I has a flea problem

Hi there, whether or not this is the beginning of a comeback will remain to be seen. I will refrain from any promises, mmmkay? But I feel like writing something, even if it’s just to let you know I’m still alive. But since I’m quite hopelessly inept at this kind of thing and I didn’t want to catch you all off your guards with a super awesome post out of nowhere, I thought I would just start small.

I have a flea problem. This is what it looks like:

I changed those sheets yesterday night, after ‘flea problem’ finished his daily nap on my bed and left some uninvited guests behind. That’s a loft bed, which means you need to climb some stairs to get there. So today, I thought, I’ll make a ‘flea barrier’ to keep the “problem” out of the bed:

Nevermind all the junk. That's not actually part of the 'barrier'

Then I opened the window:

Clearly, I had underestimated the ‘problem’. Flea Buffet jumped in through the window, ate his breakfast and went straight for his nap, unhindered by my silly human barriers. “Yooppie, NOOOOOOOOOO!”, I cried, removing the barrier and climbing the latter. It seemed Mr. Flea Spa had gotten the message, as he promptly climbed down the latter and left, clearly offended.

Satisfied with myself for resisting his cunning feline deception, I went about my morning routine. Halfway through checking my email and daily reading, I start to get this uneasy feeling that I am not alone. I only left for a few minutes at a time, surely he wouldn’t go for it a second time. I removed the barrier and checked the loft. Sure enough:

I gave up. Asshole.

Carnival of the Green #147!

Hi there and welcome to the 147th edition of the Carnival of the Green. As you can see, I am on a sort of hiatus right now (busy busy!) and this here little blog is looking as neglected as the environment in a Sh&ll board meeting. Well… sorry about that. I’ll be back soon. Don’t you quit on me now, all 6 of you!

So anyway, I’m interrupting our regular programming of radio silence to bring you Treehugger’s Carnival of the Green, a weekly digest of green stories from around the blogosphere. Last week, the Carnival made a stop over at The Green Guy and next week Sustainablog will pick up the torch.

And now, without further ado, here is your Carnival:

• Nimic over at the Green Routine surprises us with 8 unexpected products derived made from oil.
• Beth Terry from Fake Plastic Fish meditates about her experience of encountering a plastic water bottle in the most unlikely place.
• This Sustainable Life finds the beauty of community gardens born from the most unlikely urban spaces.
• The Expatriate’s Kitchen shares her thoughts on school lunch.
• Over at the Veggie Revolution the case is made for drinking greener, tastier and cheaper Arabica coffee instead of Robusta.
• The Digerati Life has some, uh, original suggestions for house furnishings on $0 budget.
• And The Bad Human does green renovations.
• Super Gas Saver goes back to the basics and explains what is a hybrid car.
• However, the Triple Pundit reports NYC cabbies aren’t too keen on hybrid cabs.
• Lighter Footstep proposes the Ten Mile Pledge – saving ten miles of driving each week would cut 500 punds of CO2 a year.
• Money Blue Book, on the other hand, proposes driving in the rain to get a free car wash and welcomes high gas prices as traffic control.
• And, according to Saving Advice, green electricity is not worth the extra cost.

And that’s it for this week’s carnival. Feel free to discuss your thoughts in the comments. Thanks to everyone who submitted their stories.

Unemployed!!!!!!11!!!!!111

Dear space vaccum formerly known as readership

I know I’ve been a bad bad girl. But you know what? I did it! I finished my “#$&%~@§&(not enough symbols to describe the horror) THESIS! I’m graduating! I never thought I could be so happy to be unemployed. You all can come back now. I’ll write…. regularly… I promise. Please? Hello?

Hey, I’ll even throw in a loosely related comic strip… Now don’t say I don’t provide you with meaningful content.

Not that this ever happened to me… ahem *whistles and looks around*

My eco-nightmare

Just look at it. So ominous and creepy. Photo by Pulpolux.

O hai! It’s been a while, eh?

I just thought you might want to hear how disturbed I am. For reals. I think I might have possibly had my first ever green nightmare this week. What do you think it was about? Do I hear you say “GMOs destroying all life on earth”? Earth invaded by armies of disfigured cloned pigs? Plain old boring sea level rise? Nope. I’m afraid I completely lack the ability for such complex abstractions.

My eco-nightmare was but this: I broke a fluorescent tube light. And there was glass and mercury everywhere. And in typical dream-state incompetence I didn’t manage to clean it up properly and was walking over it in my socks and stuff. And getting all contaminated. *shudder*

So there. I found out that I must have some weird CFL phobia lurking below the surface. Maybe that’s why I don’t have many of them.

So, your turn now. Ever had an eco-nightmare? Tell me everything!

April fools, suckas!

Tsk tsk you guys. I expected more people to call me out on the blatant April 1st joke that was yesterday’s post. Some of you actually believed me, it seems. But come on! Evil corporation? Pork Procurement Associate? (Actually, what’s funny is that that job title actually exists at said evil corporation. Look it up.) Commitment to the environment, animal welfare and food safety? C@rgill? Deleting the blog? *long sinister evil laugh*

Word up to Ashley for calling it out.

My new job

So I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I have new job. The bad news… well, it’s complicated. This has been kind of a crazy week and I’m still a little overwhelmed with it all.

I went to this university career event this week and one thing led to another and well, I am happy to announce that I have received an offer which I accepted. So as of April 1st, I am the new Pork Procurement Associate for Cargill in the Netherlands.

Of course, initially I was a bit wary at first, considering their reputation but I have been persuaded of their commitment to the environment, public health and animal welfare.

Unfortunately, as you can imagine, this position will not be compatible with this blog, so I will have to delete it by tomorrow. So cache it while you can because tomorrow the archives will not be available anymore.

Well. It’s been fun. Ta-tah!

Happy Blogiversary

… to me! Today is the Closet Environmentalist’s 1st ever blogiversary! Which as you can see I’m celebrating in style with some gratuitous lolcat blogging.

Just look at all we have achieved here:

• unsolicited expressions of opinion: 66
• highly appreciated reader comebacks: 441
• spam comments you never got to see: 2,967
• eye rolls: 62,938 and counting, only 2 of them from relatives, 6 from friends
• promises unfulfilled as of yet: 3 so far (photos for this, follow up to this, overall increase of blog awesomeness).

Environmental progress:

• items crossed off the list: 24
• plastic bags saved: 1,347
• carbon-free house moving operations: 2
• dumpster-diving operations personally engaged in: 1 (yes, you will definitely hear about this! Soon. I promise :D)
• dumpster items consumed obtained by others: ok, I don’t really know how many, but a lot. Definitely more than 20.
• individuals lectured on “the environment” in person: 37
• with visible behavior modification: 16

Thank you all for bearing with me. I owe it all to you! *blowing kisses to all of you*

Dutch lesson

Nah, not really. But you guys want to know the Top 5 funniest dutch words of all time (at least in my mind)? Either because of how they are spelled, pronounced or mispronounced, these crack me up every time.

Wanna guess what they mean? I even translated the context for you to make it easy. Find out after the jump.

#5: burger, as in American burger. Nope, nothing to do with McD’s.

#4: hoor, as in “Ja, hoor!”. Pronounced wh0re. Ya, rly! Of course it means something else! What did you expect? This is a family blog!

#3: monster, as in “Did you gather any monsters in the field today?”

#2: lucifers, as in “Have you seen the lucifers? I need a smoke!”

#1: ghettoblaster, as in “Turn on the ghettoblaster! Let’s have some fun!!1!”

Goods for Girls

Ok, now that all this Carnival craziness is over, let me explain to you what is this Goods for Girls thing on my sidebar in honor of International Women’s Day.

 

Her Crunchiness, never one to miss an opportunity to get involved in other people’s menstrual business, started this project to help girls in Africa who have to miss school because of their periods:

 

“Goods 4 Girls was started to help young women gain access to better menstrual products. Our goal is to help these girls live their lives and go to school without fear that what they are using during their period will fail”

 

In all her crunchy glory, this chick manages to help girls in need and stick it to the man, in this case, Procter & Gamble. Yes, because P&G has been quick to jump into the charity business of creating new markets for their plastic shite tampons and pads.

Hence you are kindly requested to donate new (duh!) reusable pads for this project, either by making them yourself or buying them online. And please consider donating waterproof carrying bags, because I would expect there might be a shortage of them. Oh, and to save you the trouble, I already determined that the cheapest pads are here (3$).

So happy Women’s Day! Now get!

Carnival of the Green #117!

Welcome to Carnival of the Green, Edition #117. I am Alina, the Closet Environmentalist and I’ll be your host for this week, picking up where The EcoLibertarian left off. To participate or find out more, check out Treehugger, who keeps the Carnival wheel turning.

Today, we’ll be touring the internet jungle, looking for the most interesting specimens of environmental blogging. Please feel free to admire the diversity of the wildlife. You are also encouraged to feed the bloggers with ideas.

Temperatures are expected to rise, as Emmet Duffy, The Natural Patriot, takes a good hard look at the historic implications of climate variation and translates the lesson to modern society: intraspecific competition, aka war.

To your left, The Blue Voice of Marigolds2 reaches for a Union of Concerned Scientists’ report and points a finger at the practice of science manipulation for political purposes when it comes to public welfare policies.

Natalie Bennett over at Philobiblon tackles The Enemy of Nature addressing Joel Kovel’s ideas in a thoughtful review of his book, subtitled The End of Capitalism or the End of the World.

Watch out for predators, as Eat Local KC launches a counter-offensive to Monsanto’s attempts to ban rBGH labeling in Kansas state and looks at the implications such a bill would have for farmers and consumers.

Herbivore Chile deals with her environmental frustration and proposes taking a month to find ways to deal with the emotional fatigue, while still keeping up efforts to live a more sustainable and self-sufficient life.

And symbiotic species Lynn from OrganicMania discusses semantics and suggests we cut each other some slack and call our eco-sins eco-mistakes instead.

Meanwhile, jungle forager Seeds Aside shares with us his first experience in freeganism, and the resulting delicious meal.

If you look up at the canopy you will see Mama Bird of Surely You Nest, who writes about the importance of baby steps and being kind to yourself and others on the journey to a better environment. And later on, she picks up the tab on sorting out the impact of hormones in our water.

The exotic Victoria E brings good tidings from the eco-beauty front: newly launched online store FutureNatural carries all your favorite natural brands and what’s more, she has an exclusive giveaway for you so check it out.

Notice the Fake Plastic Fish, where Beth Terry reports on the Plastic Bag Monster sightings allegedly taking place all over SF. But don’t despair, the Bag Monster Busters come to the rescue, as well as all the plastic bag related info Beth gathered for us.

Jungle resident David, The Good Human, wonders why isn’t the government and private investors or giant corporations investing in green technology:

“If I was a millionaire or billionaire, I would be so heavily invested in this kind of thing for a single, solitary reason – I don’t want my kids or grandkids or great grandkids have to deal with my inactivity on the matter.”

So, what’s the hold up?

Watching out for the cubs, Linda Sones at Ecostreet shares a few ideas on how to bring up a green baby, keeping children’s consumer needs to a minimum throughout their growing years.

Over at Green Talk, the story of 12 year old Hunter, who came up with an idea to help stop global warming. Find out what’s his Project Kool all about.

Emily from Wheels on the Bus speculates on the personal implications for her and her young of a possible energy crisis in our future and answers some difficult questions.

Admire the peculiar habits of Dawn, Frugal for Life who keeps clean the natural way with her quick and easy recipes for DIY cleaning products.

An example of efficient locomotion,Tao Oliveto of Tao of Change covers Lance Armstrong’s new bike shop/commuter center in Austin, opening in May.

Shelter is covered at Jetson Green, who has the scoop on the world’s first positive energy, mixed-use building for the world’s first zero-carbon, zero-waste, car-free city called Masdar, in Abu Dhabi and particularly impressive images of the concept.

And marking his territory, JP Davidson of GreenDealsDaily reviews two green gadgets for us: the 40W Pharox LED light bulb and the BOGO solar powered flashlight, which donates a second unit to the developing world with each purchase.

Penny Nickel (great name) of Money and Values conserves resources with an easy green tip: if possible, use revolving doors to conserve heating and cooling energy.

And searching for Greener Pastures, Lisa Spinelli looks at the motivation behind big business going green.

And so we reach the end of this tour. Thank you for joining Carnival of the Green jungle tours. Next week, your guide will be The Expatriate’s Kitchen.