I absolutely hate the word “blog”

Trumpet, like most cats, can be a bit of a picky eater. But I have been wanting for ages to try and switch him to a more natural brand.

A couple years later, I’m *actually* getting around to doing something about it. I got him using Wellness brand dry food that’s well-geared for his particular needs (he’s UTI-prone). But I tried giving him wet food from that same company, and it was a no-go — he only likes stuff with a sliced/chunky texture, and not that godawful horrifying pastey mixture that most wet cat foods possess. (And I totally sympathize. We don’t want to have to open cans of that shit for him, either.)

Thankfully, I’d bought those cans at a small, locally owned pet food store in Whitecenter, near my old work. They guarantee all their foods, so they reimbursed me even for the cans that we had opened up and rinsed out — no hard feelings! Given that I figured it would take a few more tries before I found a natural wet food that Trumpet would touch, I was bummed that this refund-friendly place was no longer convenient for me.

I popped into a local Mud Bay Granary just to see if they could be of any help, and they very much were! They lay out all their cat food brands and the reasoning behind them on their site, which is very helpful.  And they gave me three free BIG cans of wet food for free, just to see if he liked them.  And they said if he didn’t, I could come back in and get three more free cans.  And then they gave me free salmon treats to try out on him.  And they have a zillion convenient locations all over western Washington.

Have I mentioned that Mud Bay is awesome?

Junk mail has reached a new level. I’m kind of blown away that things like those unsolicited Val Pak coupon mailers are still out there, when pretty much everyone has a) email and b) recycling bins. But what’s really ticked me off lately is the number of junk mailers masquerading as real correspondence.

Check out the image of our address on a recent Discover Card something-or-other. The fake-handwriting font was so good it actually fooled me until I opened the envelope. And I almost NEVER read my mail anymore, except for handwritten things (and our friggin’ cable bill, because Broadstripe doesn’t even have the capacity for any sort of online billing. Sometimes you can’t even use their phone system to pay. But that’s beside the point.)

This is only one example of recent fake-writing mailers we’ve seen. And inevitably, when I tear open the envelope and figure out that it’s NOT REAL MAIL, my first emotion is infuriation. The last thing I want to do is support a company that tricked me into thinking I had some nice old-fashioned correspondence from a friend or relative (or at least a really motivated political candidate).

Rrr! It’s bad enough that you’re still sending me paper trash that I can’t even recycle easily, since it contains sensitive information that needs to be shredded. Do you really have to get my hopes up and then crush them, too? Fuck you, Discover! (And Chase, and American Express, and all you other assholes who try to trick me and occasionally succeed.) If this is some ploy to try and get me to use your cards, it’s not really working for ya. In fact, I have no idea how I’m even on your mailing list.

Lately, I’ve been getting more and more shitty fliers stuck on my windshield. And they fliers themselves are getting worse. They used to be business-card sized, and then they were postcard-sized. Now we’ve graduated to 8.5×11. It’s bad enough that I get all the junk mail I do — now I have to recycle shit from my car, too?

I know I live on an urban block, and that some things are just unavoidable when you’re in the city. But does ANY company actually benefit from this practice? Personally, I get so frustrated with soggy, wet trash being stuck on my vehicle that I wind up making a mental note to never ever contact that pest control company, or attend that reggae music festival, or whatever other form of boycotting is appropriate.

I’ve thought about putting a small sticker on my dash that says “Please don’t leave your trash/fliers here”, but I’m not sure it’d do any good. (I figure if someone’s sticking paper under every windshield on the block, they’re either paid to do so and gonna ignore me, or asshole enough to not care about my request.)

Seriously, I wish this were illegal, so I could report these companies for environmentally unfriendly marketing practices. Hm, now that I think of it, maybe there IS something out there that would deter this. Perhaps this can be a practice test for some law student pal of mine!

Whole Foods officially discontinued their awesomely durable, heavy-duty plastic bags as of Earth Day this year.

So what are they offering instead? Paper. Yep, tree-harvested, not-so-sustainable paper. Sure, I know paper bags biodegrade, but they also disintegrate in the rain and require us to chop down and process trees.*

I kept hoping they’d replace their plastic bags with alternatives like bamboo or corn, which are sustainable and biodegradable, but feel like plastic. These bags are also super-durable and don’t fall apart when wet — a major concern of mine here in Seattle, since I sometimes try to walk to the grocery store instead of driving, and I can’t always plan ahead in order to carry my canvas bags.

But the word from Whole Foods is that those alternatives are too high of a price point for Whole Foods. I could understand this in theory for a smaller organization, but Whole Foods has plenty of money with which to be more responsible. They should a) suck it up and do it anyway, since it’s not like they’re losing money in their business; and/or b) start charging customers for the bags. So friggin’ simple.

And the real kicker? The Whole Foods delis switched from paper containers to plastic shortly after the bag changeover. Yeah, take a minute to let that sink in. Now I not only can’t walk home in the rain with my groceries, but I also can’t microwave my deli dinner in its container. How’s that for green logic?

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