Auto Recycler

Part of my job involves going out to see various types of businesses. This one is interesting: auto recycler, they buy cars, take out various parts of the cars and stow them away in their warehouse, anything from front passenger doors to other things, and people come to them, looking for specific parts.

Here are some pics. You can see the Lexus SUV in the back.

It was a peculiar feeling walking through piles and piles of parts in various stages of usability. It seemed like a graveyard for cars, and not old ones, but new ones 2000 or later. It's more like a retirement home though. I'm sure their final resting place is somewhere else.

I wonder the trek these cars made to eventually find themselves here and then eventually taken apart? Who owned them?

Mencken Quotes

If you haven't guessed already, I'll fess up now. I have a huge hard-on for old guys. Especially dead old guys. That being said, here are some snippets from one very venerable dude.

[image from Wikipedia]


-The truth that survives is the lie that it is pleasantest to believe.

-Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

-It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.

-The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals.

from lhup.edu.

Future....corn need not apply

Newest publication and report put out by the Food & Water Watch, the Network for New Energy Choices, and the Vermont Law School Institute for Energy and the Environment holds that yes, corn ethanol is not all that. You can see the report and download it here. I dunno whether this will harken an immediate change in terms of ethanol consumption and production, given certain subsidies and what not, but it does mark another step towards us becoming more conscious of alternatives ill-touted as better alternatives to petroleum.

[photo courtesy of Nicktripp]

Here are some of the report's findings:

-Not all biofuels are equal. Corn – now used to produce 95 percent of U.S. ethanol and the only commercially viable ethanol feedstock prepared to capitalize on refinery subsidies in the Farm Bill – is the least sustainable biofuel feedstock of all raw materials commonly used.
-The capacity of corn ethanol to offset U.S. fossil fuel use is extremely limited. Dedicating the entire U.S. corn crop to ethanol production would only offset 15 percent of gasoline demand. Conversely, modest increases in auto fuel efficiency standards of even one mile per gallon for all cars and light trucks, such as those passed by the Senate last month could cut petroleum consumption by more than all
alternative fuels and replacement fuels combined.
-Corn ethanol is the wrong biofuel for combating global warming. The most favorable estimates show that corn ethanol could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent to 28 percent, while cellulosic ethanol is estimated to offer a reduction of 87 percent compared to gasoline.
-Ethanol is not the solution to revitalizing rural America. While higher commodity prices and cooperatively owned ethanol refineries could be a boon to independent farmers, unregulated ethanol industry growth will further concentrate agribusiness, threatening the livelihood of rural communities - from Oil & Gas Online

Good Neighbors

It's always nice when businesses, specifically restaurants, are singled out and given recognition for their community service or philanthropic efforts. Its definitely not easy to commingle the desire to maximize profit with bigger-picture endeavors, either community work or eco-consciousness. The California Restaurant Association today announced the 2007 winners of the 'National Restaurant Neighbor Award and Cornerstone Humanitarian Award' whom are recognized for their community outreach efforts, above and beyond the norm. The California winners of the Restaurant Neighbor Award are Sorensen's Resort and Cafe in Hope Valley, Mary's Pizza Shack in Sonoma and Mimi's Café in Tustin. The winner of the California Cornerstone Humanitarian Award is Dorothy L. Walker of Wellington's Pub & Restaurant in Turlock. They will be up for the national awards in September.

Whether they're going eco is another thing. But at least they're doing something, which is more than what can be said for most restaurants out there currently. Definitely a step in the right direction.

Sustainable Sips Cocktail Class

On Tuesday the 24th, Natalie of the Liquid Muse is holding a Sustainable Sips Cocktail Class, featuring ways to mix and match your fave organic drinks. Some of the mixers and drinks she's featuring include: Square One Organic Vodka, Bonterra Bio-Dynamic Wine, and Fever Tree All-Natural Mixers.


For a fee, you can sip these drinks and eat some appetizers @ the X Bar, 2025 Avenue of the Stars, in Century City.

It starts at 6:30pm and runs about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Water Quality in LA

After ruminating over SF government's ban on bottled water it got me to wondering-- how safe exactly is our tap water? Could I drink like a fish and manage to make out? Is drinking beer safer than water?



On my mad hunt for what exactly was in our tap water, I found some interesting factoids. Turns out everything, including the kitchen sink may be in our water supply. Trihalomethanes (TTHMs) and Haloacetic Acids (HAA5) anyone? How about Tetrachloroethylene [PCE], Arsenic (with maybe even some old lace thrown in), and Uranium? You can see their most recent annual water quality report here.

The LADWP is slowly phasing out use of chlorine for disinfection purposes and starting to use chloramines instead. Exactly when the change will be implemented is not clear, because for sure there also may be trace elements of chlorine left even after they completely stop using it. The significance of the change is due to the fact that chlorine, when mixed with certain naturally occuring organic substances in water, can lead to the creation of TTHMs and HAA5, or disinfection-by-products, which are suspected of causing cancer. 'The current Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for TTHMs, a possible carcinogen, and HAA5 is 80 and 60 micrograms per liter (µg/L), respectively'. I checked to see where my zip area would fare in the mix. Given all this info is accurate and actually reflects whats in my water then it looks like for my area, there are TTHM and HAA5 levels of 59 and 61, respectively.

WESTERN Water Quality Area

Zip Code	THMs (Trihalomethanes)		HAA5 (Haloacetic acid)
	Average	Range	Average	Range
90008	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90016	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90022	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90025	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90034	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90035	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90036	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90045	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90048	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90049	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90056	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90062	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90064	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90066	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90069	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90075	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90077	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90094	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90210	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90211	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90225	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90227	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90228	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90229	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90230	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90232	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90250	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90272	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90291	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90292	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90293	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90301	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90302	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90303	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90304	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90305	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90402	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90403	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90404	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90405	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133
90504	59	34 – 111	61	24 – 133

Oh well, maybe I'll just HAVE to stick by my Fat Tire, after all. What a shame...

Project by Project Benefit

Checked out & helped out this year's Project by Project 10th annual Food & Wine Benefit. PBP is a non-profit volunteer based national organization composed of social entrepreneurs who partner up with and assist under-served non-profits, help them with fundraising, public awareness, marketing, and other aspects of their organization to help them get the proper infrastructure in order to enable them to become independent and self-sufficient organizations.

I had heard about it from someone I met a short while ago, and last year's event was a site of a Top Chef challenge. It piqued my curiosity, and I love food and wine so I figured it would be a good opportunity to learn more about the organization and get some good eats. Various restaurants donated their food and time to showcase some of their delicacies. Among those representin' were Wilshire restaurant, recently recognized by Santa Monica and awarded the Sustainable Quality Award for their sustainable practices (using a variety of organic produce, seasonal ingredients, & Farmer's market produce & goods). I didn't get to eat too much food, but I had to try their dessert, which was a mango sorbet with fresh peaches and poppyseed cake. It was good. I haven't been to the restaurant yet but it is definitely on my 'must go to eat' list.

A side note, Eco Limo was also awarded a Sustainable Quality Award this year. I called them once to see how much it would cost for a trip to the airport. Granted, they use hybrids and various vehicles which are either electric or bio-diesel fueled and what not and are a member of TerraPass, but from West LA to LAX would have cost me around $80+, whereas a regular airport shuttle would've cost me only $20. I think if the price differential hadn't been so significant I would've considered eco limo, but I think a $60 difference is a bit....much. I don't know how many people will be willing to pay that sort of money where other cheaper alternatives are readily available. Also, if I'm carpooling with 5 other people going to the airport in a traditional shuttle service, what's the difference in impact if I'm being shuttled alone in a car that's a hybrid? I'm not sure but I almost want to say its more efficient & almost better (gasp!) to go the carpooling/shuttle route. I admire their business model though.

Going back to the event. Part of my humbling job included throwing away plates & food that had accumulated on tables after patrons had finished, throwing out the trash, stuff like that. Since the portions were quite small you would imagine that people would finish what they had, but the entire night I was throwing away plates and plates of food that people had taken one little nibble of, and then promptly thrown away. I was a little saddened, if not disgusted, at how people waste so much food without taking into account how hard some of those chefs had worked. It also makes me look at myself and my own practices, which I do admit, have not been perfect.

Random Quotes

I have to apologize for my immediate lack of pictures, the cable internet for my desktop has gone kaput for the moment and so I can't load any pictures. Please bear with me for a moment until I figure it out.

This space also serves as a memory box for me, so that I can keep and catalogue a list of things I have considered or wish to consider, so that at a later point in time I can look back and then further reconsider what I have already considered. Make sense?

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite concious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.
--Socrates

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures. --Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself. --H. L. Mencken

How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do. --Arthur Schopenhauer

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. --William James

Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems. --Henry B. Adams

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men. --Bertrand Russell

I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card. --Charles Baudelaire

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil- not the strength to choose between the two.
--John Cheever

-courtesy of www.mindpleasures.com.

Exporting Harm

photo courtesy of BAN.

Our carefree and easy culture in regards to the replacement and disposability of all of our current electronic has-beens is astounding. As of the date of the summary findings on the Basel Action Network, 50%-80% of the current E-waste is being exported to other developing countries such as India and China, who can little afford to ensure good methods to properly dispose of e-waste in manner that is not harmful to its own citizenry and their environs.

'Exporting Harm' and 'Digital Dump' are two documentaries highlighting the 'horrors of the high-tech revolution'. It illustrates that our current methods of consumption have horrendous repercussions all over the world due to various corporate mentalities and our own ignorance. Combine corporate machinations to maximize profits by encouraging and making it easy for consumers of new products to buy and replace instead of fixing, add our own desires to constantly have the new and latest products (do I really NEED an iphone if I have a sufficiently workable celly?), and we have the existence of various reasons that converge and lead to ill effects. The daily absence of the consequences of what we do only serve to not put these issues at the forefronts of our current collective consciousness.

It is significant but not all that surprising that the US is on the list of countries who have failed to ratify any of the four international toxic treaty agreements, along with Russia.

The Basel Action Network has compiled a list of e-waste recyclers who have passed their rigorous standards and criteria for being responsible e-stewards. You can check out who qualifies here, and also see if your local e-waste recycler is part of the program. If they are not, ask them why.

Clean Air Car Show & Film Fest

San Gabriel Valley's first Clean Air Car Show & Film Festival is on Sunday, July 22, an all day affair. They will be screening 'An Inconvenient Truth' and 'Who Killed the Electric Car', and will be showcasing a variety of next-gen vehicles.

There should be a bunch of good healthy eats, exhibits, and mini-seminars. Admission is free.

The Rialto

1023 Fair Oaks Avenue
South Pasadena, California 91030
11am-6pm

FOR INFO: (626) 403-7380
FREE parking in the Mission Oaks Parking Lot off Mission Street, behind Wells Fargo Bank at El Centro Street and Fair Oaks Avenue and in the City lot at Hope Street and Mound Avenue. FREE shuttle from the Metro Gold Line Mission Station!

While you're there, check out the Norton Simon museum. I plan to browse and explore some of the shops around the mini-stretch of Mission Street, West of Fair Oaks in Pasadena.

Herzog the the Rescue

I'm a big fan of Vietnam movies and Werner Herzog. That being said, I had to see Rescue Dawn, which is based on a true story of Dieter Dengler, a Navy pilot who became a VC POW for several months, eventually escaping his captors and living to tell the tale. This cat has more than 9 lives and its amazing to hear him tell the different things he went through- he has an impeccable memory.

'Little Dieter Needs to Fly', which was filmed by Herzog, is a documentary about Dengler in the present day, with him reliving his experiences as a prisoner. Rescue Dawn is putting the same doc into an actual movie with all the bells and whistles and with Christian Bale. Both are equally great.

Try to check out one or both when you get a chance.

The Idols of Environmentalism

Photo courtesy of Orion Magazine, art by Robert and Shana Parkeharrison.

Ran across an interesting article by Curtis White originally published in the May/June 2007 edition of the Orion, entitled 'The Idols of Environmentalism', part 1 of 2 part series, the other being 'The Ecology of Work'.

Some blurbs:

"THE LESSONS OF OUR IDOLS come to this: you cannot defeat something that you imagine to be an external threat to you when it is in fact internal to you, when its life is your life. And even if it were external to you, you cannot defeat an enemy by thinking in the terms it chooses, and by doing only those things that not only don’t harm it but with which it is perfectly comfortable. The truth is, our idols are actually a great convenience to us. It is convenient that we can imagine a power beyond us because that means we don’t have to spend much time examining our own lives. And it is very convenient that we can hand the hard work of resistance over to scientists, our designated national problem solvers."

"Rather than taking the risk of challenging the roles money and work play in all of our lives by actually taking the responsibility for reordering our lives, the most prominent strategy of environmentalists seems to be to “give back” to nature through the bequests, the annuities, the Working Assets credit cards and long distance telephone schemes, and the socially responsible mutual funds advertised in Sierra and proliferating across the environmental movement. Such giving may make us feel better, but it will never be enough. Face it, we all have a bit of the robber baron turned philanthropist in us. We’re willing to be generous in order to “save the world” but not before we’ve insured our own survival in the reigning system. It’s not even clear that this philanthropy is a pure expression of generosity since the bequest and annuity programs are carefully measured to provide attractive tax benefits and appealing rates of return."

Blue Velvet

Checked out Blue Velvet and ate my way to the poor house. No, not really... Nice place overlooking the LA skyline with the pool in plain view, and situated in a cool loft/live/work/shag space called The Flat, which I hear is pretty popular with the type of crowd that likes to party till no end and run around half naked at night, keeping the neighbors up till 3am.

When I got there, it was light. When I left, it was completely dark. The service was slow. I'm not complaining (who, me?) because the food was fairly good. Their menu features a variety of organic & farmers market ingredients. Pictured here is the starter, called 'Crispy Sweetbreads'. I imagined getting thin crispy little sweetened breads. What the hell do I know? There was nothing crispy nor sweet about it, although it was delicious. It had some spinach and ravioli bits, along with some tiny mushrooms. I wanted to lick the plate but had to restrain myself. It will probably be the first and last time I will have this dish however, because when I googled what this concoction was, this sweetbread thing turned out to be something less desirable, organic or not. Next time, if I don't know, I will DEFINITELY ask.

Next I had the 'Barramundi', a fish dish in a pool of crayfish bisque. It wasn't bad- the fish skin was slightly crispy and the fish tender, and went well with the fennel and bisque. Might go again, maybe, but I wasn't blown away. But the view was worth it. I asked whether or not the
rooftop veggie garden was completed, and they said that they are still working on it. When it's up then I'll want to check it out. They take reservations but when I went it wasn't crowded at all.

Blue Velvet
750 Garland Ave
Los Angeles, CA
map

Got Hair?

Because only bald guys, or 'Bald Guys', know what other bald guys crave. Spotted this at a local CVS. Comes with a 'light new fragrance' and is 'soft and gentle'. Sounds like a frickin baby wipe. What's the diff anyway? Ah, packaging smackaging. More proof of our dizzyingly arrays of our civilization's patterns of consumption.

No, I am NOT bald. I actually have alot of hair, more than I or anyone else for that matter can handle at times. Even if I was bald, I wouldn't NEED this, would I? Shit. It does say it 'cools as it dries'. I think I should create ass wipes and call them 'Chic Cheek Cloths' or something like that. How much you wanna bet someone will buy them?

These guys are probably making a killing with their cranial wet naps. I don't even want to know what sort of scalp juice gets sopped up with these sissy wipes. Disgusting.

Filthy Cooper

Was driving down the 405 N and chanced to spot this car. Nevermind that I was driving AND taking multiple pictures at the same time, but hey, sometimes I have to go the distance to make sure I have some fun photos.

I completely understand the need to preserve and not flippantly use water for trivial reasons, but this mini cooper might benefit, if not only for aesthetic reasons, but damn, how can they see a goddamn thing out of that muck?

John Humble & Zoopsia

By chance I ended up at the Getty on a lazy Sunday afternoon to see the last day of the John Humble exhibit, 'A Place in the Sun', not to be confused with 'Burnt by the Sun'. Being a native Angelenos and having grown up in the South Bay, I felt compelled to go.

Shown here is '178th Street at Manhattan Place, Torrance', September 20, 1979. It is always fascinating when an artist depicts those elements that we take as commonplace and juxtaposes them in such a way as to produce a new understanding and situating it in a larger urban context so as to encourage new meanings that we otherwise would not have considered. There is a strange beauty to some of his pictures, an almost Hopper-esque quality.

Another exhibition, albeit small one, was 'Zoopsia', by Tim Hawkinson. Zoopsia means 'the visual hallucination of animals'. Hawkinson again takes ordinary objects, either their representation or seemingly unrelated to it, and constructs new works from them. One of them, 'Bat', was interesting. He reused plastic bags from Radio Shack to make this black bat. 'Materials are meaning: the sound waves that fuel Radio Shack revenues are vehicles of self-perception, the sonar with which a bat locates itself in relation to the world'.

Couldn't help but take a picture of this rather interesting piece of artwork, called 'Delusions of Grandeur' by the surrealist Rene Magritte, 1967. Hm...thoughts, anyone?

Cyber-Activism

How can a blog, let alone single text messages, rally seemingly disconnected people and help them unite for a common cause? Well, the people in and surrounding Xiamen demonstrated just that.

On June 1st, 1 million Chinese residents in the southeast city of Xiamen demonstrated peaceably to protest the city's plans to build a toxic chemical plant near the city's center. What is notable about this event is that it not only began through a single blog and rapidly disseminated across the blogosphere, but a large portion of the mobile-lization was through SMS text messages. Anonymous texts were sent out days prior to the event, which were then forwarded to numerous others. The rest is history.

The lesson learned? Grassroots and community-based initiatives can be sparked with something as simple as a text message. And the demonstration, even with the Chinese government's attempts to quell and quiet those very outlets, still yielded pretty laudable and impressive results.

Getty Summer Sessions

The Getty Center is holding their annual Summer Sessions concert series, during which art and music crazed fanatics and scantily-clad women get together to dance however the fuck they want to, with or without rhythm, and wax poetic about the James Ensor painting 'Christ's Entry into Brussels' until the wee hours in the morning. Actually from 6pm-9:15pm. Well, I would like them to wax poetic about the Ensor painting but wouldn't mind if all had a good time. Every week will feature different 'high-energy and genre-bending international groups' with cocktails and eats to accompany. It goes down for 3 consecutive Saturdays in a row, July 14th, 21st, and 28th.

If the picture above is any preview of the festivities, then I'm so there. It's going down.

Getty Center

1200 Getty Center Drive

Los Angeles, CA

map

Seeing Green

In my efforts to catch various LA landmarks awash in green light, which was aimed to raise public awareness about the global warming crisis, I trekked down to LA to catch a glimpse of the City Hall in green. I totally missed it. I did get this picture however. I'm not sure whether the light pointing to the moon was purposely green, but it sure was purdy.

Wasn't a total waste of time and gas. Next time I have to plan my trip better.

Westside Pavilion

Found my new stomping grounds at the Westside Pavilion and the newly minted Landmark Theatres. Love the place. I went in to see a movie, on the fly, and to check out the theatre. Very nice. Tons of organic munchies (which include organic chocolate) as well as your ordinary movie-going fare, nice modern decor, and some rooms feature intimate 'living-room' like seating. Its sort of hard to make out the pic, but I'm in the very back row, sitting comfortably and sharing a type of love seat with two other much older ladies. I felt much love for them, but in a strictly platonic way, of course. They mentioned to me that the last time their friend saw a movie there, she fell asleep because the couches were so comfy. The whole room could hear the two old ladies talking about their latest colonoscopies. It was VERY intimate.

After the movie, you can head on over to the newly reopened but not renovated Barnes and Nobles for some in-store reading. I saw loads of peeps partaking in that activity.

I plan to be back. Very soon. I spied Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, which I either plan to read in-store because its a relatively short read, or online. There's just something though about having an actual book in hand and feeling the pages that resonates with me. Oh well.

Manufactured Landscapes

I'm looking forward to seeing Manufactured Landscapes, a film which is a feature-length documentary on the works of Edward Burtynsky by Jennifer Baichwal. It's only playing for a limited time at the Nuart, from July 6-July 12. It came out last year and is available on Amazon as well.

Burtynsky traveled through China to capture some of the country's most striking industrialized landscapes and humanity's transformation of nature. The effect of the documentary is not to make a judgement of the often ill-cited effects of industrialization but rather to foster greater awareness of the consequences and impacts of industry on our environment. There are no simple answers to the issues of industrialization, and as such, to condemn would be too easy. You can read an article about it here titled 'Landscapes that weep toxic tears'.

Live Earth events

For those of you who want to see Live Earth, which happens this Saturday (7.7.07), but don't want to actually see it live, there are tons of events around the world, many in your own backyard.

I think its a good way to get to know your neighbors. Many people are opening up their own houses to the public for this event in order to foster more community & enviro awareness on the topic of global warming. You can check it out here to find the closest event near you.

Charities and accountability

As I was perusing through the web, I found a couple of interesting and useful sites. Useful in lending transparency to the oft-times vague world of non-profits and charities. So if you're interested in knowing how much of your money goes to where and what charities to contribute to, then these are good sites to begin your search at.

Charity Navigator is a non-profit free of charge public service which seeks to 'guide intelligent giving'. You can type in your favorite non-profit and presto! get revenues, net revenues, fundraising expenses, and executive pay. I did a search for Keep America Beautiful, just to be consistent with my prior blog lines, and found out that the executive pay for a certain G. Ray Empson was $293,850, or 8.07% of total expenses. Apparently working for non-profits can be quite lucrative. Who says you can't help the homeless and clean the streets AND help yourself? Now, not all the charities are quite as, uh, lucrative, and a large proportion do have salaries in line with what sort of revenues are taken in. But why Charity Navigator, which is a non-profit, is not listed in their own website is not clear.

Another good website is Guidestar, which is similar to Charity Navigator, and has at least 1.5 million organizations listed. They're more comprehensive in terms of supplying tax information (Form 990) and give even further breakdown of employee data. There are different levels though of what can be seen, pay to play sort of thing. All in all, still a good thing.

Trash, revisited

My current read. Picked up Trash at the Moca store. Good collection of photographs and essays on, well, trash, written from various perspectives. Covers alot of ground. Everything to the beauty of post-industrial waste sites to airspace ("a logistical term that defines the maximum filling capacity of a site") and how Bill Gates has invested in such airspace (or waste dumps) since 2001. Shares of his waste-handling portfolio has risen at least 45% in the past 5 years or so. Apparently waste dumps are big money. It goes on to talk about how about how Canada has filled up certain waste sites, turned them into golf courses, and consequently subverted their waste products to some places in Michigan, namely, areas formerly known as Carleton Farms and Pine Tree Acres. Michigan is supposedly one of the biggest places for airspace in the area for the Great Lakes region. Or put another way, Michigan can be construed as one of the nation's leading trash dumps. The waste is then compacted by giant diesel-powered D12 CAT dozers. Since solid waste is 30-40% liquid, this so-called 'leachate', which is basically liquid from waste, is pumped back up from the dregs of the waste, and then sprayed back on the waste to further compact it. I wonder how the leachate would fare if it was pumped into the Living Machines? -

Another article talks about the non-profit, Keep America Beautiful. It was founded by various bottling manufacturers, Coca-Cola, and the Richfield Oil Corporation, among others. You know, organizations with a vested interest in people and the environs. Their initial aim was to:

masterfully transform its (debris) meaning to shift the terms of the garbage debate, diverting any stirrings of environmental awareness away from industry's massive and supertoxic destruction of the natural world. Ecological disaster was reduced to the "eyesore" of litter, and the real villain was the notorious "litterbug" who failed to put his discards in the proper place....The key tactic of blaming individuals obfuscated the real causes of mounting waste. KAB downplayed industry's role in despoiling the earth, while relentlessly hammering home the message of each person's responsibility for the destruction of nature, one wrapper at a time.

While I'm all for recycling and doing my share, it would be best if industry itself started to reevaluate its output. Look at Method. They're far from perfect but at least they have a good starting point.

Book Exchange, SM style

That's SM as in Santa Monica, NOT sado-masochism. Just in case you were wondering. That's a whole 'nother post. Or blog. Or what I won't admit to.

Another successful book exchange party at Siel's apartment. Great way to exchange your previously read books for some more previously read but new-to-you books. I scored Women in Martial Arts and went home pretty content. I'm always for women who can kick ass and aren't afraid to use it (their ass-kicking abilities, that is). There were plenty of mojitos to go round as well as some yummy organic hummus.

Nightvision in broad daylight

Visited Moca Nightvision. The whole shindig starts at 6pm on Saturdays this summer until August 11. Got there at around 6:30 because I wanted to make it to Siel's book exhange party afterwards. I suppose it would've been better to actually go to the damn thing at night, being that it was nightvision and all, but there are no rules. It's Moca, after all. There were a few people. I can imagine conceptually that after I had left at 8 a shitload of people probably piled in. Maybe.



There was some notable works at the Moca, but this being my first post, I'm entirely unprepared to supply any of the names of the works. Next time I'll be on the ball. There was one series done in spanish and english, handwritten on parchment. One article in particular in the series caught my eye...it was about progress.


Found some interesting reads at the Moca gift/bookstore, including this one on the left. Not sure if it qualifies as a 'read' but its good for coming up with alternative uses for a paper bag. In case you have alot of paper bags lying around and want to connect with your inner child. Or you want your child to connect with their inner child. Fun stuff. Probably loads better than playing with Barbies. Unless they prefer Barbies over cutting up paper bags and making hats out of them.




Couldn't resist the urge to take a picture of this. Again, I didn't write down the name but I'll call it.....aluminum foil. Hopefully that gets it sort of right. It's always interesting to see everyday and ordinary objects presented in this manner- under glass or plastic and made to look at, instead of just an object to be used for something else. I got in trouble for taking this picture, and was promptly told, rather sternly, to put my camera away or face the wrath that is Moca. I put my camera away. I was tempted, for a second, to take a picture of the security guard. And then label that picture "Security Guard: Wrath", and then proceed to do a whole series covering the seven sins. I'll put that on my to do list.