wonderful

Burning saltwater could mean new fuel source

Okay. Now the apocalypse is upon us.

Seriously.

thank you, Meester Easter

We're very traditional and pious when it comes to Christian holidays at my folks' house. And this past Easter was no exception.

After leaving milk and cookies on the table the night before for the Easter Fairy, we all woke up early and with much excitement to await the annual resurrection. See, with our family, Jesus comes back to life on Easter morning...at which point we send him off to find all the Easter eggs we'd hidden for him. (You'd think being the son of god would give him some extra skills or something, but it usually takes him a while...and we still end of having to steer him in the direction of a few stragglers. "Warmer, Jesus"..."no, colder"..."warmer, yes"...etc.)

Once he rounds them all up, though, he then gets to tell us how many more weeks of winter we can expect. A late declaration, of course, but this year it worked out well what with the snow and all. (He says it's global warming too, for any of you naysayers.) He added this last bit to the festivities only recently, though, after he saw my niece's holiday confusion from a couple years back (see first image). Being an empathetic dude, after all, he felt badly for her when she went to school in early February and complained that not only did the Easter Bunny not even faintly resemble a bunny, he also knew nothing of colored eggs or chocolate treats. Instead, he just kinda half-heartedly bitched about how bright the sun was, then crawled back down into his hole.

At any rate, Easter Jesus couldn't stay long as he had other children to visit that day, so we spent the remainder of our time engaging in activities that were appropriate to the era of the resurrection: by gorging on a giant purple cake. Actually, only the outside was purple...the inside was alternating layers of yellow and purple goodness. I believe the ingredients were sugar, butter, sugar, food coloring, and sugar. If I laid eggs myself, my guess is they'd come out pretty damn festive looking right about now. (TMI...sorry.)

Please enjoy the before and after photos of the Purple Easter Monstrosity created by my very talented, albeit holiday-challenged niece. I was ready to hurl after dinner...that's how she knew she done good.

Oh, to live in Norweigia...

(...courtesy of the fine folks at the National Labor Committee)

Wal-Mart Dumped From One of the World's Largest Pension Funds

The Norwegian Government's pension fund, with $285 billion in holdings, is dropping Wal-Mart - the world's largest retailer - from its fund due to the use of child labor and systematic sweatshop abuses in its huge global supply chain.

In its 2006 Annual Report, released on March 20, 2007, the Council on Ethics for the Government Pension Fund-Global reached the following conclusion:

There is no doubt...that Wal-Mart purchases a number of products that are manufactured under unacceptable conditions. There are numerous reports of child labor, serious violations of working hour regulations, wages below the local minimum, health-hazardous working conditions, unreasonable punishment, prohibition of unionization and extensive use of a production system that fosters working conditions bordering on forced labor, and employees being locked into production premises, etc. in Wal-Mart's supply chain. All the above examples represent violations of internationally recognized standards for labor rights and human rights.

The Petroleum Fund's Council on Ethics considers that there is an unacceptable risk that the fund, through its investments in Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and Wal-Mart de Mexico SA, may be complicit in serious or systematic violations of human rights. The Council recommends that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and Wal-Mart de Mexico SA be excluded from the Petroleum Fund's portfolio.

On the U.S. front, the fund found Wal-Mart guilty of "discrimination of female employees," "active obstruction of employees' right to unionize," "violations dealing with the employment of minors," "mandatory overtime without compensation" and the "use of illegal labor."

In the section of the report dealing with Wal-Mart's abusive offshore sweatshop practices, the Norwegian Government's Council on Ethics largely relied upon the National Labor Committee's research in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Bangladesh and China. The NLC's research was corroborated by other independent human and worker rights organizations.

Points which emerge in the Fund's report:

- Wal-Mart imports products from 70 countries around the world.

- In 2003, Wal-Mart imported goods valuing more than $15 billion from China and is the world's largest importer from China.

- In 2004, Wal-Mart had 5,300 direct suppliers, but overall depends upon "our 68,000 suppliers worldwide."

- Wal-Mart's annual sales exceed the Gross Domestic Product of 161 countries in the world.

The full report ("Annual Report 2006 / Council on Ethics for the Government Pension Fund-Global")…

Something is very fucked up...

...with the media and with us when two of the “top news stories” that appear on Yahoo! (maybe it’s just Yahoo!, but I doubt it) are, a.) “out of control” Britney checks into rehab; and, b.) Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez aren’t as good of friends as we’d been led to believe.

We make me sick. And, like my friend Wendy said yesterday in an unrelated response, “It’s a team effort.”

the money can be made if you really want some more...

Have we officially reached the “let’s all meet up at the vomitorium” stage of the empire yet…?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061016/od_afp/usfoodcokeoffbeat

How many thousands of people starve to death on this planet every day while we stuff fried fucking Coke in our fat fucking faces? Which is not to say I don’t enjoy eating a bunch of fried crap, because I do. Hell, who doesn’t? You can batter and deep-fry a turd, dip it in ranch dressing, and it will taste like heaven. But, come on, people…have we lost all collective restraint?

Please, let’s all try to not act surprised when we hear how much the rest of the world thinks we’re gluttons for…everything.

Love,
the SUV liberal