greenville-explorer.com

I thought by now that everyone would understand the importance of recycling and conserving nature and what we can of energy, etc. I have found that while many people do there are several groups of people that seem to do what they can or what they want and don’t consider the value of recycling. While I am stating that these two groups seem to have missed the value of recycling as a whole, in no means does this mean everybody in the group is at fault.

Many of the very poor are so overwhelmed by their circumstances that they don’t think about recycling unless they are doing it to get money from recycling plants. Unfortunately, some of those people actually steel copper and metals to take recycle as they get more money. This is not the way that recycling is supposed to work and cities are passing laws to stop this practice. However, we do need to educate the poor, working or otherwise, to the value of recycling and provide a way for them to participate.

Another group is the very wealthy who believe they don’t have to recycle. It is as if they are somehow above this mundane task. It has been a great year as more and more celebrities have caught on to the importance of recycling and the dangers of so much trash that I hope the arrogance of those at the top will change in time.

Can someone explain to me why for one hour of the day we can’t seem to leave our phones at home or in our gym bags? Really, do we need to see what Sally is thinking at this moment while we are sweating profusely on the treadmill? Do we need to put ourselves in danger in the middle of some insanely heavy leg press to see what witty comment Steve sent? No. I would predict that 97% of those text conversations are pure rubbish… not worth our time anyways. Read a crappy pop culture magazine instead of wasting texts or listen to some tunes… I feel like you have less of a chance tripping up the stair machine or getting a shoelace caught in the treadmill.

Do you really want to cover your precious cell phone in work-out sweat and ad gym cooties? Also those gym members that stop in the middle of the workout and just hang out on the equipment to answer these texts and voicemails can really annoy the regular gym-goer that has a schedule to maintain and might be waiting for that machine you are parked on. Be courteous to those around you…. if you would rather tend to your cell phone conversations then just stay out of the gym.

If you weren’t raised in the South, there are a few things that are just unexplainable to those from the outside…. one of those things is Sweet Tea! I do not know why McDonald’s decided to pick that one up, but thank goodness! Yum…. I don’t remember how many years back when the chain decided on unveiling this super sugary drink as a beverage option, but it began in the south and took years to begin infiltrating some of the blue states – and yeah I live in one. I waited patiently and hallelujah the day arrived!

Holla for sweet tea for a dolla! At limited McD’s… two of them being down the street from me! Man I can’t get enough… so thirst quenching on a hot sizzling summer day in LA. It’s cheaper than slurpee right now. There’s something comforting about this drink. Must be my permanently embedded association with sweet tea and the great belly busting food of the South… fried oakra, bbq brisket, grilled corn, hush puppies, pretty much anything gold brown and presented with some sort of savory sauce. The floodgates have been opened… if sweet tea is here I have hope the others are following right behind the leader.

Jane Austen has totally ruined my life. I grew up watching every form of Pride & Prejudice starting as far back as the Lawrence Olivier version up to the Bollywood try, as well as reading the book and the Bridget Jones’s series. I always had a love for the period pieces and the British accents. I’m obsessed and doomed because I am very skeptical of finding my Mr. Darcy. I’m totally a Lizzy and proud and stubborn… she must have been a Taurus. Getting wisped away in this fairytale since I was about 9 and living in Hollywood just sounds like an equation for hopeless love.

Please let there be hope for me. As the clock keeps ticking and everyone around me seems to stay young I’m waiting for that guy that can hold his own against me. Apparently I am very intimidating and I scare guys off. Well until then, I must restrain myself from putting in the BBC miniseries. Colin Firth is so dreamy. Maybe I need to spend some time obsessing over Persuasion or Mansfield Park; I need to give the other novels some of my time. Chances are I will find some dreamy qualities of a fantasy man there too.

Ya know that little doohickey on the right-hand side of your steering wheel that makes that clicking sound when you push it up or down and then causes another thing in the car to start clicking on and off… yeah the blinker, we all know where it is, so why are we not all using it? Let’s not get bogged down with statistics, but come on we all know that thousands of accidents could be avoided if blinkers were used every time when they should be used…. yeah that means, switching lanes, merging, turning left of right or even u-turning, although there should be a bonus move driver must implement: roll down the window, and shoot and index finger in an ‘around signal’ — we other drivers may need a heads up on that one. That is what the blinker is for anyways: heads up I’m moving, but not just forward, but forward and to the side.

Blinkers minimize not only accidents, but also road rage. We’ve all been in that driver seat yelling at that person who caused us to nearly collide because they slowly turn into that driveway right after the intersection, but didn’t give us the courtesy blinker. Bring courtesy back to life, back to driving!

For a supposedly Christian nation, we have a lot of laws that aren’t so Christ like, especially regarding financial laws. Even the most recent law passed by Congress to protect consumers from credit card companies, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, has loopholes you could drive a truck through. One of the first ones the credit card companies are using is the exclusion of the variable interest rate cards. Basically, if the interest rate is calculated with a variable interest rate none of the new law applies. This is why many of us have received notice from JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America that our interest rate is now calculated with a variable rate. This simply means the credit card companies have total control over the rates, late fees, etc. on their cards.

The definition of usury is “the lending or practice of lending money at an exorbitant interest”. When you see how easy it will be to get interest rates up in the high 20 to 30% interest with variable rates for credit cards maybe the majority of Americans will wake up and see what is happening. Until then, it looks like Congress will continue to be legally blackmailed by lobbyist into making decisions for the benefit of companies and not “the people” as the Constitution states.