Kate and Neil’s Awesome Website

One of the biggest problems affecting our planet is over-consumption. Especially prevalent in more affluent countries is the idea that everyone can have everything they can buy even if it is harmful, wasteful, or unnecessary. We have also been taught that progress can only be measured by GDP and that they only way to increase GDP is to consume. It is fair to say that America’s identity is tied to its economy and mass consumption and the identity of nearly all Americans is tied to what they consume. Now I am not going to say let’s stop all purchasing of all goods, because that is unrealistic and never going to happen. What I do think we can do though, starting this Earth Day, is to stop buying stuff that is going to end up tossed into a landfill 6 months from the time it was bought. Did you know that 99% of everything purchased and produced by Americans will end up in a landfill (or on the ground, in the ocean, in our mountains, or in the case of dangerous chemicals in our food system) within 6 months of purchase.

So why don’t we break this destructive cycle by BUYING THE LAST. What I mean by that is next time your Wal-Mart can-opener breaks, instead of heading back to get a second one that will also just break in 6 months why not find a can-opener that will last you a lifetime? New shoes? Get ones that can be resoled. New jacket? Get one that will last 50 years instead of 50 days. New computer? Upgrade your old one. Need a new house? Repaint! Next time you have to buy anything, make your purchase one that will last you forever.

You see, if we can start curbing our consumption of those little things that we all seem to need but which always seem to break, we can cut our total consumption greatly. We can stop spending so much time shopping, and we can start saving our planet from becoming one giant, lifeless, garbage dump. This Earth Day make a commitment to reduce your consumption and eliminate disposable products from your life. And watch The Story of Stuff!

We are going to Quintana Roo on Cinco de Mayo. Aw-yeah! In true lunatic fashion, my dad had 1 million presents professionally wrapped for a pre-Cancun party. Phew, not I’ve got the perfect hat to pack.

I know we are so over it and so back to drinking Perrier, flying on Airbus planes, coating our faces with L’Oreal and reading Rolling Stone magazine, even so I want to write about the old French product protest “we” had a few years ago. My first question about our protest of French products is; did it include the Statue of Liberty? Because it was made in France under commission of the French as a gift to America symbolizing the bonds of friendship that had formed between the two nations during the revolutionary war. If we (I am using the royal “we,” I had nothing to do with this shindig) really wanted to stick-it to the French we should have boycotted their symbol of union and friendship by only visiting the Statue of Liberty to deface it with spray paint and sledge hammers.

OK, so maybe we (royal “we” again) were only trying to hurt the French economy and as long as we already had a French product before the boycott we could continue using it because the transaction had already taken place. Fair enough, but that brings me to my second question; who even knows what a French products are? Most are elitist consumer goods anyway, and it seems like the type of American protesting French products wouldn’t buy them even during peace times. I mean I can’t tell you the last French thing I bought, ate or consumed that wasn’t purchased while in France. And I think this is probably true for most people. (To tell you the truth I bought a small bottle of French horseradish mustard the other day).

And finally, as case and point for my whole argument against the French product protest, when you have to make a Boycott Website to show people what to boycott and and what not to, it just goes to show that the world has changed so much that you can’t really punish a country anymore through a citizen product protest. Everything is made and owned by everyone else that if you were going to abstain from anything profitable to the French you’ll be left eating grass clippings and walking barefoot. Likely many French companies are owned by an American umbrella company or some other international group, and many things “Made in America” are owned by foreigners and maybe even the French. I say lets protest all things created, said or sold by those who came up with this stupid protest in the first place.

I am interested to see how the Chinese product protest goes with this whole Tibet and Olympics thing, there is not much left in the world that isn’t made in China.

So since I’m currently “under the weather” in the employment arena I have started to do a little work with my father in law until ether he hires me full-time or I find another full-timejob. This meant that I spent the weekend with him up in Boise and McCall, Idaho running various errands in regards to the new magazine he is starting here in Utah. He has had some muchachos from El Salvador make customized magazine racks in the likeness of little cabins with the magazine logo plasma torched into steel. So basically what we had to do was load 25 of these things onto two trucks and then haul them down to Boise. The only problem is these magazine racks weigh about 300 pounds each. Amazingly two of the muchachos could carry one of them and then loaded them onto the trailer and then I pushed them into place. Once they were all loaded we headed down the hill from McCall to Boise going tops 40 miles an hour. The load was just too heavy for one of the trucks so what should have been a 2 hours drive turned out to be 6.

More or less that is all we did, but it ended up taking the better part of two days. Here are some photos from the trip including two of me with my new hat (and by new I mean a cowboy wore this thing for the better part of 3 decades and all I did was was have it reshaped).

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It’s confirmed. The New Kids on the Block are back. They are having a reunion tour.

If you think that I didn’t have NKOTB sheets when I was little, think again. I got up early Saturday mornings to watch their cartoon, complete with their shar pei dog Nikko. And I also recorded and obsessively watched & re-watched their concerts with my friends.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhh… hangin’ tough.

So, Jim found a red Ford F150 pickup in a small junkyard off I-15 in Willard, Utah. Apparently he memorized the mile marker and on a return trip exited the freeway, found the owner of the truck, and convinced him to trade it straight-up for a working, but probably not for long, BMW. About a week later I drove the deathtrap Beamer up to Willard to make the trade and to help Jim load the truck onto a trailer to haul the truck home. Here is my recounting of the adventure that ensued:

 I was ready at 8:15 to drive the BMW up to Willard, however problems at the trailer rental company made Jim two hours late. We arrived at the junkyard in Willard at 10 AM. We parked the cars outside the junkyard squished between I-15 and an active railroad track

Our first bit of excitement happened after we parked the cars and went up to talk to the father of man whose truck Jim was getting. The father had torn down the fence between the junk yard and I-5 and had proceeded to try and pull the truck through the fence. When it turned out we couldn’t find the key to unlock the steering wheel the old man went into his son’s trailer to see if he could find one. After 20 minutes or so he came out saying he couldn’t find the key and that we would have to do things differently. This meant we would have to pull the truck onto the shoulder of the freeway and load it there. While we were discussing the possibility the son came running out of his trailer (see blue tarp-covered structure in photo below) and started to threaten to kill his father. The guy ran up to the father, who was sitting on the tractor, and started swearing, swinging, and then reached for his boot knife on his belt. This, of course, was more then enough for Jim and I and we fled down the hill to our cars, got inside, and started to move.

When the kid went back inside his trailer Jim ventured up to see if everything was alright (by this I mean if he was still going to get the truck). Things were ok so I was invited back to the help load the truck from my lookout spot in the car. We got the car ready and then moved our cars onto the freeway shoulder so we could begin loading the truck. After about 10 minutes the man whose truck we were loading came up to help us. His father had gone and he seemed calm and helpful. He had gone back to look for the key and could not find it but told us that if we took him to his storage shed we would be able to get it. On the way to the storage shed, Jim made me ride in the back of the car, right behind the guy. When we had a free moment Jim told me the plan, if the guy tried to do anything funny I was to choke him from behind while Jim punched him in the face. Luckily nothing happened and the guy was nice enough to put all his knifes (2 or 3 of them) away for the ride home.

On the ride back to the trucks, the man proceeded to tell us all his family problems about how his father used to beat him and today was the day he took it no more. He showed his dad that he wasn’t a kid any more and that he would fight back. The story goes as follows. Father walked into the guy’s dilapidated trailer and asked him for the key. Something happened and the father slapped the kid across the face. The kid got angry at his father and started yelling at him and telling him things he remembered from his childhood. That is when the father walked out of the trailer and moved the truck to the side of the freeway. After this story the guys mother called and they proceeded to talk about all the crazy things that had happened to this kid during his childhood…I won’t mention them as to keep this post lighthearted.

We loaded the truck onto a trailer just wide enough to fit it. Since we couldn’t find a key and the wheels were locked slightly turned to the left, it had a hell of a time getting the truck onto the trailer. Once it was on we tied it down and got ready to go. In case you forgot Jim was trading the guy an old working BMW that was too junkie and old to put any more money into- for the non functioning pickup. Jim went down to the guy and tried to get him to sign the lease, during which the kid’s father showed up and they both started dancing around Jim and the papers like a pair of wrestlers waiting for the referee to say go. Jim finally told them he just wanted the papers signed and then he would leave them to their bloodbath. The son signed the papers and while walking up the hill to the cars told Jim he didn’t want the BMW. He didn’t deserve it. Jim, of course, just wanted to get rid of the thing and told him he had to take it. We jumped into the truck and headed for the hills…going 50 mph because we were hauling more than the truck could handle. What was supposed to be a nice hour or two turned out to take the whole day, nearly included a knife fight, and I was giving instructions to choke a man if he acted up, in other words…. just your average adventure with Jim Kelly.

Oregonians are now using the lottery to determine who will qualify for the state’s healthcare program. Life and death is now determined by the Lotto. If this isn’t a sign that our healthcare system is SICK, I don’t know what is.