Hm!

From New York Times. Sad for peeps like me who pay their bills! But, they also want to push for clearer language and less deception when changing rules, which is good:

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

Can't afford your friends?

I can't imagine my social life being affected by how much money I make. I mean, yes in terms of where (or whether) I could eat out, perhaps. But to actually "part ways" with friends because we're not in the same social group? That's too weird for my to contemplate.

[from a NYT article about executives taking low paying jobs]

After applying for more than 100 jobs, mostly director-level and above in marketing and branding, and getting just two interviews, Ms. Arlt said she realized last fall that she had to do something to “close the monthly financial hemorrhage.”

Her new job at HometownQuotes pays $10 to $15 an hour and has mostly entailed data entry. But even though she has parted ways with some friends because she is no longer in their social stratum, Ms. Arlt said she was glad she was no longer sitting at home, “thinking, ‘Who have I not heard from today?’ ”

More AIG: This is long, so I've separated it into chapters

(I've gone off schedule, posting these AIG things. But... some stories need to be posted when still au courant!)

Chapter One: The Newest News!

Oh my gosh, this AIG thing... it's like a great soap opera! The latest (in the NY Times): "The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G."

"I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage." (Read here, it's worth it.)

It's whiny sounding, but the dude does give more detail into what's going on. And I get the dude's point that Liddy reassured these peeps they would get these bonuses. And I get his point that not everyone in that department was responsible for the shit that went down. On the other hand... he probably could have defended himself a little, without all the details that will now make us mock him too. For example: "Just for the record, not all of us in the department were ALSO the ones who did The Shit! Yo! Just sayin'!" (Oh wait... it's only middle class liberal pseudo hippies like me who use Self Aware Hip Hop References. This commentor says it better.)

But when you start trying to tell us how hard off you will be now... come on... what sort of lifestyle are you leading that requires this level of income just to get through the week? This is the part where I feel like Wall Street Peeples are massively out of touch. They could lower their standard of living even to, say, West Island Middle Class... and they'd have enough to live on for how long? They could have all hit early retirement before any of this went down, if they cared to live like the Commoners. (Barring the things the you need to spend money on in order to work in certain circles... the suits... the business lunches... but I'm sure that's a small %.)


Chapter Two: Comments by NYT Readers!

When you're done, read some of the 917 comments. You can sort them by Editor's Picks, or Readers' Picks etc. Here are the highest "I agree with!" readers' comments:

"I wonder if he is aware that across the country, workers making less than one-tenth of his bonus in annual salary are agreeing to pay cuts, reductions in hours, and withdrawal of promised perks in order to save their coworkers' jobs."

"I'm sorry to say that your email reveals less about why you deserve your bonus and the moral rightness of your argument than the sense of entitlement that has blinded you to your company's practices and your role in benefiting from them."

[This is my fave:]
"The company where I was a janitor went out of business. It wasn't my fault, I kept the floor clean. The taxpayers should be paying my salary."

[And for a different, but still popular opinion...]
"Dear AIG I quit" is a brilliant letter. If the publicity-seeking Attorney's General, who shot their mouths off for their own political gain, had only taken the time to comprehend the facts, they would not have fed the out-of-control frenzy that emanated from the American public which, taken as a whole, is poorly educted, won't read and learn or understand, and can be played like a banjo by those who would seek to smear the current administration. Bravo Mr. DeSantis."

...And Editor's Choice:

"Hint: If your company accepts tens of billions of dollars from taxpayers, consider your bonus renegotiated."

"If the shipping department screws up and costs the company money, then the warehouse guys are not getting a raise. If the doctor makes a mistake and causes a huge lawsuit for the hospital, then raises for nurses and janitors goes down the drain. In this economic climate, how can you expect otherwise?
Wow - you got over $700K for one year of work? Couldn't you have lived on a half of that? Do you realize how lucky you are to even make half as much?"

"So he was shamed into an epiphany. Well at least he had one."

Chapter Three: The Mature Comments!

Seems someone had to Be the Adult and make reasonable points, reasonably expressed...

Adult 1
"Instead of positioning yourself as a victim of the consequences, you might (collectively) have predicted the government and public reaction to your pay structure, and suggested more equitable and sustainable pay in October.

"Rather than quitting and charitably donating what you believe was fairly earned, you might be continuing to provide invaluable services to AIG, and more importantly, to the national and international economic recovery. Your industry desperately needs people with your ability to work constructively within a compromised system and devise practical solutions.
More importantly, it needs people like you who can factor in the actual social and political variables in our country without capitulating to fear and threat."

Adult 2
"When you say that last fall many of you stayed at A.I.G. precisely because you were told that your contracts would be honored, can you understand that some of us wish that many of you would have stayed on simply because of your sense of pride in your work, and because of your sense of duty and patriotism?

"Please understand: I do not question your patriotism, nor do I condone the wanton attacks on your profession. I have no doubt that the situation was mishandled, in part because we are all panicked a little, and in part because politicians are politicians.
But, Mr. DeSantis you are not like the plumber who should be paid for his work because it was the electrician's fault that the house burned down. It's a lot more like we've got bombs dropping on our heads and many of us are getting killed, or living in bomb shelters. The lines at soup kitchens are growing, we've got ghost towns where people have had to abandon their homes, we've got an entire generation of people who don't know if they will ever get jobs, because they are not quite as brilliant and hard working as you and I are. That in itself is not a crime, and people don't deserve to be homeless just because they are ordinary folks. Last time the world financial situation resembled the present one, the world went so crazy that millions of people were murdered in a war that engulfed the world!

"You should not be vilified because you are working in the financial world, but nor should you behave as if all that's happened was that one house burned down. Our entire world is in danger of burning down. Come and join the rest of us in asking what you can do for your country and for your fellow human beings..."


Chapter Four: The Adults Get Me Thinking...

I appreciate the Adults, because I believe those are the people who can actually reach the intended audience. If this DeSantis is reading the NYT comments (who wouldn't be??) he's only going to feel defensive over the ones that amuse us the most. But the people who give polite, patient, reasoned answers might actually mean something to him.

I think what Adult 2 said is what little Tommy Friedman was trying to say. I don't think he was defending Rich Folk, so much as pointing out a possibly more effective way of facing the bonus scandal. When Obama was running for Prez, a lot of what people liked about him was that he inspired, and made many people *want to be better people.* I heard that over and over. So if anyone could have said something inspiring, yet subtly shaming, and gotten away with it, it would have been him. ...Whereas my initial approach of calling AIG folk Unsexy Vampires... maybe less effective.

It reminds me of that old experiment, where students who were treated as smart and gifted excelled pretty much for the rest of their lives, versus students who were told they were slow. If you call on people to be Heroes! by working for little pay to restore AIG (see the next comment), then maybe you'll evoke their better natures. Rather than putting them in a position of defending themselves from being crooks.

Maybe I'm being unrealistic. Well... optimists are less in touch with reality, but we stay afloat longer because of it. (The rats!) ;-) I know I'm channelling Joseph Campbell here:

"Solo was a very practical guy, at least as he thought of himself, a materialist. But he was a compassionate human being at the same time and didn't know it. The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he hadn't known he possessed. ... Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower."

So... is it not possible that we can also put other people in situations that will evoke their higher nature? As opposed to the Wall Street atmosphere they're used to, that probably evokes lower natures on a daily basis.

A little more AIG

Here's a little of NYT columnist Thomas Friedman on AIG. Hmm I wonder if this is true. Well, the thing I have some confidence in is--Obama is probably the type who listens to Wise Counsel and learns from mistakes. As opposed to Bush.

Had Mr. Obama given A.I.G.’s American brokers a reputation to live up to, a great national mission to join, I’d bet anything we’d have gotten most of our money back voluntarily. Inspiring conduct has so much more of an impact than coercing it. And it would have elevated the president to where he belongs — above the angry gaggle in Congress.

“There is nothing more powerful than inspirational leadership that unleashes principled behavior for a great cause,” said Dov Seidman, the C.E.O. of LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures, and the author of the book “How.” What makes a company or a government “sustainable,” he added, is not when it adds more coercive rules and regulations to control behaviors. “It is when its employees or citizens are propelled by values and principles to do the right things, no matter how difficult the situation,” said Seidman. “Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values.”

Right now we have an absence of inspirational leadership.

AIG lolcat

Since Friend Paul suggested this phrase in comment to my last posting...

Millions are still millions

So the new commentary I've been seeing re. the AIG bonuses is that people are blowing it out of proportion. That is to say, that the millions in bonuses is very small, compared to the billions given in bailout money. So, like, "Hey it's only a small percentage of your bailout money... so chill!"

I feel like this massively misses the point, especially in light of the fact that the bonuses went to the division guilty in large part for the economic mess. To me, the scandal isn't that bailout money is going to bonuses, but that these people are getting bonuses at all.

First: What is the point of giving bonuses that aren't tied to performance? Oh I remember... to retain talent. Ah. If they're so durned talented... won't they show great results, and still earn performance-based bonuses?

Second: Even just one million dollars is totally obscene to the overwhelming majority of Americans who make Ordinary Incomes, pay taxes, and are being affected by this depression.

The income disparity between Wall Street Fat Cats and Ordinary Folk is obscene at the best of times... but for the WSFCs (who are in part TO BLAME) to still be taking home millions, when the OFs are losing their jobs and homes...

As Judge Judy would say: Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

AIG!!! The frontline is everywhere

I was going to post this story, about AIG giving out billion dollar bonuses to the very people who helped create the financial crisis. But today I see there's already been an update--Obama calling for the Teasury secretary to find any legal means of blocking them.

The government dude who argued, reluctantly, that the bonuses have to be paid out said it was for two reasons. First, that the bonuses were promised long ago, and were legally binding. Second, that they still have to retain talent, in order to make AIG profitable again (for the tax payers who now own it.) But question is... what talent?? These are the mf's who sold the derivatives in the first place!

These people really are living on another fucking planet. This is the reason why Brahm Stoker envisioned the aristocrat as bloodsucking, amoral and afraid of the light. And not to belittle those who died on Sep 11, but even Al-Queda didn't pull off something this destructive. And now... the poor little boys need their bonuses. ...So that their talent can be retained.

Rage Against the Machine: No Shelter
Because: I love the line "the frontline is everywhere"

Want to know how The Other Half lives?

In detail? From a NYTimes article on the lifestyles of the kind of people who would be affected by Obama's proposed $500 000 salary cap:

If a person is married with two children:

1. Weekly deductions on a $500,000 salary are:

federal taxes, $2,645;
Social Security, $596;
Medicare, $139;
state taxes, $682;
and city, $372,
bringing the weekly take-home to $5,180, or about $269,000 a year

2. Living expenses:

2 vacations a year, a winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the ski slopes: Total minimum cost: $16,000.

three-bedroom apartment (purchased for $1.5 million)
monthly mortgage $8,000
co-op maintenance fee of $8,000 a month

summer house in Southampton (cost $4 million)
monthly mortgage payments of $20,000.

cars and drivers:
chauffeur’s pay: $75,000 - $125,000 a year (the higher end for former police officers who can double as bodyguards)
garage for car: $700 a month.

A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year.

Charity galas: $10,000 - $15,000 on a dress --> 3-4 dresses/year

Each Brooks Brothers suit costs about $1,000

Children:
private school $32,000 a year per student.
additional tutoring (needed for those private schools) $125-175 / hour
SAT tutors are about $250 an hour.
Nanny: $45,000.

$425 every 10 days on groceries

Restaurants.
Dry cleaning.
kennels for the dog when the family is away
summer camp,
spas and other grooming for the human members of the family,
donations to charity
frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity ($8.50 each)
TOTAL: about $790,750

HOLY CRAP! Swis style.

"In the hush-hush world of Swiss banking, the unthinkable is happening: secrets are spilling into the open.

UBS, the largest bank in Switzerland, agreed on Wednesday to divulge the names of well-heeled Americans whom the authorities suspect of using offshore accounts at the bank to evade taxes. The bank admitted conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and agreed to pay $780 million to settle a sweeping federal investigation into its activities."

(from the New York Times)

A Blue Christmas

I've been hiding out from the news of the world all month, doing Nanowrimo (write a novel in one month.) Having gone to political science, I know a lot of news junkies--people who couldn't get away from their newspaper reading if they tried. I've never been like that. I like to know what's going on in the world, but I also accept that if I escape from it all for a little while, they won't notice I'm gone. What's sort of depressing is when I tune back in and find everything's the same!

The stories I couldn't avoid were the Mumbai killings and the shopper rampage at Walmart. Not a very merry start to the Christmas season.

:-(

On the other hand, withdrawing from the negative can sometimes help to refocus on the positive. No matter what anyone around me believes or tells me, I still think humans are just as capable of beauty as they are of ugliness. But we kinda hafta make that choice every day.

On that note, I'll post here The Most Depressing Christmas Song I Know. (It's not overtly Christmas, but it appeared on Judy Collins' Christmas album.) I had to upload it to youtube myself, and for all I know it'll get taken down--depends how Princelike she is. ;-)

What do we know about Tough Times?

Here's an interesting thought from NYT columnist David Brooks re. the Obama win:

"Barack Obama is a child of a child of the 1960s. His mother was born only five years earlier than Hillary Clinton. For people in Obama’s generation, the great disruption had already occurred by the time they hit adulthood. Theirs is a generation of consolidation and neo-traditionalism — a generation of sunscreen and bicycle helmets, more anxious about parenthood than anything else....

This cohort will soon become the ruling class.

And the irony is that they will be confronted by the problem for which they have the least experience and for which they are the least prepared: the problem of scarcity."

I can't wait to see who his cabinet is, because that's where a president has the opportunity to gain from the wisdom of others--such as people who've seen harder times than he.

Buy cheap or buy green?

With the whole up-and-coming recession thing, I'm seeing two retail trends.

1. Recessionista: Making it trendy to pay less for stuff. [Pictured here: Coco Chanel in the 30s. Buying accessories was one way to make dresses last longer during the Depression.]

" Grant Barrett, a lexicographer who specializes in new words and slang, said the word is being used to give Americans an excuse to buy more stuff. “It’s kind of permitting consumers to have justification for their spending habits,” he said. Mr. Barrett included “recessionista” as an up-and-coming catchphrase earlier this month on his Web site, DoubleTongued.org. “The idea is, because they are spending less or getting more value, it is still O.K. to shop,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It’s a very self-serving message.”

2. High End Eco Brands: The other trend is putting out super-duper eco friendly products, which cost more (with the idea that people are more willing these days to pay the *real price* for Christmas cards, wrapping paper, and such. Click here for example.)

[Pictured here: A dissolvable dress!]

Not sure how I feel about both. On one hand, they both continue to promote buying more stuff than you need. Crap in landfills is still crap in landfills. Or even if it's recyclable, it still requires money and energy to recycle-- the first R in the green trio is "reduce" (reduce, reuse, recycle.)

I guess I still lean slightly more towards Option 2--pricier goody-tqo-shoes stuff--since pricier usually means you'll buy less, won't buy impulsively, and the products have a smaller footprint to begin with. And then for things you need to buy more frequently, perhaps the Recessionista option works better. I've switched over to higher priced products in my goal to go greener, organic and vegan--ee-er, but I can't afford to buy everything this way.

Option 2 is also, more often, made locally. Making stuff that's eco-forward and local is where many western politicians are trying to move their countries as a way out of the financial crisis. For example, the US economy was once built on Ford Motors--can the economy be rebuilt on green technology imagined and built in the US? Option 2 would support that kind of innovation and job creation.

Anyway... interesting!

O Federal Government, Where Art Thou?

Despite my general left-ee-ness, I'm not anti-capitalism, or anti-markets. But I believe very strongly that it's the federal government's job to protect us from dishonesty. Markets only work if there are appropriate limits on what people can do, and if there are rules and ways of enforcing those rules.

With the latest mortgage based credit brou ha ha in the US, it's hard to believe that the Federal Reserve Board "recently put into effect rules barring a lender from making a loan without regard to the borrower’s ability to repay it." (New York Times article) Oh, like, maybe lenders have responsibilities too? Shocking.

The article explains that creditors today have raised their fees, and treat those as the assets, rather than the loan itself: "because so much consumer debt is packaged into securities and sold to investors, repayment of the loans takes on less importance to those lenders than the fees and charges generated when loans are made." That's messed up.

So while I think we are responsible for our own decisions and shouldn't be borrowing indiscriminately, I also think it's dishonest to profit by someone's ignorance. The market is based upon confidence, and if a lender doesn't have confidence in the loan applicant, they shouldn't grant the loan. While I'm reassured that "some bankruptcy experts and regulators are beginning to focus on the responsibilities of lenders, like requiring them to make loans only if they are suitable to the borrowers applying for them," I'm sure many a foreclosed-upon American is wishing it happened sooner.

Selling out like a rock band baby!

I'm a big believer in gradual change. I didn't become a vegetarian or vegan overnight, and I don't believe that if I'm not doing something Perfectly (being vegan or eco-friendly etc.) I should just throw in the towel. By tuning out, we don't have to change a thing about the way they live -- wee!

The argument against making small changes is that the changes we make won't make a difference (to animals, the environment, poor peeps....) I've never understood this argument for two reasons:

(a) What if--in theory--everyone else also wanted to make these changes to their lives, but didn't because they think the same way you do. It's silly. Be the change you want to see in the world;

(b) What about having principles? Why can't you do something because you just know it's right, even if things never change? It's called having integrity--trying to bring your actions and beliefs in line with each other.

Again, I think it's just an excuse we give ourselves so we won't have to be Uncomfortable. If you're not at least trying to live a life in accordance with how you wish the world was, then you're--in rock and roll terms--selling out.

Instead of swinging between the extremes of Perfect Person and Slacker Dude, try what the Green Living Tips blog calls: Transitional Ethics. I think it's better to make little compromises that get you closer to the end goal, than the one big compromise of trading in your values for material comfort.

"I've gained the world and lost my soul
Maybe it's because I'm getting old
All the people that I know
Have gained the world and lost their souls"

Nicely Put

I'm very interested in how the current financial crisis in the US is spurring on a lot of conversation and thought about debt and consumerism. Here's a nice passage from David Brooks' New York Times column:

We’re living in an age when a vast excess of capital sloshes around the world fueling cycles of bubble and bust. When the capital floods into a sector or economy, it washes away sober business practices, and habits of discipline and self-denial. Then the money managers panic and it sloshes out, punishing the just and unjust alike.

What we need in this situation is authority. Not heavy-handed government regulation, but the steady and powerful hand of some public institutions that can guard against the corrupting influences of sloppy money and then prevent destructive contagions when the credit dries up.

Yay! Less dieters! Amaaazing!

Excerpts from a nice good-news story in the New York Times about the decrease in dieting, and increase of home-cooking. Especially interesting is this idea that cooking is a practice we've lost and need to pick up again. I used to think I was "not a good cook" (except baking!) until two summers ago when I said to myself: Self, you is an academic. And if academics are good at anything, it's learning the basics of ANYTHING... from a book.

So I started picking up vegan cookbooks that were well reviewed on amazon, and that looked quick, and I taughts myself how to cook well. I've been so amazed at the results, Eating Out doesn't hold much allure for me anymore, because good vegetarian food is so hard to find--even what I cook is usually better. And I've followed the books enough now that I can experiment a little without things going horribly wrong. (I toyed with a black bean salad recipe this week and it worked! I toyed with spaghetti sauce and it worked!)

The bottom line is... if I can learn to cook decent (and often delish) meals in one summer, so can any fool. It can't be that much of a lost art. I will add, however, that it requires lots of base ingredients to be on hand, and to have an organized kitchen.

*

AFTER decades of obsessing about fat, calories and carbs, many dieters have made the unorthodox decision to simply enjoy food again.

... The percentage of those consumers who are on a diet is lower than at any time since information on dieting was first collected in 1985. At the peak in 1990, 39 percent of the women and 29 percent of the men were dieting. Today, that number has dropped to 26 percent of women and 16 percent of men.

The diarists also report eating more organic foods and whole grains, said Harry Balzer, an NPD vice president.

...In May, the market research firm Information Resources reported that 53 percent of consumers say they are cooking from scratch more than they did just six months ago, in part, no doubt, because of the rising cost of prepared foods.

...“We need to demystify cooking,” Ms. Waters said. “It creates feelings about food that make you feel cared for, and that’s the kind of food that really changes habits.”

The cookbook author and television personality Rachael Ray has attracted both loyal followers and harsh critics for creating food that doesn’t focus on calories, fat, carbohydrates or even portion control. She intentionally doesn’t include calorie information with her cookbook recipes.

“I think that puts your head into science and away from what I think the experience of food should be,” Ms. Ray said.

...“If everyone ate more plant-based and more whole foods and unprocessed foods, that would be major,” said Arlene Spark, associate professor of nutrition at Hunter College in New York. “But that would mean people going back to cooking, and what we’ve lost is people’s ability and knowledge of how to cook.”

...Last year, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported on a study of 97 obese women, all of whom were avoiding high-fat foods. Half the women were instructed to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables. By the end of a year, the women who were focused on adding vegetables lost an average of 17 pounds, 20 percent more than the women who were just paying attention to fat consumption.

Also, the more time people spend on tasks like food shopping, cooking and kitchen cleanup, the more likely they are to be of average weight. The Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture found that people of normal weight spend more time on meal-related tasks than people who are overweight or underweight.

Weddings and money and vegans oh my!

Ooo Portia DiRossi and Ellen Degeneres had my kinda wedding--19 guests, in the back yard, with dogs, both mothers wearing slacks, and all vegan food.

My wedding had about the same number of guests, and also featured doggy guests (though, sadly, not my cats). It was a double wedding with my brother, held in my parents' back yard, and I too was platinum blonde! No white, though--I wore a vintage 1960s turquoise polyester gogo mini and platform heels. My husband wore jeans and my Charlie Chaplin tie. All the food was homemade and vegetarian (I wasn't a vegan yet), except my brother's then-father-in-law who barbecued chicken. The cake was chocolate, with Star Wars action figures on it.


I was glancing through a book the other day about the Wedding Industry, and how they convince people to spend OBSCENE amounts of money. Not including the amounts of money that people expect others to spend at their weddings, such as on gifts, or bridesmaids dresses, etc. Somewhere along the line we've come to believe that an experience can only be special if we spend money on it?

Nothing's better than More?

When I was shopping in the village a couple weeks ago I ran into a woman who used to work with. She'd just returned from a trip to South America and was still adjusting. I asked her what was the weirdest thing about being back.

She said--as soon as she got back to Toronto she noticed that, though we have so much here, everyone is so stressed. Whereas in the countries she visited (I forget which ones) so many people have so little, but she found they were much more easy going.

Certainly goes with the Thoreau pieces I've been re-reading this month. He tried to figure out how little you can live with, and still enjoy life, and he found it to be very little. I'm not trying to imply that poor people are happy cause they're poor--I have no personal experience of poverty. But I think I can say with confidence that, your basic needs having been met (regularly), there is no direct correlation between Money and Pleasure. (Which according to this book, is backed up by studies.) And maybe it's in part because of what my ex-coworker noticed... that we stress out over everything. What's the point in having more, if you just worry more?

Local chemist *answer guy* Dr Joe Schwarcz made a similar point in a recent article addressing the "toxic shower curtain" scare:

"While most of the scares about living in a "chemical soup" are exaggerated, the stress they cause is real. People have become so scared of dying they forget about living. And if worrying about trace amounts of chemicals being released from shower curtains makes news, then living today is pretty good. So relax."

***

Reminds me of this tongue-in-cheek Stephen Sondheim song:

I got rhythm, music too, just as much as before
Got my guy and my sky of blue
Now, however, I own the view
More is better than nothing--true
But nothing's better than MORE MORE MORE
Nothing's better than more.

Show me the money-garden!

Guess I'm not the only one wishing I had a veggie garden. The NYT reports that more people are starting or growing their gardens because of food prices. "Seed companies and garden shops say that not since the rampant inflation of the 1970s has there been such an uptick in interest in growing food at home."

Lavage Vert

While I was still in school this past year I bought two "greenie" products from Presiden't Choice, even though they were more expensive: laundry detergent and toilet paper.

I wanted the tp ("TP for my bunghole! Bungholio!") because it was made of 100% recycled paper, and also the rolls are doubled up so less of those cardboard rolls used. One week The Husband bought regular cheapee and paper, and I was all: But it's not the recycled stuff! Then I looked closely at the label. 100% recycled. And cheaper. Hm.

So this week (now that I have tiiime lovely time on my hands) I examined all the different papers, and found the one that was recycled, double-rolled, and cheapest. It was NOT the Pres Choice brand.

Which made me suspicious about the laundry detergent, which has the following advantages: can use in cold water, phosphate free, perfume free, and concentrated (so less packaging.) This week I examined all the different concentrated brands, and found (1) they're all phosphate free; (2) I use any detergent in cold water, so I didn't look at that; (3) the cheapest one was also perfume free: Sunlight for sensitive skin.