Mercury

My mom has had horrible problems with mercury poisoning (as you may have read in my zine, dealing with mom. Sorry mom!)

I'm a little afraid to get tested, but probably we all should:

Greenpeace - Get Tested For Mercury Contamination

Your Easter Haiku

Early spring morning
Easter Bunny hops in sights
Tastes great with dumplings.


From my favorite poetry book of all time:
Redneck Haiku by Mary K Witte

why I love Seattle

Air America Radio | America's Progressive Talk Radio Network

My letter to Jim Trapp, program director at AM1090, Air America's local station. If you like Unfiltered on Air America, and you live around Seattle, you should write to him too.

Jim Trapp
Program Director
AM1090
1000 Dexter Ave. North Suite 100
Seattle, WA 98109

Dear Mr. Trapp,

I have been listening to AM1090 since November 2004, when I happily discovered your station. I was so delighted to find it. I can listen to every Air America show, even in the “best of” reruns, and enjoy it more than my other favorite radio station, NPR. I liked AM1090 so much that I have been going out of my way to patronize advertisers (except Sam’s Club, which I don’t think is a good advertiser match, but that’s the subject for another letter).

However, this week, you have stopped playing one of my favorite shows, Unfiltered. In its place you have scheduled Morning Sedition, which is frankly my least favorite Air America show. First I thought that this was just a week of vacation for the show, but then I went to the Air America web site and I see that I’ve missed several extremely interesting guests and segments this week, and that in fact you have cut this show from your programming entirely.

I’m so very disappointed in you for doing this. Unfiltered is a great show. I am apparently a born-again liberal, pushed to being a liberal by the Right-wing conservatives moving more and more to the Right. I really enjoy learning so much from the segments on Unfiltered. Oftentimes, the show is more liberal than I am, even, but I actually like that. I am interested in learning about views and opinions that don’t always come naturally to me. I can’t see any reason why you would censor it by taking it off the air.

I hate to be the kind of person who says, bring Unfiltered back or I’ll stop listening, but it’s true. While Morning Sedition is a good show, too, I don’t want to wake up to it when my alarm goes off at 6:30am. If Unfiltered doesn’t come back, I’ll probably have to switch back to NPR.

Thank you for your time and consideration of my opinions.

Green

Huh, I wasn't even too annoyed this year at the pseudo-Irish partiers who wear green sparkleys and drink green beer and have not a smidge of Irish in them.

Yes, I did wear green, and not a single little old creepy man was able to pinch me.

Good fences make good neighbors

Why, oh why, do our neighbors at the restaurant next door to our store insist of turning up the radio in their kitchen so loud that we can hear it all the way in our store? And, more importantly, why do they NOT BELIEVE ME when I call them, tell them we can hear it, and ask them nicely to turn it down? Tell me, do you think that I’m being unreasonable, not wanting to hear their radio in our store?

Why do I have such bad luck with neighbors?

First, there was the possible CIA neighbor, who only showed up late at night once or twice a month, and was noisily building some kind of scaffolding in her apartment.

Then, there was the crazy child who used to find pieces of wood, like a 2x4, and pound it repeatedly on the sidewalk. No reason that I could tell. He’d just pound and pound and pound.

Sue, the musical neighbor would sing opera. I mean it, really, Harry the Dirty Dog style opera, and LOUDLY. She was just above us, and believe it or not, noise traveled downwards into our otherwise beautiful apartment. That woman could really project her voice. Then, after an hour of her opera scales, she’d play piano scales and exercises. Never any songs. Just scales and exercises. For an hour. Then she’s run on her treadmill, which shook the whole building. Really. This was a punishment for us, because we once asked her not to do her treadmill at 4am. Yes, 4am, as in before DAWN. She went ballistic at us for daring to tell her how to run her life, when we obviously didn’t have lives, then she started the whole opera-piano-treadmill routine every night as soon as she got home from work. Sometimes, if she was feeling chipper, she’d sing again for another hour before bed. Weekends she’d often do the entire trio twice a day. She did this for the rest of the time we lived in that apartment.

There have been crying baby neighbors, parking spot stealing neighbors, hogging the laundry room neighbors, but none really ever could compete with Sue.

You’d think with all of this apartment neighbor karma, we’d escape commercial bad neighbor syndrome. But no. It’s like a college dorm around here.

The owners of the restaurant are so NICE, I’d like to say. The food is good and the beer on tap is great. I love the owners, they’re so very sweet. But those guys that work in the kitchen are just, well…did I do something to make them not like me? Besides ask them to keep their radio turned down, that is.

The thing is, they know that their radio can be heard through the wall. My proof is that they turn it up even louder at exactly 6:00, when we normally close. We won’t even go into the fact that our work day rarely ends at 6:00, I’ll save that for another post.

well, then

I guess I had My Island set to not allow comments. I've fixed this, and will not wonder anymore why my blog doesn't get comments. At least I know it's not because I had it broken, so there.

Quote of the Day

"It isn't enough not to do the bad stuff."
-Ben Cohen