Off-Topic: Saving the World By Fiddling With Garbage
Yes, they’re candles.
So I thought I’d take a quick break from the misogynists of the world to tell you about a new blog from my somewhat environmentally obsessed friend Etelka, who has noticed that a lot of crafty types like to think they are saving the world by incorporating biodegradable and/or recyclable junk into their craft projects — “upcycling,” they often call it — when in fact what they’re doing is creating new garbage that will often be harder to dispose of then the original materials they started with.
Also, she’s noticed that a lot of the stuff they produce — like the eggshell candles above — is hilariously ugly.
So check out her blog, Wretched Refuse.
You might want to start off with this post about repurposed orange peels and eggshells and other organic matter — which is where I found those candles — or this one, about “recycled” soda can tabs.
Posted on May 30, 2013, in go read this, off topic, open thread. Bookmark the permalink. 55 Comments.
This is…perfect!
The piano!!! *_______* I need that!
now!
http://wretchedrefuseblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/ruining-a-pony/
Very funny!
Fox News freaks out and mansplains about female breadwinners:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/05/30/four_out_of_ten_households_have_female_breadwinners_fox_news_responds_with.html
Quoth the mansplainer Erick Erickson:
Because SCIENCE!
Bawhahahahaha! Saw this earlier. It’s getting more and more absurd.
Hmmm…. Perhaps they’re not anti science, perhaps they’re just really, really bad at it?
Okay, I too really love the piano bookcase. I’d totally kill a pony for that.
We actually reuse wooden pallats we have lying around because we get them when we buy firewood in the winter (we use up a lot of firewood to keep the house warm). But not as FURNITURE! We just turn them upside down, fill them with cheap soil bought from a business garden (not sure “business garden” is the correct English term, I just translated the Swedish word straight on, but it´s a place where you buy seed, plants, little trees and soil) and then grew veggies in them. The natural soil in our yard isn´t very deep. That´s actually a perfectly convenient and useful way to “upcycle” wooden pallats… making FURNITURE of them, on the other hand, is just stupid. Just buy second-hand furniture from some cheap second-hand shop if you wanna save money and save the Earth´s resources, silly.
I’ve been known to make (scented fucking) candles in eggshells. But only for molding purposes - after the candle hardens, I crack the shell off and throw it in the compost where it belongs.
@Dvärghundspossen
For that, I’d probably use the word greenhouse or nursery. They have different meanings, too, but in that context, it would be clear what kind of nursery or greenhouse you are talking about.
Thanks, Bionicmommy.
No problem. Your English is very good, much better than a lot of people who speak it as their first language.
Female and male animals don’t compete with each other. I guess Mr. Erickson has never seen a male cat and a female cat fight over who gets first crack at the bowl full of fresh food. Anyone who belongs to a male and a female cat knows that had never happened in the history of ever.
Not that has anything to do with men and women in the workplace, but sheesh. It’s like he’s trying extra hard to
Also, I finally kittied. I hope you like her.
Ack . . I don’t see my kitty yet. Now I feel silly. Does it take time for the kitty to show up? I’ll stop clogging up the comments now in any case.
It can take a little while. Did you follow these instructions?
How to Make Kitty Avatar
1.)Go to this site: http://neutralx0.net/tool/bnmk_e.html
2.) Go make your kitty!
3.) Save kitty.
4.) Go to gravatar.com (the thing that deals with your avatar on wordpress).
5.)If you have an account already then log in. If you don’t have an account create an account using the email you use to post on manboobz.
6.)Click the add image in the list of options under my account.
7.)Click select from computer hardrive and select your kitty pic where you saved it.
8.)Crop pic to your liking and click crop and finish.
9.)Select the rating.
10.)Then check off the email address you would like to use the pic for.
11.)It usually takes a few minutes so don’t panic if it doesn’t show at first.
12.)If you are not kitty after a few moments, remember to clear your cache.
13.)You are now kitty.
I see my kitty underneath this comment box, but as soon as I post the kitty disappears (so far).
Also, I see I didn’t complete my last sentence in that comment above (walking disaster I am today). It should be “It’s like he’s trying extra hard to BE WRONG.”
Off topic, but I just read this at AVFM and I have to vent:
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/feminist-lies-feminism/facebook-hates-women/
This whole article shows in a nutshell why the MRAs are ridiculous. The article can be summed up as follows:
1. Complain that facebook just decided to classify sexist speech/rape apologia as hateful speech due to the pressure of feminist groups.
2. Wax indignant that said feminist groups didn’t simultaneously advocate to have hateful speech directed towards men removed.
3. Say that if Facebook is going to have these standards, they should be consulted before Facebook takes anything down, otherwise they’re being silenced.
4. Decide nothing offensive actually gets posted, nothing should change and that’s the MRA stance now.
Now seriously…if you believe (as all of these guys claim to) that men are persecuted at much higher rates than women, why on god’s great earth wouldn’t you form a petition for Facebook? Facebook just showed that they respond to collectivist action! It would be the perfect moment to get a real petition going, dig up examples of hate speech against men that were as bad as the one’s WAM dug up, and forward your cause!
But they don’t. They filed this under “feminist lies” rather than take even the smallest of steps towards real activism. This hypocrisy frustrates me so much.
The only amusing part of this was that the comments went on complaining that the “offensive speech wasn’t that bad” until finally someone put up the link to the examples…then suddenly the responses seemed to stop.
Serious trigger warning before looking at what WAM was complaining about:
http://www.womenactionmedia.org/examples-of-gender-based-hate-speech-on-facebook/
ay yi yi, that craft blog is giving me horrible 70′s flashbacks. I do think the Walnut Treasure Chest is kind of cute, though.
Speaking of female and male animals not competing, check out this video of total non-competition between two peregrine falcons. Skip to 2:30, that’s when shit gets real</b.
Not gonna lie, I have seen some pretty nifty things done with soda tabs. Sneak owns a rainbow choker some kid in the neighborhood was selling off a garage table made out of pop tops and zie loves it.
Gotta squint and turn my head at some of it though. (Why on EARTH would I want dishware that can ROT?)
Pull tabs…yeah, my ex-FWB made a chain mail suit (well, the upper bit) out of hundreds of them. Thing’s awesome (and a decade old by now, and still in superb shape)
Oh, my kitty is there now. I guess I did something right today after all.
Nepenthe, I can’t access the video about peregrine falcons, and I really want to. It’s just giving me an error message.
Even more OT, but how long before we start hearing WE CLONED THE MAMMOTH FOR YOU!
http://news.yahoo.com/russians-mammoth-carcass-liquid-blood-184322259.html
Love your kitty avatar, grumpycatisagirl!
Don’t mess with the kitteh.
RE: Argenti
Sneak thinks that’s awesome. Pop tops can actually be surprisingly versatile, if you’re of a crafty mindset.
Speaking of which! CRAFT RAP! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN1OR1aa2cM
Oh no.
Some things are better to compost and not reuse……….
Wow. Remind me to never piss off a peregrine falcon.
Ok, this is too rich. I just got a Google+ invite to… Manoshpere.
Why me?
Because, uh, um, my being fucked over by the universe is wearing off on you? I’m terribly sorry!!
Oh pecunium, you should join, and then invite David. I bet there’s lots of blog fodder there.
Thanks for the instructions on becoming a kitty, cloudiah! I shall begin my transformation in a few minutes. =3
Yay it worked~ ^_^
Sweet kitty, Aaliyah!
Yay, more kitties! By the way, if any of you want to laugh at Erick Erickson some more you should read this: http://www.redstate.com/users/erick/ where he says all Americans should believe the stuff about men and women that is here: http://www.redstate.com/users/erick/
Erick Erickson totally makes me want to vote Republican in the next election. Except no.
Oops, that second link should be: http://cbmw.org/core-beliefs/
Thanks! I was going to make a black kitty as black kitties are my absolute favorite, but then I wanted to pick something more out of the ordinary. So I picked one of my favorite color combinations.
Longtime lurker here. Just popping up to say hello, so I can get one of those cool cat avatars. I LOVE mockery. I’m one of those people who have to bite my tongue every time someone says something stupid. Sometimes, I don’t though, and I still have my Mom saying stuff like, “I don’t understand why you say this stuff, you’ve got know there are consequences!” Yeah, the consequences are that every time I say something, it results in one less idiot for me to handle. *high five*
Okay, enough about myself.
David, you rock. Thanks, man for this. Mockery is one of my favorite art forms. And we get to make hay of misogynists and MRAs. Awesome.
Welcome, katjimiya! Have an Official Manboobz Complimentary Welcome Package!
I once saw a news report about someone making chairs and other furniture from recycled waste bottles collected from the countryside.
So, this guy drove for miles in a van, wasted all the waste bottles in masses of hot water with detergents to rinse of the mud, labels and glue, broke the bottles up in a petrol-powered shredder, then melted it down at 800 degrees (thermosetting plastic) to mould it into plastic chairs that sold for hundreds of pounds simply because they were recycled and trendy - even though they were heavy, yet still brittle because the source material was just plain useless.
As someone who actually took some time to study environmental chemistry and clean technology, I find most of this shit embarrassing to look at.
Something which is probably environmentally friendly for real (although I’m not an expert on recycling and environmental chemistry, so feel free to correct me) is people using the winter coats of their own dogs to make mittens, sweaters etc. There’s this woman here in Sweden who has a company where you can send your dog’s naturally shedded winter coat. Obviously lots of breeds don’t grow winter coats like that, but some do - including common breeds like GSD:s and jämthunds, a really popular moose hunting breed here in Sweden where we have tons of moose hunters, making it one of the most common breeds there are. And you have to do extensive combing of your dog during the shedding period in order to gather it all up neatly, rather than having it all being spread across your floor and furniture. Anyway, you mail the shedded coat to her and pay her a sum of money, she cleans it and spins yarn out of it and sends the yarn back, and you can then make sweaters, mittens and stuff. Apparently it’s a great material for clothing, very warm and water resilient.
I’ve seen something similar with shed cat fur, I think.
Damn, if I knew how to do that I’d make a fortune. ::looks around at fur carpet::
In response to the avfm link and the following WAM one (seriously ALL the tigger warnings for that link… I really didn’t need to finish my breakfast this morning anyway), seriously avfm is actually complaining that they are not able to post shit like what was shown on the WAM site AND still think they can pretend they are a human rights movement? Because not being able to post pictures about beating up women is against your rights? What the ever-loving fuck?
In other horrible news my brother tried to talk about “friend zoning” as if it were a thing. He got the smack down of the century from myself and a friend of mine (not that I think it really did anything but oh well).
Between no more breakfast and avfm making me want to vomit, issues with the bro, and a heat rash on both feet which keeps flaring up, I am in SUCH an awesome mood today… It’s a Kahlua in my coffee kind of morning.
I’m working as a custodian right now, and I find all sorts of perfectly good stuff in the trash. Naturally, I’m not just talking craft materials. Just yesterday, there was a large purse, three stuffed animals, a scarf and a silver wig in someone’s small trash can. It seems wrong to just let stuff like that go to a landfill, so I generally fish it out, clean it and give it a second life. Of course, if I’m not gonna use it, I either see if anybody I know can or take it to the homeless shelter. Otherwise I’ll end up on Hoarders one day.
Other fun finds: A reflective jacket, slightly used hard hats, a label maker (still need to see if it’ll work with batteries), lanyards, binders, a still-wrapped Nutty Buddy (THE NERVE!), work gloves, and a Buddha.
My best find from the trash in the last couple of years: A working C64.
I also got a ton of slightly used clothes and stuffed toys, two VCRs, several lace curtains (filthy, but otherwise in perfect condition), several CDs and DVDs including a Windows XP install CD (as I’m a Linux user perfectly useless to me but interesting) etc.. Somme people are incredibly wasteful.
Obviously, I tried praying to the Buddha for a pony and a plastic rocket, but he put me on the waiting list.
re spinning fur. cat is really hard. It’s very slick. As a result it doesn’t lock up when you twist it. Add a (generally) short staple (how long the average strand it) and it’s almost impossible to spin pure cat (you can spin dog).
There are also more people allergic to cat than dog. But blended into wool (or alpaca) you can spin it.
But it’s not easy.
Oh so that’s what happened! You where recycling your she’d hair by mixing it with the alpaca fur! (If you produce the brush rats I do, that could actually work even)
I’ve seen actually interesting uses of recycling plastic bottles too. Some guy built an island out of them! Also, if you google mac aquarium, you’ll find dozens of people who’ve turned old macs into nice little aquariums. (Hell, I repurpose old/shattered terra cotta pots for my aquariums, they make lovely little caves)
Victory!
I actually have issues the other way. It’s the stuff that’s too old and worn to donate or sell, but not old/worn/broken enough for me to just throw away.
I’ve got this twill love-seat cover which was bought on liquidation then damaged in the dryer. I can’t really use it, since I meant to buy a sofa cover, I couldn’t return it, and I can’t really give it away, but I can’t bring myself to throw it away either.
leftwingfox — can you sew? Maybe make cushions or something out of it? Or cut it rectangular and trim the edges as a throw? (Might want to line it with something like an old sheet if you do that, idk if the back would be scratchy)
I know how to sew, but I’m lousy by hand, and don’t have a machine. I’ve thought of recutting it to act as a cat-scratch defender for my office chair, but they’ve tso thoroughly destroyed t that there’s really not much point in trying to save it. I’ll probably break it down for usable fabric swatches for Halloween costumes, but that’ll probably wind up as just one more project I never get around to.
Too many ideas, not enough motivation to carry through.
Re: cat cover — can’t hurt to toss a bit of it between your bum and a scratched up seat, and hey, it makes a bit of it useful
I think the eggshell candles are super cute, but the container is ugly and possibly flammable.