Free Rice (for the world, not you!)

Though I have my doubts about the effectiveness of such a website, at least it makes me feel good and smart:

http://freerice.com

What's that? Cuba's in the news again!?!

Today's daily rant is about NPR's story on Cuban dissident Oscar Biscet who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush. NPR claims that his views are "closely aligned with those of the president" but that's not a criteria for the award. Kind of like saying Halliburton's multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts are just "coincidence".

I consider myself an amateur Cuba-phile, have lived on the island, and barely heard of Biscet, so touting him as "Cuba's most high-profile dissident" doesn't mean much inside the country. Like Bush, though, he's at great odds with the rest of his own country. As an anti-abortion activist in a country that uses abortion as a primary means of birth control, a Christian in a country where few people wield that label (and fewer still who don't also infuse their Christian beliefs with a little Santeria) and a proponent of the Embargo.

Holy shit! This guy's in favor of the embargo? He's gotta be the only person inside Cuba who thinks the embargo is a good thing and working well. No wonder he's in prison.

I'm not an apologist for the Cuban government – they commit crimes just like any other government- but I do understand their line of thinking, which is "the US is waging a low-scale war against us, and we must respond in kind." The evidence of this war is hardly circumstantial, from the obvious (Bay of Pigs invasion, the bombing of a Cubana flight 455, and the 1999 hotel bombing in Havana); propaganda (Radio Martí,) antagonistic (Brothers to the Rescue fly-bys in the late 1990s); to instances that verge on paranoia if not for the hostility (a plague of insects that the Cuban government attributes to CIA clandestine warfare). Not to mention the unrelenting rhetoric from ten US presidents and counting calling for the downfall of Castro.

Any and all modern nations engaged in a war have clamped down on civil rights of their own population, for right or wrong, and the Cuban government is no difference. They think the US is at war with them, and we give them ample evidence to make such a conclusion.

Awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to one of the most extreme, a pro-Bush dissidents in one of the biggest anti-Bush countries in the whole anti-Bush world is just one of GW's many ways of saying "fuck you" to the rest of us.

I can't admit which movie I'm reviewing in this blog, you'll have to guess

A non-stop commercial disguised as a "movie" has little evidence of the
latter (plot, dialogue, character development, humor, reason, point)
and ample evidence of the former (I stopped counting at 37 different
corporate brands, but I think 150 is a good guess, plus a full-blown
Applebee's commercial in the middle). Critique the movie, highlighting
the plot holes, or writing another word (even to commend Sascha Baron
Cohen as the movie's only redeeming quality) is a waste of time. Quite
possibly the worst movie I've ever seen in my life. (Ps, curse IMDb!
They want my comment to take more than 10 lines. No, I tell you! This
movie is not worth ten lines! Please don't see it! It's horrible! If
you think this is funny, you are 13 years old. If you're not 13 years
old, you may have serious emotional and intellectual development issues
and I suggest seeing a doctor. There, is that ten?)

Thank you, Not For Tourists!

By the time you're reading this, it's probably too late: I missed Weird Al.

This blog is no longer an internet campaign to get sushi restaurants to stop using disposable chopsticks

It's reforming itself as to just another totally pointless blog. In fact, I'd rename it to just that, except it's already taken.
Yup, that one's mine too.

So many blogs, so little time...

My greatest confession: I'm just doing this for the money.
I mean sure, I'd love to do it to save humanity -get all those fuckers to start recycling their chopsticks, reuse their plastic forks, and just bring a cloth bag to Trader Joe's and avoid the whole paper/plastic dilemma- but really, I just do it for the money.
The adds on the side? They're there for you to click. That little tip jar? Yup, add a snide joke like "401k fund" or "Fear Change? The leave it...".
The weird, obsessive posting on craigslist R&R? Trying to lead you here like Hansel and Gretel following breadcrumbs.
Sigh. When did I become so shallow?
(Update, I've got so many blogs, I forget which one I recently pimped to Not For Tourists. Was the obsessive recycling blog? The aggressive cycling blog? The shy exhibitionist blog? The social butterfly environmentalist blog? Which was it? Which!)
Sigh... I may have to start keeping track myself...

Again, the advertisers fail...

Guys, I'm not looking to buy chop - sticks, I'm looking for ads for glazed, enameled, reuseable chopsticks, or articles and ads revealing how districtive the disposable ch-op sti-ck culture is! Enameled Chopsticks! Think if I yell it enough times, the go-og-le god will pick up the hint?
REUSEABLE CHOPSTICKS!
ENAMELED CHOPSTICKS!
NOW!
environmentally friendly products!
fuck year!

This is what I'm talking about: Chopstick Art

On my other blog, Reuse! Everything! Now!, I lamented the fact that the ads were for plastic plates, something I loathe. I'm thus very pleased to highlight an ad on this blog, Reusable Chopsticks Now! In case you miss it, the site is here:

www.kwytzakraft.com/

I'm so pleased to start finding other sources that share the ideal of this blog: reusing chopsticks.

(Actually, it's only half the ideal; the other half is persuading companies to switch to reusable chopsticks, but I'll have to get to that later.)

Kwytza Kraft has just the sort of practical and fancy stuff I dream about making with my chopsticks! Check it out, and buy your ma a placemat made from former chopsticks today!

Environmentally Friendly Shopping Today!

China mulls tax on disposable products

This is what we want to avoid...