renaissance poisson

first there was some good news this morning: families displaced by hurricane katrina will receive debit cards good for $2,000 to spend on clothing and other immediate needs.

alas no good news can last for long.

in the very same article alaska governor frank murkowski, a republican (quelle surprise!), said he had concerns about the potential for abuse. "That's a lot of money. The question is how do you separate the needy from those who just want a $2,000 handout".

well, i tell ya, frank -- i guess it takes one to know one when it comes to abuse. you're the governor of alaska, which has just gotten itself the mother of all pork barrel projects, a $223 million bridge to an island with 50 people.

how you asshole dare to even open your big, fat, crooked mouth is beyond me. how any decent conservative can stand not to denounce you is beyond me. how any self-proclaimed christian can support people like you, oh man, i hope your god is watching.

of a problem, the new US energy bill changes daylight saving time starting in 2007. yeah, that's what's gonna make good sense, changing a system that's been in place for 18 years, and that is connected to every other country's system. nevermind that i actually think DST is bullshit and if any change should be made to it, it ought to be abolished and companies should be encouraged to offer flex time (since that has a whole lot of other positive side effects), and people should be rewarded for keeping their energy bills low.

whoever came up with this should be tied to an anthill, covered with honey. i wonder if anyone has calculated the approximate worldwide cost for the switch. not like the US would care, really. we ought to boycott their idiocies. but even internally, that's a lot of software and gadgets that'll have to be changed. i almost feel sorry for the airlines.

small saving grace is that apparently as part of the new law, the secretary of energy has nine months after the enactment of the act to report to congress the impact the change in daylight saving time would have on future energy consumption in the us. hello! how about doing studies before signing something into law?

[edit: daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time, daylight SAVING time ...]

warning: high rant content.

i didn't have organic chemistry in highschool, and i've never been much interested in potable alcohol from the typical end user's point of view -- i don't like its effects when drunk, neither on myself nor on many other people -- so my recent investigations into perfumery have given me some surprises.

see, i've been trying to find a high-percentage, pure-as-possible (90-95%) ethyl alcohol, in order to experiment with making alcohol-based perfumes -- essential oils dissolve nicely in it, and it's a super preservative. it's what professional perfumers use. i just want a small bottle, like half a litre. do you think that's possible to buy anywhere in this town of 80,000 people? apparently not. drugstores feature isopropyl and rubbing alcohol, and they have a strong smell, totally unsuitable. hardware stores carry methanol and a variety of denatured ethanols, all of which are not stuff i want to have sit on my skin. liquor stores offer at best vodka, which is only 40%, and carries a hefty price tag. i could get it, though i haven't found a canadian online source yet, from a chemical supply house -- but i don't want to buy a 55 gallon drum, for heaven's sakes. getting it from the US is bound to cause all sorts of cross-border trouble, and it's not like the US is any more sensible about alcohol than canada. anything i can get locally is poisonous crap. WTF? we're not talking about weapons-grade plutonium here.

so i do a little more research. and if i understand this correctly, ethanol (ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol) is the "good" alcohol, the safest, least toxic of the lot, the stuff people drink, and what should be used in perfumes. methanol (methyl alcohol, methyl hydrate, wood alcohol), on the other hand, is a "bad" alcohol, it's highly toxic, metabolises into formaldehyde and formic acid, and can have severe degenerative effects on the retina and the central nervous system if drunk; the fumes alone aren't the cat's meow. isopropanol is somewhere in between, not quite as toxic as methanol, but more so than ethanol.

y'all probably knew this already, but i can be naive about things that never popped up on my radar: methanol appears to be a very typical thing industry puts into perfectly good ethanol to create "denatured alcohol" (which means "made unsuitable to drink"), to not have to pay the heavy taxes governments put on drinking alcohol.

i am probably really, really late with my upset, but this is outrageous. i can't get a small amount of clean alcohol to make perfume, instead i have a choice between stuff that's toxified or too thin, because my government thinks anyone who drinks booze ought to pay through the nose for it, and besides, we're apparently not adult enough to handle >40%. i wonder how many people end up in hospital each year drinking those toxified alcohols, and what that costs me, the tax payer, in turn; nevermind the human cost.

you know, that still i was talking about? now i am considering making my own alcohol. wanna bet it's illegal, even for personal use? those fuckers.

i'm clearly bucking the trend: the older i get, the more anarchist i turn, and the less respect i have for the overwheening nannydom of governments.

p.s. yes, i know i can use oils carriers rather than alcohol. but that's a different thing altogether.