the world is your acorn

Just go look at it.

He Took a Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day He Died [via the badbadivy experience]

I recently lost my cool with a friend in a public space and will probably cringe about it for the rest of my life. But at least I wasn’t on camera.

“Modern Amazement” [via yewknee.com]

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

The Story of Stuff

There’s a character in some Ann Tyler book (maybe it’s Back When We Were Grownups?) who makes himself a big batch of something (stew, meatloaf, pot roast, something like that) once a week and just eats that until it’s gone, every day. It struck me as the most depressing thing ever at the time. Actually, it still seems really depressing, but this past week since The Little Red Haired Girl has been out of town I’ve been doing something similar. Not nearly as depressing, and actually quite enjoyable for me, but still reminiscent of that character (whom it turns out I don’t really remember that much about at all).

In general, when left to my own devices at home I just won’t eat, I’ll drink my dinner, or I’ll eat some previously canned or frozen crap. It’s partly that I’m lazy, and partly that cooking only appeals to me when I need a stress release, and/or there is someone to appreciate my cooking, and/or there is someone there to do the dishes later. Given that The Little Red Haired Girl was to be gone a full 6 days, and my stomach has been behaving badly as it is, I figured I needed some sort of new strategy. So at the beginning of the week I did two things. I cooked a package of bacon, and made some broth and chicken for Vietnamese chicken pho soup. The rest of the week I had two of my daily meals were cobb salad and chicken pho soup. It has worked out quite well, but I’m now out of bacon and broth, and am starting to feel lonely.

A co-worker of The Little Red Haired Girl’s just forwarded this to me and I had to post it right away. Teresa at Green Bag Lady makes cloth bags for groceries and the like and will send you one for free, in exchange for your promise to use it instead of plastic. Seems like a pretty good deal if you ask me. She is also looking for fabric donations to help her with this project, so if you have shirts, futon covers, or whatever, send them along.