Valentine’s Day the Anti-Hallmark Way

Valentine’s Day is undeniably one of the more sickeningly commercial holidays, but it doesn’t have to be.  This year, why not refrain from giving anything with a bar-code printed on it?  Cut a paper heart, bake your sweetie their favorite sweet, pen a not-so-frequent-now-we’re-married love note, or take those oft requested but always denied nudie photos.

If you just aren’t a from-scratch person, pay an artisan – not Hallmark – to do the crafty work for you.

Drinking, Marathons, & Hel-Imps

This year, I resolve to not run a marathon and to drink half my weight in ounces of water a day.

I really kind of hate New Year’s resolutions.  Mostly because of me, not them.  Honestly, I never make them because I know I won’t keep them.  This will be the first I’ve ever made, so I better come through on it, I guess.  Don’t worry about me if I don’t, though.  One of my best traits is that I pretty much never feel guilty about anything.

This is where the self-helpers/self-improvers out there begin to pity me.  (From now on, I will refer to these types of folks as Hel-Imps, because I feel clever right now.)  Here’s my interpretation of their pity: “She’s never kept, much less made, any resolution in her life?!  I guess she’s never run a marathon, then.  Sweet Moses, how does she live with herself?!”  I just do.  And it’s awesome.

My stereotyping here comes from real life experience, of course.  All Hel-Imps I have ever known are obsessed with running marathons.  Why?  I don’t know, but I imagine it’s one of the things I’ll discover the answer to in heaven, along with a bunch of other, less important, things.

This guy I once worked for, who was one of the most extreme Hel-Imps I’ve ever known, and, therefore, loved to run marathons, once returned from a race in which two people died.  Yep, died.  From improving themselves.  Call me lazy, but I don’t really want to improve myself TO DEATH.

Death by self-improvement seems counter-productive, at best.  If a person has improved so much that it results in death, haven’t they really just gone full circle back to a most unimproved state?  I imagine so.

Now, you might be asking yourself, “Why is Beth anti-marathon?”  I’m not…exactly.  I am, however, having a hostile day, and I will absolutely never understand the point of marathon running.  It can’t be for the love of running.  One can run any where, any time.  Run with your dog, run while pushing your kid in a jogging stroller, run in the park.  I’m very pro-running.  I run a couple times a year.  I even have some awesome family friends who run marathons in Europe (which is cooler), but they are not Hel-Imps.

This leads me to conclude that my problem is not really with marathons, but rather with Hel-Imps.  It seems to me that all the Hel-Imps I’ve known run marathons just so they can say they have, and so they can find a way to drop the statement “I’m training for a marathon” into every conversation.  It’s the pinnacle of Hel-Impishness.  And, I guess it’s just not as cool to scrapbook a page for “The Day I Ran Around My Neighborhood for Six Hours”.

Anyhoo… water.  I’m going to start drinking the recommended daily amount – half my body weight in ounces.  Which is 55 (just kidding).

I figure one can’t even feign health if they’re not drinking enough water.  And, seeing as last year sucked for me in the health department, water-drinking seems like wise and reasonable goal.

Oh.  I also plan to pee a lot.  If I keep my first resolution, this one should be easy enough.

Christmas Rage

Britain rocks. This post over at GOOD brought a little hardcore joy to my day.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the UK’s “Christmas Number One,” or the movie Love, Actually for that matter, I’ll do a little explaining.  The week preceding Christmas, Brits rank the bestselling singles and crown number one Number One.  (In the aforementioned movie, it’s Bill Nighy’s character’s “festering turd of a record.”)

In real life, however, Rage Against the Machine’s 1992 Killing in the Name has taken the lead over Simon Cowell’s production due to the success of a facebook campaign.  Supposedly, the group’s goal is to upset the famous Upsetter (and raise money for a homeless charity).

Now, I’ve heard Killing in the Name more than I like to remember, especially during what I will refer to as my younger brother’s “Rage Stage,” but it beats another nauseating, factory made song any day.

Now if, like me, you are thinking “Maybe the other song isn’t so bad; maybe it’s a little bit good – pretty, even.  I can’t be so judgmental without knowing.  My wisdom is not flawless…. …  Who am I kidding?  This is pop culture we’re talking about, so of course it’s horrible!  It’s got to be!  Enough.  I’ll just listen to it.  But only to affirm my amazing intuition…”

Yep.  Festering turd alright.  (Exercise your gag reflex by clicking here.)

Note:  Double joy!  I just learned that the “The Climb” is an effing cover of a Miley Cyrus song!  I don’t believe it gets any worse than that.

UPDATE:  Rage won!  (I wrote this entry last week and never posted it, actually.  As of yesterday, the victor was decided.)

Sugar Stacks

A label can tell you there are 39 grams of sugar in your soda, but what does that much sugar look like?

Back in May of this year, a web site called Sugar Stacks was launched to help consumers actually visualize the amount of sugar found in common food items.  They use “regular sugar cubes (4 grams of sugar each) to show how the sugars in your favorite foods literally stack up, gram for gram”.

Note that they don’t differentiate between different types of sugar, they just use cubes of white sugar as a visual aid.

Support Local, DAM It!

I know.  It’s been over five weeks since I last posted.  Sorry, friends.

This is a happy reminder that the next DAM (Downtown Art Market) will be this upcoming Saturday the 12th.  Ben & I will attend as consumers this time around, which means I’ll post more on my Local Christmas Challange later.

Thanks to our friends who bought produce from our garden last month.  It was such a blessing.  (Betenbough stopped by and made a donation!)

Dumbfounding Moment of the Day

My friend Amanda sent this to me this morning.   Watch and be flummoxed:

Um, I’m speechless.  Just…wow.  Please, I hope she doesn’t procreate.

A Very Local Christmas

Ben and I went to the Lubbock Downtown Art Market a couple weekends ago to promote efforts at starting a Downtown Farmers Market.  This was the third ever monthly Art Market, however potential Farmers Market vendors were invited experimentally.  It was a success!  (Thanks to all our friends who stopped by!)

Inspired by all the local art, we decided to challenge ourselves to buy only local or handmade Christmas gifts this year.  This means that our gifts have to be bought from local artists, locally owned retailors, or hand made (by me, unless Ben wants to learn how to knit or something).  I’ll keep you updated on my progress (and, though hopefully not, cheats), as well as work on a post about my favorite local shops.

So far, I’ve bought a porcelain necklace, little ceramic dish, and porcelain buttons (for two of my knitting projects) from Summers Studio Pottery.

Here’s the  Art Market schedule for the rest of the year:  August 8, September 12, October 10, November 7, December 5.

It’s True, We “Can’t Live Without Spunk”

I’m still giggling over this…you’ll see.

Ask anyone that knows me well – I think Dasani is utterly disgusting and won’t drink it.  I’ve hated it since my first taste, soon after its introduction to plastic-bottled-beverage fridges everywhere.  I’ve always whined that it tastes like tap water, but not just any tap water.  Dasani tastes like bottled city park drinking fountain water.  Water of the kind that is acceptable to drink only when absolutely necessary.  Sure, I’m probably a brat about this, but seriously, just the smell of Dasani makes me a little sick.

So, I’ll admit that I was happy when (in 2004) this British PR fiasco revealed that Dasani is in fact water from a public source.  More disturbing, though, is this: A month after Coca Cola introduced Dasani to the British market, UK authorities found bromate, a suspected human carcinogen, in the water.  Coca-Cola immediately issued a recall and pulled the brand.  Apparently, bromate was not present in the water before the treatment process, but rather was a result of it.  (So maybe city park drinking fountain tap water is safer than Dasani?)

How I missed the following, though, I have no idea:

A month before the bromate discovery, Coca Cola launched Dasani in the UK with an advertising campaign that referred to the product as spunk (“bottled spunk” / “can’t live without spunk”)!  For those of you with a less-than-broad sexual lexicon, “spunk” means “semen”.  Mmmmmm, bottled semen!  How did their advertising department miss this?!  While I know that this is technically a British English slang term, I know what it means!  So, I thought maybe I’ve just read too many British novels or watched too many British shows.  But Ben knows what it means, too.  I asked him today, and his response was not “It means ‘fortitude.’”

Anyway, Congress has shocked us all by announcing this month that it finds the need to regulate….Yes, bottled water, in this rare case of government sanctioned control.  You can read the how’s and why’s over at GOOD and the NY Times.  In short, they sent letters to 13 companies requesting more information about the source of their water and how it is tested.  While Pepsi and Nestle both disclose that Aquafina and Pure Life come from “public water sources,” Coke so far won’t admit to Dasani’s water sites and sources.

While you should feel free to ask Coke to disclose this information to its end users, I say just don’t consume it.

Inescapable Monsanto

There’s a frown inducing Food Policy Friday blog over at Eat. Drink. Better. (from two weeks ago, sorry, I’m behind on posting).

Once upon a time, Ben and I were optimistic that Mr. President would appoint advisers who aren’t actually Corporate Tools, especially in the long-villainous ag and food departments.  But alas, “hope” and “change” are not to be applied across the board.

Monsanto is a whole other blog (or series of blogs).  But, in case you are unfamiliar, I’ll explain that I have no greater disdain for any other American entity (and that is saying something).  In reading and learning about American health, food, and farming one inevitably comes across Monsanto many times.  And let me tell you, their story reads like an unreal, pre-apocalyptic sci-fi horror story.  You just wouldn’t even believe.

But alas, these are the people making policy.  So it goes.

What’s On My Food?

Last week, the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) launched their new searchable online database, What’s On My Food?.

The website uses data gathered from the EPA’s Pesticide Reregistration Status, the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program, and PAN’s own Pesticide Info Database and compiles the information into easy-to-understand graphs and charts, placing each chemical in one of four categories (Carcinogen, Hormone Disruptor, Neurotoxin, or Developmental/Reproductive Toxin).  You can search by food item or chemical.

So lets look at strawberries, for example.  Captan (a known carcinogen) is found 70.1% of the time and Myclobutanil (a developmental or reproductive toxicant and suspected hormone disruptor) is found 34.7% of the time in conventional strawberries.  These chemicals were not found (0.0% of the time) in domestic organic strawberries.

Some domestic organic produce does still contain pesticide residue.  Domestic organic apples, for instance, are found to contain an average of 0.004 micrograms of Thiabendazole (a probable carcinogen) 20% of the time, versus an average of 42.5 micrograms 89.7% of the time for conventional apples.

The USDA tries to prepare the food the same way you would so most foods are washed and/or peeled before testing.  Many pesticides are systemic, however, meaning they are actually absorbed by the plant.

I know I don’t buy all organic, all the time, but this is a good resource to use when deciding which conventional fruit is most toxic and should be avoided.  While I still think any fresh fruit or vegetable is better than none at all, it’s rather disturbing to be so vividly reminded that I’m not eating just a strawberry or an apple – I’m eating, and my body is absorbing but not eliminating, all the toxins too.