HA! Froot Loops = “Smart Choice”

Check out this article from Grist: http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-08-big-foods-smart-choices-label-raises-eyebrows-at-the-fda/

highlights include:

1. A discussion of government dietary guidelines “that allow you to eat Froot Loops and M&Ms for breakfast, a cheeseburger for lunch and 3 slices of pepperoni pizza for dinner”

2. the cynicism-inducing news that the FDA’s food safety advisor, Mike Taylor, used to be an executive for Monsanto and is in favor of food irradtion (wtf??)

3. a link to the Twitter feed / website of Fair Food Fight, an organization committed to food justice and Mexican wrestling

Dr. Eileen Kennedy’s (of Tufts) analysis of consumer decision-making is also a must-read.

The US might be well-served by a solid consumer protection organization like the one in Australia that actually managed to remove sugary cereals from major supermarkets (I couldn’t find a box of Frosties to save my life while I was there). This AU government agency acts along those lines: http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/142

In the meantime, we will continue to be reminded of how much our lives are controlled by big, profit-driven businesses, who may go to great lengths to feign interest in the well-being of everyday people, as long as they don’t actually have to care.

This article (also from Grist) about the ongoing battle between coal miners in West Virginia and the mining companies also helps to illustrate the issue:

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-07-labor-day-of-infamy/

It doesn’t matter that Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was raised in a mining town, and should therefore be able to relate to the plight of the “blue collar” coal miners (a kind of demographic that so many politicians are claiming to represent) – he still allows his company to blast the tops off of mountains, strip mine, and bust unions.

I’m going to stop now before this turns into an extended rant about my issues with capitalism (which would include the obligatory internal conflict over how I’ve benefited from capitalism).

Please enjoy the Mexican wrestling flavor of FairFoodFight.org.

goofy news from the BBC

“Girls ‘born with fear of spiders’ “

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8237691.stm

I originally read this article in Spanish, where the headline reads “Temerosas por naturaleza” or “[Women] afraid of nature”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/ciencia_tecnologia/2009/09/090904_2314_aranas_mujeres_miedo_gm.shtml

The general response has been “w t f.” Does anyone else think this just sounds like bad science? For example, maybe the babies looked at the picture of the smiling person longer because they like to look at smiling people, and the spiders had nothing to do with this… it seems like there should have been some control portion of the study with only people and no spiders to see which face the babies looked at longer.

Also, how does the Spanish version of the article manage to extrapolate from spiders to all of nature? And why on earth is the headline different in Spanish than in English?

Overall, though, the whole thing is just too comical to be angry about it. I mean, really? This is what scientists are trying to figure out right now – whether women are genetically predisposed to being scared of crawly things?

Other comments:

Anjali: “if women are supposed to protect their offspring from dangerous creatures such as spiders, wouldn’t they be LESS afraid of them so that they could kill them?
because when you are afraid you lose control and freak out….”

Erin: “I also like how he assumes that men have no instinct to protect their children, that hunting requires “risk-taking” rather than patience or caution, and women “in their role as natural child protectors” would be fearful instead of strong. I love it when science is used to reinforce gender stereotypes!”

Caroline: “I guess I just missed out on that “child-protector” instinct… I kill spiders with abandon… annnnnd bare hands. Booya, science! And my brothers cower in the corner when it comes to spiders. lol. “

creativity : )

the fruits of today’s running around:

canvases

acrylic paint (red, blue, yellow, black, white)

paintbrushes

photo paper

ceramic tiles (to be broken, for mosaic-ing)

library card for NY Public Libraries

Basil is lookin pretty good too! And the oregano and rosemary (though they’re a bit blurry today).

Tomorrow:

stools for the kitchen

photographs for the hallway

Eventually:

Stained glass paint

To those of you who have been asking for pictures of the apartment, I haven’t posted any yet because we haven’t finished decorating. But you’ll see some soon!

“that sounds like preet soup” [Max]

This soup was the result of a craving for leeks and rosemary potatoes, and a lack of vegetable bullion (thank you, Fine Fare, for only selling beef, chicken, and shrimp bullion cubes). This is also a LOT of soup. I can only cook in the quantities of the bunches they sell at the farmers’ market. I apologize for a complete lack of measurements – any numbers below may as well be made up. Just add things until your proportions look / smell like something you would want to eat.

leeks (5 or 6?)

carrots (also 5 or 6?)

potatoes (7 or 8 small ones)

white beans (1 lb dry, or more if you like beans)

zucchini (I had 3 really gigantic ones, so 4-5 normal ones)

rosemary (preferably fresh, chopped a little) (lots of it)

fennel seed (ground, if possible) (lots of it)

garlic (chopped) (~ 5 or 6 cloves)

green tea (in a tea bag, preferably) (2 tea bags)

salt

black pepper

olive oil

white vinegar

Put the beans in a vessel of sorts to soak in water for about 1 hr. Start about 2(ish) gallons of water boiling in a stock pot. Add rosemary, fennel, and green tea. Let this boil while you chop your potatoes, leeks, carrots, and zucchini (bite-sized kind of pieces, but not so small that they will disappear in the soup, like potatoes and zucchini do sometimes).

Sometime in the middle of cutting vegetables, toss about half of the chopped garlic into the water. Add a few tablespoons of olive oil (3? 4?) and a couple of tablespoons of vinegar. Toss in some salt as well. This does not all need to boil for the full hour that the beans are soaking, as long as it stays hot. You can also steep the herbs in water for longer if you want.

After the beans have soaked, add them to the water and bring it to a boil again. When the beans are almost done (just squish one or taste one – they should still be a little bit hard, but chewable), add the potatoes. Keep a close eye on these. Once they start to get a little bit soft, add the zucchini, carrots, and leeks. Add salt, pepper, garlic, etc. to taste. Once the vegetables are cooked to a tenderness that you like (and the potatoes and beans are all the way done), you’re ready! yay soup!

“like any hot-blooded woman, I simply want an object to crave…”

[alanis morissette]

it’s official. i don’t know what i want. this is a lot of fun. and i think that saying that i want anything more definite than maybe right now would just be lying, especially because of all of the reservations i’ve managed to raise in my head. sooo it’s probably better to just not talk about it. i finally think that you have the right approach here.

in more exciting news, i made new friends! yay for meeting new people who also don’t have the energy for the “so where you from?” conversation…

I also met a woman in my program who graduated from USC in 2007. Since this is Anjali’s year, I thought she might know her… so I asked, “oh, where you involved in any-” and she interrupted me to say “sororities?”

….. that is not what i was going to say. i was going to say “student organizations” (of course). and she said, “oh i was involved in some other stuff!” “like what?” “Pepsters.”

…. and so of course, she does not know Anj, and the douche-bagery associated with USC has just been reinforced in my head. I mean, I’m sure she’s a nice person, and at the very least her heart is in the right place (she’s doing the exact same program at TC as me, after all), but if her experience at USC consisted of sororities and Pepsters, i’m pretty sure we’re not on the same page… yet.

And on the subject of cool moms, our new roommate (subletter) has an awesome mom, with whom i talked extensively about women’s collectives. she walked into my room and saw the Sublime poster on my wall (yes, i took it from the house… i’m sorry if you miss it, but please know that it makes my life complete) and said “Hey! I have that shirt!”

she has this poster as a shirt. yes.

so cheers for awesome subletters (and amazing roommates – I would be so lost here without Anj). and also for a magical saturday, that involved an inordinate amount of “firsts.” : )

in spite of what i wrote yesterday…

I realized that all the friends that I already have in NY are women (which is amazing, don’t get me wrong). I’m coming from having these wonderful feminist men around me – who I can always call on for anything – to no men at all, and having to start all over with finding men I can trust. It’s a little bit scary, really.

Being around babies so much the last couple of days (cousins) has made me realize how much I miss the cats. Willoughby in particular, and Skye…

My baby cousins have this keyboard toy thing that has like a “demo” button, which plays instrumentals of a whole bunch of kids’ songs, like Yankee Doodle, Row Row Row Your Boat, and a honky-tonk version of Ode to Joy. It also, however, plays Silent Night. WTF? Not only is that a Christmas carol, it’s also a really religious song. Why is that okay? What’s even weirder is that I realized that I know all of the words to Silent Night. That’s even worse than still knowing all of the words to all of the songs on Mariah Carey’s Daydream despite not having listened to the album in 7 years. In my opinion. Okay, maybe they’re both pretty bad. Either way, it feels a little off to be indoctrinating 9 month old pagan babies with the tune of Silent Night.

And now, cats!

This is a terrible picture of Willoughby, but it’s the only one I have on my computer… I’m sorry! The other is Skye (in the laundry basket), free wherever she may be!

after conducting a thorough study of the population, I have come to the conclusion that men are scum.

I have heard way too many stories lately of women I know, women in my family, getting physically abused by their husbands and shunned by their fathers. It’s terrifying. I feel like you can’t trust men that you just meet in places… but apparently you can’t really trust men you know, either.

My aunt was telling me that she hopes she can raise her daughters to be strong enough to walk away from something like that, God forbid it should ever happen to them, or better, strong enough to never get themselves in such a situation in the first place. She kind of suggested that i might be tha tkind of person, and i realized then that, while i have always thought myself to be, i certainly don’t feel that way right now. Not with how vulnerable i’ve made myself lately, with the amount of weakness and lack of self control i’ve displayed this summer, and especially the last few weeks.

I’m really starting to understand the differenct between physical chemistry and emotional connection… or rather, i’m realizing that i have a very, very, very hard time distinguishing the former from the latter.

And so, armed with this new information about myself, I am about to embark on a whole new leg of this journey, in which, hopefully, regrets in will be diminished by really, actually moving on.

all troops surrounding the heart, stand down

apparently i have no emotional self-defense. i could never lie to keep myself from getting hurt, or evidently not even for the sake of my self-respect. my only mode of operation, both in situations of emotional calm and panic, is to put myself out there completely and make myself vulnerable to the other person (whether they realize it or not).

i regret that this is what i’m thinking about the morning that i’m leaving for New York.

Until yesterday, I thought I was having a great summer… then I realized how bittersweet it’s been, because of the one thing that I’ve been thinking about constantly, that has kept me from really being totally free… and although that’s been arguably involuntary, I still regret it. I regret not having had the mental or emotional strength to avoid getting tied up in it.

On that note, however, I would like to thank my co-op family for loving me so much that I’ll never need anyone or anything else, even though I haven’t fully realized that yet.

oh, world…

listening to John Bolton (former Ambassador to the UN) on the Daily Show just made me realize how much I secretly love IR. Or maybe it’s just the only thing that I can pretend to know anything about, thanks to four years of fake learning.

Of course Imagine by John Lennon is playing on Pandora as I start to write this… in a weird way, watching the Daily Show has been quite possibly the only thing that is connecting me to who I was a few months ago. I.e. someone who kept up with the news, who studied world affairs and was passionate about them and was concerned for humanity. It’s not so much that I’m not that person anymore, as that I don’t feel like I’m that person right now, because I’m not around other people who are like that, nor am I in any situation that forces me to think about those things. I’m hoping to regain consciousness when I move to NY and go back to school.

The same is true for generally not really living by my values, or at least the values that I feel like I’ve been sincerely trying to live by for the last few years. I’m not really around other people who are encouraging that… Not so much that the people in my immediate surrounds right now are discouraging that, but rather that no one is pushing me to practice what I’m preaching (in my head).

Of course, being in NY, I will be immediately confronted with all of the injustices that bother me. And I’m sure I’ll be back to my old neurotic self, who can’t spend less than 45 minutes in the grocery store (because I have to read all the labels on everything) and who can’t spend more than $6 on an article of clothing (because that’s the most anything costs at Goodwill).

I’ve managed to surround myself this summer with some of the beautiful things in the world… the Arkansas River Valley in Colorado, Chino Hills State Park in my backyard, birds outside my window and bunnies in my neighborhood… and I’m about to be submerged in a concrete jungle, surrounded by some of the deepest depths of human suffering and ugliness, disguised as feats of genius and conquest (of course, conquest tends to be inherently ugly). But there will be bright spots. That’s why I’m doing things the way that I am.

Somewhere over the rainbow….

living in a vacuum (part 1, i suppose)

Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Robert McNamara… crazy week in history.

in other news, i have two goals for the future:
1. get a license to drive a motorcycle
2. get a commercial drivers’ license, so i can drive things with more than 4 wheels.

and now, we return to Selling My Childhood on Craigslist, followed by Putting College in a Cardboard Box in the Closet Next to the Box That I Put High School In.