cats and bananas

I've come to the conclusion that my cats would starve if they were locked in a fruit store. On occasion, I've tried feeding them grapes, bananas, apples and they simply turn up their feline noses as if to say "as if !". this led me to wonder about how bananas grow and I learned about blue plastic, and banana hands and banana fingers. Even low tech (bananas) has its own vocabulary. This web site is based in the UK and offered this insight: "Buyers of fruit in the UK want unbruised bananas" (wow! how weird!), and has the wrong spelling (!) for common words like center (centre) and pounds (kg).

As I wandered across this site, I found numerous mentions of Fair Trade and wonder whether that will ever be successful given that most consumers buy whatever is cheapest, and care little about the product's origin. This spans everything from coffee to electricity (clean, wind-powered electricity costs more than coal but how many people will pay 50% more to have a cleaner conscience?).

I tried to locate a business using the new Google : Search by Location thing, but it just didn't work for me. Part of this may be due to the ZIP code split (1 July 2001) when the post office horizontally split my old ZIP code into 2 (due to projected growth). They gave us one year to inform everyone who mailed us, and most of the large companies automatically discovered my new ZIP all by themselves. But, it seems a LOT of people still haven't gotten the message. I commonly encounter web sites which tells me that my ZIP code does not exist (I then feed it the old ZIP code and it's happy).

Perhaps I should organize a large-scale revolt by those of us with the new ZIP code! We refuse to buy anything from someone who is too cheap to update their ZIP code database! I could use Meetup: Organizing local interest groups or any of the myriad web sites which do this stuff.

Finally, I was amused to see a pinwheel Tractor Spinner .. I've always been soothed by kites, wind socks, and such and have bought from Into The Wind in the past.