1/8/08

Wanted: Green Workers








The sprouting of green businesses has been growing so fast, there is a shortage of qualified workers. Check out the NPR Story about what companies are facing in terms of filling these positions. Also, I found the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, which has a listing of courses, workshops and certification courses that educate and train the next generation of "green collar" workers.

1/4/08

Barack!








Congratulations to Barack Obama, who won Iowa. You're my hero.

1/3/08

Dinner!!








Um, my guess is that this guy has a DUI.

1/2/08

The Holidaze

I can tell that we're still in the holiday mentality.

An imagined conversation in the cafe at work:

Guy: "What's this?"
Me: "Oranges"
Guy: "Are they made of chocolate?"
Me: "No. They are natural. They came off a tree."
Guy: "Do they have nougat in them?"
Me: "Dude, it's fruit."
Guy: "How about caramel or peanuts?"

Silence.

I go back upstairs.

ShopDropping








During the crazy holiday season, you may have encountered strange things in retail stores. Shopdropping has become a more popular activity in recent years. I remember reading things about it back in '02 and '03, mostly on anti-advertising blogs and in art magazines. It is becoming mainstream.

Shopdropping.net is a great place to learn and share information on this popular form of culture jamming. If you are an artist, this may be an important and useful method of getting your message out there.

Here's a New York Times article about it from Times Daily.com.

1/1/08

It's January 1

Happy New Year! May this year be happy and fruitful.

12/28/07

The Popcorn Conversation








A co-worker and I had a half-hour talk the other day about popcorn. It stemmed from an earlier conversation we had about it, which sounds weird. I told my co-worker about how I have not had microwave popcorn for 5 or 6 years because we got an air popper as a gift in '01, and then told him about some factory workers getting lung disease from the powdered "flavoring" used in the bags.

Then a few days later, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal ran an article about the dangers of microwave popcorn and how ConAgra dropped the dangerous chemical!! That spurned the half-hour conversation about it. Don't get me started on ConAgra. They have a laundry list of lawsuits and a criminal-like history of sociopathic behavior. That's a subject for another post. But back to popcorn, how dangerous is this flavoring chemical to the casual consumer?

We couldn't believe that someone in Colorado who ate two bags a day for ten years had the same lung damage as the popcorn plant workers!! What??!! Unbelievable!! Who knew that stuff was that bad?? Furthermore, who eats two bags of popcorn a day for ten years?? That's the real question. Popcorn? I mean, I could see even one bag a day, but Jesus man, put it down for a while.

It's best to go old-school, buy the corn kernels from a small outfit and air pop them. Just pretend it's 1983 and you just put in the rented tape of E.T. in the VCR and you're totally stoked about the miracle of rented movies.