Drunk Mar 22, 2010 at 1:16 pm

Comments

1
And! Leonard is reading at Powell's tonight:

http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Ev…
2
Oh, duh, I forgot to mention that!
3
Water was also discussed on this morning's "Think Out Loud" on OPB...http://www.opb.org/thinkoutloud/shows/water-bottle-or-tap/.
4
I'm forgainst water.
5
Also, since it's World Water Day, this is worth looking at (especially if you want to keep a water bottling plant out of the Columbia River Gorge):

http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/p/dia/…
6
Ned you may already know this, but you can bring an empty bottle to the airport and fill it up with tap at a drinking fountain after you go through security. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but it is allowed.
7
@Ned. You obviously don't live in the Gorge like I do, otherwise you would know that the water bottling plant would be a huge boon to the area. We are hurting out here, and need any jobs that come our way.
8
Bottled water is perceived as evil for some very good reasons. But, just like everything in the American worldview, we tend to jack it out of proportion where it doesn't need to be or ignore the peril where there is one.

Within certain limits, I suppose having a supply bottled water is necessary. Some places are hundreds of miles away from a water main. In Ned's narrative, buying bottled water for or in places where the supply can't be completely trusted or depended upon has its virtue. And the plant Jocie mentioned in the Gorge might indeed turn out to the all-round benefit of the Gorge communities and economy.

The plague that is bottled water - to the degree that it is - stem from the treatment of water as a lifestyle commodity. In most of America you can get water from the tap that is just as good as the bottled water you get (did you know that municipal water supplies have to meet more stringent standards than bottled water?) from the store, but people, abstracted into demographics and drunk (if you will) on image and lifestyle status, want something in plastic container, preferably with palm trees, a Europeanish label, or some cleverly-designed logo … even here in Portland, where the city water is pretty much better than just about everywhere else (should be, with the rates we pay for it).

The root of the problem is that the companies marketing bottled water hit on the way to associate it with fashionable lifestyles, and turned it from a staple into a fashionable accessory. Americans, fad sluts that we are, followed right along.
9
Jocie, what's wrong with that economy in the gorge? Are there no more logging or commercial fishing jobs? Oh, right you killed those already. What about those dams? Can't you get a job at one of those? They were supposed to provide jobs weren't they? I guess our last option is to suck all the water out of that river and ship it to Malibu. What is wrong with you!?

Please wait...

and remember to be decent to everyone
all of the time.

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