Schwarzenegger: Keep Our Beaches Open! Move Towards At Least Commensualistic Symbiosis

Dear Governor Schwarzenneger,

(From John Thomas "Kooz" Kuczmarski)

I'm a strong believer that the purpose of a city should serve Nature. Nature -- wildlife, animals, we homo sapiens ARE Nature -- should be the intention of anything municipal, or city-based. Therefore the idea of actually closing beaches, closing a way for humans to enjoy nature (the ocean and beaches) would be undermining the very purpose of a city.

Do you really think people will stand for not being able to access beaches? Have you any idea how ludicrous that sounds?

I think anyone who believes eliminating parks-nature-Beach funding for the purpose of redirecting those funds to something non-Nature-based needs to re-evaluate their mission, don't you?

If the significance of Nature (the oxygen we breath from the botanical plants of parks) and the body of water that keeps us alive (planet earth ecologically could not survive if it were not for it being covered with over 70% water) is eclipsed, all is lost for EARTH and humans. This sounds extreme and that's because it is. If anything, funding needs to be redirected to opening MORE beaches and parks to remind us homo sapiens that we are just highly-evolved primates, elements of nature and truly do deserve to connect with Nature readily and frequently.

I think one problem with American government is that it HAS too much funding!! IT has so much funding that it redirects it's energies, finances, and time away from the absolute necessities (nature, oxygen, planetary perpetuation and survival).

What would be the result of this situation? What would the HUMAN RACE look like couped up in offices and buildings withotu access to Nature (our origin). To euphemistically refer to the chaos, inhuman treatment, loss of identity, uncertainty of values, drop in wholistic health, and slow disintegration of the third planet from the sun -- Bad things would occur to our planet and humans.

Closing parks is analogous to saying "we dont' need to focus on nature, on beaches, on the very oxygen we breath - the most fundamental survival necessity of us humans, mind you" And that is indirectly saying "it's okay for people to suffocate and die". I wont' go as far as saying that choosing to close beaches is identical to some kind of asphixiation concentration camp -- because that would be extreme -- but I think the analogy does exist there in some form.

For the Health of Homo Sapiens (and other flora and fauna on the planet), I urge you to make the decision to NOT close the beaches and to instead maybe apply funding to actually creating more (instead of less) of an awareness of the Significance of the health of our planet. The Pacific Trash Vortex, for example....that's something more people need to be aware of, in order to stop trash accumulation in the oceans. We're failing as a species, dumping trash into the ocean?! No other species does that.

The very LEAST we can do is keep beaches and parks open to ensure that the deteriorating of our most vital resource -- OUR PLANET -- does not continue.

And we do not possess the earth. The earth does not possess us either (for we can take flight into space and leave earth), but homo sapiens MUST have a MUTUALISTIC relationsihp with the earth and we are failing because The relationship of homo sapiens and Earth has become PARASITIC. We are feeding off and hurting the ecology or our own home (earth) and not giving back. A commensualistic Symbiosis would be better than the Parististic symbiosis that humans currently have with our planet. We Should be having a mutalistic symbiosis but are in fact, having the complete opposite of that.

So again, I urge you, could you try to elevate our already-suffering relationship with the planet from parasitistic to (at the very leaast) commensualistic symbiosis, and direct funds towards cultivating attention TOWARD the necessity of beaches and parks, not away from them?!!!

Thank you!


-- Johnt Thomas "Kooz" Kuczmarski

Buying Bulk Saves Money, Time, the Environment: Win-Win-Win

Buying in bulk solves three problems very vital problems in life. Buying in bulk boost finances, is healthy from a temporal-sentient point of view, and keeps our planet cleaner and less polluted. Oh, you don't understand how did my mental-math? I'll show my work:

1. Saving money. Anyway you cut it, whether it be bulk salmon or bulk soap, purchasing in bulk means less marketing costs for the individual items and a closer to wholesale price which means less expensive, and more mullah (that stays) for your pocket!
   
2. Saving Time. Buying bulk decreases the amount of times you have to go to the store and purchase refills. It's a hassle to have to write "buy more hand soap" on a grocery list, what? maybe 6-7 times per year if you go through one of those every 1-2 months?! Well, with bulk, you write "buy more xyz" as little as once per year, and food items as infrequently as once per month! Most of my soaps, and cleaners (with the exception of bleach and ammonia, because I go through those quickly but they're extremely cheap) I buy in huge large quantities and seriously, laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent (I wash a lot of my own dishes and ration out the laundry detergent well) for example, last me a year. That's just a huge relief either way, to only have to worry about buying laundry detergent or dishwasher detergent ONCE a year (or more likely ONCE every two years)?! That's awesome. We have 365 days per year. What are some other cool creative, successful things you could be doing with your time now that you don't have to go to the grocery store for almost any kind of cleaning supply for the entire year?!! That's just rad! Here's a mini list of the items I buy in bulk
   • Handsoap (1x/year)
   • Dishwasher soap (1x/1-2year)
   • Laundry Detergent (1x/1-2year). Yes, the same thing of laundry detergent and soap has lasted me almost two years!
     
   • Toilet cleaner (1x/year)
   • Fish (1x/1-5month). (I freeze all my fish so you can easily buy a ton in bulk and freeze it for 5 months and if you get canned tuna, that can go for 6 mo. easily).
     
   • Vegetables (1x/month)
   • Cheese (2-4x/year). I'm dead serious. I freeze all the cheese and when I packet is gone in the fridge, just chuck one in the dairy bin from the freezer. You buy in bulk, you can buy cheese sooo infrequently but always have a ton.
     
   • Pasta (2x/year. I'm dead serious. You buy bulk pasta and even if you eat a lot of pasta, you only have to buy it twice per year!)
3. Saving the Environment. Buying in bulk is a direct enterprise in helping the environment because buying in bulk means less purchases which means less left over bottles and plastic wrappers simply because you'll be purchasing less plastic bottles and plastic wrapper and marketing packaging, and less plastic containers. Read up on the HORRIFYING Pacific Trash Vortex to fully understand the global wide "too much trash" problem. Basically, we're pumping so much plastic wrapper and bottle refuse into our ocean. Seriously. Seriously. How f$@ked up is that?! Couldn't we re-use our bottles instead of litterally pumping them into our ocean water?! The disgusting physiological ramification of this is mini fish eat the mini shreds of plastic, bigger fish eat the mini fish, we eat the bigger fish and therefor consume plaste. Read up on the PTV, it's nasty, very real, and very frigthening stuff; I'm becoming very interested at the very least informing myself of that problem and I donate toa charity that helps solve it. So, but buying in bulk, you purchase one huge one huge container that you can likely reuse and that saves the environment, the ocean, and our planet!
   
4. *Saving you from Disorganization. My little bonus perk idea. May not work for everyone, but truly works for me! This one seems like an odd ramification, but truly, I reuse over 50% of the bottles and containers I get that are "wrappers" typically discarded after opening something or using something for 1)organization, 2)environmenal safety and 3)cheaper. Some of the containers that contain products are as sturdy and useful as one you'd spend $14.99 on at the Container Store! True!. I'm an organizational freak so buying in bulk works toward this end, too!
   

Buying in Bulk saves the environment, saves you money, and saves you time (less trips to the store)! Bulk is a win-win-win!!

Safe Plastics, Healthy Ocean!!

safe plastics healthy ocean article. My questions. what plastics are safe? Other than buying unwrapped produce, how can I as a consumer not contribute to ocean toxic waste and help the environment? If I have to buy plastic-wrapped items is there any kind that's "safer"? I'm a HUGE fan of reusing containers and I do. yogurt containers, coffee cans, protein containers I rarely ever discard and reuse around office-work-homespace as a recepteacle for something else. How do we not become plastic paranoid?! I like buying strawberries from the grocery store but they come in that clunky plastic container that I'll discard! There should be a cool way to get solid good inexpensive food and items without resorting to plastic. Like a BYOB method. At grocery stores I simply don't ask for bags because they'r clunky and cumbersome. NOT having plastic is smoother easier and simply...for you as an individual and with the external ecology check it's MUCH healthier for hte environment. The fact that that ratio of plastic-to-fish-weigh had skyrocketed so much was frightening and saddening. We've got to seriously change this and the interviewer dude is right, I think it does start with "not-marketing" not doing outrageous prepackaging stuff. It's actually a cool feeling ot get back from grocery shopping and having got primarily almost all produce, and to reuse the peanut butter containers, and maybe some plastic wrapped around fish, but it's simpler and much safer for the environment. Everyone should have to read that awesome, harrowing, but poignant Earth Island article interview with the chemist-captain dude. Just to get a sense of where we've got to start moving for environmental conservation and healthy environmental experiences to cherish our Nature!

Like I have to go pick up a printer ink cartridge and that has plastic wrapped in it. I like Hansen's soda, but it comes in a can. I need to pickup this xyz product and it only comes wrapped in plastic. I feel pretty unsettled and think this "scare" articles are Great. Hey, it worked. I'm scared and saddened by the amount of plastic infestation in our oceans, but they need to attach a solution to this. All these articles always end with the tone of :"This is royalled F$@%ed up..and we're working on a solution." There needs to BE a solution attached to these articles because when a normal person (like me) reads them, they want to do something but can't really take any kind of action except feel saddened, frightened, and maybe frustrated by the foul pollutants in our oceans, in our fish, in our very food. So where's the solutions man? The solutions that individual can take on their own? This is a group endeavor but everyone can contirbute. I mean I can avoid purchasing plastic-wrapped items but sometimes it's a necessity and reusing plastics, too. But yeah, freaky stuff.

Also from a global POV yeah this a MASSIVE dangerous, harrowing, freak-out-city problem! But from a consumer POV. Where are the people marketing CHEAP, INEXPENSIVE products that have no environment-contaminating plastic wrapper and such? I know there's tuna brands that don't harm dolphins...great. But where's the equivalent of that kind of product that I can purchase instead that doesn't contain harmful plastics (that will ultimately recirculate back into our own body! Plastic goes into ocean, eaten by small fish, eaten by larger fish, we eat the larger fish that contains the plastic. F$@!ed up!)