Visit my YouTube page at Lonely_UN_13...

Just a quick follow-up from the conference post yesterday...
The UN must be feeling a little emo because they now have a blog. Actually, it's a fairly interesting space that updates far more than I do, giving a daily rundown all the UN activities your heart desires. Chris Crocker even submitted a compelling video exclaiming, "Leave Darfur Alone!"

Check out the UN blog HERE.

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In other news: Bah Humbug.

I'm going to put on a helmet and lock myself in my house until January 2nd. I'm done with the holidays...

If I see on more inflatable-PVC-snow-blown-Santa-in-a-snow-globe tied down like an S&M submissive in Stepford, I'm going to buy an inflatable knife and go MSNBC Lockdown on it.

The trend astounds me! It started with plastic crap, grew to inflatable crap, and has degenerated in to a Walmartpalooza of inflatable crap FILLED with inflatable crap. It's a plastic Turducken.

Luckily, there's a website that feels my pain...

Tacky Christmas Yards!

Kat from The Burb Blog --like my wife-- emigrated from Orange County to the Midwest. As she states on her About page, she is now affectionately stuck here with her husband and dog. I myself, a replant to the Midwest, understand all too well what the word stuck means. The situation may vary, but the term of endearment (I swear) inevitably explains the sentiment.

Stuck is my wife yearning for Santa Ana winds on the 43rd day of Ohio snowfall/rain mush mix....Stuck is commuting to and from work in a state without carpool lanes or concepts of fast lanes/slow lanes....Stuck is seeing a very, very large Sam's club shopper load a pallet of Mountain Dew (diet) in to the back of their Nascar-inspired Monte Carlo....Stuck is having your cousin go to Cancun for Spring Break and exclaim that she's been "overseas."

And most importantly, Stuck is trying to figure out why more and more people are blowing (literally) umpteen bazillion-thousand dollars on tacky yard decorations.

Honestly, while I admit that I saw my fair share of plastic fantastic last week in Huntington and Laguna (in the bars AND in the yards), I'll bet a size XXXXL Member's Mark sweater that the Midwest has more Christmas kitsch per capita than any other region in the United States. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned trip to Southern California, Rachel and I won't be able to afford travel for the next decade or two, so my hypothesis will have to wait. However, thanks to Kat, I can now take in the best of the best user-submitted blech.

And although she doesn't give locations, I think I used to live next to 65% of these people.

Wha wha whaaaaaaaat?

I know the above Walmart photoshop is pushing the envelope a bit, but it does feel like we're saturated in green news from the megacompany. They're hosting environmental consortiums, making their stores environmentally *cough* friendly, and even going so far as to recycle their former employee's vests.

So what has all this alleged environmental leadership done for the company? According to activist Adam Werbach, not much. As former President of the Sierra Club (at 23!) his clients were outraged to find out he had joined teams with the big boys. He was quickly fired just for associating with them.

Apparently, Walmart's reputation still precedes them. Can they ever recover?

Working With the Enemy

Once the youngest president of the Sierra Club, Adam Werbach used to call Wal-Mart toxic. Now the company is his biggest client. Does the path to a greener future run through Bentonville?

From: Issue 118 September 2007 Page 74 By: Danielle Sacks

“To this day, they won't speak to me," says Adam Werbach. His clients--or rather, his old clients--fired him when word got out last year that he was doing work for Wal-Mart. Of course, many people make compromises to do business with the largest company in the world--accept lower profit margins, absorb relentless performance pressure. But for Werbach, 34, a lifelong environmentalist, the cost of working with Wal-Mart has been personal. Some of his old friends don't speak to him. His former colleagues think he's sold out. And then there are the threats. "I attended this event and someone came up to me," recalls Werbach, his discomfort still fresh. "He said, 'I wouldn't feel safe if I were you. People have gotten hurt.'" Werbach has stopped speaking in public without special security.

He has made a leap that is either visionary or naive, depending on your perspective. He's been a leader in the environmental world, president of the Sierra Club at just 23, author of a 1997 book Act Now, Apologize Later that called Wal-Mart "a new breed of toxin" that "could wreak havoc on a town." He was such an iconoclast, he'd publicly challenged old-line environmentalists in a speech in 2004.

But in signing on to Wal-Mart last year, he went too far, driving off even those nonprofits who still did business with his small consulting firm, Act Now. They didn't want the help of someone who would sell his services to the Behemoth of Bentonville.

Folks at the Sierra Club, which funds the watchdog Wal-Mart Watch, begged him to reconsider, and activists John Sellers and Barbara Dudley wrote an open letter headlined, "The Death of Integrity: In Working With Wal-Mart, Activist Adam Werbach Is Abandoning His Principles."

Ouch.

Read more HERE.