By Marisue | January 6, 2009

Ever felt like skipping down the street?  Humming in a store? Laughing over something silly and small?  Because you’re “in public” do you stop yourself from smiling, enjoying light moments? 

As adults, we are way too serious, and it’s killing us.

Did you know that most of our diseases are stress and diet related? 

If we believe that being an adult means taking yourself seriously every waking moment of the day, if we are stopping ourselves from laughing with a child, or playing with a pet, then we are way too busy and caught up in our own idea of self importance.   It is not up to us to solve the world’s problems or find every solution!  If your internal weather is dark and heavy, gloomy and without sunshine; if you’re walking in a cloud, there’s a storm brewing and it’s most likely showing on your face, and in your attitude. 

Lighten up!  Let the sunshine in!  Let smiles happen; let the lightness of laughter, and the joy of a childlike attitude bring brightness to your life!  Those around you will thank you, and you will wonder how you ever let laughter disappear.

With the stress of foster parenting, trying to heal wounded hearts of abused kids, and broken families, I found myself living in an internal hurricane.  I couldn’t let go, had forgotten how to laugh.  I felt guilty if I giggled!  With all the sad situations around me, the pressure of deadlines from college classes and the misery of families whose children we had in our home, it was as if my daily routine had sucked the enjoyment right out of me.  Hearing a giggle would make me cringe.  Within just a few years, I was paying a high price for “helping others.” 

When is that price too high?  When you no longer know or like who you are, and you have very little to give.

Misery forced me to take a good look at “me,” and I decided I wanted “me” back.  The “busy and important” things of life had dried me up.  I was a starving, thirsty woman, forcing smiles I did not feel, and trying to understand those around me who laughed and had fun.   Helping others wasn’t supposed to be this much work!  I read somewhere that Mother Teresa was actually a depressed woman.  I could understand that, seeing all that misery would make you think there is no joy, and how could you laugh, when others cried?

Stop the misery!  Turn on the music, the lighter, more wholesome movies, listen to an uplifting sermon or motivational talk.  Play, skip, hop, love, enjoy!  Laugh and concentrate and search for the good things in the day; form the habit, no matter the effort.  No one can make deposits in the lives of others, if their own emotional bank is overdrawn.  Give yourself regular emotional paychecks! You’re worth it!  Those you love need you to be whole and pleasant.  We change the world when we are happy, well-adjusted, content.  It’s contagious!

You will have bounce in your step, no matter the circumstances if you develop the habit of enjoyment.  Look forward to the day with hope, with opportunity, with gratitude, and you will discover solutions, and energy you thought had gone forever.

For health and the constant enjoyment of life, give me a keen and ever present sense of humor; it is the next best thing to an abiding faith in providence. -George B. Cheever

Enjoy your minutes!!  Enjoy your life!

By Marisue | December 19, 2008

Well I’ve read of high flyin’ drug trips, but this one takes the cake, or is the snort?

A Customs official said Friday that about 30 kg (66lb) of smuggled party drug ketamine arrived on one of the first direct cargo flights between political rivals China and Taiwan following six decades of hostile relations.

It’s a wonder the Airport Customs agents in Taipei found the popular powdered hallucinatory drug Thursday and turned it in.  Pardon me for being skeptical of honesty.  The powder was packed into eight boxes on a Chinese cargo plane, customs officials said.  Are they sure it wasn’t nine?

“Our expectation was that direct cargo links could possibly lead to drug smuggling,” said Lin Shu-chi, deputy Taipei Customs Office head. “I can’t say this was beyond our imagination.” Yeah, well.  I wonder how many got through Customs, with a bit of help?

The ketamine was worth T$930,000  or $27,000, Lin said.  Not so much, as drugs go.  I’ll pass, thanks.  I don’t like being poor, but I do like being in control of my faculties, such as they are.

Taiwan and China opened direct cargo routes and launched daily direct passenger flights Monday for the first time since 1949 to help Taiwan investors save time and money on travel and factory shipments.  Great timing.

China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s Communists won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists (KMT) fled to the island. Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under its rule, by force if necessary.

The jump in trade and transit links underscore how quickly ties have warmed under the island’s pro-China President Ma Ying-jeou, who took office in May on a pledge to improve cooperation with Beijing.  Well, I’m glad they’ve all decided to get along, if this doesn’t throw a kink in the comradery.

A 31-year-old Chinese woman was arrested in connection with the ketamine, which was destined for a convenience store in central Taiwan, local media said.  You can guess what will happen to her, if she’s even alive now. 

In America, she’d be on the street again before the cops got home, but they don’t mess around with you, in China.

She may not know a thing, maybe she only knows one thing, but she’ll talk.

By Marisue | December 19, 2008

Oh the woe’s of holiday fancy gadgets.  Why do we buy the “what’s this?”  We have a morbid curiosity for the unneeded techy cutesy gadgets.  We have the fatal “gadget-itis!!”  It’s curable, though, all we have to do is buy things we don’t need, can’t use, nor figure out.  Soon, We’re cured!!  Until the next “thingy” comes along….what’s this??

At first glance, it looks like an actual product: A “USB Toaster” that plugs into a laptop to toast a single slice of bread.

“Don’t be tethered to the kitchen! Take your toast … to go!” reads the ad copy on the slickly designed box, which sports images of a pop-up toaster and a busy-looking guy in a motel room biting into a piece of toast.

You can just imagine some poor sap struggling to look excited on Christmas morning after unwrapping the oddly useless gadget. Once he or she opens the box, however, an inside flap reveals the joke. “Gotcha!” it taunts. “There is no USB Toaster in this box. Even the concept of such a toaster is silly and unrealistic. In reality, you, the gift recipient, have been duped.”

That’s the punch line of the GotchaBox, a series of decoy gift boxes sold through the online store of The Onion, the satirical fake-news outfit. Other GotchaBoxes have featured such nonexistent products as a 28-piece “professional” whisk set and a build-your-own-umbrella kit.

Pranksters are encouraged to put their real gifts inside the gag boxes, then keep a straight face — or better yet, ask sweetly, “How do you like it?” — as the recipient squirms with discomfort.  Been there, done that!

I know this guy Arik, thinks it’s funny, and money talks, but frankly, I don’t like that.  I go by the box.  It’s elementary, I know…but wrapping talks, don’t you think? 

The boxes are the brainchild of Arik Nordby, a graphic designer from Eden Prairie, Minnesota, who got the idea in 2004 after a birthday party for a friend’s young son. The boy was visibly dismayed when a toy came wrapped in a box for a coffee pot.

Nordby immediately set his sights on The Onion — whose products include a fake atlas, Our Dumb World — as a potential partner. Through persistent e-mails, he finagled a meeting with Sean Mills, The Onion’s president, and brought him a prototype box for a “home dentistry kit.”

In 2006, when The Onion launched its online store, Nordby’s GotchaBoxes were among the first products sold.

“There’s a lot of people who have ideas for goofy T-shirts and things. And they’re not always that funny. But he got The Onion’s sensibility. He just charmed us,” said Glenn Severance, The Onion’s marketing manager. “It makes for great business. Who wouldn’t want to sell empty boxes for a profit?”

Well, I can identify with that, I sell empty storage units for a profit.  Or used to, before everybody went down that road and we all had to lower prices because some rich oil companies decided to diversify and dilute the market.  Thanks Mr. Rich Spoiler.  Now we’re all making nickles instead of dollars, but hey, it’s a free market, right?  No matter that Self Storage sites are on every corner down here in Florida!!   Real smart.  Like joke boxes.  Someone gets rich, someone get’s bugged, bothered and depressed.  Big joke,  The joke is on the buyer.   You just made someone filthy rich and someone else cry.  A fun Gift….?  I don’t think so, but buy that box if you must!

The Onion sells the boxes for $7.99 apiece, or $19.99 for a set of four. Other GotchaBox “products” include:

• The Visor-ganizer, a storage pouch that “holds up to 7 lbs.” and attaches to the brim of a hat. The box reads, “Finally, an alternative to the embarrassing Fanny Pack!”  Well, I already know some fatheads, so I’m not impressed with another.

• iFeast, a combined pet-feeding and iPod-docking station. “Produces earsplitting beep when the water dish is empty!”  Great, another ear piercing sound to injur our ears and the ears of our pets.  O, well, as long as someone is laughing…all the way to the bank, why should we care?

• The Kleen-Stride personal debris removal system — small push brooms that attach to the front of the wearer’s shoes.

• The Peaceful Progression Smoke Alarm, featuring sounds of the rain forest. “Awake to your next fire calm and refreshed!”  Now this is the time for Piercing sounds and they give you something to keep you asleep???   I’m smell lawsuits…personally.   Burn, baby, burn.

Nordby meets occasionally with The Onion’s writers to brainstorm ideas for boxes and promotional text. His are the only Onion-sanctioned products that didn’t originate with the humor site’s writing staff, Severance said.

The Onion has so far sold more than 50,000 of the boxes. Those involved said the key to a successful GotchaBox is striking the right balance between plausibility and stupidity.  Hey I’m still trying to understand the Rubber Band Man, and this guy is selling empty boxes that are jokes.  Ok, I’m dumb, he’s rich, don’t listen, to me, but baby, I still ain’t buyin’ - I’m keeping my money in my pocket and that’s rich to me.

“We don’t want the products to look over-the-top ridiculous,” said Nordby, 41, who also designs Bogey Pro, a popular line of irreverent golf gear. “We want them to look awkwardly strange.”

After witnessing several unsuspecting people open GotchaBoxes, Severance has noted a familiar pattern: baffled silence or feigned enthusiasm, followed, eventually, by laughter and relief.

“They open the box and get their sweater or whatever,” he said, “and then they spend more time reading the box than they do playing with the gift.”

By now, Nordby’s family and friends are on to his GotchaBox tricks, so he can’t fool them anymore. But he still chuckles at the memories. A few people were disappointed, he said, when their boxes didn’t contain a USB Toaster.

See?  what am I tellin’ ya?  Tears, disappointment, sadness, lawsuit. 

I’m not sold on gotchaboxes that “get ya.”  They don’t get me.

By Marisue | December 17, 2008

If and when he gets out of jail, he could have a beautiful bride waiting for him, at least we can hope she’s beautiful. 

The shoe thrower in Iraq is not without his fans.

An Egyptian man said on Wednesday he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush in Baghdad on Sunday,

The daughter, Amal Saad Gumaa, said she agreed with the idea. “This is something that would honor me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero,” she told Reuters by telephone.  Oh yeah, all good and beautiful brides want to go live in Iraq.  What a bridge to nowhere! 

Her father, Saad Gumaa, said he had called Dergham, Zaidi’s brother, to tell him of the offer. “I find nothing more valuable than my daughter to offer to him, and I am prepared to provide her with everything needed for marriage,” he added.

Zaidi’s gesture has struck a chord across the Arab world, where President Bush is widely despised for invading Iraq in 2003 and for his support for Israel.

Amal is a student in the media faculty at Minya University in central Egypt. Zaidi’s response to the proposal was not immediately clear.

Don’t most would be brides in Egypt want to go to Iraq?  What’s to think about?

By Marisue | November 22, 2008

Did you know?  We use 2 billion disposable batteries every year, enough to run close to a billion toys!  Yikes!  As fast as kids use them, that’s a lot of power and money out of the pocket!

Behind the scenes: You might not think that the little batteries you use in your flashlights, radios or cameras could have any effect on the environment, but household batteries contain heavy metals!  The most common is mercury, a highly toxic substance that has become a major source of contamination at some hazardous waste dumps.  Another damaging source is cadmium. 

Those batteries you are taking out with the garbage end up in the landfill, where they corrode and break apart, releasing mercury or cadmium into the soil.  Batteries that are incinerated with garbage release dangerous mercury or cadmium into the air.

The Danger:

• Long exposure to mercury can not only make people extremely sick, but can also affect behavior.  In the 1600’s hatmakers who used mercury to treat felt and fur began acting strangely.  Since no one knew tht the batters were showing effects of mercury poisoning, it was assumed they were just crazy.  Hence the expression, “mad as a hatter.” 
• Nearly 50% of the mercury and 25% of the cadmium used in the US goes into batteries.
• Almost 75% of all batteries used in the US are the alkaline type, which are 1% mercury.
• The average annual use of mercury in batteries exceeds the federal limits on mercury allowed in garbage by 4 times.

Simple Solutions:

1. Use rechargeable batteries.  They do contain cadmium, they last much longer than alkaline batteries and therefore contribute a little less to our hazardous waste problem.
2. Recycle alkaline batteries.  Not widely available, the technology to extract mercury and other metals from batteries for re-use does exist.  Support it by recycling.

Other Info:  About 40% of all battery sales are made during the Christmas Season.  See if you can reduce that percentage!  Find a battery recycling location here

By Marisue | November 22, 2008

Stop!  Go Green by deciding not to purchase anymore white styrofoam cups or plates!  In 500 years they will still be in the dumping ground!

Did you know?  We produce enough stryofoam cups every year to circle the earth 436 times!

What is that white stuff shaped into a cup?  Styrofoam is actually polystyrene foam.  It’s made from benezene,  known carcinogen, converted to styrene, and then injected with gases that make it a foam product.  The gases often used are CFC’s which eat ozone molecules, depleting the Earth’s vital ozone layer.

Don’t ask me why we still make them, they should be outlawed!!  At this time, non-CFC foam only trades one kind of environmental problem for another, there are just no good substitutes. 

The Garbage: 

• Polystyrene foam is completely non-biodegradable; it just won’t go away.  Even 500 years from now, that foam just won’t go away.  Can you imagine your morning’s coffee cup still sitting on the earth’s surface hundreds of years from now?
• All styrofoam, contians large amounts of air and takes up a lot of space for its weight.  This means it wastes enormous amounts of precious space at already full landfills.
• Polystyrene foam is deadly to marine life.  It floats on ocean surfaces, breaks up into pellets resembling food, and is consumed.  When sea turtles eat styrofaom, it’s buoyancy keeps them from diving; and it clogs their systems, starving them to death.

Simple Solutions:

• Just don’t use it.
• Avoid foam packaging in egg cartons, disposable picnic goods, etc.
• Ask for paper cups and plates for your to go foods.

Source:  The Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, Berkeley, CA 94702 or go online.

By Marisue | November 12, 2008

Let’s Go Green!  Check your water tank!  In our homes, water heaters use up about 20% of the energy we use.

What’s the temperature of your hot water tank’s water?  Go Look.  We often don’t.  Most homes water heaters are set at 140 degrees.  Was yours?  The tank is always working, and is the 2nd largest energy-user in our homes.

If your tank is set at 140, it’s hotter than necessary.  Not only does that waste energy by overheating water, but adds to heat loss in the tank and shortens its life.  For every 10 degrees you turn down your water heater, you save 6% of the energy used.

However, since bacteria that causes Legionnaire’s Disease can live in hot water heaters, turn your water heater down to 130.  That is hot enough to kill bacteria and still save energy.

Simple Solutions:

1. Set your water heater on 130F, hot enought to kill bacteria and still be energy-saving.  Most modern heaters have the “energy conservation” setting.  There are also the style that is no tank required, heating the water in the pipes as you use it.
2. Insulate your water heater with a pre-fb “blanket, making sure not to block off the air vents.  This step’s important if it’s in an unheated space.  You can save 7-8% of the energy you’ve been using.
3. Every 2 months, drain about 2 quarts of water from the valve faucet located at the bottom of the tank.  This helps prevent acc7umulation of sediment and improves efficiency and life of the heater.

Note:  The #1 Authority on water heaters

By Marisue | November 10, 2008

Let’s keep going green simple, add things to do as you think about them, but let’s start by taking a look at plastic.  And, what’s in our paper?

Did You Know?

• If 25% of American homes used 10 fewer plastic bags month, we’d save over 2.5 BILLION bags a year.
• To make plastic wrap, manufacturers add “plasticizers” that are potentially harmful chemicals that can even work their way into our food!! 
• Our coffee filters, paper towels, are white, because they’re bleached.  That may look really clean, but it’s not a benign aesthetic; the process of bleaching paper is responsible for creating dioxin, which is a deadly toxic that has been dumping into American waterways. 
• Lots of the time, paper is bleached white despite the fact that we rarely look at it or care about it’s color.  Americans buy billions of bleached coffee filters every year, and then throw them away after one use.  What difference would it have made if we purchased the brown, unbleached ones? 

Simple Solutions:

• Use reusable containers to store food in your refrigerator instead of habitually wrapping food in aluminum foil or plastic wrap.
• Use unbleached coffee filters.  Check your local supermarket, or contact Rockline, Inc., PO Box 1007, Sheboygan, WI 53082, or online.  Reusable cotton coffee filters could be used.
• Keep rags in the kitchen to wipe up spills instead of using paper towels every time.  Then wash and reuse the rags.  Still cheaper, and especially if you dry your rags outside on the line.  I know, how old-fashioned!
• Use biodegradable wax paper to wrap sandwiches instead of foil or plastic.  Or, for sandwich and freezer bad addicts:  Biodegradable, non-toxic bags made of 100% cellulose.  Write to Earth Care Co. Box 3335, Madison, WI 53704, or online.
• Other kitchen products are also available by mail from Seventh Generation, 10 Farrell St., South Burlington, VT 05403, and online.

Warehouse of Information Fact:

• Appliances, heating, and cooling cost the average US home well over $1000 a year in energy.

By Marisue | November 10, 2008

The Dirt on Clean - What Detergents Have To Do With Clean

“Stay Clean.”  That’s important to all of us.  I’m doing research about how to help the environment.  I just want to know simple things.  I can’t cure all pollution, but I bet I can make a difference, and I bet if you knew some simple things, you’d choose to make a difference too.  It just takes a few to become many.  We can do it.  I’ll talk about why.

Go get your dish detergent bottle, and your laundry soap.  We’ll read the labels in a moment.  Go get them, I’ll wait.

Now.  Let’s talk a moment about Phosphates.  Chemical compounds con