Pull your pants up, man - posted at 20:38

It's old news by now: several communities throughout America are passing some form of legislation that bans, of all things, baggy pants.

Don't get me wrong, I think the the way some guys wear their pants is ridiculous and god knows I gave my brother all kinds of unending crap when we were younger and he insisted on sagging. I'm all for guys actually wearing their pants at their natural waist, of all places. But putting it into law? That's an extremely slippery slope, if you ask me. It's not at all surprising that many communities are grouping it into the realm of public indecency, which in itself is an extremely subjective grouping. What's next? Are we going to ban people from wearing their hats backwards, or pass a law that prevents them from wearing them indoors at all? Are we going to ban wearing red shirts on Monday? Or are we just going to go after what is different and group it as indecent? Because, really, guys showing boxers is pretty tame compared to the way a lot of girls dress, and I don't see anything about that being legislated.

For me, that's really the crux of the issue: we, as a society, are apparently so offended by seeing the (still covered) backsides of some guys that we're willing to throw the book at them, but when a female dresses in a similar way - or in an even more aggravated fashion - what happens? I have yet to hear of a law that forbids women from wearing low-rise jeans that show their thongs or even their ass cracks. See, guys at least have the common courtesy to wear long shirts that for all intents and purposes render their skivvies invisible, but women are baring their backsides. Apparently, female plumber crack is the new black.

So I, a women who dresses pretty modestly - especially compared to a lot of other females in this country - am worried about the message that this sends to other young women. No no no, we don't want guys to dress in a way that shows an iota of skin, but girls, your bodies apparently mean so little to you and are so undeserving of respect that you are permitted - nay, encouraged - to flaunt every inch of it. Yeah, I get that the female form is supposedly more beautiful and all that. And guys, you should really pull those pants up, because you look absurd. But girls, that's a message you'd do well to heed too, because it's a lot harder for other people to take you seriously when it looks like you don't even have the ability to cover your own ass.

Not quite a resolution - posted at 20:03

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. Personally, I don't see why any day of the year isn't a good day to set a goal, and face it, if you make a goal on your own time you're much more likely to stick with it than you are if you feel some sort of pressure from tradition.

But as I was driving around today, it occurred to me that I've really been changing my life a lot recently, and it all falls under a theme more than a goal or resolution. It's pretty simple. Here it is:

Make more.

No, I don't mean make more money or anything. What I mean is stepping back, slowing life down, and creating more things myself instead of relying on someone else to do it. This means making more food, making more gifts, making more garments, making more things that will make life better or more beautiful.

Hasn't everyone heard that the fun is in the journey, not just the destination? Despite this, we're all so destination-focused that we completely skip the journey. We don't cook, we microwave frozen lunches. We don't take the time to make something for someone we love, we rely on someone else to put it on a store shelf. We don't make art, we buy crappy mass-produced posters. Let's spend some time on the process, on the journey.

As I said, I've been doing this a lot recently, and people apparently think I'm some sort of extreme nutcase - especially when it comes to cooking. And really, I can see their point. There is no sane reason for me to invest hours in the kitchen making something that I can buy off the shelf in five seconds. But here's the thing: even if my bread doesn't rise as high as I want, or say I let it ferment too long and it gets boozy, I will still get satisfaction and pride - and enjoyment - from the process of making it (and let's not forget that even if it's a brick it will still taste better than anything bought from a grocery store). Even if that sweater I knit is lumpy and uneven, I will have something that I can hold in my hands and proudly proclaim "hear ye, hear ye, I MADE THIS" (even if no one is listening). And if I give that loaf of bread or that sweater to someone as a gift, I have just told them that I care enough about them to spend real time on them, to embark on a journey on which they are they destination.

We have jobs where we stare at computer screens for hours at a time. We no longer can hold something in our hands at the end of the day, knowing that we have been truly productive. That's why I have shit for job satisfaction, and I know that I'm not alone in this. Going back to the roots of how things are done, doing it the hard way, and holding the product in my hand is my source of pride and this way - making and not buying tons of stuff to fill up my life - is the only way I know how to make up for our inherently unsatisfying American way of life.

Because flooding Yosemite Valley isn't wasteful enough! - posted at 18:57

In Anchorage we get our water from Eklutna Lake, one of the single most stunning places on Earth.

And yet, even in Alaska, we are not immune from the disgusting trappings of excess,

I am talking about, of course, bottled water.

I mean, really, why drink pure water from a natural, local source when you could pay to have someone in a city thousands of miles away put their tap water in a plastic bottle and ship it to you? That's the American way, isn't it?

To further highlight the evils going on here, that plastic bottle made from fossil fuels will be used a single time and will likely be thrown away. Plus, water is very heavy, so you've got to expend lots of fossil fuels to get the stuff up here in the first place. All this does is increase our demand for oil, which, incidentally, increases it price!!! But hey, look, now I'm in tanget land!

I wish I could say that Anchorageites are the only stupid American consumers. But alas, you don't have to look too far for another similar case. My husband lives outside of San Francisco and gets his water from Hetch Hetchy, which is basically a second Yosemite Valley that they flooded to make a reservoir. Just like Alaskans, they are drinking water that is as pure as it gets, but Californians are stupid enough to buy bottled water too!

I've lived in many other places in the country and only one of them (San Angelo, Texas) had water that was truly too god-awful to drink . When I say too god-awful to drink, I mean that the water was so hard that the you could actually see mineral particles in the tap water and the area had an astronomical rate of kidney failure - and I still got my water locally, from machines that would do some crazy reverse osmosis process on the city water supply that made it taste just fine and dispensed it into gallon jugs that I re-used the whole time I lived there. But you know, if I ran out of the fancy-pants machine-dispensed water I still could drink the tap water. It certainly wouldn't kill me. Think of all the other millions, if not billions of people in the world who aren't so lucky. They would probably be super pissed if they found out that Americans snub their city water supplies and wash their cars in perfectly potable water while elsewhere, all those who are less fortunate have to drink is water that gives them dysentery. Ever play Oregon Trail when you were a kid? People die from that shit!

So seriously, engage your brain before you commit an act of utter wastefulness and remember, if you're going to bitch about the price of gasoline, you'd best pass on that bottle of Dasani you were going to buy at the gas station.