Employees, Consumers Deplore Waste

Bookstores toss resources, bad books out of the door. Yes, tearing off the covers and dumping is an old industry practice, but with the dwindling amount of natural resources, some carefulness is warranted.

I read this book, Affluenza, and it was a really flawed look at American excess. - They say you don't need a computer! But they forget many jobs don't take paper applications, and that with all the school work your child is doing using computers nowadays, you'll need to drive your OMG WASTEFUL car to the library so they can have access. And of course, the cure for American excess is to conspiciously consume 'green' items, and to be an edgy Adbusters lover. They of course also lack a real class or racial analysis of the issue, and are the sorts who complain about our kids playing violent video games, when common sense would tell you that children should play kids games like Cooking Mama or Mario and only adults should play violent video games.

I think a lot of our excess can be pared down by sharing and recycling. I just gave a woman tons of old manga from the 90s. I gained more space, and the woman gained some enjoyment for her child. Win-win.

Why You Won't See Haiti Listing In My Shop

It's actually pretty simple. If you spent $25 in my shop, and I gave $15 to Haiti, truly, it's just not very efficient. You could have just gone to amazon and gave a whole $25 to the Mercy Corps or gone to the Red Cross and given your entire $25 to them. Having me as the middle man weakens your contribution. Not to mention, I would personally give to established charities- even Wyclef Jean's Yele has come under scrutiny for personal enrichment off charity, and random etsy sellers are actually much less transparent than that. I think a recurring gift might be best, because months and months on, charities will still be helping people recover from the quake.

I don't believe in the awareness model. People don't care if we're 'aware', they care if we're actually helping them.

I don't care about all natural

People can say anything is 'natural' and just because it might be doesn't make it better. In a soap, I'm looking for hardness[is it hard? does it get all goopy in the shower?], shower fragrance[does it smell good in shower?], out of shower fragrance[does it smell good on skin?], and moisturizing and skin feel[does it make my skin feel soft? does it have ripples that feel good on skin?] I tend to gravitate away from flower scents, and towards unisex.

Note that no where on this list- which is quite extensive for a layperson, is 'naturalness'

We're Wasting Supplies

H&M; Walmart waste clothing. We also have so much old clothing in the US that we've destroyed some African clothing markets because we dump our stuff there. I think soon we will have to learn to reuse things, and maybe stores could tighten inventory. Just dumping useable cloth is not the way to go.

Tiny Niblets

How Twitter Works by Patrick Neilson Hayden

The Boxing Day Disaster. I try to use gift bags to try to cut down on the waste, but it can still get pretty bad. My brother packaged some gifts in old appliance boxes, which was good.

dear the entire internet

Seems like etsy is going through some restructuring.

I need to put my pedal to the metal because January is coming. For some reason, people enjoy buying jewelry after Christmas.

Man, I Wish We Had a Craft Business Nightmares...

I love Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. People with a lack of business sense try to open restaurants[i.e. they have dog poop in the kitchen, frozen food on the menu,etc] and Ramsay comes in and says WTF? IT SHOULDN'T TAKE 30 MINUTES TO PUT SOME ICEBERG LETTUCE INTO A BOWL! Since getting into the crafts business is so much easier than the restaurant business[I bet you could get in with an initial $100 investment] I bet even more egregious messups are being covered up by folks saying that their detractors are just jealous...

Bacteria in Lotion

...don't use lotion from people who are worried about naturalness more than health.

Angry Nerds Cause Bad Publicity

Nerds who put many hours of work into rules summaries, unique cards and the like for their board games have their work deleted. 

More geek rage.

Personally, that's short sighted. The problem with board game fandom is that we're a little...intense...about our games. Hose one person's files, and all his or her board gaming buddies will hear and hear and hear about it. And new games are coming out all the time it seems- if one company pisses off the fans, there are tons of others hungry for the business...

Hey, I don't like this poll design!

You have to basically answer 'etsy sucks', unless you want to be some sort of jerk who says that everyone with an issue with etsy , no matter whether it's the folks who pick the front page's obsession with white women being attacked by clothing to too many resellers is a whiner.

And saying bad things about other sellers is just bad business. Not only are sellers buyers, and you just called them all lazy whiners who suck at life, it just smacks of hypocrisy. If whining is what people who don't focus on business do, and you're whining about that...hmm...

I need to advertise my free shipping sale more, but I have more than one tab open. I can blog and advertise at the same time.

Etsy is finally responsible!

Instead of RAH RAH POSTIVITY EVERYONE WHO HAS A LOGICAL QUESTION ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS PLAN IS JUST JEALOUS! etsy has produced an actual sensible business related article that even has profit mentioned!

This sort of thing is why I am a hobbyist. People in business can't just run off and spend all their earnings on beads- they have to grow their business, working to cultivate new markets, and making new product lines. You can't just take a day off to play video games!

Black Folks Love Twitter

I thought a lot of trending topics were amenable to my interests!  The net is for everyone!

I made two items yesterday, but I need to do some photo editing before I can post pictures on the web.

Dear etsy

Really, we don't want people who already get extra promotion to get more off the backs of our shops. When I promote me, I promote me. I'm not promoting who is hip on the etsy scene today. I might personally like their stuff, or think their stuff is horrid, but those folks can promote themselves on their own.

Artfire Drama

Man, folks are being threatened and there's wackiness! I also hear about 20 folks were muted over the kerfuffle, and that even more allegations will surface soon. Also, part of the forums has disappeared too.

I'm sort of bummed. It's as if my jewelry making ability isn't very creative lately. I just need more beads, I think

Guerrila Advertising

This photo amused me.

Allegations are flying!

Will Lime Crime answer them? I hear the field of mineral makeup is difficult, with people worrying about resalers all the time. Sadly, in the field of jewelry, I'm just here waiting for my beads to arrive. I guess the lesson from the kerfuffle about this is maybe you guys should do some in the studio shots to show how unique you are, and worth the price? But the truth about me is that I make all my products in my room from beads I find on the internet.

Hey, it's the eye makeup liberation front!

It's nearly Christmas!

Hahaha. Yes, I've totally skipped Halloween- one of the best holidays ever! People in other countries, American Halloween is an all out extravagantsa involving costumes for adults, kids, and sometimes small animals! Kids eat so much candy they get sick! Pumpkins decorate the area for weeks on end![No, we don't know why the pumpkins. Someone blamed it on the Irish. And uh..turnips]. Women wear revealing 'costumes'. Men dress in drag! Much alcohol is drunk and costume contests blanket the land. HALLOWEEN FREAKING ROCKS!

But oh yea...I was going to talk about working on your brand steadily throughout the year, building your inventory and product line, and then getting a big climax at Christmas and the post Christmas season, instead of just hoping Christmas will shore up your failing business, but I haven't been doing much this year.

I was almost going to close down, but then I realized that I needed to sell things to buy more beads to make things and then I would be in the same 'I have too much jewelry' place where I started.

Oh flickr!

The tag person in your photo thing doesn't seem to fit. It seems to me that flickr is full of photographers, faux photographers, crafters and faux photojournalists. Tag the peron looks like the sort of thing you'd have on a site whose picture capability is more focused towards- 'so here's me at a party.' "here's me and the SO at the beach Hey honey!' 'here's my baby' sort of thing. It just doesn't seem to go.

I'm glad my thoughts don't control the universe

I forget the origin of this quote- 'my thoughts do not control the universe'. But I am glad that it is true that my thoughts do not control the universe.  I'm a small petty person who could not create even a Wii. Sometimes my thoughts get distorted like everyone's do. If my thoughts created the universe, there would be no hope for that. No evidence beyond my mind to marshall to explain how things will be alright. And it seems like a small blasphemy to say something as large and magnicent as the universe bends to the whims of mere humans. Most humans have difficulty truly picturing a trillion items, but the universe has trillions of stars. The operations of a single cell of our bodies is amazing beyond most people's imagining. So, let's not just focus on me, me, me- making the universe and any possible divine mysteries inside them turn on materialistic desires, but let's drive to find out how amazing everything is now.

A First for Cassowary Jewelry

I was on the front page of etsy! And I got a blog feature! 
Folks say the front page is no big deal, but I got 3 orders in my main shop today. This in a shop that used to average four sales a month.