Recycling

Everybody loves the idea of saving the planet, especially by doing something as simple as recycling. It takes just one second of thought and you get a good feeling. The problem is a lot of people don't know how to recycle. I work at a fast food shop and the bag for recycling is more often than not just put in the trash, because most of what people are putting in the bin is trash. It is a hard truth to learn but most employees are not going to sort through the recycling, and even at the plant a lot of should be recyclables are thrown out because people do not know how to properly recycle. 

Here is a list some things that are NOT recyclable. 

1. Food. This sounds obvious, but apparently it isn't. Half full plastic bottles are not recyclable. Pizza crusts are not recyclable. Food is not recyclable. 

2. Straws. Drinking straws are not recyclable. Bottles and cartons with drinking straws in them are not recyclable. 

3. Bottle lids. The lids are not recyclable, any plastic you cannot push you finger through is not recyclable, and bottles with lids on them are not recyclable. 

4. Pizza boxes. These are sort of recyclable, when you can it is better to put them in the green bin. 

5. Coffee cups. Depends on the materials and the policy of the area, in Hamilton: no. However Tim Hortons cups can be put in the green bin. WITHOUT the lid. 

6. Milk cartons and juice boxes. Mixed paper products are not recyclable. 

7. Stickers. You did a great job on your test, but if you recycle it you are doing a poor job for the environment.

The Harper Government

Recently Prime Minister Harper has changed Canada's signature from "The Government
of Canada" to "The Harper Government".
WTF. It sounds like a joke. I really am expecting the yes men to pop up at the end of these annoucements. Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc made a comment that "You'd expect this kind of directive to be issued by the ministry of information in North Korea" I feel like Harper is doing this kind of stuff to piss people off. Who thought that was a good idea? Really.

I have not really being paying to much attention to the Canadian Government in the past. However, I recently turned 18, and can legally vote. So I decided to start paying attention, and omg I am appalled. What was with Bev Oda's "not". You cannot do that. You dont just pen in the word not and then sign it. I know, I've tried it on True/False tests. Like holy crap, I have listened to Rick Mercer say that our government needs to be constantly supervised, and now I am realizing our government needs to be constantly supervised.

We need national votes on the issues because our government isn't pulling their weight. Every governement debate should be televised, and you should be able to text or call in your vote. It works for So You Think You Can Dance, and it will work for Canada.

Words that look like their Meaning

I have been fascinated by the idea of words that look like their meaning for around a year. Pretty much every time I write one I think about it. I've googled the idea a few times only to come up fruitless. On my last search however I found a blog entry by Carl Morris: http://quixoticquisling.com/2009/05/english-words-which-look-like-their-meaning/ his idea does not exactly match mine but he has started a decent list of words that look like their meaning. Also one of the comments has a decent name: onomableva, coming from the greek words "name" and "to resemble".

If you don't know what i am talking about the best example is the word: bed. Which looks like a classic bed that has tall post on either side.

Carl says that the words must be nouns. Which is a complete lie because the first one I ever noticed was: awkward. I would say awkward is an awkward looking word. Look at the wkw, where else do you see a wkw? And you have the k sitting in the middle of a bunch of short letters like some fifth grader who hit puberty early and is clumsily trying to fit in but everyone around him is a w and he just stands their awkwardly.

The main issue with these words is that you pretty much have to make an argument for each word. You can't just be like "fast is onomableva"* and be done with it in the same way buzz is obviously onomatopoeia. So we would have to create a committee that would vote on each word up for onomableva, and then create a dictionary of these words. It would probably end up as a side quirk to English in the same way there are hundreds of funky math things that nobody knows or cares about. Like Happy Numbers. 7 is a happy number because if you add the squares of it's digits, and repeat the process you will eventually reach 1 where it loops endlessly. What is the point of that? It's cool to math nerds, and thats basically it. Onomableva is an English nerd thing and that is it's purpose.

*fast is onomableva because it is a short word and takes practically no time to say.

examples of onomableva according me and Carl (I am not including the ones that I did not agree with):
awkward - wkw
fast - quick word to say
I - looks like a person standing. especially the lowercase i
bed- looks like a bed
four - has four letters
abbr. - it's an abbreviation for abbreviation
committee - bit of a stretch but, there are typically three people in charge such as the Chair person the     treasurer and the secretary and then there is just members,. C is the chair, stands at the front, O is the treasurer, because coins are round, and I is the secretary because they sit between the other members and write down the goings-on, and "mmttee" are the rest of the faceless crowd that makes up the group.

There would also be an argument for words that look like the opposite of what they mean.
like "abbreviation" it's twelve letters long. That is not abbreviated at all. We can call these words unomableva or nonomableva. or the ironic Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia  meaning fear of long words. Or how about long, that's 4 letters.

If anybody comes up with more onomableva's  please leave them in the comments and we can commence the committee of  onomableva.