Boobs! FOR SCIENCE!

In retaliation to one of the most ridiculous allegations of all time, Boobquake is happening tomorrow.

Jennifer McCreight dreamt up Boobquake as a joke in response to this statement:

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes"
-Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi ,Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader

The idea spread like wildfire, and there are currently over 100,000 people lending their support and boobs to the cause tomorrow. After declaring my own participation on Twitter, Paul Chapman (editor for the Province, and not the first time my tweets have landed me in the Province!) asked me if I'd like to take part in a fun interview regarding Boobquake for a local story.

See the Province's story featuring yours truly and my weapons of mass seduction here.

Earth Day! And Why it Makes Me Sad.

"Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents.
It is loaned to you by your children."
~ Kenyan proverb

WARNING: This post may get a little preachy, and I might come out looking like a hippie.

I could cry today, because I'm so frustrated with people and how they treat this planet. Moreso, I'm frustrated by people's apathy.

We live in a rural area on a main street, and one that many a fisherman makes his home-away-from-home when he needs to "get away from it all."

We also have two trailer parks on our street. One is mostly home to retirees, and as a result it is tidy and kempt. The other is your stereotypical trailer park, full of trailer trash, both figuratively and literally. I spent seven years delivering papers there twice a week, and I went to elementary and high school with many of the children that live there, so I've seen it all firsthand. One Saturday morning I witnessed young children playing in their front yard, which was littered with aftermath from the previous night's party: dozens of beer cans and porn mags. I'm not kidding.

And we're the main street that 20- and 30-somethings use to get to Stave Lake, home to the mud flats and off-roading trails, and often a dumping ground for stolen vehicles.

So as a result of the types of people that frequent our street, its shoulders and ditches are home to styrofoam bait containers, chocolate bar wrappers, pop cans, beer cans, countless cigarette butts and packages, and trash from most fast-food restaurants, especially Tim Horton's.

It's also a dumping ground for large things, for those too cheap or too lazy to properly dispose of them. I just called Mission Public Works to have them pick up the double-size futon that's been laying on the side of the road for well over a week now. There are countless garbage bags filled with dirt - a lovely gift from the grow-ops in the neighbourhood - and apparently one fisherman went home pantsless after he tore a hole in his and left them for someone else to deal with.

So this morning, as I was feeling all lovey dovey about the Earth, I picked up a heavy-duty garbage collection bag and one of those sweet robot arm garbage-picker-upper things from my neighbour (the neighbourhood used to share in weekly garbage pickups) and set off with Jack in tow. In less than half a kilometre my bag was so full and heavy that one of the handles broke. I also came home disheartened, because my bag can't hold the paint cans and plant pots that I had to leave behind.

So with all of this, you'd expect we live in a pretty rough, ugly neighbourhood, right?

Wrong. I took this just now, standing in my front yard.

I'd hate to see how people treat a place that isn't this beautiful.

I also get frustrated with people's lack of motivation to actually do anything more than just say "Happy Earth Day!" Words don't undo pollution, or automatically sort your recyclables from your compostables from your garbage, or plant trees, or pick up garbage that thoughtless others have tossed out their window.


Usually I hate the expression "if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem," but it's days like today that it couldn't ring any truer.

So I'm happy to report that today I'm part of the solution. I've resolved to make today a car-free day, in efforts to reduce my carbon emissions. Instead of turning up the heat in the house because it's cold, I'm going to layer up. I'm planning on not creating any garbage today; all the waste I produce will either be recyclable or compostable. And I walked down the street to pick up free-range organic eggs from our neighbours' farm today for my good-for-the-environment lunch.

Happy Earth Day! Do something good for the environment please.

Things That I Think Are Stupid

The Price of Razorblades.

I've been buying the same blades for about ten years now. They're not advertised by Gillette anymore, and haven't been in some time, and they will probably be discontinued soon as the handle's been unavailable for a couple of years now.

So with no advertisement, and no cost of R&D, you'd think the price would stay roughly the same, right?

Wrong.

Ten years ago: about $10, or $1/blade.
Today: $17, or $1.70/blade.

You can't tell me that inflation has caused the price to increase 70%. A piece of plastic housing two thin strips of metal (Yes, mine only have two blades. I don't need 16 blades to shave.) should cost mere pennies to produce. By the time you package and ship and resell that ten pack it should cost no more than $3 or $4.

But it's a monopoly market, as there aren't any inexpensive alternatives. Professional waxing and laser hair removal cost small fortunes. Electric razors don't come cheap either, and with a lifespan of only a couple of years, they probably cost more in the long run. Disposables aren't as good (not to mention the unnecessary garbage they create), and generic brands, if you can find them, aren't up to snuff.

And what are we supposed to do in protest? Boycott razorblades? That's only hurting ourselves.

I'm just going to start buying lots of blade packs of ebay. Still not as cheap as it should be, but a substantial savings over what you'll pay at the grocery store.

Bikram's Yoga, aka Hot Yoga.

Ok, so let's get this straight. The same temperature and humidity that causes the government to issue heat warnings about when it happens in the summer is the same environment that you're working out in? You're spending anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes in a makeshift sauna, when a real sauna is filled with signage warning you not to stay for longer than 15 minutes, and to leave immediately if you begin to feel nauseous or dizzy.

And everyone is getting their sweat on. But unlike in a gym, where the air is circulated and conditioned, Bikram's is in a sealed-off room. Nice. You're breathing in everyone else' sweat and breath. Better hope no one's getting a cold, because you'll be getting it too.

What's worse is that you're told not to drink any water. This goes against everything we've been taught since the beginning of PE classes.

In the 45 minutes I spend doing cardio on the elliptical at my gym I will polish off an entire 1 litre bottle of water, and another 500mls on my drive home.

"Oh but I lose so much weight with Bikram's! I feel so awesome after Bikram's!"

Yes, you do. But you put it back on as soon as you rehydrate yourself. That's probably why you feel so good after your workout; stepping outside into cool air where you can finally drink water is bound to feel euphoric after you've been trying not to pass out for an hour.

Feeling dizzy, light-headed or nauseous while working out = bad
Not staying hydrated while working out = bad
Paying $20 for an hour-long group workout = stupid

I'm not anti-yoga, nor am I anti-saunas. But together? Anyone who participates in this needs to give their head a good shake.

"It makes me feel amazing!"

If you're lacking amazement in your life, here are some other, not-so-stupid things you can try instead:

-regular workouts (including regular yoga!)
-recycling
-volunteering
-cuddling puppies
-giving hugs

And the best part? None of those cost $20/hour to do! You're welcome.

AirCare

Oh wait, we already went over that.

Exciting things that happened this week!

This was a week of firsts.

I experienced something I've been moderately (and unjustifiably) hateful of for some time now.

1) The Snuggie.

I take it all back. You are soft and warm, and even though you're a little bit staticky I'm still really into you. Literally.

2) Waking up in a Snuggie.

Thank you Jenn, I owe that one all to you.

3) New Snuggie-based projects.

I'm going to make a Lions Snuggie for this season. There was even talk of an orange three-person Snuggie for Jenn, Doug and I. Doug doesn't know about it yet, and Jenn pretended she wasn't super excited about that idea, but I know better.

4) Pho.

I've finally tried pho! And it was super delicious! It's like I live in Vancouver or something. And I managed to eat the entire bowl without having to ask for a fork. Gold star for me.

5) I fell in love with Jim's new beagle puppy, Barnaby.

Not to be confused with Burnaby. Having a tiny puppy asleep on your chest while he twitches and whimpers because he's dreaming is probably the cutest thing ever. And I am an expert on cute things, so you can rest assured that this is an accurate statement.

6) I won (another) contest!

My reign as queen of the radio contest isn't up yet, as I scored a pair of tickets to Rihanna at GM Place. ON MY BIRTHDAY!

And the most exciting thing that happened this week...

7) I was asked to MC Nicole and Nathan's wedding!

And oh boy, am I excited! So I get to play makeup artist the morning of the wedding, and then I get to spend all night on a mic. I'm so excited about it you'd think I were the one getting hitched or something.

Mistress of Ceremonies. I like it. Only 278 days to go!

I don't know how I had a job.

As I am now job hunting, step one is getting my cover letter, references and resume in tip-top shape. The last job I had was a big-girl job, and I remember how pleased I was with the final version of my resume.

Oh, to be young and blindingly naive again.

Part of why I now know everything that is wrong with my resume is because I helped with several rounds of hiring at my last job. With all the atrocious resumes, cover letters, email correspondence leading up to interviews and the interviews themselves, I've got an arsenal of hire-me-NOW weaponry at my disposal.

And it's nice to know that we were much more stringent than most employers were.

Do you know how hard it is to find someone who has both a particular skill set and the ability to spell their own name correctly? Apparently the two are mutually exclusive.

It also helps that during my tenure at Resilience, I took the 12-week Word course through BCIT, as part of my technical writing program. That course was worth its weight in gold. If it had measurable weight. Just say it's worth its textbook's weight in gold.

Highlights from my 2007 resume

-Under Activities & Interests I put "new experiences." What a loser.

-There are upwards of one hundred different styles in the Styles & Formatting sidebar. ONE HUNDRED. Actually, in my continuing quest for journalistic integrity, and in my other quest to stop over-exaggerating everything all the time, I'm actually going to count.

Ok, so I was sort of right and sort of wrong. There are eighty-five different styles, but that is not including the standard ones that are already included with Word. It's well over a hundred if you include those.

Eighty-five.

Do you know how many is a good number to aim for?

Maybe ten or twelve.

So basically what this says is, "I'm telling you in words that I'm proficient with Word, but I'm proving this to be an outrageous lie as soon as you actually look at how I whipped this together. I'm also making it painfully obvious that my good friend Google helped me find a template on some website and that's what I based my resume off of."

Think of it this way: the words are the skin, and the styles are the skeleton.

And your employer has an x-ray machine.

You better hope your bones are in order.*

-I included an Objective.

Now I'm always torn on this one. I don't like the Objective section per se, but I also don't like jumping right into Skills or some other section. I feel like there needs to be some sort of "Hi I'm Sam and I want to work for you!" before I start telling you all the reasons I'm awesome. And I know that's what the cover letter is for, but you can't always assume that a potential employer is going to look at your cover letter first. We'll see what I come up with as I go.

Regardless, Objective is wrong wrong wrong.

-I underlined stuff. In blue. Wtf is wrong with me?

So it's clear I have some work ahead of me. And sadly, the more I read through this, the less I'd want to hire me. I thought I'd have some substance to work from, but apparently not.

*This, of course, is primarily for any position that includes writing. If you're a mechanic applying at Joe's Car Repair, they won't care if you used styles. They might not even care if you use Notepad.

AirCare's Sole Purpose is to Remind Poor People That They're Poor

Alternate blog post titles:

Volkswagens and AirCare: enemies to the death.

"Did it pass AirCare?" "It's a Volkswagen. Of course not."

AirCare: The Bane of My Existence

First World Problems

I'm probably not going to elicit much sympathy from this, as I could have had a new(er) car instead of the one I already have. But because I made the "fun!" (aka irresponsible!) choice to quit my job and then spend my big pile of money gallivanting around some continents for a while, I came home to my high-mileage 1997 Golf.

I loved this car when I got it five years ago. After driving an awesomely charismatic but supremely unsafe and unreliable yellow '72 Superbeetle for three years, upgrading to a car that was produced when I was already alive was amazing.

I still love you, Mabel. You death trap on wheels you.

And I love things about this car. Like how a tank of gas that will get me 550km costs less than $40. Or how... it has a manual transmission! And... doors. And wheels... And it gets me from point A to point B relatively unscathed... Ok, so there isn't much that's great about this car. But it's (usually) cheap to run, and I don't have any sort of monthly car payment.

Car payments are why I don't have a newer, nicer car.

Do you know how much a monthly car payment for a new Civic is? $300

And the car payment for the sole car that might actually motivate me into taking on a monthly car payment, aka a Dodge Challenger?

At least $600.

(That was the sound of my bank account getting raped.)

So I still have my 13-year-old, junky-but-mostly-reliable, practically-free-to-drive Golf. I should probably throw some money at it, like to paint the hood or fix the cracked-to-shit windshield, the latter of which would not hold up in a vehicle inspection. But as it's high mileage and never been rebuilt, it would probably be smarter just to sell it before its maintenance bills are more than the car's value.

I cancelled its insurance pre-departure and put storage insurance on it. And I was actually excited to reinsure it, as three years has now elapsed since my car accident and ICBC's accident forgiveness would have kicked in, making my already practically free to drive car even freer. Whoa that's actually a word? Awesome! Freer freer freer.

I head to the local Autoplan to reinsure my car, hand her all my paper work, get my blank cheque ready (as I had forgotten it on the first attempt), and smugly wait to hear just how cheap my monthly insurance payment is going to be.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Your AirCare's expired."

If hopes and dreams dying was audible, that's the sound.

She could have also said, "Cry. Then please go to your nearest mechanic and pay $300."

AirCare is a tax on the poor.

New vehicles are exempt from AirCare for their first seven years of life. After that they only need to be checked every two years, and they usually pass with flying colours.

AirCare was implemented in 1992. Does this mean that vehicles built prior to 1992 are exempt? No. Cars built in 1992 or previous need to be checked every year.

AirCare should be much the same as how the seatbelt law works: if your car was built without seatbelts before the seatbelts law came into effect, you don't need to install seatbelts in your car.

And while I realize that this still wouldn't make my 1997 Golf exempt from AirCare, it would make me a little less bitter about all the hell they caused me with my 1972 Bug. But AirCare is government, which means it's not much more than a thinly-veiled cash grab, and despite similar programs being nixed throughout the states they had been implemented in because it's becoming increasingly pointless, AirCare still exists because the BC government likes to tax the poor.

I don't drive a '97 Golf because I think it's fun to not have things like airbags and air conditioning and ABS brakes and power windows. I drive it because I can't afford anything else right now. Because I spent all my money on silk and silver in India. Pity me.

You know what else I can't afford? The mechanic bill, to fix my off-the-chart nitrogen oxide rating. Because I quit my job before I went on said silver and silk shopping spree. Cue more pity.

Do you think they looked at my supremely-below-average carbon monoxide reading and gave me a break? Or averaged the three readings? Or though, ehhh two out of three ain't bad, off you go. Nope. Not even a high five.

Carbon monoxide? WILL KILL YOU.

Nitrogen oxide? Makes your car go fast! Wheeeee!

If you are in the 1992 or older category, where regulations say you need to go through AirCare every year, they charge you $23 for the exam.

If you are in the 1993 and newer category, where you only need to go through AirCare every two years, the testing fee is $47.

Whoa, what's that?

Both exams are exactly the same. But if we're only going to see you every two years, we're going to charge you double! That's the price you pay for being able to afford a new car that was built to meet modern emissions standards!

My car is pretty economical in the grand scheme of things. It even rated as having better than average gas consumption for its class in the AirCare test. If I were to take that $40 tank of gas and light it on fire, it would still be more Earth-friendly than a new V8 diesel that spews out a thick plume of black smoke every time you hammer on the pedal.

Maybe this is Mother Nature's vengeance for how I drove Richie's truck. In that case, I'm sorry MN. Love you!

But because that brand new $78,000 F350 V8 meets the emissions standards for its class, it doesn't even need to go on its first date with AirCare until 2016. And that first date won't even be awkward and it'll pass with flying colours and it'll do the stride of pride out of the AirCare lineup like no tomorrow.

So let's break it down.

Typical redneck: $15,600 for truck/year* + $6,000 for diesel/year** = $21,600 annual vehicle expenses
*($78,000 / 5 year payment plan)
**(20,000km / 400km per tank x $120 per fill)

Me: $900 for car/year*** + $1455 for gas/year**** = $2,355 annual vehicle expenses
***($4,500 / 5 years of ownership)
****(20,000 / 550km per tank x $40 per fill)

I'm not even factoring in insurance, which is exponentially more for a vehicle that expensive, compared to what it costs me for mine.

One of us can afford expensive car repairs, and the other cannot.

One of us is hands-down spewing more pollutants into the air than is necessary, and the other is not.

But I'm the one being penalized for emissions and on my way to fork out a few hundred dollars in repairs.

AirCare is a tax on the poor.

Home, sweeeeeet beautiful home!

After being away for nearly three months, home brings many realizations with it.

1. I own a shit-tonne of stuff.

The amount of stuff that I have crammed into my >10’x14’ room is borderline unbelievable. Couple that with the basement crawlspace, one section of which is devoted entirely to housing all the things I’ve accumulated over the last handful of years in anticipation of moving out.

Much of the things are home things, like decorative stuff, art, and textiles. In this way, I’m totally my mother’s daughter, and a textbook Cancer.

I’m not, however, my mother’s daughter in that there is absolutely no cohesion to any of the things I own. At all.

If something meets any one of the following criteria, I will buy it:
-if it’s a bright colour
-if it’s many bright colours
-if it’s black, white or grey
-if it’s silver
-if it’s gold
-if it’s shiny or sparkly
-if it’s glass
-if it's metal
-if it's wood
-if it's old
-if it’s an interesting conversation piece
-if it would look nice on a bookshelf
-if it’s a miniature version of something
-if it’s an oversized version of something
-if it would be fun to take to a party
-if it’s BC Lions merchandise

This theme continued while travelling, and of the above list only one criterion did not come into play while abroad, which is obviously the Lions criterion.

So what did I do?

I bought Olympiacos stuff instead.

So now I’m tasked with finding homes or storage for all the new things I’ve brought home. The biggest undertaking will be for the smallest items, as I bought a royal inheritance worth of jewelry and I have no idea where it’s all going to live. But hey, I’m unemployed! I have time for stuff like this now.

When I finally do move out, I’m going to have go the museum route: paint the walls stark white, throw everything in, and pretend that I meant for everything to be completely disconnected from everything else. It's art.

2. I have a shit-tonne of clothes.

And oh boy, am I excited for them! After three months of one pair of jeans, one cardigan, one sweater and a rotation of a half dozen t-shirts and three scarves, I’m ready to be a real girl again. Wearing the same dozen pairs of underwear for 80 days is a travesty. And when you’re gallivanting around the planet, seeing how much amazing stuff there is out there, your boring clothes make you feel extra boring. I don’t like feeling boring.

3. I am not very good at planning.

I had intended for all my laundry to be washed, folded and put away before my departure. As I quickly ran out of time before I left, things like normal adult responsibilities got shoved aside.

But seeing as how I was employed then, and I am unemployed now, it’s not like I don’t have the time to do it all now! So I guess I am good at planning.

4. Dogs are jerks.

I'm gone for nearly three months (4.8 dog years to be exact), and Jack is more excited to see my dad than me.

Edit: 80 days is not 4.8 dog years, it's 1.53. How I screwed that up so badly is beyond me. But still, more than a year? And all he did was sniff my shoe.

5. Bacon is no more delicious after not eating it for three months.

Because bacon was already at maximum delicious, that's why.

6. Your own bed is so amazingly luxuriously comfy after a three month absence.

Seriously. It was heaven.