hump day

my friend, a violence and injury prevention specialist (whatever that means), shared this link.

according to a new study, suicides are most likely to occur on wednesdays. while those interviewed for the story cautiously offered work stress, at its height in the middle of the week, as a possible reason, here are my guesses:

there's nothing good on tv on wednesdays. consider the law and order franchise. monday is the classic law and order, a good way to start the week. tuesday is SVU, so it only gets better. but then on wednesday, you're stuck with criminal intent. shoot me.

no one goes out on wednesdays. thursdays everyone is raring for happy hour. friday everyone's like wooo, let's start the weekend! but wednesday? no one wants to do shit on wednesday. except maybe hang themselves.

wednesday is the worst day for sushi. a lot of restaurants get their shipments on thursday, in preparation for the weekend rush. this means that by wednesday, you're getting all the leftover week-old fish. if THAT doesn't kill you, you might just off yourself.

wednesday is commonly referred to as "hump day." but if you're not getting humped, you just feel like shit.

the way wednesday is spelled makes no fucking sense. and if you try to make sense of it, you'll just go batshit crazy, and potentially leap from a building.

more theories? post them in comments.

the recession claims more victims

in one of the saddest states of the economy i've seen yet, the los angeles times reports that more and more people are leaving the bodies of their dead in the custody of the state because they can't afford to collect the remains.

i can't imagine what it must be like not only to have to deal with the death of someone, but to then be burdened with the guilt of not being able to honor them with a ceremony, burial, or even an urn.

it's kind of a sick, sad reason that i wish six feet under was still on the air. the show dealt several times with bodies going unclaimed, but never for a monetary reason. there was a memorable episode when david tried to upsell a family on a casket. i don't think funeral homes are inherently evil [ not all anyway ], but in a bit of macabre irony, they, too, are just trying to ride out the economic tide.

someone more thoughtful than i... go make a show about this.

the complexities of sustainable food

i came across this article today, even though it was published in february. it talks about the complexities of our food system, and why labels like "organic" and "local" aren't enough to address the problems we face.

Real sustainability... is defined not by a food system's capacity to ensure happy workers or organic lima beans, but by whether the food system can sustain itself—that is, keep going, indefinitely, in a world of finite resources. A truly sustainable food system is inherently resilient—more capable of self-correction and self-revitalization than its industrial rival. Unfortunately, in the real world of farming, ideas like "resilience" must compete with realities like "costs" and "profits," and producers and consumers alike gravitate toward simpler standards—even if those standards don't represent truly sustainable practices. Worries Kirschenmann, "We've come to see sustainability as some kind of fixed prescription—if you just do these 10 things, you will be sustainable, and you won't need to worry about it anymore."

while the article never offered up a grand solution, it is interesting to think about what how inadequate some of our sustainable parameters are. it also does a good job tying in the economic side of the equation, including demand for unsustainable meat and dairy products, and the habits we've formed because of relatively cheap food. the idea that a consumer push strategy will never be enough certainly rings true - which means we need to do more to encourage our government to address this problem.
in any case, it's a good read, especially before i head out to the grocery store.

my one-woman campaign to save sbarro.

buzzfeed also lists 14 things that the recession will help us lose. but it made me think of the one thing i truly hope weathers the economic storm, and that is sbarro. last june, slumping mall sales attributed to the pizza chain's $5.7 million loss.

now, look: i'm not going to defend sbarro's shitty pizza, though i did live on the stuff all through college. but i do NOT want to live in a world where i can't have their garlic knots, baked ziti and spaghetti any time i get suckered into a mall! i don't know what they put in those spaghetti noodles, but it is my weakness. my kryptonite. my salvation.

please, everyone. join my campaign. i promise you a world without sbarro is a sad, tragic world indeed.