~yawns and stretches~

It's 5:26am, and I'm just sitting down with my first cuppa joe. My caffeine consumption is seriously lagging these days, and that is probably not a bad thing.

I am relatively wide-awake for it being such an early hour. I was awakened around 3:30 by a combination of the pain in my back and the wretched feline yowling downstairs... sounded too much like my daughter saying "mom." Does that "mother hearing" never go away? ~sigh~

I hope you all liked yesterday's entry on The Story of Stuff. Other than some statistics, it really didn't present any information that I didn't know, but I hope it gets spread around the internet enough and seen by enough of those with the "Wal-Mart mentality" that SOMETHING in there strikes a chord with our consumer-driven masses.

Not that I think Wal-Mart is really any worse of a retailer than Target or K-Mart or Sears or Abercrombie or Macys... I see the same countries of origin on the labels of products sold in those stores as I do in Wally-World.

You know, if Americans were to not shop for a month (hell, two weeks), it would do more to damage our economy than high gas prices, plummets in the stock market, the failure of large banking/insurance corporations, and the housing crisis combined.

Whomever is to be the next president of this country (I really pray that it isn't McCain, and I'm a Republican. A Republican with a conscience, that is.) is walking into a truly fucked-up scenario.

Another big thank you to the Clinton administration. It was his administration that deregulated the securities industry in '98/'99 (somewhere around there, I'm getting old, gimme a break, OK). Those controls had been put in place after the GREAT DEPRESSION. And, hey, look... it took us less than a decade without those controls and regulations in place to totally screw things up. Gotta love the global economy and the fact that our currency is backed by nothing of any value. We have tremendous national debt and trade deficits. Oh hell... you all know how we got into this mess.

Oh, hey... I got one of those DVD's that Clarion sent out in order to smear Obama. If you didn't receive one, it is titled "Obsession." The "O" in the title is the Islamic crescent and stars and the cover art definitely lends an "apocalyptic" tone. I didn't get to watch it. The perverse and twisted part of my nature really did want to watch it for purely vicarious reasons. The offspring (another Republican with a conscience) however, stated quite matter-of-factly, "You know we're not watching this, right?" as she deposited it in the trash on Saturday - the very same day that it was received in the mail. I really don't know where that bitch gets it from.... ~insert giggle and wink here~

Well, it's 5:50am... shower time.

Ciao!

Economic Totalitarianism and Dissent

It has been a rather productive day in several aspects. Laundry was washed and folded. Dog hair was banished from the floor. Hanks of yarn were wound from the swift and transformed into tidy balls of yarn much to the amusement of the cats.

I would have finished the afghan I have been knitting, but I ran short of yarn by six inches. I began to rip the bound off stitches back and decided that it can wait one more day to finish. Six inches of yarn... makes me want to pound my head on the desk.

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There was no tantrum, but there was sleep. An, "I don't think I moved at all once I got to sleep... Man, I really do have the chills, does this electric blanket get any warmer?... The thermostat for the space heater in the bedroom is set only to high so we're going to be broiling in here tonight... Woke up drenched in sweat and without cold symptoms, hallelujah!" kind of sleep.

I have frogged (rip-it, rip-it) back the stitches that I had bound off and have ripped to nearly the beginning to the last knitted row. 20 or so more stitches to rip and we will try this finishing thing again. Done. Now, on to other things.

If you are not aware of it, eBay recently raised the final value fees that it charges its sellers by nearly 60%. It has also placed limitations on sellers being able to leave feedback for deadbeat buyers. Sellers are staging a boycott. I think it would be nice if eBay buyers would do the same.

With the economy and stock market being what they are in this current economic crisis, I'm sure eBay would feel the crunch even more if there were no customers buying the items upon which they charge fees. eBay has a space where members can create blogs. My eBay name now has a Karma's Dogma - Impertinence et cetera blog, too. LMAO

And, the only post there was made earlier today and motivated by my support of the sellers' boycott against the increased fees and feedback restrictions.

My next entry to my blog there will be the calculation of just how much money I have spent on eBay in the last quarter of 2007 and thus far in 2008. I can say without hesitation that it will amount to around $1,000. It may well be more. That's merely an estimate based on some quick mental arithmetic.

I spend a lot of money on eBay. And, I am a loyal customer who is very displeased with how they have chosen to conduct business.

Also, I have transferred my eBay ID to Wagglepop www.wagglepop.com and to iOffer www.ioffer.com in protest. iOffer was even nice enough to provide me with a widget/gadget in order to be able to transfer my feedback rating from eBay to their site. If I were a seller rather than a consumer, I would have been able to transfer all of my eBay sale items to them with a widget/gadget as well.

I perused iOffer's knitting listings for a bit this morning. I saw several familiar seller names. Seems there are quite a few sellers making the switch.

My next order of business is to inform my regular eBay sellers that my money will be staying in my pocket for the next few weeks in protest of how eBay has chosen to do business. When you consider that I spend $100 to $200 per transaction with some of these vendors and purchase from them monthly or more frequently... Well, you can see where I'm heading with this.

That will have to wait until later, however. For now, it's off once again to bake in the bed in preparation for work tonight.