Saturday 23 February 2008

Jaffa

Too much misogyny and too little environment- alism. It feels as though there is something swimming in the wrong direction in the underverse.

In Nicaragua, a law passed in 2006 banned ALL abortion. In a country where women are already abused and mistreated, this makes their existence intolerable. It's unthinking, it's inhumane and it's bloody immoral.

I'm wondering if the TV in Britain is currently running ads for Christmas Hampers. Well it is here. I mean I KIND of get it, when we were quite young my mum used to pay extra on the milk bill every week and we'd get a hamper at Christmas, and it seemed like it was free, because who notices an extra 50 pence or whatever it was, a week? Except that half the crap you got was stuff you would never, NEVER go out and buy, and not because it's too expensive, but because you'd only eat it in times of thermonuclear war.

Today we bought one of those devices that gives you information you're probably better off not knowing. No, I don't mean bathroom scales. It's a gismo that tells you how much Wattage each of your electrical devices is using. Gulp. Some of it's disturbing. The cable box for example, uses 21 Watts when in use, and 19 when not in use.
Huh.
Now we have to work out what we can do about it all - that's the disturbing part.

On TV last night, we were watching the Canadian programme, 'The Murdoch Mysteries'. There is quite the effort in this excellent programme, to get different English accents and idiom going on, the time period being late 19th century.
Last night, they used the term 'Left Footer' - which means that someone is a Catholic - to mean gay.
Detective Murdoch was having to dress as a 'sodomite' and infiltrate a 'tennis club' in order to track down the murderer of a gay man. He was given a pansy to wear in his lapel, which they obtained from someone's brother, 'a bit of a left-footer', which was confusing since Murdoch had just been to confession himself.

It seems that the use of Viagra may be turning men into Jaffas. But surely Viagra is used by older men. When older women want to treat age-related infertility, there's an outcry. So why is it a problem that Viagra is causing older men to shoot blanks? Surely they're no worse off than before, since without the Viagra, they may have had seed, but it wasn't going anywhere.

I say distribute it free in Nicaragua. It won't stop the rape, abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and forced prostitution, but it may save women's lives.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's the name of the device you use? I've been meaning to green my place up a bit (and save money on hydro bills) and that may be a good way to get Ross on board.

One suggestion for things like cable boxes and DVD players is to plug everything into a power bar. When not in use, turn off the power bar. One unfortunate side effect may be devices flashing 00:00:00 as their time all the time.

Oh, and shameless plug here - the company I now work for just launched their website. Some good information there and it looks like it's getting some traffic. Check out Kyoto Planet.

Anonymous said...

Link didn't work.

Try this.

Sleepy said...

Anything with a clock on in this house flashes all the zeros.
That hour forward and backwards thing means nothing gets set.

The heating does, but I don't set that.
Some Heating Fairy must visit!

Schneewittchen said...

Oh my goodness! Your new company sounds like the biz!
Not sure about the thingy, I'll get Kevin to give details on that.

Sleepy - yes, the zeros thing is annoying, but more and more stuff does just seem to get done by the time-re-setting fairy.

kdf said...

The easy way to measure the power usage would be any Energy/Power meter that you can plug in directly. The most known name for such a device is the Kill-a-Watt. It's available online for $30 (easily found via google search).

I found something similar at Canadian tire in the electrical aisle. UPM EM10 Energy Meter. It will measure current, power and record kWh usage and the amount of money that's costing you (as long as you enter the cost/kWh from your Hydro bill)

Many modern devices should get the time via the power line, or cable connection. The annoyance with turning off the cable box, however, is that it takes about 30 minutes to get the program listings. A bit of non-volatile memory would have been nice. Must be hard for Shaw to justify $1.45 for some flash memory when they can only sell the boxes for $678

It's also possible to purchase modules that can remotely control power on/off for wall outlets, so you don't have to keep reaching behind to get to those hidden power bars.

Sleepy said...

Piiiiiaaaaaooooow!
That was the sound of all that not even ruffling my hair as it passed over Kev!

That's the business we all need to invest in and set up.
Going in to people's houses and just sorting it for them. (Charging them muchly, of course!)