T-Shirt of the Day

Brilliant. I think I may need to get one of these vulagar T's.

Climate Protester Attempts to Superglue himself to British Prime Minister

You really can't make this stuff up.
This is absolutely brilliant.
(read the story here)

In related news, I've been working on
a rough demo of "Duct Tape and Superglue"
I'm really happy with where it is going.
I will share when the time is right.

Capitalism is folding in on itself

Sometimes I wonder if every generation has felt like the world was ending.
Apocalypse seems to go in cycles, but when will it stick? When will this planet
get fed up enough with human beings that it will unleash enough incurable diseases,
earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, cyclones, floods and reality tv shows to drill into the skulls of humanity
that we have royally fucked this place up and Mamma earth aint happy about it.

Regardless of whether you imbue the planet with a personified emotional state, ready to shake off humans like flees or see this place as a godless rock in a meaningless void, you must surely have noticed that the small corner we've cut for ourselves isn't doing so hot. Blame Bush. Why not? He seems like a good scapegoat. I'm all game for digging in the toolshed to find granddad's old torch, stop by the hardware store for some tar and eagerly pluck the feathers out of my luxurious bed bath and beyond comforter. Really though, as much as king George II has done to flush the economy, world relations and human rights down the drain, I think one would be hasty to paste a stamp of blame on his empty cavernous head.

I blame capitalism. The very thing which has made this nation such a world power is the very thing that is causing it to implode. Ok, so capitalism is great in theory, but it's structure has no checks and balances to help control greed. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, but once they've had one slice, they want another. Before you know it they have the whole pie. Why find satisfaction in one pie when you can have the whole pie shop? Why not two pie shops, the pie factory, all the cherry trees, flour mills and every pie tin. Now that they've got all that and the millions, make that billions it brings, they're still not satisfied. They have to buy out all the competition and desimate the towns where they had built factories. God, this money is like a drug. How can they make more money. Fire all the local workers and ship the factories to china or india. Yes, they don't have to pay them very much and they can have more money, piles of it.

I think of this as trickle up economics. So the people who worked at the pie shop and the pie factory aren't doing so well. They start putting expenses on credit cards because they can't afford to live in a nation with so little pie. The banks that loaned that money aren't doing so well, so they have to borrow from the government. The government isn't doing so well, so it has to borrow from china. Well, china's got all the factory money coming in from all the pie manufacturing, so they don't mind making the most powerful nation in the world their bitch. It, afterall is part of their plan for world domination. Stupid Americans, so arrogant.

While this is going on most people are so fascinated with buying crap they don't need because it takes their minds off the fact that the carpet is being pulled out from under them in their foreclosed homes. Btw, that crap they don't need was made in china by people who took away their jobs.

I found it fascinating to watch elaborate arrangements of dominoes stacked and stretched for miles. All that work and then one little flick and you watch this chain of events that is quite breathtaking.

Reducing Your Carbon Footprint

photo by Carrie Thomas

As a child I was taught the three R's of Environmental conscientiousness.

Today I'm going to focus on the first R: Reduce


Carbonfootprint.com defines the carbon footprint as

"a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases we produce. It is measured in units of carbon dioxide."

You can go to their website to calculate your own footprint. They also list ways that you can reduce the negative impact your habits may have on this planet.

I am lucky to live in a city where I rarely need to take a car and where public transportation and walking, rollerblading or biking are the main forms of transport.
Unfortunately that is not the case with most American cities. Reducing the amount you drive, carpooling and buying hybrid or energy efficient cars with good gas mileage are a few things you can do if you live in a car heavy area. If you don't need to drive, You can walk or ride a bike. It's good for your health and the environment.


We recently switched all the lights in our apartment to compact fluorescent lights. CFLs as they are called use 60-80% less energy than their incandescent counterparts.
They cost a little bit more than regular bulbs but last for up to 6 years of use. You will be doing your part to help reduce energy consumption by simply changing a light bulb. An added benefit is the money you will save on your electric bills.

One habit I inherited from my father is that I turn off lights in rooms where light is not needed. If I am not in the kitchen, the light is off. I turn it on when I need to cook or do dishes and then turn the light off. This simple habit of turning lights off when you leave rooms will reduce your energy consumption and save you money. This can also be applied to electronic devices. Turning off computers, unplugging cellphones and not leaving stereos on when you are not playing music are all little things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint. Unplug everything connected to the wall. Reach out your hands and unplug it all.

Finally, I'd like to mention plastic bags and hearken back to my plastic obsession. I carry a messenger bag and if I can fit my purchases into that bag, then in they go. If you don't need a plastic bag, then don't take one. Get into the habit of taking your own bags with you to the supermarket. Most grocery stores give you a discount for every bag you bring in. I save all my plastic bags and take them with me to the grocery store. It saves money on groceries and makes me feel a little better about doing my part. These may seem like little things, but with 300 million people in this country using one less bag per day, that is a reduction of 109.5 BILLION bags per year.

Happy EarthdayFree Download

Happy Earth Day. I prefer to keep it upbeat even though Anderson Cooper
is right that our planet is in peril.
Click here to download a free demo of plastic bottles. This is my gift to you on Earth Day.
This song was inspired by the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. I used to cross the canal on my way to the recording studio. The water is so polluted that it reflects purple and green shimmers of light and gives off a sulpher smell. If there are fish in this water, they are not what one might call normal and are definitely not edible. It saddens me to see our planet destroyed at such an alarming rate.

We have worked to fight factory pollution in this country only to allow companies to move those factories to China where the problem of pollution is much like the conditions of Europe during the industrial revolution. I watched a program where farmers in china were putting plants in greenhouses because the air pollution is so horrible that the plants were dying if exposed to the air.

The ice caps are melting. The Ozone Layer is being destroyed.
It's time for each of us to make a difference in our own lives. Small acts of conscienciousness can make a huge difference. I hope to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. It takes effort but we can and should get involved. This week I will be highlighting little things that you can do in your own life to be a good steward of this planet.

Mr. Carpentier-Live

This is what happens when you F___ with Nature

I fear that movies such as The Fly, Jurasic Park and Species have taught us nothing. Listen people,When you F--- with nature, nature F---S back.

-Killer Bees Descend on
New Orleans-

(as if they didn't have enough to worry about)
Read the Article

-Scientists Engineer Salmon
to Give Birth To Trout-

(Associated Press article)

The christian right is so worried about gay marriage, calling it unnatural and against god. I personally think salmon giving birth to trout is much more of a crime against all that's holy than gentleman of the man-on-man persuasion tying the knot and taking it up the pooper. Who's with me?

I think Seedless Watermellon is an abomination against god and nature. I am horrified by its existence and go through a traumatic experience everytime I buy watermellon, finding it almost impossible to buy the seeded variety.


Here at the rant we're not afraid to tackle the real issues.

With the help of the Greek

With the help of the Greek,
I salvaged a solid wood side table from the
garbage heaps of the gentrified holy lands of Park Slope.

We made a pilgrimage to the hardware store asking for guidance. The table's only problem was a bit of sharpie on the tabletop and two loose legs. I tightened the legs and we sanded off the sharpie exposing the beautiful light wood.

We sanded the legs and the underside. The Greek handled sanding the legs. I focused on sanding the top. We stained the table a beautiful dark Walnut. The richness of the grain astounds me. One person's garbage is now a beautiful table with a grain like the sand by the ocean. I can almost see the ripples, the tide, the motion in it. It is so awe inspiring. I am amazed.

Reduce, Re-use, Recyle....oh I've become a collector of plastic. I cant bare to throw it away. I re-use it until I can't anymore. I've begun to contemplate making my own furniture from salvaged pieces. I'm thinking of making my old cutting board into a centerpiece. I looked at antiques in the street over the weekend. I went into two antique stores and I bought a baby gift, well two...oh they are so very cute.

I'm going to be an uncle very soon. It's so crazy.

"Did I show you this picture of my sweetheart, taken of us before the war, of the Greek and his Italian girl one Sunday at the shore? We tied our ribbons to the fire escape. They were taken by the birds, who flew home to the country as the bombs rained on the world. 5am, here i am, walking the block to table talk. You could cry or die or just make pies all day. I'm making pies"

-(The amazing) Patty Griffin

Listen to Making Pies

HOSED...deception and destruction

When I was 14 years old, I stopped drinking sweetened carbonated beverages and switched to drinking only water and juice. I remember pulling into a convenience store with my family on a road trip and buying a bottle of water. At that time, the bottled water craze had not exploded into the plastic peddling monster that it is today.

My father made fun of me, saying that it was a rip off to buy bottled water.

"You know there's just some guy in the back with a hose filling up those bottles with water."

I rolled my eyes and unscrewed the cap to my bottle of Evian, which comes from a pristine French spring, thank you very much.

It is funny to read a headline years later about Coca-Cola selling tap water under the name Dasani and while Pepsi is selling tapwater under the name Aquafina.

An estimated 25% of bottled water is nothing more than tap water, sometimes filtered, sometimes not.

The environmental impact of the bottled water craze is a whole other can of worms. Once you get me started on this, I could keep going for days. I will share a few obvious points and direct you to an article for some more information, but I recommend you educate yourself and try to phase out your bottled water consumption as part of an environmentally concious lifestyle.

--Most bottled water is not recycled. It piles up in landfill
--Plastic production is dependent on oil, a non-renewable resource. Dependency on oil is not only disasterous to the environmet but is half the reason we are blowing up innocent women and children in Iraq.

Think of the children...the children.

hang on, maybe I have a picture
of a very sad feed the children style child I can use for this part.

Saving the World on a Stationary Bike

Photo by the one and only Carrie Thomas

Last night while eating a peanut butter, honey and banana sandwich and contemplation global destruction I had this idea, which I'm sure has been pondered before.

There are all of these gyms around the city with people on stationary bikes and treadmills. Why don't we harness this energy and use it to power something? I bet if we combined all the energy from every stationary bike in the city's gyms we could Keep the lights burning bright in one McDonald's or Burger King. I dream of a world where crazy thoughts like this are put into practice, making it rather unnecessary to desemate entire countries in the name of fossil fuels.