Fake Plastic Fish - an excellent start to being a better person

Beth Terry's done some amazing work over at fakeplasticfish.com. I hugely recommend her site to anyone wondering what the heck I might mean when I talk about becoming a better person. See, plastic is everywhere, and yet most of it doesn't really go anywhere, except into the trash. Oh sure, there's recycling too, but who are we kidding that anything actually gets recycled? See, that's the trick of it: the false sense of normalcy that our disposable society has set up for us. "Recycling" is way more energy-intensive than just building something reusable that lasts longer, but that's not going to make everyone as much money, so...it's got to be disposable. Those values, and their long-term consequences, go unquestioned by almost all of us, except for Beth and like-minded bloggers.

Beth's decided to chronicle her plastic waste while trying to constantly reduce it AND maintain a semi-sane life. Not all that easy, honestly, but because of her efforts we can learn how to take some of the same steps ourselves. I've already been using a stainless water bottle for two years and bringing my own bags to the grocery store regularly since 2006 (when I got addicted to the nickel they'd knock off my grocery bill at Whole Foods -score!). But there's always more that can be done, and there's bigger questions that are raised by each of these small steps, and that seems to be more and more what Beth has been addressing this year. Food for thought.

What do you do about the little bits of trash that might be clogging up our landfills and oceans?

This is probably going to be a very personal site

Honestly, I've been reading so many different blogs that I just needed to metablog - blogging reviews of other blogs (Or tron-chron as I prefer to call it. You know, an electronic chronicle? Tron-chron > blog, decidedly.) I've found myself wanting to tell everyone about how awesome x, y or z blog is for various reasons, especially that it will IMPROVE YOUR LIFE ('cause it sure did mine!). I'm always giving unwanted advice anyway, so here's the random stuff I've collected for you to self-help, from all the bits and bobs of help I've enjoyed researching on the internet. (90% of which I can't use yet, because I don't own a house or have a husband or kids, all of which are distant specks on some overplotted horizon in my mind, a-twinkle with Excel spreadsheets.)

But then, out of frustration or serendipity, I chose the best possible name from the little blogspot finder, and realized this is going to be a very personal affair. Well, I am a person, so I guess that's OK.

a) It's an inside joke.
b) It has to do with the one I love, B.
c) I Love You Farts is a very good thing.

I will put more about me later - it's bound to come out eventually, if I keep updating. Like I said, I'm a person. A well-researched person, who tries to straddle personality types A & B, ADD & OCD, striving to do the right thing with living in a complicated world of difficult choices. Thank goodness the internet is here to help!