Into The Rabbit Hole

Here’s a new, fun meme all about venting, complaining, ranting, letting it all out because sometimes you just need to be heard!

Instructions:

1. Copy / paste everything below ‘Instructions’, up to (and including) the CUT at the start of a new post.
2. Write a complaint about the subject of your choice after the CUT (visit Universal Complaints Department for examples, guidelines, and even a complaint form if you’d like to use one).
3. Important: Email the complaint to universalcomplaints@gmail.com
4. Link back to whomever tagged you.
5. Tag four people you think might like to rant/complain about something.

This will give you a chance to vent, boost your page-ranking and your Technorati authority all in one go! This meme has been brought to you by http://universalcomplaints.blogspot.com - Passing the Buck Since Time Began.

Don’t forget to email the complaint, and we will feature your complaint on our site and link back to you!

You can even complain about having to complain if you like

Happy complaining!
—-CUT—-

Brought to me by Catatonic Kid, I’ve got one Get Out of Hell Free For Complaining Card.

So here’s my waaaah!!! This has been the worst month EVVVVVER.  I can’t wait for this whole thing to be over.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.  (read more at the Universal Complaints blog.)

I tag:

1. Amber Lotus

2. Bree

3.  Torch

4.  Shiv

Sorry, I know, dramatic title, not very positive.

Not to say I’m in an entirely funky mood, but I’ve just been “researching,” and I feel like now I know more, and at the same time realize the dire problems we face as a culture.

You’ve heard me mention this once or twice. What we’re doing ISN’T working.

Indeed.

So, let’s take a basic life sustaining product: no, not television… but WATER.

We drink it, and there’s controversy. Should we drink eight glasses? Or a certain number of ounces per body weight? Should we buy bottled? Or drink the city’s water?

I know, I know, over-thinking it again, are we?

Well, let’s look at it this way… we drink fluorinated water… because it’s good for our teeth. Because it’s what the dentists recommend. Because that’s what we have. We pay for our water, and we conserve it because we’re good environmentalists.

But then we hear a breath-taking report that there are pharmaceuticals in our water. We discover that there are prescription drugs– from anti-psychotics to vitamins to antibiotics to estrogen… well, there’s a whole damn lot of pharmaceuticals in our water. How’d all that junk get there? Well, it survived the treatment at the local treatment plant… stuff that we flush down the toilet along with our human excrement. The pharms got there through our urine. And don’t worry, we’re not drinking urine when we open that cold tap water– we’re drinking filtered, cleaned water. Urine is mostly water, no? Un-metabolized pharmaceuticals that left our bodies and are not caught in the filtration… It also behooves me to mention that our water supplies easily and readily become polluted by the contaminants (including carcinogens) that wash out of our food supplies– via herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers.

Does anyone see a problem with this?

Curious to know what the EPA calls contaminants?

I know I’m neurotic. I worry about my own death on a fairly frequent basis. It just seems to me that maybe I’m just not that crazy. Now, I don’t need to be all panicky and worrisome and stuff without finding out the actual threat, which I plan to do. (Suddenly organic chemistry seems much more interesting.)

I guess I just wanted to throw out there that here is a lot of stuff that we never think about– it’s SO much easier to live obliviously.

Shouldn’t you care, too?

I just want to point out how retarded my bank is.   Now, this is me venting, not complaining.

So, I open a savings account.  This is nice. This is good, this means I have a little extra money that I’d rather put in the bank.  Right?

Okay, so in order to Not Have Any Under The Limit Fees, I have to have a recurring automatic monthly transfer, which they set up for me.  The transfer amount: $75 monthly.  The minimum balance otherwise: $2000.

What???  That’s an awfully high monthly balance.  But, since I get paid twice a month, I figure a $75 automatic transfer shouldn’t suck horribly, especially since I was reassured that I could always transfer back if I wanted.

So, now that I have my savings account set up, I Now Have Overdraft Protection.  You know, in case I spend more in my checking account than I actually had– which, by the way, I have NOT overdrafted anything more than $1-2 in a very long time… Which means instead of getting dinged $34 for every transaction (even if it were a penny) that I go over on my checking, I now have the money “automatically transferred over to cover the overdraft” and only get a measly $10 fee.  Fine.  I can avoid these $10 fees if I just transfer money over from my savings to my checking before they go through.  Halle-fuckin-lujah!!!!

But wait, there’s more!!!  If I have more than six transactions in a month in my checking account, I get, wait for it… wait for it… A $10 excess activity fee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WTF????!!!??!

Argh.  Retarded.   Ask me how I really feel.

Well, can you deal with mental illness?

Generally speaking, I say yes. I have this knack for being able to see a red flag that indicates I’m not working with a full deck and can immediately hit the off switch on my emotions. In most cases, I’m golden. Emotionally un-volatile. People tell me things. Things that no one should tell me. I handle it very well, and can remain objective and non-judgmental about it.

Except for one thing…

I have a really difficult time with suicidal people. It’s because I feel so emotionally connected with it. I’ve never once in my entire life– in and out of depression– NEVER felt the urge to kill myself. I’m afraid of death. I’m afraid of it not because I don’t want to die (though, I’m sure somewhere in there, that’s part of it), but because I can’t imagine the pain that my beloveds would experience in losing me. Of course I can think rationally about the situation: everyone dies. You’re no more unique in death than you are in birth. It’s an important part of our life cycle, which in many ways has been fiddled with so incessantly (probably because many people are afraid of death) to the point where we have extended our lifespans so dramatically that it’s affecting our ecosystem immeasurably. Hell, maybe it’s not immeasurable at all– we can see the measurable effects of over-population in a plethora of ways. The point is that I don’t necessarily agree with the extent that we’ve extended our life sentence. It’s not really very good to fuck with the cycle of life. Death is imminent, it’s necessary, and it’s REAL.

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I’ve been thinking. This is usually greeted with a collective sigh of, “Uh oh.”

I’ve also been reading, which means I’ve been learning. Pondering, if you will. Soaking up the thoughts of other people and incorporating them into my belief system or discarding them as the wrong piece of the puzzle for the picture I’m creating.

That, I suppose, is my disclaimer.

However, much of what I’ve recently been reminded of rings completely true to my soul. And for that fact, I am compelled to share it with you

The last six months has consisted of a set of recurring, cooperative themes. The most important has been of self divinity, self worth, and self love. In the last few years I have discovered, in this order: that I was lovable, that I was capable of experiencing love, that I was worthy of being wholly loved, that I *was* and *am* wholly loved, that there is perfection in me– even though I can and do make drastic mistakes, that I am of this earth, and part of its powerful creation, that I can see clearly the paths I take and am participating in the creation of this perceived world in a subjective and dramatic way.

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http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20080214/NEWS/972891293

I found this article on the above Vail Daily (news) website. I think it’s really important that you read it! I’m amazed that this is going on– and has been in the process of being addressed since NOVEMBER. (see the letter from the EPA) I feel like our media is a puppet show. Here, pay attention to Britney and Angelina and car accidents while this is going on behind the curtain! Grrr!!

For those of you not familiar with Leadville, this should give you some perspective. Leadville is clustered in between some of Colorado’s greatest ski resorts. It lies 20 miles south of Copper Mountain and 40 miles southwest of Vail, 15 miles west of Fairplay, and about 30 miles east of Aspen. I’ve put my notes/references in red.

February 14, 2008

LEADVILLE, Colorado — The pool of contaminated water trapped by the collapse in the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel is an immediate threat to the lives and well-being of Lake County citizens, according to the Lake County Commissioners.

“Citizens, it is not our goal to cause panic, but it is our goal to protect human health and the environment. Lake County residents and the citizens that live in the Arkansas Valley Watershed are faced with an imminent threat that cannot be ignored anymore,” read Lake County Commissioner Mike Hickman at a special meeting of the Lake County Board of County Commissioners on Wednesday.

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Will someone please tell me what it is that compels me to go to www.9news.com and www.cnn.com? It’s mostly horrible stuff on there. It’s mostly car accidents, shootings and robberies on 9news, and mostly politics and yucky stuff on CNN. Seriously, it’s all crap, yet for some reason, I compulsively check it.

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We went to Wal-Mart today… braved the masses.

I found it difficult to navigate… EVERYTHING was in Spanish.

I felt… like I was in another country.

I suppose it’s obvious to see that Wal-Mart is marketing to a particular population.

For a moment, I was a bit peeved that I was having a difficult time finding what I needed.  And then, I thought about it.  Would I really rather that Wal-Mart was marketing to me?

Pshhhh, prolly not.

BPA strikes again!!!

See?  I was only a few steps ahead of the game on this one.   Yes, I know I didn’t come up with the evidence, but it was only a few months ago that I set my beloved Nalgenes to rest  (RIP dear trusty water bottle), and suddenly it’s making news more and more frequently than ever before.

I swear it was causing me extreme PMS.  The real basic explanation: The Bisphenol-A (BPA) that leeches from the plastic into your liquids acts like a false estrogen.  Estrogen is something we have to be cautious about when it comes to putting more of it into our bodies.  This chemical has a similar structure to estrogen, and our bodies process it somewhat like estrogen.  Have you ever heard of the idea that drinking too much soy milk (which has a sort of similar process in our bodies) can increase the risk of breast cancer?  Well, it’s sort of like that.

Anyway, you may want to start thinking about ditching your polycarbonates…

I’m about to get political on all yer asses. Look out.

So, front page story of CNN.com: Immigrants Leave AZ

I’m astonished with some of the verbiage they’ve chosen to use. One immigrant’s-rights activist and pastor says, “They don’t want to live in fear, in terror.” Um, what??? In terror? Hello, they broke the law, possibly (probably) stealing a person’s identity in order to get employment. I bet that other law-breaking people are terrified of getting caught, too.

Another gentleman is quoted saying, “I don’t want to live here because of the new law and the oppressive environment,” he said. “I’ll be better in my country.” New law. Hmmm. Apparently the old laws were okay because you could break them without major punishment? And oppressive government, Ahem. Okay. If that’s what you think. Perhaps it WOULD be better if you went to your own country. Try *them* on for size for a bit. Don’t let the door hit ya…

Now, let me also add, that I’m not hating anyone.  It’s not about race at ALL, and I am okay with people who break laws. Of course we’re not perfect, and in fact *gasp* there are laws I break– but not many. Anyway, the point is that I don’t judge a person’s character necessarily on them making justifications as to why they’ve broken the law. There have been many illegal immigrants whom I’ve loved very personally, and I don’t think they’re bad people, even though they’re here illegally. At the same time, I’m astonished by the sense of righteousness that is being portrayed by some of these quotes. Maybe that’s why CNN put the quotes in the news– they wanted to elicit this sort of reaction from their readers. Yes, I agree, illegal immigrants are not bad people personally, but at the same time– they’re breaking the law, and sometimes ruining lives by stealing identities. Identity theft sucks, and it’s really hard being the person who is caught on the receiving end of the problems that come up when someone’s stolen your social security number. If now the government is “protecting” itself, then so be it. That’s the governing body’s prerogative. When in Rome, live like the Romans, right? Well, when in America, abide by American law. When you choose to move to another country– and you choose to do it illegally, well then you choose to deal with whatever consequences that come of that. Period. Take a little responsibility for your experience, here folks!!!

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