Nov. 14: I was going to start writing some things in my
“parking lot” email draft. I clicked on
it, and it was blank. So it doesn’t
work. I then sent it to an email that
doesn’t work and it always gets bounced back to me. And it doesn’t bounce back. I’m kind of mad about it. However, I have another “parking lot” email
in another account so I’ll write about that instead.
Consumerism: My sister checked out this book from the
library called Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by
Elizabeth L. Cline. This is a good time
to put this on my email/ blog post because of the holiday shopping season. Here’s the summary on Amazon:
“Until recently, Elizabeth Cline was a typical American
consumer. She’d grown accustomed to shopping at outlet malls, discount stores
like T.J. Maxx, and cheap but trendy retailers like Forever 21, Target, and
H&M. She was buying a new item of clothing almost every week (the national
average is sixty-four per year) but all she had to show for it was a closet and
countless storage bins packed full of low-quality fads she barely
wore—including the same sailor-stripe tops and fleece hoodies as a million
other shoppers. When she found herself lugging home seven pairs of identical
canvas flats from Kmart (a steal at $7 per pair, marked down from $15!), she
realized that something was deeply wrong.
Cheap fashion has fundamentally changed the way most Americans dress. Stores ranging from discounters like Target to traditional chains like JCPenney now offer the newest trends at unprecedentedly low prices. Retailers are producing clothes at enormous volumes in order to drive prices down and profits up, and they’ve turned clothing into a disposable good. After all, we have little reason to keep wearing and repairing the clothes we already own when styles change so fast and it’s cheaper to just buy more.
But what are we doing with all these cheap clothes? And more important, what are they doing to us, our society, our environment, and our economic well-being?
In Overdressed, Cline sets out to uncover the true nature of the cheap fashion juggernaut, tracing the rise of budget clothing chains, the death of middle-market and independent retailers, and the roots of our obsession with deals and steals. She travels to cheap-chic factories in China, follows the fashion industry as it chases even lower costs into Bangladesh, and looks at the impact (both here and abroad) of America’s drastic increase in imports. She even explores how cheap fashion harms the charity thrift shops and textile recyclers where our masses of clothing castoffs end up.
Sewing, once a life skill for American women and a pathway from poverty to the middle class for workers, is now a dead-end sweatshop job. The pressures of cheap have forced retailers to drastically reduce detail and craftsmanship, making the clothes we wear more and more uniform, basic, and low quality. Creative independent designers struggle to produce good and sustainable clothes at affordable prices.
Cline shows how consumers can break the buy-and-toss cycle by supporting innovative and stylish sustainable designers and retailers, refashioning clothes throughout their lifetimes, and mending and even making clothes themselves.”
Overdressed will inspire you to vote with your dollars and find a path back to being well dressed and feeling good about what you wear.
The Shopping Diet: Spend Less and Get More: It’s a
book by Phillip Bloch. This is more
about how to stretch your dollar further.
My opinion: I hope all of you guys become more
conscious consumers after reading the above.
Crazy ATM blast video: On Oct. 1, 2014 I found this on Yahoo
news "Caring thief saves homeless man from ATM blast":
Zoomin.tv: “A thief in Sao Paulo
who was preparing to blow up an ATM showed his
humanitarian side when he pulled a homeless man to safety
after he unknowingly walked into the blast zone.”
Dean: When you are committing a crime the furthest thing
from your mind is the consequences. You are in an extended "fight or
flight" state and you only focus on the task at hand aka "the
plan". You can't and don't stop and think "hmm if that guy gets
killed then I could be charged with murder" Especially in the short time
they had. It was purely out of concern for a human life. Not the act of a
person trying to avoid a murder
charge.
Canadianmade: Honour among thieves
Maureen: He was not a humanitarian!!!!!..... He was saving
his own skin and his
criminal actions.. He
did not want to add "murderer" to his list of crimes.
My opinion: I have to agree with Dean. I thought that too.
Cascades and the environment: The company Cascades
created a sustainable products. Here’s
the website:
Robin Thicke: This was way back in Jul. 2014. (I did say it was in my “parking lot”
email). Here’s an excerpt:
Paula Patton has not yet forgiven Robin Thicke -- and
neither has anyone else, apparently. While promoting his new album
"Paula," which addresses the breakup of Thicke's marriage, the "Get
Her Back" singer got slammed over the weekend by Nick Cannon and Chris
Rock, as well as by the public.
But that was nothing compared to what happened on Tuesday
(Happy Canada Day!) when Thicke took part in Twitter Q&A under the hashtag
#AskThicke. Predictably, instead of asking him celebrity-friendly questions
about his work, Twitter users addressed Thicke's controversial music as well as
rumours that he cheated on Patton.
My opinion: When you put yourself and your work out
there, there are going to be fans and critics.
James Franco: Same goes for this actor. Here’s an excerpt:
A scathing message posted to the actor's Twitter account
Thursday blasted the Times' theater critic Ben Brantley for his pan of the new
"Of Mice and Men" Broadway revival.
After the New York Times released a less-than-flattering review of the play, Franco went on a rant on Instagram, calling Brantley a "little b****" and declaring that "the theater community hates him."
The Instagram post was quickly deleted, but not before Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson obtained a screenshot.
My opinion: Once again, not everybody’s going to like
you and your work.
Stacey Dash: She is the actress who plays Cher’s
friend Dionne on the TV show and movie Clueless. I clicked on the link and it doesn’t
work. It’s where Dash talks about being
African- American and supporting Mitt Romney instead of Barack Obama.
http://startpage.lenovo.com/tv/3/player/vendor/Newsy/player/grab/asset/newsy-fox_news_hires_clueless_actress_stacey_dash-grab/source/Clips
Aggressive Bull Interrupts Wedding Photos: I found
this on Yahoo:
“Brian and Rebecca Pepper were taking their wedding photos
in a paddock in Tamworth, Australia
when a bull approached the loving couple. At first, everything was fine, but
when the bull got aggressive, so did the groom.
Luckily, their photographer Rachel Deane snapped some very memorable
pictures of the unusual animal disturbance.”
I want to add that the “parking lot” email bounced back to
me after all. It just took longer than
usual. Lol.
No comments:
Post a Comment