My Loquacious Friends and I

After discovering that everyone and their dog has put up twenty posts on their blogs in the time it's taken me to post one on mine, I feel I must answer by at least doing two in one day.

We here at Fifteen Feet do not feel the need to post unless we have a completed thought to convey. As most of our thoughts never reach this state, we do not post in a reliably predictable manner.

In keeping with the theme of Fifteen Feet, the Management stresses that oxygen is to be conserved while decompressing, as we wish to resurface before we suffocate ourselves.

We also wish to point out that rapid ascent of thoughts will lead to the mental bends, and we do not want to find ourselves drooling in the corner somewhere.

In an unrelated story, I just heard on the news that a bunch of seafood from China has been deemed dangerous - shrimp, dale, catfish, basa, and eel. Add this to recent recalls of Chinese pork, toys, tires, grain, toothpaste, etcetera ad nauseum. Chinese suppliers face tremendous pressure to shave pennies off their products, which means they cut corners in safety, quality, and workers' rights. For instance, the pork suppliers were found to be force feeding their pigs waste water post-inspection to boost their weight, 44lbs of waste to each 250lbs hog. Yummy sewage flavored pork... and super cheap!

With Chinese imports continuing to increase, the percentage of goods that US inspectors can examine continues to shrink. Americans are drawn to the cheap price on the sticker without understanding the far greater price they are paying. The things on the shelf didn't show up there by magic. They have a history, maybe a horrific one. Track your goods, and boycott Wal-Mart!


Funny how one little news story makes me feel like writing. Forgive me if I'm feeling a bit activist-y today.

6 comments:

Wendy Wagner; said...

1st of all, I feel I must defend myself. I blog to warm up my writing muscles and quality be damned! I pretty just type without thought.

Second of all: thank you for this post! The stuff about the pigs was trully disgusting.

I have decided to try to make and grow as much of my own stuff as possible, and then stick to "Made In the USA." People say it's too expensive, but if you stick to second-hand and what you can build out of found items, you would not believe how cheaply you can live!

PS: You've got to read about what I'm making right now! Go here: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=82446508

Monster Librarian said...

I refuse to believe that Chinese goods are tainted...I believe it is an attempt by the U.S. Govt. to bounce the U.S. economy back...well, I am only saying this because I ate some crazy pork last night and have been since rocking in a corner and drooling...maybe I have the bends...I would consider it the result of Grad school.

I loved this post. And it is cool to be activisty! Down with WALMART!!!hpnyh

Anonymous said...

Oh how I would love to boycott Walmart. I really truly would. If there were a way for me to not every shop there, I would take it. Unfortunately, in Roseburg--you can pay $6 for a tube of toothpaste at any of the grocery stores or you can pay $2 at Walmart. And as we are trying to conserve money here in the Snarke house, we do shop at Walmart because there is no where else even slightly affordable. Stupid Roseburg.

And to defend myself a little bit too--I blog because I love it, and I like to write the stories of my daily stuff. Also, some of my posts are paid--that's why I sometimes blog four or five times in a day. Not to put down any little thought that comes into my head. :) That's the great thing about the blogosphere: It's not really a competition, you can just do your own thing!

Kt said...

Ooo... I didn't mean to put everyone on the defensive. I was writing in code for "I'm lazy and everyone else is not."

We were having this discussion last night - If you knew that Wal-Mart was selling diseased meat, you would either fork out for expensive safe meat or go without it, right? What if the meat merely had chemicals that *might* make you sick? What if the meat was okay for you to eat, but its production had killed several people back in China?

The question is, where is your line in the sand?

No one else in America will ever be able to match the sticker price of stores that buy from China, period. Unless we start looking beyond the sticker price, we'll continue to support these nightmarish cycles of crashing industries, health scares, and global environmental devastation.

Ha, I feel like writing a whole new post! I guess I could go on all day about Wal-Mart.

Anonymous said...

Okay I just ran all over my house, looking at everything I buy from Walmart. 90% of it is made in the USA. The other 10% came from Canada and Mexico. For the record, in my previous comment when I mentioned that we're trying to conserve money in our house, I didn't mean that we have the option not to :) We conserve money because we don't have an excess of it and have to make ours stretch as far as we can, especially as we are most likely moving in a couple of months. :)

Kt said...

WalMart sells stuff made in the US of A? I'm agog. Or aghast. One of those.

More impressive is the fact that anything is even still made here. Hang on, worthy little US companies!