Pollywogs!

Since when can credit card companies forcibly close your account for you?  Kelley and I had a shared FirstUSA account that we’ve long since paid off and allowed to collect dust in order to help build our credit reports.  Chase in the meantime purchased FirstUSA and recently sent us a notice in the mail:

Thank you for being a Chase customer (hah, we’ll see how long we remain, fuckers).  We recognize you have other accounts with Chase, and we value your business (obviously NOT).  We also want to make sure that we are providing you with Chase products that meet your needs.

We noticed that this account wasn’t used for at least the last 24 months.  Because the account wasn’t used during this time period, we assumed that you no longer had need for it and we closed it, effective the week of November 10th (FUCK YOU).

To protect your security and ensure that you don’t inadvertently attempt to use the card(s) on this closed account, please destroy any cards or convenience checks associated with the account (I have half a mind to post the fucking cards on 4chan).

We will send an update to the credit bureaus within the next 60 days to advise that this account is closed (and lower our credit scores, fuckers?).

We look forward to serving your credit needs as you use your other Chase account(s) (not for very long).

Sincerely,

(The Assfucks at) Cardmember (dis)Service

Kelley called and was informed that they’d sent two notices already.  As we process every single piece of mail that comes through (destroying the sensitive documents and recycling the rest, including the envelopes that sensitive documents come within) I know for a fact that this is not the case.  They simply wanted to close our account and simply made it happen, retroactively.  I wrote a short letter to Chase via their online messenging center:

Hello.

We recently had a joint credit card account closed without notice. It was originally a FirstUSA account, which Chase then purchased. We held onto the card after we had the balance paid off in order to help develop our credit reports, as it is a fairly old account.

We recently received a letter informing us that Chase had retroactively closed the account. When we called to dispute them closing the account from under us (and potentially damaging our credit scores), they claimed to have sent two previous notices. I am here to inform you that they absolutely did not do so. We recycle or destroy every piece of mail we get. Each item is broken down into the original envelope, and non-recyclable materials are thrown away. Non-sensitive documents are then recycled, and sensitive documents are destroyed. We absolutely would have been informed if such notices had in fact been mailed to us.

I have never heard of such a thing, having a credit card company FORCE your account closed. We have been long and valuable customers of Chase in the past, but if unless this situation is immediately corrected, I guarantee that this will change.

Thank you for your time,

Garrett

If I do not get satisfaction, I sure as shit will post the information to 4chan, maybe they can get some fun out of it.  Why the fuck do I need to protect my security on an account that was closed last week against my wishes?  FUCK YOU CHASE.

…so I read this book recently called The Food Revolution.  Just finished it today, in fact, after reading it in short bites for the past couple weeks.  The more I read, the more what was written resonated with something inside of me.  I can clearly remember the chapter where it had me hook, line and sinker.  It is easily one of the most important books I’ve read in my life, as a human being.  So, I’m going to attempt to write a series of posts summarizing and expanding upon some of the central themes of the book. 

I’ll lead with a short quote from the end of the book, and then this first post will focus on some of the health aspects of the food choices we make regularly in our modern diet…

—

“Whether we like it or not, and whether we accept it or not, the choices we make, individually and collectively, in the coming years will make an incredible amount of difference, perhaps more so than at any other time in the history of life on this planet.  It is not just the quality of our personal lives and health that depends, now, on the choices we make.”

—

Food and Health

What if your meat and dairy products at the store carried a warning label like a pack of cigarettes: contents have been proven to cause cancer.   Would you think differently about shopping for food and snacks?  Hold up, you say, that is a pretty bold claim.  How can you simply say meat and dairy cause cancer?  Animal studies certainly do not help, as each species is fine tuned for the diet they’ve evolved to survive and reproduce on.  And, man is clearly an omnivore, fully able to digest a very wide range of food sources, well adept at being a jack of all trades, and master of none…which as served us well as a species during lean times when our only single concern is simply living long enough to reproduce and ensure our children live long enough to reproduce themselves.

So, if we can eat all of this food, what is to say that some of it isn’t healthy?  Well, the way you determine what is and what is not healthy and the resulting consequences, is to compile data from studies where each factor of a person’s life is quantified and accounted for.   The results are scientifically unequivocal: eating a diet with even modest amounts of meat and dairy products extracts a heavy health toll, encompassing nearly every modern ailment that our health care industry has had to face.  Cancer, heart disease, diabetes & obesity…

But you hear and read that you need meat and dairy!  You hear it a lot, because literally billions of dollars are spent each year advertising brands (I’m loving it) and product categories (got milk?).  The other side of that coin?  The National Cancer Institute with their $1 million advertising budget promoting a diet high in fruits and vegetables…among a few, lonely others…

Speaking of the government subsidized milk industry (comrades, grab another delicious and cold glass of socialist milk and rejoice our cultural victory over the capitalist pigs), as we don’t really have any rules against truth in advertising, you may be surprised to learn that drinking milk is actually bad for osteoporosis.  Amazing?  You’re aghast, how could I try to lie to you so blatantly?  You’ve seen on TV over and over that milk does a body good!  Yes.  Milk does a baby cow body good.  In our bodies, the shot of protein in milk makes us literally piss calcium.   Scientists know this, but no one gives them millions of dollars in advertising to help people with osteoporosis make informed and healthy choices.  Whereas the USDA just showers our own tax money on lies that make our lives worse.  Thanks, government, for showering money on both ends of a bad equation! 

I could go on and on, but that is what this book is for.  Now, I’m not saying that everyone should sign up with PETA and go vegan, although that is not a bad choice to make.  I’m simply saying that what you’ve been told was true isn’t necessarily so…but it is not in the best interest of the rich and the powerful for the truth to come out, so the status quo continues.  I had Fettuccine Alfredo last Friday, and it was delicious.  It was also only the second meat or dairy item I had had all week (the first being a BLT earlier that day).  The dish tasted rich and opulent, like a meal for a king.  

I feel it is a simple shame that I cannot make sure that the grains were grown organically, nor that the dairy products used were free of genetic modifications or cruel farm practices.  We have no laws regulating labeling of food, other than a simple “organic” label.  Nothing regarding the presence of GMOs or certification regarding how the animal was raised, and then nothing at all governing how meals are presented in restaurants.  Literally, who knows what is in a prepared meal!

I also know that the food itself is not healthy for me, which is why I make these choices in moderation.  I would like to be able to make the healthiest, most humane choice possible while still occasionally enjoying myself in a decadent fashion.  Just as you know eating candy and smoking cigarettes all day long every day is going to ruin your health, know that eating meat and dairy all day long every day is going to ruin your health just as likely: there are always those who live a hard life to 90 with no repercussions, just as some people have bodies that can take the abuse of a high animal protein diet day in and day out.  

…but why take unnecessary risks?

If even a little of what I’ve written today has piqued your interest, please go down to your local library and check out “The Food Revolution” by John Robbins.  The end of the book is endlessly useful as it is filled with references so you yourself can read the original scientific studies that are cited.  I didn’t even touch upon the health risks that have increased lately due to factory farming, such as E. Coli and other pathogens all over (and in!) the food supply, dioxins accumulating within the food chain, and so on and so on…  

Upcoming posts will cover the ethical aspects of factory farming (which I may skip thanks to Kelley’s previous and comprehensive posts), the environment and hunger, and finally pesticides and genetically modified organisms.

So I saw change.gov on reddit this evening, and looked around a bit.  It is actually an amazing website…the thought of an administration being open and transparent?!?!  I think I just fainted…fucking check this out, the actual Transition directory used to bring new Obama administration members up to speed…WITH THE VICE PRESIDENT IN THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH!  Biden is going to be piiiisssed!  

Alright, I’m back, I actually did faint, I was out for like five minutes…

So I find a form to submit ideas.  I am full of bitching and ranting, so I decided to submit a few wandering, wondering thoughts:

So many items need addressed, but scaling back our armed forces into a lean, focused force geared towards rapid intervention in small-scale conflicts would free up desperately needed resources. We’re set up to fight World War III, and have been since the 1950s…and it is bleeding us dry. I made this recommendation to Bush in the spring of 2001, that we needed to refocus on rogue nations and terrorists instead of having this standing army outfitted for war with Russia or China…of course, my recommendations at the time fell on (purposefully) deaf ears…

Second, the environment and energy is so very precarious currently. Everything possible should be done, as soon as possible, to scale back dirty energy and replace it with clean energy, as you have mentioned. Fossil fuel use simply needs to be eliminated, there is no other long term option with regards to the true impact that burning fossil fuels has on the environment. Even if we did eliminate 100% of dirty energy in 10 years (as We Can Solve It has forwarded) I fear the damage has already been done… We ought to be in full damage control mode currently, and yet we’re for all intents and purposes still have our feet still firmly planted on the gas pedal…

Third, our foods need a revolution as well. It is so terribly inefficient to convert plant material into animal material for us to consume. There are so many hungry people in the world, yet we eat like kings, a more opulent diet than any people before us. And ironically it is killing us with heart disease and obesity. Man was not intended to eat meat for every meal (or at least live a long healthy life while doing so). Reducing meat consumption would pay vast returns, reducing the burden on our health care services. Further, reducing our vast factory farms would reduce the needless suffering and unhygienic conditions that so many animals are raised under. By eliminating the subsidies that make factory farmed flesh so cheap (by our wealthy standards), we could put food production back into the hands of small family operated farms, with local ’slow’ food production and consumption directly benefiting our local economies (as opposed to some faceless giant who works directly with Monsanto to raise GMOs of unknown risks). We could borrow a page from Europe with regards to our entire food situation…they’ve recently been enacting a number of needed reforms (including proper food labeling of aforementioned GMOs).

Which reminds me of another idea I had recently: the governments of the world all have to deal with the same fundamental problems. Your administration ought to form a panel which examines all of the difficulties faced around the world, and cull the best responses. Then, share what you’ve learned (and hopefully integrated into our own nation) with other nations. Treating government like a science, where the best minds work together on the same fundamental problems. It seems like everyone is going around reinventing the wheel currently…

So, those are a few of my humble suggestions, items which I haven’t seen mentioned much on your formidable and very comprehensive list of items to address. I’ve spent the last eight years highlighting and criticizing the Bush administration, do not worry that you do not have a solid partner who will continually remind you of your shortcomings from the view down here.

Thank you very much for simply being who you are, President-Elect Obama.

Oh, and…yes we can!

If you’ve got a couple thoughs that you don’t think have been given enough attention, feel free to drop him a line.  Hopefully he has a team of people to sift and organize what I am sure will be a torrent of input!

 

…honestly, while I pretended that it was in the hat, I did not know what was going to happen.  I didn’t watch much of the afterwards, and practically none of the ‘media coverage’ (I vomit in my mouth when I try to call it news), but this caught my eye…

If I were intelligent and eloquent. If I were driven and competent. If I were totally fucking awesome, I would give this acceptance speech. It is almost as if he had been reading my blog all along, realizing my own personal worries and fears…he spoke for me, and I hope he spoke for all of humanity.

A more perfect union.

Thank you, President Elect Obama. Thank you, United States. Thank you.