Soccer Saturdays

I slept almost 13 hours last night and I am finally starting to feel like myself again. Hopefully this will be the last time I get sick for awhile. To make sure, I disinfected the apartment this morning. I normally don't like to use "antibacterial" products but felt that I should make an exception this time. Plus its GORGEOUS here in "The Rouge" which is exciting!

Dominica Soccer

I knowing nothing about Dominica soccer, heck I can not even name a single player that hails from the island. I do know that many are part of the European soccer scene but that’s about the extent to what I know. I had a great world cup experience on the island in 2006 which was one of the great memories I have of Dominica. So why soccer today? Dominica played host to Barbados in a world cup qualifier at Windsor Park Stadium. They drew a 1-1 tie which was hailed as a small victory against the higher ranked Barbados team. Steve from Steve’s Dominica Blog had some great pictures from the game. More can be seen here.

Dominica Refinery
The tourism industry has released and official statement in regards to the proposed Venezuelan oil refinery. It echo’s much of what has already been said in regards to the image that Dominica wants to present to the world. If you put an oil refinery on the island how can you be honest in marketing yourself as the “Nature Island of the Caribbean?” Since nearly all of the money that comes to Dominica in the form of tourism is based on the “Nature Island” concept and the product that is derived from that, the refinery will surely have an impact. We can hope that whoever is doing the EIS for the island will find that it harms outweigh the benefits to the island, but it probably won’t happen. It took several public outcries about the oil storage facility before the government was able to produce the EIS that was supposed to have been done. Does anyone know who is doing the EIS for the oil refinery? Any place we can get a copy of the one done for the oil storage facility?
Cheers!

Friday Mourning

Fridays are normally jubilant days, especially when its pay day! Unfortunately disturbing news greeted my drive into work. This week has seen several people gunned down in what seems like senseless violence, and today it seems is no different.

Louisiana Tech Shooting
Three women were killed today in "The Rouge" when a unidentified woman walked into a nursing class at Louisiana Technical College. Unfortunantly not many details are emerging from this so not much to write about here. It seems that Louisiana is just getting more and more violent as this new (and young) year goes on. New Orleans has had 21+ murders just in January with several shootings occuring at Mardi Gras parades. Maybe its has something to do with the media only reporting the bad things...

Kirkwood City Council Shooting
The shooting at the Kirkwood City Council meeting is just disturbing. It appears that "Cookie" had a beef with the city council and decided that the best way to deal with thousands of dollars of fines and citations is to shoot people. From the details that have come out, this guy was a wack. Interviews with his mother prove this point. She felt that it was "bound to happen" eventually. Did this not ring a bell? This will surely get the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton involved but its not about race. I'm tired of the race thing. Clearly this guy had something wrong mentally and like several recent shootings, those with mental issues are the cause. Not the guns.


Super Bowl Shooting
Luckily this did not occur, but recent news has come out that another "troubled" individual wanted to cause mass chaos at the Super Bowl. It has come out that the indivual had 200 rounds of ammo and a AR-15 rifle (see picture). He drove within sight of the stadium but decided at the last second to change his mind...thankgoodness. And why did he want to cause death and destruction? He was denied a liqour license for his resturant. A BOOZE license! Holy cow, what is this country coming too? Luckily he'll be locked away for awhile! Lets have a good weekend!

Blasting off to a Biofueled New Year (Lunar)

Chinese Lunar New Years
Wahoo!!!! Its the year of the RAT!!!!!!! Anyways, thought I would pass along a wish of happy New Years to all of you that celebrated:-) The Around the World For Free man Alex Boylan was in Vietnam and partied hard and I wish I could have joined him. Alex will be making his way back to the United States this coming week, so if you know anyone on the west coast that would like to help him out check out the site! (http://www.atwff.com/)

Shuttle Launch
The space shuttle Atlantis blasted off today for the International Space Station with a 2 billion dollar science lab. Atlantis has been delayed for 2 months due to some faulty fuel gauges. Does anybody know if they ever got that annoying "Check Engine" light to go off?

I watched it live today and even though it does not get much press unless something is wrong, it was still amazing to watch. When they start dropping the fuel right before ignition and then it lights....truely awesome! I hope everything goes well and that shiny new space station lab works like a charm!

BioFuel Bummer
Some disappointing, but not really surprising, news coming out of the biofuel world today. It appears that when the "costs" of creating biofuel are taking into consideration, biofuels actually create more greenhouse gas than conventional fuels. Why does this happen? When you take in the effects of land use change into account the carbon output increases dramatically.

In many tropical nations rainforests are being harvested to either 1.) grow biofuels (palm oil) or 2.) grow grains that have been phased out in other parts of the world (soybeans in Brazil). The whole biofuel initiative is still missing the boat. We cannot assume that biofuels will be able to replace all current traditional fuels to maintain our current transportation/consumption habits AND lower our greenhouse gas emissions. Hopefully we will learn (including myself) to curb our driving habits and use our own means of transportation (i.e. our feet) more and at the same time trim our belt lines. I think I need to run, I mean drive, to go get me some ice cream...cheers! :-)

Plastic Pinnacle

I have been sick the past couple of days and I felt I was going to kick it going to sleep last night. Boy was I wrong! So after a 101 temp and a day of wasting away in bed I decided I must get something done, or my readership would drop off. Luckily I had started a small bit on a couple of things so this is more of a cut and paste than a full fledge writing. So onward we go...

"The Rouge" Update:

This weekend EBR Parish goes to the poll for the presidential primaries and to vote on a measure approving the new casino. Pinnacle Entertainment has been running a counter ad campaign against the two "Boats" that have casino licenses here in the city. I don't have cable, only what I can pick on my "ears" and it is a never ending cycle of ads. Pinnacle sucks....Pinnacle is a savior....Pinnacle sucks....Pinnacle is a savior. Make it STOP! So please EBR Parish get out and VOTE!

U.S. Tornado's
There was some rough weather the other night throughout much of the United States; snow in the north to strong thunderstorms across the south. Unfortunately a large outbreak of tornados roared through the night causing major fatalities throughout several states. I believe it was the largest number of fatalities from a single tornado outbreak in about 20-25 years. My hopes and prayers go out to those affected by this. . Get with it FEMA!

Irish Plastic
The Irish have imposed a 33 cent tax PER BAG on all plastic supermarket bags which has led to reduced consumption of these bags by greater than90%. This is awesome! They have a proactive environmental minister who had the balls to stand up to the plastic and grocer industries and say no. There have been similar laws passed in many countries and in a few states here in the US with many more countries watching this issue very closely. I'm all for reusable bags and getting rid of the plastic and paper sacks that are essentially another form of packaging, in addition to the over packaging of our products already.

I came across this article awhile back and have been thinking about it more and more after I stumbled upon another plastic reduction blog. I have a link to Fake Plastic Fish but one of her links led me to another individual who is trying to live plastic free. At Living Plastic Free her last entry was a tip about how starting small can have a big impact. In particular she was talking about the "hallowed" plastic grocery sack and the produce sacks that are synonymous with the produce section of the supermarkets. So I got to thinking...

So how did the Living Plastic Free and the article on banning of plastic bags get me thinking? Well I was at my local supermarket and was getting my sacks out (reusing all of my old plastic sacks until all of the handles break) and saw the ubiquitous southern men’s hairstyle...THE MULLET! In a moment of Mulletness I realized that the hardest part about selling anything green, in this case reusable bags, is to make it chic, cool, ___________ (insert term here) for even the most uneducated, gun tooting, southern redneck. It is at this point that I hit a wall. How do we get men, who are not "metro-enviro" to tote around reusable bags?

Do we need NASCAR, NRA, or Cabela's to jump onto the idea? Maybe a tote bag designed to look and handle like various "packs" beer? Like a 6 pack or 12 pack tote for your smaller purchases and a 30 pack for those Sunday shopping sprees? That way even the most "dudeliest" of dudes out there can still look like a dude and get his shopping done in a eco-chic fashion. Heck, he might even make it up to metro-enviro yet!

Taking Tuesday off...

Today is a holiday (Fat Tuesday) and I'm officially sick:-( Its been several years since I've been sick and hopefully I'll kick this crap soon. I appologize for the lack of posts, just no motivation to sit and type while sick. Cheers

Monday Blues

Fighting a little flu bug, not feeling up to posting today...hopefully I'll feel better.

Super, wait I mean, GIANT-bowl party

Ah the SuperBowl! A great showing of great athletic prowess on the field, and the great ability to keep down pounds of junk food off the field. I was over at K&A Wags for the superbowl since they have HDTV and good food. After a relatively boring and lax first 3 quarters and halftime show the game decided to get good. The NY Giants ended the New England Patriots perfect season and capped one of the biggest upsets in SuperBowl history. The catch at right by Tyree was one literally for the record books. I hope this play will get a great name that I can tell my kids about in the future. Since I'm exhausted by the game and a long weekend of Mardi Gras I leave you with my:

Top 5 Superbowl Commercials

1.) Budweisers Hank the Horse

2.)Diet Pepsi Max "What is Love"

3.) FedEx Delivery Team

4.) Vitamin Water Shaq and Chunk of Love

5.) Tide 2 Go Interview Commercial