Last minute musings

Now that January 1st looms bright and full of promise, I am, dear reader, giving up the boycott.

I am doing this for many reasons, not the least of which is because with all my efforts and attempts, I still failed to live the whole year without buying anything made in China. I failed several times in fact, as did Luke. If we failed at this together, does that have the potential to make our relationship stronger? Just a random thought on my mind.

My initial reasons for this boycott were not born out of a hatred for China, or Chinese people or products, in fact, this boycott has very little to do with China and nearly everything to do with working for a company that outsourced most of it's jobs to China and a desire to raise my own awareness of just how much stuff I consume from this country. Perhaps if my company had outsourced jobs to Malaysia, I would be boycotting them for a year instead...which would have been much easier to do in many ways.

I hate the flippant attitude I found myself using when I had the drug addicted need to BUY SOMETHING NOW!!! and the only things I could find were made in China. In moments like these, when I found something made outside of the USA, but not in China, I would inwardly, sometimes even vocally shriek, "It's ok to exploit that country!" What a terrible way to think about anything!

This may be an abrupt ending, but dinner is ready and the festivities are about to begin. My boycott will soon be over, and for those of you who are wondering what my first legitimate "Made in China" purchase will be, I have no idea. For months it was going to be a new Silver Bullet...I even dreamed about the day that would happen, but I got one for Christmas, so now I don't know.

Perhaps that will be my next entry.

Happy New Year!

Light at the end of the tunnel

Wow! It's finally here in all it's splendor, the holiday I usually loath...

This New Year's Eve has a special significance to it, not because we have any plans (we're staying at home for a quite celebration) or because we paid off the car or won the lottery or anything nearly that interesting...it is significant because it is the last mandatory day of this boycott.

Despite my complaints and railings against consumerism and product origin, this is a bittersweet event. It is bittersweet because it has been with me for so long it has taken on and identity of it's own. Most people who know me are aware of the boycott, although no one else, save Luke, have joined it. Most people seem to think I am either insane or wasting my time. It has made shopping far more of a burden and far less enjoyable, although I am not sure that I actually saved money as a result. It has kept me up at nights and been a recurring source of arguments between Luke and I and between my mom and I and it has made me painfully aware of how much I consume, from food to useless stuff. I am fearful that I will slip back into a pretty oblivion within a few months of being able to buy whatever I want.

I don't think I've ever boycotted something as long as I did this (although 2008's boycott appears to be the pending landfill expansion in our neighborhood) and it was infinitely more difficult than I ever thought that it would be.

However, there were positives such as an increased awareness of where my cheap consumable products came from and what it might have taken to make them and get them to me at a price I was willing to pay. There were also the rare moments when I was debating over making a purchase only to find out it was made in China and therefore the decision was made for me. Sometimes that was a positive. Sometimes.

Today we prematurely celebrated the end of the boycott by going to the hardware store (a big chain store which probably helped eliminate any independent hardware stores in the area) to buy a "goose neck" and a "1" nipple" for the shower parts I managed to break while attempting to install my new Christmas present, a "Made in China" shower head.

I was all nervous and somewhat dumbstruck to learn that both pieces were made in China and there were no alternatives in the store. We discussed if this violated the boycott or was permissible because I broke something that wasn't mine or if it was an emergency (this was Luke's idea). In the end, we bought the parts because someone is coming to fix it first thing tomorrow morning and I am just fine with my mom not knowing that I broke the shower's nipple. (Just so you know, that is a part which connects the pipes behind the shower wall to the goose neck, or visible piece in the shower which your shower head mounts onto. I did not know any of this a few hours ago.)

In some ways I already feel like I've given up on this boycott. I certainly threatened to do so often enough when I was Christmas shopping! A far more logical way to handle that fiasco, by the way, would have been to give gift cards to everyone, be finished with my shopping in an hour and let their good consciouses choose what to buy. But I didn't do that and it was a miserable experience!

Made in The China

Amidst the frenzy that can be Christmas shopping, my most favorite identifier of a Chinese product was the following: "Made in The China."

As frustrated as I was with this whole boycott, it even managed to make me laugh...is there more than one China? Was the product meant to be made in The United States? Was it just a typo? Are there any other countries which put the word "The" before the country of origin? I mean, we don't say, "Made in The Japan" or "Made in the Malaysia".

Maybe it's just me, I haven't found much to laugh at with regards to this boycott.

Christmas Blues

Well Alvan, it's that time again...Alvan? Alvan....?!?!!??

Oh....I just had a panic attack that I had completely lost my mind and was talking to the chipmunks...you know...Alvan, Simon, Theodore....the..oh, forget it!

I am in fact loosing my mind and I'm sick and tired of Christmas shopping and I hate this boycott and it is killing the Christmas spirit; which obviously is to buy as much useless crap as you cannot afford to hurl at people you won't see again for months in a hopeless effort to get something from them which was cooler and more expensive than the crappy gift you bought.

Does that statement make me sound cynical?

I used to enjoy shopping. I liked Christmas shopping. I almost always started by July or August and was finished before the rest of the lunatics got to the mall.

This year I loath the whole miserable process because everything I can afford or am willing to pay for, is made in China.

That's not the whole reason though, I hate it because it is such a commercial experience.

I am not a very religious person but I do feel conflict and guilt over my desire, or even addiction, to time spent shopping for a gift for someone instead of investing that same amount of time actually interacting with the person I am buying a gift for.

I've spent a lot of time mulling over this issue and wondering why it is that I will subject myself to countless hours of unproductive time spent shopping, time where I am often in a rush, bitter and resentful towards my fellow shoppers who are always in MY WAY and hopelessly frustrated about what to buy. Rarely is gift shopping a pleasant, never mind tolerable experience for me. So why do I do it?

Why would I rather spend my time and money bolstering the economy of some major corporation, regardless of where they make their products, than I would spend that time hanging out with the people I care about? Has it become easier just to buy a mass produced gift instead of having lunch with my friend I've not seen in four months? And since I haven't seen that friend in four months, why do we all the sudden have time to get together when the exchange of gifts is involved?

I spent three or four hours Christmas shopping on Friday night. I canceled plans to go with Luke to a restaurant we've been wanting to go to, shoved some processed food product in my mouth, called it dinner and in an increasingly frustrated, cynical even rageful mood, tried to find "the damn gift" (I've lowered my standards enough to move beyond "the perfect gift").

All this resulted in was wasting a lot of time doing something I did not want to do, resenting that I was doing this, fighting with Luke and eventually buying "the damn gift" I saw when I first got to the mall hours ago.

What was the point?

I don't know that I have answers to any of the questions I've posed. I don't know that I have the strength, the where-with-all or the desire to look closely enough at my actions in order to better understand them. I do know though, that boycott or not, I do not feel very good about the gifts I've purchased so far and I don't think that is what gift giving was ever supposed to be about.

Yet how, even with a boycott that severely limits what you can buy, how do you get out of this consumerist vortex?

The Strangest Experience So Far

Shoe shopping has been one of the most aggravating things about this boycott because so many of them are made in China. Now, if you couple that aggravation with the fun of shoe shopping with a man who truly believes that there is no earthly reason to own more than two pairs of shoes at any given time, you have a recipe for disaster!

Luke, despite his ranting against shoe ownership, needs a pair (or two or three) of new shoes. This is true because about a year ago he insisted on buying a pair of very snazzy men's dress shoes for his interview, which is a very sensible thing to do.

However, he has worn these same snazzy pair of shoes to work EVERY DAY since then and they are falling apart!

Since we live in the middle of nowhere (according to some people) we are often at a loss for what to do on the weekends. One Friday night I thought it would be fun to drag Luke to the mall...to go shoe shopping...for him...on a Friday night....

Yeah, it was a blast! But the point of this blog is not to prattle on about my relationship, it's to talk about not buying stuff made in China, so here I go....

The very first shoe store we went into was some chain thing, Shoe Dept. or Famous Footwear or Super Cheap Shoes R Us. Both of us were assuming that we would be unsuccessful in our efforts to find a pair of shoes not made in China, never mind to find a pair that Mr. Pickypant who scorns shoes would begrudgingly buy.

All was going according to our pessimistic plan when low and behold a bizarre twist of fate occurred!

Luke picked up a pair of shoes, I think they were Sketchers, and I picked up the same pair of shoes...and his were made in China and mine were made in Vietnam. The same pair of shoes!

Now, I've seen companies export all of one type of product, say purple rubber ducky boots, to China and export the neon green stilletos to Brazil, but I've never seen the size 12.5 sneakers being made in China and the 13.5 made in Vietnam.

What do you suppose is the rationale behind this? Is it significantly cheaper to make the slightly larger sized shoes in yet another country? Was there a misprint in the shoes? Did my eyes deceive me? Does it matter?

In this case, no, not really, because despite finding a few pairs of shoes not made in China, Luke has not yet found the holy grail of "super awesome incredibly redeeming and super styling yet comfortably functional shoes" he is pretending to look for.

Do I need to tell you what the rest of the shoe not shopping experience was like?

Post note-
We did manage to find New Balance sneakers at Kohls which proclaimed that they are made in America. They even come with a thought provoking blurb about what it means to be made in America. A refreshing find in these turbulent times, and yet not enough for my honey...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Do you know where your Halloween candy, treats and costumes were made?

The gummy worms, eyeballs, mice, etc. that my mom is giving out are made in China. The pretzels are made in PA and the chocolate I already ate, so too bad for the goblins that come our way.

My "treat" is to be stuck in class all night wearing a Halloween shirt from Old Navy which was probably made in El Salvador and a pair of kick ass calf-high patent leather black spider web boots. I don't know where they were made, but I bought them at a thrift shop in Chicago last Halloween so they are safe.

I'm going to look hot for my "made in PA" presentation tonight!

If you have any leftover chocolate candy that is not made in China, please feel free to send it my way.

What I Learned in School

In my graduate environmental health class on Monday, I learned that 90-95% of all apple juice and apple cider contains apples imported from China.

To "test" this theory, on our break, I went to the Wawa across the street and two out of the three bottles of apple juice listed apples from China, Chile, the US and a variety of other countries on the label.

This is worrisome for many reasons, the two biggest being:

1) Lack of universal environmental standards when growing or producing food products
2) If individuals become ill due to drinking apple juice, how do you ever trace back where the apples came from? I suppose this is less of a problem if a few people become ill, but what about a "Mad Cow Disease" equivalent problem?

FYI- the Tom's Juice Company (0r whatever they are called) were the only brand sold at Wawa to not list where their apples came from.

Too bad we already opened our bottle of A&P Apple Cider, which of course, after we opened it, we noticed it contains "apple concentrate from China."

I didn't even know they grew apples in China!!

I also learned that most of the garlic sold in the US comes from China instead of California.

Apparently you can tell by looking at the bottom of the garlic bulb.

If the bulb is flat, without any stringy roots hanging off it, then it was grown in China.

If there are small, scraggly roots hanging off it, then it came from California.

One more thing...

Apparently China does not have to process/refine the toxins and chemicals in the fertilizer (read treated sewage sludge...what we flush down the toilet) before feeding it to the fish raised in the fish farms which are then imported all over the world, and duh! people are getting sick from eating this fish.

Who knew the grocery store was such a minefield?

On a positive (?) note, every Monday night my classmates tell me of another product I can't buy because it is made in China.

As far as I know, none of them have read my bog, but they are thinking about my boycott. That's a bittersweet victory.