Why Does the Devil Wear Prada…and Not Recycled Cotton?

And by Prada I mean a Prada handbag, because every classy lady should have an expensive designer handbag, right?

Well, I consider myself a classy lady…most of the time…except when I’m watching the Orioles and they are down by 5 in the last inning. Then I get crassy, not classy! But overall I’m classy in my demeanor. And I’ve never spent more than $25.00 on a handbag.

So why do women have to spend $15, 090 on a Prada Jacquard Frame Bag like this:

When they can get for $5.95 a cool, stylish, durable 100% recycled cotton handbag like this:

I bought 3 of these totes for grocery shopping, but they’re also great for carrying your purse, lunch, umbrella and laptop in the morning to work.

Geez, the bag, and everything in the bag, don’t even cost as much as the Prada handbag.

I know that women like to look good and they love to shop, but the main reason we try to look good by going shopping is to get a man’s attention. Or to get another female stranger’s attention when we set it on the table in a restaurant.

So ladies, do you really think that a guy cares how much you spent on your handbag or what it looks like? Won’t they be so busy gazing into your “eyes” on the first date that they forget that you even had one? Or won’t your husband be so busy watching the football game….er, the kids….that he’ll disregard your new purchase?

I’m not saying to use this grocery tote as a handbag, but there are plenty of good websites out there that offer non-leather handbags made of organic cotton or bamboo, or recycled paper and plastic, that are very stylish. Like these:

• Ecoist
• Pristine Planet
• Salvation Sacks
• Hip & Zen
• Eco-Handbags.ca
• Hemp Sisters

Why not spend less money and help out the environment instead of putting yourself (or your significant other) deeper into credit card debt.

With the few extra thousand dollars that you don’t spend on the Prada handbag, you can save it.

Save it for the next time you go shopping.

Was Weezer’s Green Album Really Green?

So, I’m a huge fan of Weezer. I was first introduced to this great band by an ex of mine. He gave me the Pinkerton album because for some reason the song “El Scorcho” reminded him of me.

Maybe it was the famous “god damn you half Japanese girls.” I’m half Korean, but we pretty much “all look same.”

Anyways, I’ve grown to like a majority of the albums the band has put out. I’m at a crossroads with the Blue Album and Pinkerton as my favorite.

The Blue album has the beautiful and serene “Only in Dreams, ” but Pinkerton has “The Good Life,” an athem for all people who finally wake up and say, “I don’t want to be an old man anymore it’s been a year or two since I’ve been down on the floor. Shaking booty making sweet love all the night, It’s time I got back to the good life.”

Gosh that’s a great line.

Maladroit was kind of a disappointment, as so was Make Believe. And I’ve only listened to the Red Album once. It was just…okay.

To hide my disappointment of the band’s musical downfall, I tried to find something else that was bad about them to cover up the truth.

So I decided to pick on their Green Album. Besides having a cover that was green, there was nothing else really green about it.

• The CD cover wasn’t made out of recycled paper
• It came in a plastic CD case, which wasn’t really necessary
• The band members weren’t wearing recycled shoes
• No proceeds of the sales were going towards preserving the rainforest

Worst of all, none of the songs were really green.

So what I decided to do was to write down my green interpretations of what I thought the songs were about:

1. Don’t Let Go – A young woman is driving on a lonely interstate in the middle of the night, and she has just finished drinking her Coke, a much needed source of caffeine. No one is around, and she is about to throw the aluminum can out of the window, but Weezer says “Don’t Let Go”
2. Photograph – Take a photograph of all the trees now….they’ll soon be gone
3. Hash Pipe -If you’re a hippie, you know this
4. Island in the Sun – What’s left of Antarctica in 50 years
5. Crab – Ironically, will be Maryland’s next endangered species
6. Knockdown Dragout – What happens when two old women vie for the last remaining watermelon at an organic market
7. Smile – The oil prices have just dropped below $4!
8. Simple Pages - What Bush reads when he’s memorizing his next speech
9. Glorious Day – All vehicles are zero emission
10. O Girlfriend – Thanks for showing me that organic food is better than processed food

So that’s my whole green interpretation. I think that if these songs would have been about these green topics, the album might have been half as good as the Blue Album or Pinkerton.

An eco-obsessed music lover can still dream.

Take me out to the solar heated ballgame

Since I’ve moved to Baltimore, there are a few things that I’ve learned to love:

• Old Bay seasoning
• Hearing people say “warshing” machine
• Seeing Mexi-mullets in Fells Point
• The Resurrection beer at Brewer’s Art
• Chicken cheesesteak subsfrom Never on Sunday
• The Baltimore Orioles!

Of all of these things, I am most obsessed with the Baltimore Orioles. I think I’ve watched every game since the season started. My favorite players are Kevin Millar, Adam Jones and Melvin Mora. Yes, I like Nick Markakis, but so does everyone else.

I love my O’s and their stadium, Camden Yards, but I have to admit that I’m a bit jealous of my second favorite team’s stadium.

The Boston Red Sox, who are beating the O’s 5-0 in the top of the 2nd inning as I write this, are going to have a solar heated water system at Fenway Park. And it’s not just in the stadium; it’s going to be used for all the restaurants located under the stadium.

This is going to reduce the park’s average gas consumption by one-third.

Read about it here.

I can only hope that Camden Yards will do something like this. If the stadium went more eco-friendly, maybe I would ignore the $6 beers and $5 burgers. And the trash. And the annoying Yankees fans.

Think how much better the environment would be without Yankees fans

The Incredible Hulk Carbon Calculator

Only 2 days after writing my first post on green characters, I found this: The Incredible Hulk Carbon Calculator!

This is beyond cool! Not only do comic fans get to see Ed Norton go even more ballistic than he did in Fight Club and teenage boys get to see Liv Tyler play, yet again, another slow-witted yet angelic love interest, but eco-friendly fans can learn how to reduce their carbon footprint.

Once you complete the calculator you can make a donation, which will go towards the World Land Trust’s Paraguay project. The project helps to restore various ecosystems in Paraguay that are home to over 117 species of mammals and 600 species of birds.

This goes to show you just how green the Incredible Hulk really is.

Superman may be faster than a speeding bullet and can save a plane when it’s been hit by a Lex Luthor missile, but did he ever offer to reduce fuel consumption by flying planes on his back? I think not.

Did the Silver Surfer ever offer to help restore the melting polar ice caps? No.

Iron Man never offered up the secrets behind the alternative energy-operated “Arc Reactor” power pack that fueled his iron suit.

Even though the Hulk is mean and has a huge actual footprint, at least he cares enough to help us reduce our carbon footprint.

Transformers: Mean, Green Fighting Machines?

I was a child of the 80′s, so of course I loved The Transformers. So you could imagine my surprise (as well as everyone else’s in the free world), when we learned that that live action movie was coming out.

Of course I went to see it, and thought it was a fun-filled ride back to my childhood with dazzling special effects and a funny Bernie Mac as the most annoying car salesman in the world.

The ending left room for a sequel, and sure enough, I found this post today (*Warning: Don’t read this if you hate movie spoilers…it does tell a few things that will happen):

Transformer 2: Leaked Info!

After high-fiving the air and jumping up and down in my seat, I got to thinking about the greenness of the Transformers.

Think about it: The motto of the two dueling Transformer sides is to Protect or Destroy. That could easily mean not just mankind, but our entire environment.

The Transformers, which can morph into cars and then monstrous-sized animals and other fighting machines, as far as I know, use NO GAS!

With the sky-rocketing prices of gas nowadays already at $4 a gallon and more, could you imagine the money we’d save and carbon emissions we would reduce by having a transformer for our transportation?

Okay, maybe we all wouldn’t get as lucky as Shia to have our own personal Transformer, but what if we could work out a deal for the Transfomers to be our mode of daily transportation?

I see the next movie now:

Transformers 3: We Killed the Electric Car, But Welcomed the Zero Emission Space Vehicle

We could live peacefully with the Transformers, allowing them to frolic amongst us, in exchange for their transporting of us wherever we needed to go. That would include transportation overseas, military equipment, subway systems and anything else that requires fuel.

Here’s my favorite Transformer, Jazz:

Taxi cab by day

Decepticon butt-kicker by night

Hey, it’s not like they get the raw end of the deal. They would get to travel the world and meet new people as well.

I think it’s brilliant.

It would never happen in reality, but it could send a positive environmental message thanks to the magic of the movies.

If I have time maybe I’ll start on a script. Any ideas are greatly welcomed

Oscar the Grouch and other green characters

When I was younger I remember that all my friends liked the cute cartoon characters that were associated with the colors of red, pink or purple… or some other horribly bright girly color. I guess that’s why Strawberry Shortcake, Barbie, Elmo, Big Bird and those adorable My Little Ponies were so popular.

But being the tomboy that I was, I was always drawn to colors like blue, black and green. I loved the Smurfs and their evil tormentor Gargamel, who looked more like a goofy Adams Family character than an evil sorcerer.

I also happened to like green characters, like Oscar the Grouch, Kermit the Frog, the Grinch and the Incredible Hulk. Maybe that’s why I got drawn into the green movement.

If you think about it, these literally “green” characters even practiced living green in their own ways:

• Oscar the Grouch – He loved trash! He loved it so much that he lived in a trash can. That means that he reused and recycled everything in his home, which is a big plus for overcrowded landfills.
• Kermit the Frog - He’s a frog. He’s from a pond. He sits on a lily pad and sings. He embraces his natural environment while fighting the advances of Miss Piggy.
• The Grinch – He’s grumpy. He’s slimy. He hates everything. But, he’s eco-friendly in the fact that he built his dog’s antlers out of a set of old horns, and he even built his makeshift sleight out of old items from his cave. Even though he stole all of Whoville’s presents, he didn’t emit any carbon emissions while doing it.
• Incredible Hulk – Okay, Bruce Banner was turned into the Hulk from an explosion of a toxic gamma rays, but he has the ability to withstand environmental extremes like burning fire and freezing snow. If only nature could do this, then it wouldn’t suffer through global warming and pollution.

Maybe my liking of green characters fueled my desire to be greener.

While my friends grew up to be shopaholics obsessed with buying bright-colored $500 handbags and designer jean made by children in third-world countries, I became a simple kind of gal interested in reducing trash by recycling and enjoying the beauty of nature through walks and bike rides.

So this blog is dedicated to my quest to be greener….not meaner, like Oscar the Grouch or the Grinch.

I want to incorporate the green information that I learn into my daily routine, so that I can make a small difference in the preservation of the environment.

I may not leave a huge footprint like Big Bird, but I may just leave a small carbon footprint.