Getting The Best Start

When 2010 was such a terrible year in every facet I made the decision that 2011 would not be the same. It didn't happen all at once, but I eventually got a job that wasn't great but gave me abilities and skills I didn't have before (which led to the great job I have now), started the most wonderful relationship, and ran 3 half-marathons. When 2012 started (by the way, how is it that you can tell so much from a new year's kiss?) I was confident it would be as good as 2011 was, and it only got better. Now it's ending and I have an amazing job at a fantastic company, my relationship with the boyfriend has gotten stronger and I love where I live and how I live.

Going over my predictions for 2012 from last year, I'm a little disappointed. The Mayan End of Times was no big deal. People seemed to treat it like I've treated all of the past end of times... with a party. The last day of the world was the night my company's holiday party and the group next to us was an End of Times dinner party. Awesome, but there wasn't as much fear mongering as there used to be. I suppose people are becoming more rational. Sigh.

2012 has been the year of Apple. In June I bought myself a new shiny, and in October the boyfriend got me a mini shiny, helping me finally join the world of iPhone (yay!). I bought a heavy duty case for it, mostly because the boyfriend is convinced I'm going to drop it in the toilet or something (to his credit, just the other day I was holding it while standing perfectly still and somehow it leaped out of my hand, but my hyper-aware iPhone reflexes helped me catch it, so there), but I want a thinner case to show off the sexy profile. Cause let's be real: a big part of the reason I wanted this phone was because of the slim, sexy design, and my case lets everyone know that I'm a clumsy fool. Or that I have a toddler.

This month my car and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary and I can proudly say I'm a full-fledged stick driver. Plus, I taught the boyfriend to drive so whose car we take doesn't turn into a who has to drive situation. We took my car on a 2,00+ mile road trip up to Oregon in August and he gave it a couple of sexy photo shoots. 

There were a few sort-of disappointments this year. The main disappointment being I did not beat the 2 hour mark on my half marathon in 2012, and in fact did not even come close. I ran the worst race of my life, coming at barely under 3 hours. Embarrassing. But here's to making 2013 better.

I also took out the piercing I got in 2011, finally admitting that it was infected and just not worth the pain and hassle (and money). Rather than working towards 7 piercings, I'll just stick with the 5 healthy ones I already have and be satisfied with that odd number. Maybe that's me being a little bit of an adult... other people, some of whom are younger than me, are removing piercings because they aren't "adult" so maybe it's not so bad that I do, too. 

This year has been a pain in the ass for birth control. I still had no insurance so had to rely on Planned Parenthood even though I was working full time for all of the year, and it's been really frustrating having to give up so much just to stay un-pregnant. I'm not one of those women who has to take hormonal birth control for medical reasons, so for me it's just to be able to have a normal relationship with my boyfriend and not have children neither of us want. Which seems simple enough, doesn't it?

Also, the fish I got in 2011 died. 

I'm ending the year with almost as much debt as I paid off in 2011, which is OK because I have the money to pay it off, but have been saving it for an apartment deposit. Once I have my moving situation settled it'll be paid off in no time. Making pretty good money helps.

So what's going to happen in 2013? One of the first things will probably be moving. This will be a terrific milestone for me because I haven't moved since late 2010, a feat I never really thought I'd do (one thing that stayed the same from 2011 to 2012 was not moving). Now that I'm working 4 blocks from my current apartment I have no reason to leave - especially since I love the neighborhood. So finding a place that likes dogs will be one of my first tasks. My second task will be to start training for my 5th half marathon - the 3rd annual Safari Park Half. This time it's for rhinos! I'm so excited to run for the guys I love. My third event will be my first time as a bridesmaid! All of those activities will take place before June, so I have no idea what the second half of the year will hold, but I'm really excited. If the first 6 months tell me anything, 2013 is going to be another great year.

My resolution will be to redesign this blog, host it myself, and write 10 posts a month. I want a new name, a new home, and a new look. I would also like to do some of the same things for the food blog, even though that's still relatively new... Also take that blog a little more seriously and write a lot more. 

I would like to write about some of the other things that happened in 2012, things not directly related to me, but when I think about what the world was focused on this year (rape, shady politics, genocide, taxes) it mostly depresses me.

So here's to a fantastic 2013, to all of those in my life old and new, to those who had a great year and those who had a not so great year. May 2013 be one of the greatest years. Cheers!

Making A Point With Money

The majority of my recent post have been somewhat depressing: between palm oil, poaching, the USDA killing birds, more palm oil, and the economy, there hasn't seemed to be much good in the big wide world out there. People are greedy and willing to do whatever it takes to make a buck or get things done the easy way, the rest of the world be damned.

All of this led to me wondering about the business practices of large corporations... the latest disappointment is from a company I love and have recommended for years, yet now all I hear is Apple buying products from what are essentially slave and child labor companies in China in buildings that work people 12+ hours for pennies and have suicide nets as a standard office amenity. Apple is wildly successful and insanely popular and their young, hip and socially aware following gives Apple the ability to change world business practices, so why support unfair and cruel business practices?

I know the answer, and it's the same reason high quality food companies use palm oil when they know it's low quality and environmentally damaging, but it's depressing. Corporations can make a higher profit margine by saving money on production, and if palm oil and child labor are the means to the end then so be it. It's got me thinking twice about getting an iPhone (and a MacBook Pro) when the time comes... I don't like the other products out there, but if buying from Apple means supporting horrid labor practices I can't feel good about that, and I really, really want to be excited about those purchases. (I know that other computer and phone companies are exactly the same, and that no matter what I buy I will be supporting environmental damage or child labor or some other horrible business practices, but Apple is so popular and believes so highly of itself that it should be above that. A silver lining may be that Apple has now, finally, disclosed almost every supplier for its products, allowing third party auditors to assess the conditions of the factories and create better positions for the workers.)

Last month I bought an American Apparel hoodie because I had a Groupon for half off. I always really liked the styles of the jackets and they seem to last forever, but even still I could never justify paying $50 for a jacket. At $25 it was way more reasonable, especially since the lower quality jackets at Target were $20 this season, and I'm glad the only negative business practice that purchase supported was skanky models and a skankier CEO. But I'm not hipster enough or rich enough to shop there all the time, so Target and Ross it is for the rest of my clothes, which no doubt save money with Chinese slave and child labor (not to mention Target's financial support of anti-gay fanatics).

One of the reasons I want to be quasi-wealthy one day is so I can spend $50 on American made jackets, buy sustainable and organic food at farmer's markets every week and really make an effort to make a difference with my money. And it's sad that doing so requires a certain amount of wealth, but it does. I already spend $8 on a bottle of shampoo (and am looking for new body wash, face wash, face scrub and hand soap), buy high quality cat food, avoid palm oil, get fair trade and organic tea, and only buy sustainable fish when I eat meat, but I know all or most of my clothes were originally made in a sweat shop somewhere, the battery in my phone was mined in Africa and probably cost someone his life, and now my computer (and iPod and likely every other electronic I own or use) is manufactured by little kids or miserable adults in China.

So what am I supposed to do? Ignorance really is bliss. Not knowing, or caring, can make life so much easier. Better, maybe not, but easier.

Conservation Lows

More than a dozen dead elephants in one box.

This year wasn't a particularly good one for a lot of people, mostly due to the world economy, but it was a particularly bad one for endangered animals. In addition to smuggling, a man releasing his private zoo before offing himself and the essential acceptance of global climate change as legitimate fact, poaching was steeply on the rise in 2011. More than 400 rhinos were poached this year (compared to less than 15 just 4 years ago) and thousands of elephants were killed for their tusks. Millions of dollars worth of illegal ivory was confiscated and showed that poachers are getting smart in the ways they kill elephants and transport ivory to Asia.

Which really pisses me off. As awful as rhino poaching is and as useless as it is (really, Asia? Powdered rhino horn is going to cure your cancer?) at least they believe it has medicinal properties so valuable that they'll pay it's weight in gold for even a few ounces. Elephant tusks, on the other hand, are used purely for decoration. Ivory is carved into shapes (sometimes, for irony, in elephant shapes), used to adorn silverware and handles and added around the house to show off wealth. How fucking vain. Oh, and sometimes elephant feet are also chopped off to be used as a side table to display more wealthy shit. Even ivory. Cause, you know, that's high fashion. And totally worth causing an entire species to decline and untold amounts of pain and suffering.

Again, I'm left to wonder what will happen when these animals do disappear from the planet because, let's be real, it's only a matter of time for most of them. There's only one species of rhino that is doing alright and that's only because of extreme protection, and even they had record deaths this year, and the rest are on the fast track to extinction. I'm still not sure what people will do when there's no more supply of rhino horn... will the existing horns skyrocket in price? Will Asian medicines be altered to include parts from other animals? Will the other animals used in Asian medicine be poached even more (bye bye tigers)? Will people realize they were silly to think that rhino horn or tiger penis had any benefits whatsoever and shrug that they're gone now? Will ivory become even more prized and will people begin hurting each other for a piece?

And what about the rest of us? I'm always one to revel in "I told you so," but (to quote my favorite movie butler/caretaker), "on that day... even I won't want to."

Dumb Animals

I'm not the only one disgusted.

Spoiler alert: the dumb animals are us.

Thanks to poaching for a completely made up reason, there are now 7 Northern white rhinos left in the world. One captive Northern white rhino died recently in a zoo in the Czech Republic, leaving the captive count to 3. And two of them are what some call reproductively challenged. Also, old. So there's no captive breeding, period. Those 4 that were shipped of to Africa a 18 months ago better be making babies STAT.

Angalifu likely represents exactly 1/3 of his species.

It's long been known that rhino horn is used as a traditional Chinese medicine, supposedly curing everything from fevers to AIDS. First, we can ignore the obvious logic that if rhino horn did cure anything, we'd be raising rhinos for the exact purpose of harvesting their horns. Now that all reason is removed, let's look at China, one of the biggest players in the rhino horn black market. One man, the retired head of the National Traditional Chinese Medicine Strategy Research Project, believes it's only a matter of time until rhinos are bred for their horn, and is actively trying to re-legalize the use of rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine. At least this guy (Jia Qian) is 70 and doesn't have his whole life left to see his goal realized, and if he does rely on rhino horn for his medicine he should be dead pretty darn soon. So that's good.

But in the meantime, Jia believes

"the reason the Chinese government hasn't used rhino horn for these diseases is because some people were Western trained and tainted by Western thought. Other people were weak and gave in to foreign pressure."

Fuck you, Jia. Western scientists have intensely scrutinized rhino horn to see if there is anything even remotely worth using for the benefit of our own species and there's absolutely nothing. It's just hair. Simple hair formed in an unusual way (no other animal has a horn made entirely of hair), but not miraculous and certainly not medicinal. But he, and others, believe strongly in its use and advocate breeding "endangered medicinal-use animals" to deal with the increase in demand.

However, and this is a big point, the only reason there's an increase in demand is because Jia and the Chinese government are encouraging its citizens to use rhino horn. There's already a rhino farm where 60 or so white rhinos are kept in concrete pens (under the guise of creating an African safari-type park for tourism, despite the fact that plans for this park halted over two years ago) and are used in horn harvesting experiments (under another guise of reintroducing the animals into the wild through breeding centers) which is 100% against CITES and definitely not why South Africa gave them to China. What does China gain by doing something the vast majority of the world disagrees with? Why does China eat dogs?

Nola, the sweetest girl to live out most of her species. She's 1/7 her population.

But here's some good news: South Africa just sentenced 2 poachers to 16 years in prison after catching them red handed - literally - with a freshly cut rhino horn that they later matched with DNA analysis to a dead rhino. And then in Kenya some poachers shot an elephant with poison arrows, killed it, roasted its meat, and then died from eating poisoned elephant. Serves you all right, you fucking assholes.

Poison Apple

Laws protecting the Earth from human greed exist everywhere, but aren't always as effective as they intend. Sometimes the average Joe feels the need to take matters into his own hands.

Ed Hern owns the Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve in South Africa and is raising the baby rhino orphaned when its mother, the last adult rhino on another reserve in the country, was killed by poachers (I wrote about it here). His idea is to inject cyanide into the horns of the rhinos on his reserve. Theoretically, according to Hern, the cyanide won't harm the animals because there are no blood vessels in the horn to transport the chemical to the rest of the body (rhino horns are like fingernails or hair: connected to the body, but what we do to our nails and hair doesn't affect the rest of our body in any way). Hern says,

"The aim would be to kill, or make seriously ill anyone who consumes the horn. If someone in China eats it and gets violently sick, they are not going to buy it again."

He does have a point. Rhino horn is used in ancient Chinese remedies, so I imagine it acts as a giant placebo, seeing how rhino horn (keratin) has no healing or aphrodisiac properties whatsoever. But if generations upon generations of your family members have used rhino horn, why wouldn't you use it? And if it's so expensive and hard to get, it must work, right? So if people start dying after consuming rhino horn maybe they'll see the connection and stop buying it. And if they stop buying it poachers will stop making money from it and stop hunting rhinos.

But there is a good counter point: attempted murder. At least in America it's illegal to purposefully taint products with the aim of causing harm or death. I have no idea about South Africa, but I can see the moral qualms with such a plan. Killing rhinos and buying rhino horn are illegal, so could poisoning the horn be justifiable?

Kill All Humans

Bender really does have it right. Humans are the most destructive force on the planet. And some are just downright stupid.

Take Elle Macpherson. Actress, model, designer, producer. Speaks 4 languages, lives in the UK, 2 kids, fucking rich. And she eats rhinoceros horn.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! What the fuck is an quasi-educated white woman doing buying BLACK MARKET ENDANGERED ANIMAL KERATIN? Thanks to you, Elle, rhinos are still endangered. They're still being killed for compressed hair. That's right, hair. Save the stray hairs from your brush until you've got a nice handful, then grate them on your salad. Or use your fingernail clippings. I'm sure for a lot less than $100 grand you can go to a nail salon and ask them to save their clippings for you.

What is it she thinks she gets out of rhino horn that she's willing to pay out the ass for it? She's nearing 50... maybe rhino horn is the fountain of youth? What gets me even more is she's the producer for Britain's Next Top Model, which means all those aspiring young models, who might look up to her, might see that she takes rhino horn and might want to take it, too. Seriously guys, not only is it ridiculously silly, it's illegal. She should have some sort of repercussion for admitting it (and then lying about it: "Oh, it's bad? I mean, I didn't know it was rhino horn, I just thought I was paying thousands for a vial of Chinese herb powder that helps me... um, I dunno, be pretty.") Fucking dumb. She should die like this poor girl:

See that, Elle? She had a 9 month old baby. And you killed her.

That rhino was the last female in Krugersdorp Park in South Africa. Her baby watched the killing and was then moved to an area with other rhino orphans. There are at best 18,000 rhinos in all of Africa right now. Most of them are Southern White rhinos, like 4 are Northern White, and a few thousand are Black rhinos. Rhinos are most protected on reserves, but guess what? This picture was taken on a reserve. Not very protected. This pisses me off so fucking much. It's 100% pointless. I can almost understand ignorant families relying on ancient remedies because they have no other option. But Elle Macpherson has no excuse and this makes her a horrible person.

I have to give a shout out of thanks to Us Weekly. It was in their magazine I learned of Elle Macpherson and her horrific actions. I have a newfound respect for the gossip magazine and am glad they've exposed a model, knowing how many people read it. Thanks, Us Weekly.

*EDIT: Here's another source.

Follow-Up: Palm Oil

Possibly preggo Borneo rhino!

See? This is why palm oil isn't so great for the environment.

A very rare Borneo rhino (the article says the Borneo rhino is the rarest of all rhinos, but it also says there are 30 left... there are only 7 Northern white rhinos left) was spotted on remote camera traps in Malaysia. The good news is she may be pregnant. The great news is two calves were spotted earlier.

We've brought animals back from the brink of extinction before, but no matter what we do and how much effort we put into saving a species, it does no good if there's nowhere for them to live... Unfortunately for these rhinos, there's not a whole lot of space for them to begin with.

Lost

Today at work I reunited a worried mother with her lost baby. 

Kaya reaching for a snack.

During the "deluxe" tour we wandered into the South Africa exhibit and found Kaya hanging out with an unrelated rhino and her son. Later on we heard Kaya grunting for her mom, Golpara, and saw her searching the fields. Baby rhinos are almost the most adorable things on Earth, and seeing one lost and grunting for her mommy was too cute. 

Kaya eventually found her older sister, Asha, and was happier and stopped grunting. But then we happened upon a very worried Golpara. She grunted non-stop and slobbered all over the place, looking in the back of the truck and finding nothing but guests, then peeking in the cab. If you've never sat behind the wheel with a worried rhino poking her horn through the open window you don't know what you're missing. 

So we decided to help. I had to back the truck up a winding road (using just the side mirrors), but by the time I did Golpara had ambled off to continue her search. My trainer and the guide called out to her and her ears perked back: Golpara ran back to us and I drove towards Kaya and Asha. Golpara never stopped grunting and almost literally ran in circles around the truck. Rhinos are very light on their feet and look and sound like ballerinas.

The grunting finally stopped when Golpara caught sight of her baby. But Kaya, though she was lost and crying less than 30 minutes earlier, ran from her mom as if afraid of punishment. Pretty damn adorable. 

So that was my day. How was yours?