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The Chilean Earthquake was huge. An 8.8 on the Richter scale. That means it had 100 times the shaking amplitude of the Northridge Quake.

This works because of the logarithmic nature of the Richter Scale. It’s in base ten. In simple terms that means each increase of 1.0 is a tenfold increase. And in Richter terms that means a tenfold increase in shaking amplitude. Lots of people interpret this as power, and while the two are closely related, the amplitude and power aren’t 1:1. In fact, as the difference on the Richter Scale increases, the power varies even more than the amplitude.

Lots of the info out there says that Richter was measuring the power of the quakes, but the best info says he was measuring wave amplitude. This was what he could observe. And observe he did: the scale was born (not surprisingly) in Southern California.

Measuring wave amplitude means that the actual ‘power’ (in the Physics sense, not the everyday sense) varies by a 3/2 exponent (or you could say ‘to the 3/2 power’ but that’s the mathematical use of ‘power’, not the physics use, or the everyday use. Silly mathematicians.) Okay, what this all means is that a 2.0 increase in the Richter Scale for shaking amplitude means a 1000-fold increase in the power of the quake (in the physics sense). Yeah, yeah, if you really wanna know, get your pencil out and get your math on – it works.

What this all comes down to is this – the Chile earthquake was a big ass quake. It made Northridge (6.7) and Haiti (7.0) look like they weren’t even trying.

Apparently enough mass shifted from the quake that the earth literally moved on its axis. (No, that wasn’t you. That was the quake.) It moved a whopping 8 centimeters (that’s about three inches, for the conversion impaired.) 8 centimeters is a big movement in earth terms. Think about how hard it is just to move your refrigerator 8cm, then think about doing that to the earth. In earthquake terms again, Haiti and Northridge didn’t touch this.

This movement of the axis has apparently altered sunrise time, popping it up to about five minutes earlier. And that’s not all. Not only did the quake tip the axis, it moved enough of the earth’s mass toward the equator to make the earth spin just a little faster. If you doubt or don’t know how centralizing mass makes things spin faster, try spinning on a tire swing or a rope. Go ahead, relive some childhood memories in the name of science. You can also run your own biology experiment here . . . fast spinning induces nausea due to the way your eyes track movement. Good times!

Sadly, though the earth is spinning faster, it isn’t noticeable. (Even if it were largely different, would we notice it? After all, the vast majority of our timescale is based on the rotation of the earth . . . so how would we know?? It’s all very Einsteinian.) While it’s cool that the Chile Quake changed the course of days, it only shortened them by 1.26 microseconds. What a let down!

In fact, the Indian Ocean Quake (that triggered the Tsunami in 2004) moved enough mass to shorten earth’s days by 7 whole microseconds. Cool, but still not measurable without some very precise instruments.

This does mean that since 2004 we have lost a total of 8.26 microseconds from each day. Let’s consider one more thing, though: both these quakes moved mass toward the equator, and quakes tend to move in the same direction. This is because the earth is, quake by quake, moving further and further away from the good old days of Pangaea. So it makes sense that these big quakes will continue to shorten days.

Sadly, we won’t be here to see it really take effect. It either won’t add up to enough time in the time we have, or we’ll perish in one of the big quakes that really moves the mass around. Ironically, wanting to see the days get shorter, is detrimental to living to see them get shorter.

I really wanted to say to my great-grandchildren, “I remember when days used to be a full two minutes longer than what you kids have!” On the upside, just the time it takes your neurons to fire to learn that the days have gotten shorter was way more than the 8+ microseconds we’ve lost. In fact, we could argue that, with all the time we put into contemplating the Chilean Earthquake just now, we have effectively lost a good second+ per day for the next year! Mission Accomplished! Sweet!

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Because pictures really are worth a thousand words . . . .

I know that I usually work in words, but there are a handful of images that just stick with me. Some can be shared without the picture (Charleston Chew’s claim that it is ‘chewy flavored nougat’ always makes me smile.) But these just required a photo! Enjoy!

If you ignore the creepy kid peeking over the top from the next aisle, you can read that the sign says “weight control” and yes, those are gallon jugs of water. Special thanks to Publix for saying it like it is!

This next one is a gift certificate offer I got in the mail. They can’t advertise to children, can’t be on TV and can’t leave the factory without a warning label barely shy of ‘sudden death’ but this company has managed to skirt all that with their “share the love” campaign. Maybe a ‘share the cancer’ campaign next?

This is my personal favorite! It’s a stained tag that fell off some furniture when a friend remodeled (bathroom cabinets, I think). Notice the company’s name in the upper left: Celite. Then read the body of the tag. It’s a bit hard to catch because it wraps around a line (why they broke their own name with a hyphen is beyond me!). But this time they spell the company name C-E-L-I-T. Yup. Their own name. And the very best part? It’s a quality control tag.

*Sigh*

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Let’s start with a little history – the term “vegetarian” may not come from the word ‘vegetable’. Some say it’s from the Hindu term for ‘to enlighten’. I think this may be a typo, perhaps they meant ‘to lighten’. Look, I’m a proud omnivore, and here’s why.

First, you vegetarians need to get together and make a freakin’ decision. Do you eat fish and chicken or not? According to Websters, Random House, Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft (hey, it’s what I had on hand), the term means ‘eats no meat, fish or fowl.’ Yeah, they all say ‘no fish or fowl’ – so don’t tell me you’re a vegetarian, then say, ‘but I eat fish’.

Also, that ‘fish and birds are okay’ thing isn’t right. It’s flat out discrimination. Even if you are a vegetarian, you know or are one of those people who think it’s not okay to hurt the animals. So why is it okay to hurt the birdies and the swimmy things? Because they aren’t as cute?

Humans have this problem where we seem to think cute things are closer to God. That’s BS. Didn’t God make the ugly things, too? I don’t recall any points in the Bible where it says it’s okay to eat the ugly things, or any point where any of the disciples said “But I can’t eat it, it’s sooo cute.”

Another bad argument is that fish and birds have little, tiny brains. Are you saying it’s okay to eat the stupid things? Because I know some people with little, tiny brains.

Some say fish and birds don’t feel pain the way we do. So, because they aren’t like us, it’s okay to eat them? Maybe they do feel pain. We can’t hear what dogs hear. We don’t see heat, like snakes. We can’t even feel the chemicals when plants communicate. There’s a lot out there that humans can’t sense. Just because we don’t hear the broccoli scream as it’s ripped from the ground, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t feel pain. (And if you’ve ever seen a baby broccoli, you know. Man, are they cute!)

When you take into account that there is a growing body of evidence that plants do feel things, you realize there’s nothing left to eat but dirt . . . well, and astronaut ice cream (that stuff has to be completely synthetic!) And that’s a problem.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m on board with the ‘save the cute things’ campaign. When my cat catches a mouse or rabbit, I try to free the little critter. The problem is, they have a prey mentality. They won’t run. I’m holding back the cat, trying desperately to shoo the bunny/mouseling away and it won’t move. It just looks at me like “It’s okay if the cat eats me. It’s my time. Don’t worry, I have a lot of brothers and sisters.”

There’s another big issue in favor of consuming meat: health. Lot’s of folks actually become vegetarian for their health, but that only works depending on where you started. Let’s be honest, if you were eating a lot of McDs, then a diet of pure concrete is going to be healthier.
The health problem with vegetarianism is that it’s really hard to get all the proteins you need without meat. Our biology dictates it. We need amino acids (i.e. protein) in order to build our own proteins, and without meat you are limited to nuts, beans, beans, beans, beans and beans. Actually, there are protein powders, too. Because, let’s face it, if you eat all those beans you’re gonna smell so bad even the cute fuzzy creatures won’t want to be around you.

While I agree that the way we treat many of our food animals isn’t humane, abstaining from meat isn’t the way to change things. (Lots of us are protesting McDonalds by not eating there and look how well that’s working!) The passive thing only worked for Ghandi, and that’s because he actively sought attention for what he was doing. So eat some protein! It will give you energy to get up and really fight for cute, fuzzy creatures everywhere. If anyone asks why you eat meat, tell them God gave you pointy teeth for exactly that reason.

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When I say bunny, you say . . . playboy. Oooh – you have a dirty mind.

Okay, there are a ton of things you might have said there. Cute, cuddly Easter bunnies. Bugs bunny. Peter Rabbit. Jessica Rabbit. Beach bunnies, ski bunnies, buckle bunnies, you name it. Some are even furry animals. But I bet when I started with ‘bunny’ you didn’t think ‘biofuel’.

Yup, it’s the latest trend: burning bunnies for fuel.

Biofuel is a term used for things we burn or package for any kind of heat or energy source that comes from an animal or plant (i.e. non-petroleum or fossil) source. Usually this includes inedible organic trash like watermelon rinds and paper type products. Now that term is getting expanded to include cute fuzzy things.

Okay – let’s clarify here – no one I heard of is actually throwing live baby bunnies into a fire. But if you look up the articles, a large number are accompanied by a picture of two to five baby bunnies, perfectly alive and cute looking. *shudder*

This practice of burning bunnies is occurring mostly in Sweden. Apparently, Stockholm has borrowed a page from Australia and gotten themselves a severe rabbit problem. Over there, the creatures aren’t considered an Easter gift, but rather a vermin. (Do note that rabbits aren’t rodents. They are lagomorphs – an entirely separate order from mice, rats and opossums. Even beavers and porcupines are rodents – but not bunnies. The first part: ‘lago’ is Greek for ‘hare’ – but the ‘morph’ part sounds suspicious and maybe even sinister . . .)

What’s happening is that the rabbits are being shot or in some cases frozen to death, then transformed into some kind of cheap fuel chip or liquid that can be used for heating. While this sounds cruel and excessive, maybe it isn’t.

The rabbits are pests. Regardless of whether they are burned, the Swedes are going to shoot them on their own properties. In fact, freezing them to death is considered a humane method. Hypothermia makes you get cold, then just happy and sleepy – at least in humans. It seems the only real downside is that you don’t ever wake up. A vet once told me this was the nicest way to put down some baby rats I found in my porch closet at my apartment building. I scooped up the cute little suckers and relayed all this to my landlady. She can have the ratscicles in her freezer, thank you.

Conversion of already dead rabbits to fuel may be just a good use of an already dead animal – and one that the good people of Sweden don’t feel too kindly towards. In fact, thinking of rabbits as cute pets isn’t even universal in the US. Many Americans hunt and eat rabbits or even breed them for meat. So, if you are going to roast them for food, it’s only a small step further to leave them on the fire a bit longer and call them a heat source. (Oh, get over it. I bet you didn’t feel that bad when I said I made the landlady freeze the rats. You know, in some places they eat cats and dogs. Yeah, chew on that.)

The big issue here is that it pushes our buttons. Most of us think that cute fuzzy things are closer to God. And some of us even have bunnies as pets (I have three!). Once we connect bunnies to pets we start thinking about throwing Fido on the fire on a cold night and that’s it: the line has been crossed. There’s another line here, too. Most of us don’t have an issue with making something useful of something that’s already dead. It’s that we fear the Swedes will start hunting the rabbits specifically for a fuel source, and that’s when we have trouble. But again, no one would shed a tear for a rat or a spider used to heat a house.

Ultimately, we have been using bunnies for warmth for a long time. And, let’s face it, burning a bunny may keep you warm for a few hours, but (PETA aside) a rabbit fur coat will keep you warm for years!

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Two things that taste great together. Just kidding. But really, bridges and beer have more in common than you might guess.

In both cases, it’s really easy to lose count of how many you had. On a whim, I decided to count how many bridges there are on my drive home from work. (No, I didn’t have any beer. And luckily, unlike beer, bridges don’t actually make you lose count as you go.) I was incredibly surprised – on my twenty-two mile trip I passed over a whopping 27 bridges. They are freakin’ everywhere!

Now, I did have a little wiggle room here – let me explain. I have already admitted to living a bit out in the boonies. But, scientifically, this is good. It shows that the crazy high number of bridges I passed wasn’t because I was in – or out – of the city. I passed through dense city, suburb and boonie areas and all were roughly equivalent in the amount of bridges. (Yes, I counted and did the averages. So sue me, I’m a geek.)

Another thing that beer and bridges have in common is expiration dates. As only a few beers print them on the bottle, most of the time you are left guessing. I have yet to see an expiration date stamped on the side of a bridge. And, like beer, many bridges are good for a while past their expiration dates – but that all depends on how you keep them.

Mind you, things that don’t do bridges any favors are water and salt. So unless you are in the Mojave, you don’t have prime bridge lifespan conditions. But no big, right? Not so. Many US bridges are way past their prime.

New York recently identified 93 bridges that are in seriously bad condition, more than a few of those are major thoroughfares. This isn’t just New York, it seems to be common in most states. There are concerns that the DOT is overloaded with other, non-bridge work – this is obvious if you have driven in LA and been concerned about breaking an axel in that pothole on the freeway. Luckily, you probably aren’t going to achieve any real speed on an LA freeway, so you can see the big potholes before you hit them and do your best to avoid them. The same DOT problems are obvious in Kentucky. Even without the twin disasters of earthquakes and a plague of single-rider cars, Middle America has car-swallowing road problems, too – often in the form of sinkholes. Without all the other traffic to slow you down, you will hit those and drop in. Who knew LA traffic was a health benefit?

Just like the seasons (heating and cooling cycles endemic to North America!), small earthquakes are a stress to bridges. Though most of us associate earthquakes with California, the US is riddled with them. New York City is built on a series of fault lines. The Appalachian and Rocky Mountains were formed by biggies, and though they haven’t been doing major damage for a long time, folks will tell you the ground shakes every once in a while, big enough to feel it.

All this adds up to stress on bridges – bridges that I was shocked to see I passed over at a rate of significantly greater than one per mile. And within two-hundred feet of starting my journey, I realized that counting the bridges I went over, wasn’t enough – I needed the ones I went under, too. That added another twenty-two to the tally.

Since I didn’t have any huge chunks of concrete fall on my car during my drive, I assume the chances are that these bridges are probably pretty okay, right? No, I’m actually more worried about the ones I go over – the ones where I can’t see the structure and won’t get any real warning that something is wrong before they collapse. So I checked out the websites for a lot of states’ DOTs and they are all hopped up on shiny, pretty pictures of scenic bridges and slick new super trains. So the old, standard bridges that I have been using way more than I realized must be in good shape, right? Nope! Right there on a lot of bridge sites are notes that your state DOT isn’t responsible for a lot of your bridges. Maybe they are too busy making drawings of bullet trains?

But I’m sure those scientists raising a stink about bridges past their expiration dates are just full of it, right? I mean, I have to drive into work in a bit, and that means forty-nine bridges to pass. Youch!

I’m sure if I start drinking beer now, I might just feel better about it by then.

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Whether or not you are aware of it, you know about pity sax. You hear it all over – sometimes in expected places and sometimes when you were sure you’d be listening to something else. It’s any pop song, from any era, turned into a mellow sax version for your enjoyment. Or not.

This is the reason Kenny G is so incredible wealthy. It’s not because anyone is going to his concerts. And the crowd that does attend his events is that one that thinks tipping a server thirty-five cents shows how appreciative they truly were. So you know he’s not raking it in from shows. He could be selling CDs, and I bet he does. Right along with Yanni, Kenny G is your go-to gift for the grandma or great-uncle that you don’t know well enough to choose something thoughtful for. Even so, there’s more at play here. Both these guys can afford palatial estates on multiple continents without resorting to Hasselhoff-like drunken declarations that ‘they love me in Germany!’

It’s not just them, there’s enough of this crap to keep a lot of fantastic-but-not-quite-Yo Yo Ma musicians in the green for a long time. It seems as soon as a song hits the top forty there’s some company out there recording it in a partially orchestrated, horn-heavy mosh.

Let’s be honest here: nothing is safe. Both Britney Spears and Lady Ga-Ga have turned up in sax. Those old Kenny Loggins songs are prime fodder – come on, I bet you already had “Danger Zone” going in the back of your head, in sax right now, just from me mentioning this. If not, then you sure are being haunted by it now. Things you would think just couldn’t be converted are. Think about that old Blue (Da boo bee, da boo dai) song or even the more obnoxious, super techno “Fireflies”. Yup, I’ve heard them both. But it doesn’t end there. Lots of musicians record songs, or even whole albums, with orchestras. But this doesn’t keep them from getting ‘orchestrated’ at all. Even Metallica turns up this way. I heard “Enter Sandman” just the other day.

Muzak – the biggest purveyor of pity sax – is ubiquitous. You know it from elevators and cheesy restaurants everywhere. (I’m sitting in one of those restaurants right now listening to “The Long and Winding Road” in sax. That song is a personal favorite, but not like this. Excuse me for a moment while I yak . . . . okay. I’m back.) But there’s a lot more to Muzak than I bet you knew.

You probably understood that Muzak is an empire unto itself. You hear it so many places, how could it not be. But did you know that it’s a science, too? Yes, my friends. Muzak is an early attempt at mind control. I kid you not.

The science behind the sax is this: humans have natural output cycles. You are more productive at the top of the hour, and low at the forty-five minute mark. If you think about it, you already understood that humans are sluggish in the afternoons. Hence, the Snickers run, or the Red Bull shot. Whole cultures have designed their day around the concept of an afternoon lull, most notably with the practice of the siesta.

Anyone who is aware of this downswing in energy – that happens to 95% of us around 2pm – won’t plan a test or big presentation at this time of day. You just aren’t at your best. Any elementary school teacher is aware of this, too. And whole school systems are banning their most “important” (input) subjects from the just-after-lunch time slot and instead putting in hands-on or active (output) classes there, like Gym and Art and Music.

Muzak not only knows all this, they are in cahoots with the scientists and even fund some of the research. Their music choice is specifically crafted to pump you up just a bit in the upswing of the hour when you are petering out, and give you a little extra boost mid-afternoon. No, the fact that you heard My Chemical Romance over your office’s speakers at 3:15 wasn’t coincidental. Aside from the fact that you stopped and asked yourself “what is that!?” and then followed that thought with “That’s not My Chemical Romance, is it?” – the music had a profound effect. It was chosen just to make you more productive.

That’s a little creepy isn’t it? Makes you wonder what they want you to do when you get assaulted with the sax version of “Play That Funky Music White Boy” in the elevator. Think about it the next time you are listening to a winding sax sound and asking yourself “Is that (insert totally inappropriate band name here)?”

I’m with you. All this is disturbing. Even more disturbing is that companies report that it works: Muzak increases productivity. It makes me feel just a little dirty. I’m through with pity sax. I think I’ll download some Kenny G CDs and have some sax just for the sake of having sax.

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I’ve been traveling a little bit lately, and I’m disturbed by a trend I am seeing: Oxygen Bars. Yes, you can pay good money to sit at a ‘bar’ or lay on an ergonomic table and have a canula put up your nose to deliver a hit of good old O2. This used to be reserved for those on their last legs and was intended to be accompanied by a good amount of wheezing. But, no, now it’s trendy.

These little oxygen bars are popping up a lot in airports, so you can suck down some overpriced air between flights. I’ve noticed, too, that it seems to be overwhelmingly professional men using these bars. This surprises me, since when you sit at the bar with the prongs up your nose you can’t help but look like a pussy.

But there they are, men in expensive suits watching their oxygen bubble through their choice of two out of four colored liquids that should add something extra to the oxygen they paid for.

While I understand that the bubbles are mesmerizing, you can certainly find better things to stare at for twenty minutes. Trust me, many stores carry these Lucite cubes with colored goo in them. They have a hole between two compartments and function like a liquid hourglass. Trust me, these can keep a whole roomful of people in thrall for far longer than a mere twenty minutes and you don’t have to pay an upcharge or anything, just turn it over.

But I guess the bar has its advantages. You can get a back massage, too. But since most of these that I have seen involve two of those vibrating handheld water-bug looking things that you can buy in the check-out lane at WalMart, and you are sitting on a barstool while you get this really limited back rub, I don’t see where you really come out ahead.

The physiological effects of increased oxygen through your nose are negligible, too. Only a mild portion of the oxygen your blood carries is used on each trip around the body – yes, that blue blood coming into your heart still has a lot of oxygen on it. This is why you can hold your breath for a while and not pass out – there’s still oxygen going around even when you aren’t sucking it down. Also, in normal healthy lungs, oxygen gets into the bloodstream quite easily. This is because blood cells really like oxygen and even our regular air has so much more oxygen than the blood can carry that it saturates the hemoglobin (that attaches directly to the oxygen) in relatively huge quantities. Since this process is designed to keep us breathing well, even in low O2 scenarios like higher elevations, then why do we need an oxygen bar? Yeah, I had nothing.

The sign at the bar says otherwise. It suggests that O2 can help with headaches, hangovers (yay!?), jet lag and memory among a handful of other things this super-element does. (It’s so wonderful, Earth gives it to you for free! But don’t let that stop you from paying for it!) Seriously, the best thing to improve your memory is Nicotine. Sad, but true, and totally not worth the side effects of the painful cancerous or emphysemic death. You could get a bit light-headed – but that’s it. The light-headedness might jolt you out of your hangover or jet lag, but I would guess this works much the same way smashing your thumb with a hammer would help ease that tension headache you had.

The one thing I noticed was this: the bigger the city, the more likely there was an oxygen bar in the terminal. And I have always wondered if pollutants in the air stuck to the insides of your lungs like cigarette smoke. Would a hit of extra O2 help clean this out? Hmmm, maybe. And I’ll even go one step further and try to be open-minded.

Maybe there is something to this Oxygen Bar trend. Maybe you guys at the airports are onto something. But you still look like pussies!

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I know I’m not at the beginning of the green trend, nor do I even think of myself as ahead of the curve. But I’m trying.

Whether or not it’s easy being green, there are a handful of celebs out there who want us go greener. It used to be hippies and commune families who lived green. Now it’s Brad and Angelina (remember she used to carry blood in a vial around her neck to help save . . . Billy Bob Thornton. Never mind, I don’t think we want that resource conserved.)

This just points out that there’s confusion out there about who to follow. Many celebs will tell you they are green, because it’s hip to be green these days, but that doesn’t mean they are. My money says that Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey aren’t green in the ‘earth conservation’ way. “Going Green” and “Smoking Green” are two entirely separate things.

But there are celebs really making the effort to save mother earth. Bands big and small are trying to make a difference. Thirty Seconds to Mars devoted their “Beautiful Lie” video to educating the watchers about global damage and inviting them to a website to learn how to conserve. Ironically, they shot the video in pristine wilderness north of the arctic circle. Because nothing says conservation like drum kits, amps and helicopters for those overhead camera angles.

Rock concerts are huge polluters, causing massive emissions from road trips by both ticket holders and tour busses. They also produce huge quantities of unrecycled trash and put amazing strain on local electric power. The Dave Matthews Band makes an effort to offset this and their CO2 emissions by planting trees and building wind turbines. They also dump their human waste from the tour busses over rivers. And onto unsuspecting river-boat riders. But apparently that wasn’t an act of conservation – just a bus driver error.

Ed Begley Jr has gone so far as to get his show “Living with Ed” on HGTV. In the show he promotes all the things his family has done to cut emissions and be greener. In the old days pedaling a wheel to produce enough power for toast was considered, at best, a job for the family hamster. But, no, it seems Ed does this just about every morning. Toast takes about ten minutes apparently, but what about oatmeal? I don’t think I’ve ever wanted breakfast that badly. In the old days we would have referred to Ed as ‘off the reservation’. Now, he is simply ‘off the grid’ and somehow, that’s cool.

For many of the rest of us, conservation is in the little things – no toaster bike for me! We can give our kids printed on paper to draw on, re-purpose gift tins and such, and just make certain we fix what we can rather than tossing it and buying new. We can re-use all kinds of things. My dad swears that my grandmother (who came to help when I was born) rinsed out the dirty paper towels then hung them out to dry and use again. He thought she’d taken frugal to a whole new level, but maybe she was just green before the rest of us.

Celebs are on the ‘Reduce’ bandwagon, too. It’s a lot simpler than building wind turbines and solar panels. And it’s less painful than skipping the concert by your favorite band because of the trash. My father mentioned that my daughter had clogged his toilet with too much paper. We are trying to get her out of this habit. Luckily, there’s a celebrity spokesperson for this, too. Sheryl Crow says we only need to use one square of toilet paper to wipe. And while I do applaud her conservationism you won’t find me shaking her hand.

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Though the phrase “Man’s Best Friend” came into being around the middle of the 1800s, the concept of Dog as Companion has been around a lot longer. We can trace domesticated dogs back to the Egyptians. Of course we can trace domesticated versions of the housecat back that far, too. So I am sure there were Egyptian men back then refusing to date some nice girl with too much blue eyeliner just because she had a couple of cats. The Dog/Cat debate seems embedded into human history and unlikely to end any time soon.

While I have both dogs (3) and cats (2), I have to say the dog team hasn’t been out winning points lately. Start with the fact that dogs can kill their feline competition, and their red-headed step-brother the coyote often does it for them. A friend of mine says this about having open land “It’s all fun and games until something eats the cat.” But I guess that wasn’t enough. Dogs are getting press for doing their own dirty work lately. Packs of feral dogs are coming after people. Though this isn’t a new problem at all, it’s happening more often lately and with bad, bad consequences.

So I have to ask: Man’s best friend? Really, close your eyes and picture this: You are out on your bike on a neighborhood street in the suburb of a big city. It’s a sunny day and all is well until you hear a rustling behind you. Then you hear the patting of paws on the pavement. Your blood spikes. You bike a little faster, but the noises keep up. When you hear it you know you’re done for: “Mmmmrrrow”

Exactly. There are no packs of feral cats out killing people. And the dog issue isn’t limited to America where we have such a love affair with puppies and kittens that we still can’t convince the general population to spay and neuter. Mexico has a wild dog problem, too. Only their dogs are Chihuahuas.

You might think a pack of Chihuahuas is as scary as the feral cat story two paragraphs ago, but laugh not, my friends. The tiny canines can work in concert and take down a bull. The good people of Mexico are afraid. And rightly so.

There are two competing problems at issue here with the wild dogs. The first is the spaying/neutering problem already mentioned. It’s like the ‘cute animals poster company’ is afraid they’ll run out of models and are undermining the SPCAs efforts.

The other problem is breeding. Dogs are bred for function or looks, but not for behavior. A lot of this breeding leads to health problems in the dogs. Daschunds are a great example: they’re too long which gives them back issues. That is, if they don’t wear sores on their bellies first from dragging them on the ground. And those are just the obvious problems. You might not know this unless you’re a weenie-dog owner because why else would anyone know this? But Daschunds development also interferes with their anal glands. Yes, they get . . . Okay, nevermind, I’ll stop. But it’s really disgusting and no you don’t have anal glands of your own to worry about.

Yes, there are a lot of nasty side effects when we breed for looks and function. We breed for jaw strength, we breed for size, we breed for agility and sense of smell. And all too often we breed for looks. Gnaw on this before you choose a registered dog over a shelter mutt: purebreds have more problems. Breeding in those cute ears and fuzzy little body have side effects (anal glands not withstanding). These dogs die faster, have more health problems and are noticeably stupider. This isn’t surprising when you hear some breeders brag about how they got those perfect ears by breeding one dog with her brother then one of the babies to the grandfather and so on. My only question is who’s dumber, the dog or the person who made it?

We should be breeding dogs for personality, because I’d like you to name me one American who has gone out fox hunting with his daschund. No, you’re more likely to find these small dogs in the mall, shoe-hunting. And don’t even get me started on the total uselessness of mini-daschsunds (in case you are hunting really tiny foxes from the back of a Shetland pony?). And mini Dobermans are like a living oxy moron. The Doberman is for protection. The mini won’t protect you from anything, even a roving band of robber midgets.

If we bred for personality, we’d make a dog that hates the taste of leather and doesn’t really feel the need to chew much of anything. It would be highly loyal. It would abhor peeing and pooping on the carpet and would hold it for hours until it could go outside. In fact, this uber dog would ideally not pee or poop at all.

Yes, I’d like to see a dog bred for personality. Or wait . . . if we did that . . . bred it just for personality and not for looks then . . .

On second thought, maybe I don’t want to see this creature, because that’s gonna be one ugly dog.

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I’m rescinding what I said at the end of the last entry of “Not Easy Bein’ Green”.

Maybe the grocery store isn’t the best place for us to pick our veggies.

I’ve already copped to having a problem getting the cloth bags into the store. I have them, I want to use them, but when I’m getting out of the car it doesn’t pop readily to mind that I should grab those cloth bags. I know those bags are the major method by which us ordinary folks get to exhibit some mild superhero tendencies and save the earth. But I’m just not good at it.

I’ve lately been pleased to find that I’m not the only one. Although this does make me sad for the future of earth. I thought you were remembering your cloth bags! How do I know you haven’t remembered your bags either? Because the supermarkets have sprouted signs that say “Did you remember to get your cloth bags from the car?” Yup, they didn’t put that up at three different Krogers just for me. They aren’t the only ones doing this, either. (I think Publix has the best sign: “Reduce, Reuse, Remember”.)

Also sadly, two of my bags have had to be retired already – one for a hole in the bottom and another for a broken strap. Unfortunately, both these conditions are fatal. If I were the kind to think about the money, I would say that I’m pretty sure I didn’t earn back my buck-oh-nine before they broke, but knock-on-new-growth-sustainable-wood, I think the others are holding up well.

These bags all have a future traveling back and forth to the grocery, and Bravo for them. Unfortunately, just getting them in supermarket the door isn’t enough.

I have this other problem with the bags. I not only have to get them into the store with me, I have to have them at the ready before the checker starts ringing my purchases. Because it’s really hit or miss as to whether they’ll ask if you brought your own bag. And if they don’t ask and you aren’t watching like a hawk, you’ve got three plastic bags with an average of two items in each in your cart before you can say, “But I brought my own!”

I know this because it happened to me just the other day. I took the bags into the store. Then I shopped. Naturally, the food went on top of the bags (they were at the bottom and I didn’t need them . . . yet.) It was a good day, the line moved quickly, there was a checker and two baggers. And before I could say “But I brought my own!” I had five plastic bags in my cart.

I blurted it out anyway. Bagging stopped. I have to take an aside here and say this is my fault. I’ve made this mistake before and stood gape-mouthed as baggers took my food out of plastic bags, placed it into cloth bags then wadded the plastic and threw it in the trash. What the hell? At least if the plastic had gone home with me I would have reused it for . . . for . . . something!

This time my hapless baggers didn’t chuck the plastic. Nope, they set the plastic bags into the cloth bags and put those into the cart. I sighed. I would have said something, but I was distracted by the checker bouncing the apples on the scale/scanner.

What?! I spent time picking out un-bruised fruit and the checker bounced them! Then, (because, yes, it gets worse) she rolled them to the baggers, who dropped them into bags. Then she asked one of the baggers for an apple that didn’t scan and the poor green orb went rolling back to the checker then to the bagger again in a sick version of Red-Rover.

But it wasn’t over yet. No, my milk was in a cloth bag (around a plastic bag) and my apples (bruised like my little heart) were in the insulated bag. I tried to be polite when I pointed out that the insulated bag was for the cold things, please. After a blank stare I added, ‘like the milk and the frozen veggies.’ But the baggers looked at me and the bag as though I had asked them to do all this while reciting the alphabet, backward.

All I could think was . . . well I won’t repeat what I was actually thinking, but I did also think this: that bag says “Kroger” on it in big letters, so it’s not like they’ve never seen an insulated bag before. They sold it to me. And it’s not like it’s a discontinued item or something that the newbies wouldn’t have seen before. Not ten feet away was a display that had a sign on the top saying the insulated bags were for cold things! So why were the baggers acting like monkeys who’d been handed a computer? No, that’s a bad analogy. The monkeys would have figured out something cool to do with the computer. These two had no clue.

Well, crap. I should have just bagged it myself.

I’m apologizing to you now. I’m the one responsible for the clog at self-check. I’m the one with the full cart and long line behind me. But I want you to know why, before you and your one item get mad at me. I would gladly go to the checkers if I could trust them not to bounce my apples – and no, that’s not a metaphor for anything dirty. Me and my apples are going home un-abused this time. And I’m sitting down for a tall glass of cold milk when I get there. I thank you in advance.

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