The Monthly Cycle

If you're expecting a post about menstruation, you are going to be vastly disappointed. The world has become too liberal with talk of personal body habits and happenings. I am not one of those people who feel the need to expound on every motion, illness, ache, or passing of air that my body incurs. No, dear readers, I speak today of the other monthly cycle. The utility bill. Every month I get a vast array of providers demanding money for the often shoddy service each supplies. Cable, phone, electric, natural gas. Oh yes, they all want their due for dropped calls, interrupted internet, power outages, and hiccups. I understand imperfection, for I myself am full of such. But what I do not understand is the bitter exchange of false hope that manufacturers and suppliers sell to us. All of us. Walk with me down the vicious cycle a moment. Your dryer took a shit. It happens. We know anything built in this modern day by China or India is going to break sooner rather than later. You head off to Lowe's or Home Depot or wherever to purchase a new dryer. The new ones are all fancy with their singing switches and wrinkle releasing auto starts. But what really draws you is that lovely star on the front with it's magical money saving glittery trail of ka-ching. Energy Efficient it boasts. Could save you $600 annually on your electric bill it falsely promises. The dryer is $1200. Please note: this product now costs more than my first car and will likely last half as long. $1200 for the dryer. It hopes to save you $600 on your electric bill every year (fine print warning: note it suggests how much laundry one does to save that money. Three 12 pound loads per week. If I only did 3 loads per week, I would probably save $2500 per year on my electric bill). Ok, fine. Let's pretend we do only 3 12 pound loads per week to save us $600 per year. Grab your calculators, folks. We will save $50 per month. $50. Ok, that's a trip to Wendy's we can now afford because of the magic dryer with its spell casting ka-ching star on the front. Here's what they didn't tell you. Electric Company no longer has to provide you with 110 kilowatt hours of electricity because of your magic dryer. You're only using 100 per month. At $.13 per kilowatt hour they just lost $1.30 that month from you. $1.30. That's $15.60 per year they lost on you. No, it's not that much. That's barely a T-bone steak at the Road House. Who would miss $15 a year? No one, right? Besides, they're getting you with a $35 per month delivery fee (I have never seen an electric delivery man. I think we're getting shafted here). Now let's say 12,000 of Electric Company's customers have same said fancy magic ka-ching dryer. $187,200 per year Electric company just lost. That's the CEO's salary. Gone. So your magic dryer is now going to result in one of two things; Either the employees of Electric Company taking a voluntary pay cut (yeah, right) or Electric Company must start charging more per kilowatt hour to compensate for the loss. We said they charge you $.13 per kilowatt hour right? This month, you got your regular bill with a notice informing you that due to blah blah blah operating costs, the service charge will be raised to $.20 per kilowatt hour plus a delivery fee hike of just 10%. Know why they say 10%? Because it sounds less scary than $3.50 more per month. That's on top of the $35 dollar delivery charge you're already paying. Ok, so $3.50 more per month for delivery and $.07 more per hour of electricity used. Oh, that's not so bad right? Break it down yearly, my friend. Your original, pre-magic dryer bill was $171 per year (110 kwh x $.13/hour. Let's keep it simple, people. My writing skills far out exceed my math skills. Have you read my posts? I suck at writing. Now consider how bad my math skills must be) plus your $35/month delivery fee. That's $591 per year. Your new, magic dryer bill shows 100 kwh @ $0.13 per hour which dropped you down to $156 per year if all numbers stayed static for 12 month. Plus your $35 delivery fee, so $576 per year. YAY! But they didn't stay static, did they? Electric Company needs to compensate for 12,000 magic dryers. Your new bill is 100 kwh @ $0.20/hour plus $3.50 more per month to deliver it making your annual cost making your new magic dryer bill $702 per annum! What the hell happened to saving $600 a year?!?! The manufacturer's of our lives LIED!! And I just lost my single combo, no onions, from Wendy's! See, they produce these things knowing full well the ramifications of them. And not only did they screw us on the magic dryer and its energy efficiency (time to really mind-screw you), they screwed you on the actual cost of the dryer, itself. You paid $1200 for it, right? Parts and assembly only cost Dryer Maker $200. Know why? Because some guy in Detroit lost his dryer making job 10 years ago because it was cheaper to make the dryer in India. The savings of outsourcing weren't passed on to we, the consumer. It was absorbed by the Dryer Maker. 10 years ago it cost him $400 to make the 'sell for' $800 dryer. But, then he discovered that he could make his $400 dryer in India for $200 but charge $1200 for it. People, we're really getting screwed here. We're getting screwed for convenience. For popularity. And it's on all ends. Dryers, cars, food, clothes, houses, cupcakes, toys, and batteries. Why are we rolling over, believing magic stars and allowing the rich to get richer? I don't know how to end this rant. As mentioned, my writing skills are sub-par. Perhaps I'll allow you, dear reader, to close this for me. Thoughts?

A Matter of Trust

Hello, my dear readers. I'm sorry I stayed away for so long, but life throws us hurdles with unbridled passion and so I am left jumping, moment to moment, day to day. But, today is a good day. By this, I mean the young ones are at school and the infant sleeps. Let us expound of theory, of philosophy, of theology. Or, we could just talk about how fucked up the world has gotten. Surely I haven't the time to list each way; every pimple of society in the broad span of an infant's nap. We shall narrow it. Today, I bring you the idea of trust. Millions and millions of consumers world wide exhibit trust of their lives to foreign and domestic producers. What do I mean by this? I would like to take you, dear reader, through my average day of trust. One day, and how many people, companies, countries and entities I allow to dangle my life from their product making marionette strings. I allow myself a shallow night's sleep and awake to the sounds of Zombie Baby growling from his crib. Simply put, in the ten or so steps to his baby cage I have already risked my life in the short jaunt across the room. See, I have no idea who built my house back in 1871. Granted, I put more faith in the builders of the 19th century than those of this 21st, but still.... How long until that floor board gives out? Has that nail rusted from the leak in 1978? Did the tornado of 2011 do unseen damage? As I pull him from his sleep station I sigh in relief that he made it through the night. This is a constant worry of mine. Life is fragile, you know. So I traverse more man built house containing flaw to our kitchen, down 15 stairs that I trust my life to 17 or 18 times a day, and into the arena of HOLY SHIT. Gas stoves, electrical appliances next to water sources. A Pitt Bull. Demon cat. All these dangers. And I haven't mentioned the biggest yet. The jar on the counter. The jar of baby formula. The product I allow Zombie Baby to ingest up to 8 times a day. The jar of formula. The bottle manufacturer. The nipple manufacturer. And the folks that sell sterile water. 4 little items mean the difference of life and death to Zombie Baby. Who made them? How many people touched these products before they got to our home? How many trucks, boats, trains, and planes have they traveled on? How old are they? What cancer causing agents are the canisters made of? And how many impurities are in the cream colored powder, itself? I have just spent the first 9 minutes of my day putting the life of Zombie Baby into the hands of people who don't care about him. Migrant workers. The sick. People who may want him dead because he's white, or atheist, or new, or just based on the geographical location of his birth. People who don't care who dies as long as they make a buck. Let's move on. I take a shower as Zombie baby naps in the crib manufactured by who only knows with whatever material they produce. I chemically enhance my hair, trusting the manufacturers of Pantene to my being clean. The makers of Tone to my skin. The people of my township and their bungling of the water supply. Lotion, make-up, Gillete razors, and the guys that assembled my poofy scrubber. The people who thread the bath towels. The painters of my vanity mirror. The panty liner people. All this trust in one 15 minute process. A shower. A basic human necessity- to be clean- comes down to about 5000 different chemicals and 5000 different people to achieve. We move to my own breakfast. Who made my coffee? Who mixed the French vanilla creamer? How was the damn mug made and with what? Did my dishwasher make matters worse with its toxic cleaners? The box of dish detergent itself says "harmful if swallowed" but I'm spraying all of my eating ware with it? Trusting the "rinse cycle" to remove every ounce of possible harm? One hour of my day has produced this many risks thus far. And it's not even 9 a.m. Let's take a drive, shall we? Let's put Zombie Baby in a car seat that has already been in at least one accident at the manufacturer's plant. We'll trust Chevy, a good ol' American company that outsources their entire product line to a cheaper, more profit making country, with that already purposefully damaged car seat housing my future in it, and drive 12 miles to the nearest Wal-Mart. 12 miles. And 12,000 opportunities to die. Semi-trucks with 18 tires ready to shred. Deer. Bear. Dogs. All very real threats. The little Mitsubishi whose driver just HAS to get to work on time. Even though he hates his job, he's willing to die for it, and he's willing to kill me and Zombie Baby to get there punctually. The state workers who paved the road and didn't think anybody would notice that gaping hole in the left lane. Who cares who hits it and blows out a tire, a tie rod, a CV joint and crashes their car? They don't. They got paid, that's all that matters. We're going to grocery shop and buy food that was brought to the store by who knows who from who knows where. And we're buying it with the sole intention of ingesting it. Produce, we're told is so good for us, that contains more chemicals to make it LOOK good, than to actually BE good. Sprayed with man-made toxins to kill the bugs. To make the apples redder. To make the peas greener. To make it only seem appealing. Like the woman with large, fake, silicone breasts and 8 pounds of make up who looks great, but has herpes. Manufacturers have clearly played on our need for visual appeal, as opposed to the need to actually live and be healthy. And we've let them do this. Medications: enough said. We have bought a week's worth of risk, and now must travel the same semi-truck tire shredding, Mitsubishi weaving, bridge failing, pothole filled high-way back to the flawed, rusty, rotting home in our built by the lowest bidder Chevy truck. It's not even noon at this point and I have have risked my entire family's lives 10,000 times. I haven't even gone on to mention the variables; Comets, satellites, tornadoes, cell phones, pollution, bacteria, random car with failed brakes who has just smashed into my front door, fire, flood, or snow storm. The chemicals I clean my house with. Our clothing. The very Earth beneath our feet. Some things I can't control. Some things I can. Some things the authorities have taken away the choice to be able to. The entire purpose of this article was awareness. Be aware of how much trust you put into "them" every. single. day. And if you decide you want to bungee jump- remember; every bite of processed meat you take offers more risk to your life than the rubber band around your ankles. Carpe Diem, my friend.