New Life

In the Weird returns to its roots! Today, we showcase an artist working in the medium of strange. In this case, we laud him not only for his artistic ability, but for the green quality of his oeuvre, which is hand-crafted exclusively from discarded phone books. Artist Alex Queral soaks these ubiquitous and antiquated relics of a world without on-demand information in water to stick the pages together, then carves the faces of famous men and women into the hard, pulpy mass, using a scalpel.

View more images of Queral's work here.

Finally found a reason to post.

can't be unwatched. you're welcome. groovy.

Read to a Dog

In the Weird has started to sound like a dour, angry old hippie, standing out on the porch of our dilapidated farmhouse, shaking our collective fists at the world's conservatives, capitalists, and anyone who happens to set foot on our damn lawn.

That's not weird. That's just sad.

So let's take a break from all this seriousness to tackle a topic that at the heart of our sister blog, Dragon's Library: youth literacy. Do you have a moment to discuss your dog's ability to appreciate literature?

In the days of two working parents and too much video technology, beginning readers often don't have the motivation to practice reading, which is where therapy dogs come in.

Yes. Dogs.

Did you know that a dogs is a "non-judgmental listener...who will accept the story exactly as" it's read? For struggling readers, reading to a dog involves less stress than reading to someone who may correct or question their interpretation. This information comes directly from our local library system website, which hosts regular "Read to a Dog" events. In fact, most dog-owners will probably find their dog eager enough to listen to five hundred renditions of The Cat in the Hat, but if your dog doesn't want to hear your child's voice, or if you don't have a dog, consider acquiring the services of a professional, trained listening dog.

If you would like to know more about reading to dogs, you can check out this Read to a Dog website, or just Google "Read to a Dog."

It's the, stupid, economy

There's a human element.

First, there were the foreclosure and for sale signs up and down my block, but since we are misanthropic and anti-social, and my landlords are not planning on selling this house, it didn't affect us much. After a while, most of the foreclosure and for sale signs were replaced with rental signs. And gradually, those disappeared. There are still a few in the neighborhood, but most of the empty homes converted smoothly into rental properties.

Second, there was my cat. He was obviously domesticated, and he was obviously out of doors, and he was obviously starving to death. We speculated he came from one of those foreclosed homes, was left behind when the humans went. I took him in, fed him, and his problems ended.

Third, there are the unrentable houses.

I wouldn't know about them, except that circumstances transpired to make this a good time to buy my first house. It's a buyer's market, after all. I'm not wealthy, though. I can afford a bargain, and a bargain is what I'm looking for.

The houses we've been looking at are all in need of work. Lots of work. These are houses that you cannot get a bank loan for, because no bank would loan you money to buy these kinds of problems. Sometimes the trouble is that the foreclosure happened in the middle of a flip. The investor gets mad about losing his money and sabotages the house, steals the appliances and fixtures, everything that's not nailed down. We've looked at houses with no HVAC, no toilets, no faucets. We've been warned to watch out for concrete poured down the drain.

Sometimes the foreclosure happens to someone who's lived there a long time. These houses have holes in the walls. "Angry movers," my real estate agent called it. There is trash on the property, and little slivers of other people's lives strewn here and there: spare change, empty boxes.

The saddest thing we've seen yet was the graffiti room. It was a little room in a little house. I wouldn't have bought it under any circumstances, because it was cramped, and the yard didn't suit my needs. But it was someone's house. Some little girl remembered that house as the only house, that room as the only room.

Her parents must have told her she could do as she liked, it didn't matter anymore, and she covered her room, walls and ceiling, with pastel-marker messages: "Goodbye House!" and "Memories are Forever" along with names, initials, illegible in-jokes and a few mildly rude words ("Boobs!") She loved that house and that room. She didn't understand what happened, why things had to change. She just knew they had. In some ways, kids are better at letting go than adults, in other ways, they hold on longer.

We've declined to move on the other kind of foreclosed house: the kind that still has tenants. I'm not sure how it's even possible, to go into someone's home and evict them. Sorry, you're behind on the mortgage, you lose your investment, you lose your home. But this is happening. In some places, the market is rebounding, but Tucson, Arizona is not one of them. July marked the highest number of foreclosures yet.

Someone's loss will be my profit. I'll find a home with no floors, holes in the wall, a big gap where the fridge should stand, and I'll snap it up for a song and throw my heart and my paycheck into fixing it up. No one will foreclose on me, because I will pay cash, in full. But I will remember those who came before. I will remember the human element. I will remember the little girl with the pastel markers, whose childhood home will haunt her dreams.

On Health Care and Dining Out by Allison Williams

Imagine that America has the best restaurants in the world. The food is both amazingly delicious and incredibly nutritious. Chefs come from all over the world to work and learn in American restaurants and test kitchens, and every year billions of dollars are spent to make the food even better, and to make food that appeals to every possible diner’s personal tastes and physical needs. And anyone who wants to can eat.

One catch – eating in an American restaurant costs at least $200 per meal. Not counting the appetizers, any special requests like “extra Bearnaise sauce, please” or the napkins. But since the food is so good for you, and so desirable – and in this world, most people can’t cook at home, and most raw ingredients aren’t sold in stores – about 84% of the public has an agreement with their employer. They pay about $200-500 a month, and they can eat all they want. The remaining 15.8% of the American population goes hungry most of the time, eating whatever they can scrounge, and hopes they don’t get very hungry, because if they get very hungry, and really, really need a week of those very delicious, very nutritious meals to stay alive, it will cost them enough money to put them in debt for the rest of their life. Most of them choose to stay hungry.

This is what the current system of American health care is like. Sure, the restaurant is usually pretty busy, but most people make reservations anyway. If you want a big banquet, or some really special ingredients, you might wait a few weeks until they can squeeze you in, but you can almost always get a table.

So what happens if we let that last 16% come into the restaurant? Well, wait times might be a little longer. And some people might decide to go eat at another country’s restaurant, where the service is snappier, or where the chefs are a little less rushed because they deal with fewer people. But there would be fewer people starving, mouths watering with their noses pressed to the glass while the people who can afford it dine in splendor.

Are there waiting times in countries with socialized medicine for some procedures? Sure. That’s what happens when you allow everyone to see the doctor instead of just the people who can afford it.

It’s OK to vote in your own self-interest – most people do. So when you vote against reforming health care, please be clear on what you’re voting for.

You are not defending the American way of life.

You are not defending the freedom to make your own medical choices.

You are not defending the world’s greatest medical care system.

You are voting so that you can see the doctor and I can’t.


Source on health insurance statistic – the Census Bureau via Cnn.com.