green-passions.com). Because two recyclers are better than one.

Unwrapping Christmas...Yippee!

(Cue the theme music to the movie "Jaws"...)

It's back...

...It comes back every "year" (Linear time? Haha!) like hay fever... or that flu thing... or those relatives whom you're glad live so far away that they can only visit once a year (Whew!) ...it's Christmas and, overnight - it seems, anyway, that Satan's...ummm, excuse me... Santa's Helpers have plastered Everything Red and Green with annoying little blinking lights throughout... If Santa and the reindeer (Rudolph included - blinking red nose and all.) exploded, it would look like this.



The holidays start rearing their tinsel-topped heads at the earliest possible moment each year..... this year the warning signs were visible far in advance - beginning on November 1st... or as quickly as Walgreen's could get all of the Halloween left-overs stuffed into a shopping cart marked " 75% Off!".



Fights broke out between the Christmas decorations and the Thanksgiving decorations for shelf-space. Well, okay... not quite, but if they did fight, at least they would have some entertainment value.



Speaking of value...

Here's an article of educational value related to some of the not-so-long held traditional symbols that much of the modern world associates with Christmas, but whose origin is far from Christian. I'd like to say that I feel this provides some semblance of balance...hmm. But actually, no, it's nowhere near as sensory overloading... It is my own litte countermeasure to off-set all the Ho-Ho-Holey Hooey Holidays.

That said, really, I'm no scrooge... I just believe in being thankful daily and in being compassionate and generous the whole year through... Not just 1 or 2 months out of the year (toward those who have less than I do/are in need, especially.)

One more item of note... One of the more sad sights - in the days and weeks following all of the manic tree-choosing or assembling/decorating/oooh-ing and aaah-ing, shopping, party-throwing, gift-giving, duraflame log-burning (FYI - I know... all lit up, with dancing flames, in your fireplace, they're pretty (...Whoa, the colors, dude!) , But, to the innocent civilians outside skating or walking, in the 'fresh air'... those things stink!), etc... It's kinda heartbreaking... seeing the seemingly endless number of unceremoniously discarded and dumped, oh-so-quickly forgotten, (once living) "Christmas" trees...Left out with... as trash... with little, sporadic tendrils of tinsel flickering on some branches in the cold wind.



Just a thought.
To those who, instead, choose live trees and replant them afterwards, Thank You!
Happy Present Moment.
-L.



Unwrapping Christmas
What's underneath the traditions that decorate the day

Patrick Langston, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, December 16, 2006

A world-class scavenger, Christmas has ransacked everything from Druid ceremonies to Norse myths for its glorious, overstuffed sack of traditions and rituals.

Christmas lights? Try old-time Babylonian lighting ceremonies. Held at the winter solstice, they ushered in warmer and shorter days ahead.

Gift-giving? Another rip-off of those pagan party animals, who swapped presents during ancient Rome's Saturnalian shindigs.

As for Santa, well, he's a conglomeration of many folks including third-century St. Nicholas, the Anglo-Saxon god Woden, a 16th-century Moor called Black Pete who kept lists of bad kids (in Holland, he whipped them) and Coca Cola's marketing team. And it was the U.S. Surgeon General's 1964 report on smoking and cancer that apparently led to the demise of Santa's pipe.

Heck, even Christmas Day probably isn't really Christmas Day. Aside from the fact that not one of the four gospels actually mentions him, the fellow who apparently owned the stable where Christ was born was an innkeeper, not a birth registrar, and it's anybody's guess when baby Jesus drew his first breath.

As with many Christmas traditions, Dec. 25 was probably just a handy way to pool a bunch of existing pagan rituals, thereby smoothing the way for Christianity's expansion. (It made the "Conversion" choice - as in "Convert or Die" - easier to swallow when 'their' big holy days happen to be around the same time as yours -L.)

We all love traditions, which help give structure and continuity to our lives. Here's a definitely non-definitive look at some of our favourites.

Candy Canes

No, they weren't invented, as some have suggested, to symbolize Jesus (white for purity, red for blood, upside down "J" for, well, you know). Instead, it seems a canny 17th-century Cologne Cathedral choirmaster realized that candy sticks, curved like shepherds' staffs, would distract fidgety kids attending Nativity enactments. Fast forward to the beginning of the 20th century and candy canes are rotting teeth on both sides of the Atlantic. In the 1950s, another churchy fellow, a Catholic priest named Gregory Keller, invented the mass-production machine that turned his brother-in-law's company, Bob's Candies, into the world's leading candy cane manufacturer.

The Yule Log

One angry website auteur condemns Christmas cakes in the shape of yule logs as a remnant of the "vile phallic worship" once endemic among Scandinavians. Well, the Vikings did carve magical runes in the shape of logs during their solstice celebrations, but then yule logs feature prominently in many traditions. The Druids apparently blessed and burned a log -- must have been a big one -- for 12 days during the solstice, keeping a piece to light a new log the following year. Yule logs and cakes, the latter appearing in Victorian times, can still be found in some of the best Christian homes.

Carolling

For major-league carolling, you need look no further than Luke 2:14, where an entire heavenly host proclaims Christ's birth. More earthbound, the Celts went wassailing during the solstice, walking, or more likely stumbling, from house to house where they sang, drank, ate and drank. (Speaking of stumbling and carolling... To the pickled people who put great gusto into destroying (...to call it singing would be a sin) some traditional xmas carols outside my window in The Haight last night...no, this morning(!) Thanks! I'm guessing that the bar tossed you out on your christm-asses.-L.) They also visited orchards, dousing the tree roots with cider to ensure a bumper crop the following year. Somehow, it all wound up entwined and we've been carolling the neighbourhood since at least the Middle Ages, when the earliest Christmas carols emerged. Carols took an official beating during the Reformation, but the 19th century, never averse to a little sentimentality, kicked them back into high gear.


Mistletoe

Popular at least as long ago as ancient Greece, mistletoe is a sure bet for bestowing good luck, extinguishing fires, enhancing fertility, and alleviating gout. Who wouldn't want it hanging in their house, especially since smooching under it ups the chances of marriage in the coming year? Which may explain the kissing-under-the-mistletoe fad that swept 18th century England and Wales, enshrining it as a holiday tradition. Mistletoe etiquette alert: pluck a berry for every kiss, but stop kissing when the berries run out.

Christmas Stockings

Centuries ago, Dutch kiddies, instead of leaving empty wooden shoes to warm by the chimney on Christmas Eve, started stuffing them with hay for Sinter Claes' horse and adding a little something for the man himself. He reciprocated, throwing candies down the chimney to land in their shoes, a tradition that eventually morphed into stockings hung by the chimney with care. In Italy, meanwhile, it was the good witch, La Befana, who filled the kids' shoes, one legend claiming that she was on her way to bring toys to Jesus, got lost, and figured any child would do. (Apparently it's La Befana, maybe ticked at being lost, who started the coal-for-bad-kids tradition). Yet another story has it that three dowry-less maidens hung their stocking to dry by the chimney. Saint Nicholas, taking pity on the young ladies, dropped gold coins into their stockings, making them good marriage prospects and cheering up their penurious nobleman father. Choose the origin you like best.

The Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree sprang, it seems, from numerous origins including gifts of evergreen branches at Kalends, the ancient Roman new year; the Tree of Life in Genesis; the intertwining of Christianity and the pagan mythology of sacred trees in eighth-century Germany (St. Boniface apparently used the fir tree to explain the trinity to Germanic pagans); and the decoration of wooden trees for medieval English mystery plays. Certainly, Christmas trees were hugely popular by the 18th century in Germany, and proliferated in Britain thanks to Queen Victoria's enthusiasm for them. They jumped to North America, some say as early as 1710, with either German or Dutch immigrants. Edward H. Johnson, Thomas Edison's assistant, was the first guy to live longer by swapping candles for electric Christmas tree lights.

Poinsettias

Native to Central America, this ubiquitous symbol of Christmas was once prized by the Aztecs for its decorative qualities and the purplish dye they extracted from its leaves. The Aztecs also considered it a symbol of purity while Christian Mexicans used it in Nativity processions, seeing its star-shaped leaves as representing the Star of Bethlehem.

A Good-Bye salute to the (reality-challenged) neocon dream (...with my middle finger.)

I'll admit it... a while ago (B-4 I found like minded friends via the 'net)... I was feeling some Anxiety...
I was concerned that those delusional stupor-villains at the PNAC - The Project for the New American Century - (and their allies at Bush, Inc. and elsewhere.) were going to get away with it... With screwing America ("Constitution, what Constitution?), screwing Americans (and adding insult to injury... getting many of our citizenry to go along willingly - thinking themselves patriotic.) and screwing the rest of the world (Invade and Conquer)... Oh yeah, and worsening and speeding up the onset of environmental disasters.



With such a fate to look forward to... I was. not surprisingly, often cynical... occasionally depressed and regularly incredulous at and arguing with the TV news... I couldn't believe how they would just repeat whatever sound-bites the White House fed them, that no one cared to ask obvious and pertinent questions! What happened to "in-depth reporting"? 1984 and Big Brother were alive and kicking... and scheming... and re-writing... and...

Then came The Decider's decision - with premeditation and fabricated justification and with a perpetual parade of political allies who were willing to use and abuse the (imaginary) big, bad, bomb scare (Ahh, the "mushroom cloud" speech.) - to invade and attack Iraq. They told us and the world that it was "pre-emptive" and necessary to stop Hussein from using "WMD" on us. They lied. Some of us knew it to be a foolish fabrication from the start, but far too many believed the lie and the liars. Those ethically bankrupt buffoons believed that if you told a lie often enough... if you pummeled the populace with the lie... the people would eventually accept it as the Truth. Unfortunately, it was partially true in regards to part of the populace. But, the Bushites went overboard... They took that idea and ran with it and expanded on it... Adding the "if you tell the country everything's fine and under control - even when all evidence screams the exact opposite - the people will believe the lie." modification. But, thanks to the FEMA disaster that followed the Katrina disaster... the American people had had begun to see the Truth, in spite of the lie and the united front of smiling and back-patting.

I, myself, prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, to believe that people are basically good - at heart - and want to do the right thing. And maybe that's what those who supported these assholes were doing. I can appreciate the intention. It would make me feel better than if it was just that they were duped.

I'll admit, I wasn't expecting the turn of events that happened...scandals, elections they couldn't fck up as much (Thanks to the Enlightened electorate questioning/rejecting electronic machines without paper, voting absentee and turning out to vote, period...and more scandals.) ...How things have changed! Wonder of wonders...Bush, himself, FINALLY stopped saying, "...stay the course..." (Maddening, it was.) Hell, the White House spin-man even tried to deny it was ever said/was ever the plan. (Yeah, right. Cue the VCR.) I am and will forever be grateful that the Bushites took deceit to a whole 'nother level. How confident and full of themselves they were to smile at us and say, "Everything's okay." "They aren't as bad as they're being portrayed." (Partially true - sometimes they were worse.) I'm glad that they've refused and still refuse to admit that they are capable of making a mistake, let alone several big ones. ... If "to err is human..." then they must think they aren't human... I know that, over the last few years, I often didn't believe they could be human.



I'm giddy that their massive B.S.ing and the denials and the conceit are all biting them on the asses that they are. Ha! Ha! Ha! Bad neo-cons! Very Bad!

S-a-l-u-t-e!

I may even begin to believe in... Nahh.

Cheers to us... All of us... Everywhere.

Here's an interesting little piece. I don't agree with all it infers - I have an eternal/internal belief that is positive. But, it's a fun read.
Peace.
L.



From: Media Monitors Network

New American Century Set for Disaster Paralleling Third Reich
by Stan Moore
(Monday December 18 2006)

"The New American Century may not even survive to the end of its first decade. It was a bit presumptuous for the neo-cons to believe a New American Century was even possible."

The Bushites thought they had it all figured out. And they thought it would be easy and relatively painless for themselves. Led by a commander-in-chief who was a former combat aviator with the Texas Air National Guard, the U.S. armed forces, with all that combat firepower was going to beat down Saddam Hussein, take Iraq, then move on Iran and Syria, transforming the Middle East into an America-centric oasis of democracy and freedom. The entire oil-producing region of the Persian Gulf and even Central Asia would become controlled by satellites of American hegemony to the benefit of the U.S. economy and to the negating of potential rivals such as China, India, Russia and anyone else who might think they could pose a threat to the New American Century, to be totally dominated by the U.S. with no serious or even potential rivals.

To achieve these lofty goals of democracy and freedom abroad, democracy had to be quietly aborted domestically with election fraud and manipulations needed to put Bush in the White House. From there, it was going to be a cakewalk, like every other magnificent accomplishment President George W. Bush had achieved in his illustrious career in business and government service ...

It was thought to be SO easy that the advice of senior military officials regarding force requirements to take and control Iraq were dismissed by another military genius of the Bush Administration, Donald "Chesty Puller" Rumsfeld, who knew how to win wars in the new century, and that required sending neigh-sayers within the senior military to early retirement in order to enact a program with the best of the remaining "Yes-men" from Tommy Franks down to Peter Pace, with lots of other conspicuously under-performing military "giants" in lead positions along the way. The best performer of the entire military has been General Geoffrey Miller, who did not get personally involved in combat operations but really gave 'em hell in the field of torturing detainees, many of whom were sold into detention for cash rewards.

So, America deposed Saddam Hussein, and with the aid of the Kurdish Peshmurga, actually took Saddam into captivity after a few months and after the sons of Saddam had been killed violently. All these milestones were supposed to result in Iraqi acquiescence to American occupation, but as of December, 2006, the single most desired wish of all Iraqis of all religious sects and cultures is to have a complete withdrawal of all American personnel from their soil. So much for democracy! The will of the people is inconsequential still to the American government and their puppets in the Green Zone.

And it has become clear to anyone free of myopia that there will be no military solution in Iraq for the disaster brought by the Bushites. America cannot win, but could lose catastrophically even in military terms, especially if the Shiites take control of logistics lines foiling an attack on Iran or something similar...

Even adding another few tens of thousands of American troops for a few months will not pacify Iraq, but will result in significantly more American casualties. And the breaking points of the over-stretched American military draws precariously near.

So, what will Bush do? The logical next step from the Bush perspective is to attack Iran. Why? Because Bush cannot see his mistakes -- he believes he is working "God's" will and that God wants American hegemony and control over the world economy and the world's petroleum resources.

So, it appears that the unraveling of the Bush Administration in the last two years of W's presidency may also be the unraveling of the New American Century. The New American Century will not last as long as Hitler's Third Reich, which was supposed to last a millenium, but had maybe ten or twelve strong years before the myopia of that German/Austria commander-in-chief led to disaster and humiliation for a nation and tragedy for the entire world.

Bush' grandfather, Prescott, was a business partner and collaborator with the Third Reich. He was convicted of conspiring with the enemy during wartime. And George W. Bush is leading the powerful U.S. military much as Adolf Hitler led the powerful German military of his time -- to early victory and ultimate disaster.

Bush may very well see the handwriting on the wall. He may feel that if American cannot have the hegemony and strategic control over Persian Gulf oil that no one else will. Maybe he will attempt to wreck the economy of the entire world, destroy the oilfields for a generation or two, and sink the entire ship of modern civilization rather than see prosperity elsewhere but not on native shores. Bush may very well be the apocalyptic president who single-handedly drives America to the rapture where either God will rescue the faithful or they will drown like rats from a sinking ship.

The only thing missing in this sordid scenario is the perspective of the great political writer, Hunter Thompson, who unfortunately died and had his remains fired from a cannon in public celebration and therefore has not been able to witness and document the unraveling of the American civilization he once lived on the edge of.

The New American Century may not even survive to the end of its first decade. It was a bit presumptuous for the neo-cons to believe a New American Century was even possible. These are the same people who sent Republican kids straight out of college to the Green Zone to run the Iraqi stock market and banking system, and who to this day have about six skilled Arabic translators in the entire Green Zone. They are a bit "reality-challenged" and incompetent would be far too kind a word to describe the resulting tragedy and havoc they have wrought.

The Democrats complain a bit now, but only on tactics, not strategy, and they will be unable to resurrect the failed state they were complicit in ruining.

If only Al Gore had not stolen the votes needed to put Ralph Nader in the White House in 2004, we might have stood a chance.


Source:

by courtesy & © 2006 Stan Moore