What's your fuel?

Right: homemade organic

cheddar-jalapeño challah

In my house, we're kind of obsessed with food. Part of that is because we're naturally health nuts, part of it is because of dietary restrictions and food allergies. A third, more important part, is that we're both nuts about eating, and if it doesn't taste good, why bother?

I discovered earlier this year, for instance, that the reason I never liked bell peppers before was that I was eating conventionally grown peppers that taste like dirt. Organic bell peppers are sweet and crunchy, and delicious in just about everything.

Today on The Karel Show, the passionate host, Karel, spent an hour talking about how the Corporatization^TM of our food chain is poisoning us, making us fat, and increasing the prevalence of metabolic diseases to the extent that there is now a classification of illness called "metabolic diseases". To quote another favorite liberal talker:

OF COOOOOOOOOOOOOOURSE!!!

As crazy as it sounds, it's 100% true. Most of the available sustenance is half-artificial. Most of even our freshest fruits and vegetables are genetically modified, or at the very least grown in such a way that they are nutrient deficient and taste non-existent. Don't believe me? Do an experiment with me: purchase two of your favorite fruits or veggies, like a honeycrisp apple; one with a produce code that starts with a 3 or 4 (conventional), and one with a produce code that starts with a 9 (organic). If you're really feeling adventurous, grab one starting with an 8 (that's your GMO, bleh!). Take your fruit home and try each of them. What you're going to find is that the conventionally grown apple is soft and meally and has that waxy flavor that is only supposed to come from apples at the food bank. Meanwhile, the organic apple will be crisp and sweet and will taste like, huh, an apple.

Truthfully, most people actually don't know the difference between organic and non-organic foods -- and a part of that is because they avoid vegetables because they don't taste good. Or they were raised with canned veggies, and those are good enough. Except that their not. Things that come in cans, pretty universally don't have any nutrients.

The thing is, if you don't have time to pay attention to what you're eating, you need to reassess your priorities. The less time you devote to feeding your body what it needs -- not just something to put into your stomach, but nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and NOT preservatives, additives, or things that metabolize into formaldehyde in your liver -- the less time you're going to have to be alive.

The chemicals that Big Food is pumping us full of is causing more harm than the chemicals we get from Big Tobacco! Think about it. Do you know what monoglycerides are? I can't even figure out if "monoglycerides" is the plural or singular expression of that word! Is there a reason something with common ingredients to nitroglycerin is in food*? Is there a reason an ingredient has ingredients?!

We all know that these things are cheaper than actual food. And for some reason we've been socialized to think that the amount of food is more important than the quality of that food. And truthfully, an entirely organic diet is just as satisfying and not that much more expensive than a conventional diet. (And trust me, organic chocolate is so much better!) For some reason, the idea that money trumps value has been transferred from the people who make the garbage and sell it to us, through the "food", and into our subconscious minds.

Well, we're paying for it now. The money that we saved eating eggs made in factory farms, shrimp grown in pools with chicken coops suspended above them, and high fructose corn syrup, will eventually be spent on our healthcare bills. And then some. Having diabetes costs way more than you ever would have spent on bread made with sprouted whole grain instead of flour. It takes a lot more effort to deal with the impact these poisons have on our health than to avoid them in the first place. Just ask my friend Kelley.

Americans aren't fat because we eat too much and exercise too little. We're fat because our bodies are filled with garbage. And it's incredibly difficult to get that stuff out once its in. Start by drinking more water.

_____________________________________________

*If you can call it food.

Oh for-- really?

I have to admit that follow ForbesWoman on the Facebook. After their post this morning, however, I'm not entirely sure why. I'll save you the FB typos and just say that the post went to this article on Forbes.com. "Smart girls marry money". Sure, girls. Right.

Now, I personally don't believe in marriage (that's why I'm not married), and I honestly could give a crap about what other people do with their personal lives. My issue here is the sheer intellectual laziness and incongruence that is this entire 500 word article.

"It's time to start treating your life like reality," says the headline. "We live in a world that runs on dollars and good sense." And then goes on to advocate that women wake up to the fact that they're going to miserable 4evr unless they marry a man with a fat wallet. It's called the "Gold Digging Imperative". Marry a rich guy so that you can take vacations and get hot-stone massages instead of being a "lady lawyer, doctor, or MBA still slaving away after 40" like a man. EW!

The biggest problem with this article (and the viewpoint it promotes) is this:

"The average guy believes most gals are only looking for money, but the truth is too few of us are interested in their income at all. The modern gal is earning her own cash and is looking for emotional security.

Too bad it doesn't exist.

What's worse, national statistics show women suffer far more economically than men when marriages fail. With this in mind, we have some advice: Instead of looking for love, let's look out for our own security, the kind you can count in dollars and cents."

In essence, instead of preventing economic disparity after a failed marriage, marry someone who has way more money than you so that when he dumps your ass you get a huge alimony check. If you live in an alimony state, that is. Not to mention the fact that if a woman takes care of her own assets, marries, and then divorces, but still has those assets the economic disparity isn't going to to be as great. The other thing that it's important to remember here is that the perpetuation of the idea that men should be in control of the finances is what usually gets women into trouble at the end of their marriages. Sure, she pays the bills, buys the groceries, whatever; but he's in control of the debt. The house. The three water-logged boats sitting useless in the backyard.

Women fare worse in divorce because our society is set up to shit on them economically. We're taught, and teach each other, that we shouldn't worry about money, just find a man. We're discouraged from going into "masculine" fields of work, like engineering, law, medicine, when those fields pay more. And as a woman business owner, I have lost count of the number of people who have paid me less respect for my business prowess because I have a uterus. (Of course, my business is makeup, so I get a little more credit than the woman who owns a construction company. At least I'm in a field that I know something about.)

There are other issues with this segment too. For instance, assuming that the "average guy" thinks that women are only after money in relationships. That really should say "the average misogynist", which by my own research is about 15% of the male population (and an opposing 15% of the female population, including the authors of this book and the publishers of Forbes). The truth is, most guys I know are more interested in having a spouse to whom they feel themselves equal in all arenas, including finances. In relationships where there is a good deal of economic disparity, neither partner is happy.

The message is clear, ladies: marry a man who has lots of money so that you don't have to work. (And we wonder why certain conservative groups paint all poor people as being lazy...) And gentlemen: no matter how awesome she is, you're going to have to pay for it somehow or another. Let's just demean everybody, shall we?

However, in reality the bottom line is this: smart women make their own money, and most people marry within their own socioeconomic class. It's not a secret. Cinderella, the fairy tale upon which the "Gold Digger Imperative" is based, doesn't follow what happens to the girl after she marries Prince Charming. Do you really think they lived happily ever after?

For g-d's sake! Even the women who do become successful solely through the glory of their squacks have to work for it! Real life is going out and making it for yourself, not just depending on someone else (a man or otherwise) for your own fulfillment, happiness, and hot stone massages. It's the American dream!

Why does ForbesWoman hate America?

A few things we learned while flipping through the bios for WA state senate candidates

The Senate bios start on page 8.

1. Don't write about earth really being a spaceship.

2. Proof-reading should be done by someone who speaks English.

3. Hot air balloons don't have brakes.

4. There's no "u" in John Galt. That's the whole point of the question "Who is John Galt?".

5. Your bio should not feature a scene from a movie starring James Gandolfini. No less than a movie starring John Travolta should be quoted in any bid for national office. Have some goddamn respect.

6. The children of potato farmers can go on to win 3 Super Bowls in no other country than the United States. Amirka. Fuck yeah.

7. If you're a physicist, you should stick to physics. Any idiot can run for congress. Seriously, this is beneath you "Skip".

8. Once again, the person who proof-reads your bio needs to SPEAK ENGLISH.

9. Don't write your bio in iambic pentameter. Its next performance will be by George Takei on the Stephanie Miller show.

That is all. Please take these lessons with you in in the coming years, as they might come in handy should you ever choose to run for office.

Couldn't have said it better myself

So I won't. Via Ren.

I also believe in "truth in advertising" as it were...in so much that if a woman is dressed sexy, well, she might be interested in sex. HOWEVER, that does not mean she is interested in sex *with you* or any and every other man who might approach her. And sure enough, men who do NOT take no as an answer are fucking asshats. End of story. A woman could be half naked, drinking, doing your best friend on the bar and if she says "no" to you, well gee, men should take that as a no and move on. End of story. Not taking that no is one of those things that leads to rape, and well, gee, if the horrible hussy did not really mean it...well, she can look elsewhere and the dude who walked away has maybe just saved himself some future drama (and people say I am not a humanitarian?) And further more...it is not the job of women to police the behavior of men. End of story. Once y'all are past the stage when momma is bringing you up- you are on your own and responsible for your own behavior, and no woman owes you shit or is obligated to make sure you behave yourself. That there is what we call being "grown up."

Condoms, pulling out, abstinence, outercourse...

What the hell am I talking about? Well, there seems to be a little bit of a squabble going on (perpetually) about men's right to choose.

Summary: single, stay-at-home dad has girlfriend. Single, stay-at-home dad doesn't want more kids, but knocks up girlfriend. She has an abortion. He knocks her up again, and even though they had previously agreed that if it happened again, she would terminate without discussion or hesitation, she changed her mind (as is her prerogative). However, she saves herself from becoming a hero in this story by not only having the baby, but suing single, stay-at-home dad for child support. Dick move. Seriously.

Anyway, Single Stay-at-home Dad has become a poster child for some men's organization who want to give men a say in whether a woman terminates or keeps a pregnancy. There are two problems with this idea, and it's not hypocritical for me, as a feminist, to tell men that they don't get abortion rights. Men don't get abortion rights because men don't get abortions. If we were all intersexed and could procreate that way, sure, if one partner wanted to keep a pregnancy and the other partner didn't, you could just go "okay, here, you have it", and then everyone would be grown-ups about it and not try to sue somebody for child support. But we don't live in that world so...

Listen guys, you already have reproductive rights. It's called pulling out. Women get birth control and abortion rights because we can't control where your semen goes. You can. Ergo, figure it the fuck out. If a man doesn't want children, and either can't be bothered or is too stupid/lazy to figure out at least one of the many ways to avoid impregnating a woman, then he's already made his choice. It's not an issue of not having sex, it's not an issue of "keep your laws off my body" either (because, let's face it, abortion laws don't affect men's bodies, they affect their checkbooks and emotional well-being).

The fact of the matter is that, for the span of human existence, men have had the say in whether a baby gets born. You can read about these things in the bible for gods' sakes -- how to cause a woman to have a miscarriage, how it's okay to punch a pregnant woman in the stomach if she's your wife and it's not your kid. Blah blah fucking blah. Welcome to the 21st century, guys. You don't get a say in what goes on in a woman's uterus anymore unless the owner of the uterus says that it's okay for you to have an opinion on the matter and she loves you enough to give a fuck about what that opinion is. Because we're an enlightened (ha) society, and once sperm meets egg, it's no longer your property or a part of your body. Period.

Speaking about the specific instance that's mentioned in the Broadsheet article, she had the right to change her mind and he had the right to walk away. It was a dick move to sue for child support, but just because someone is an asshole about something like this, doesn't mean that men suddenly have a say (again) in what happens inside a woman's body.

Now, I'm gonna say this again because it's very important:

If you're a man, and you don't want kids, figure out at least one way to avoid impregnating the woman you're having sex with. Use a condom. Pull out. Don't fuck her, or don't fuck her vagina. And if you've already gotten her pregnant once, don't make her go through another abortion. Wise up and figure it out. We can't control where your semen goes. You can. Don't act like a powerless victim when an unplanned pregnancy doesn't go the way you want it.

Can't get a rib in edgewise

I like to read Broadsheet on the bus. I'm not terribly fond of most blogs while I'm traveling because the crackberry doesn't do so well with rich text and images, so Broadsheet. Well, last week Margaret Eby wrote a piece righteously chastising Tony Bourdain for something he said in an episode of No Reservation entitled "Food Porn 2".

But then Bourdain dropped a wisecrack that irked more than amused. "Barbecue: It's like chocolate for men," he quipped, introducing a segment about some succulent, slow-roasted meats.

Now, let's bear in mind that the title of the chastising blog was "Ladies, back away from the BBQ" and decided that it was time to "disabuse" Tony of the "notion that women like sweet things and men like meat things". Let's stop for second and ignore the weak premise, and set aside even calling Margaret out for attacking the wrong person -- Bourdain didn't invent the stereotype that men like meat things and women like sweet things. Let's focus on all this talk about dissertations regarding barbecue sauce.

Because, when you think about it, when you get into the nitty gritty of the foods themselves, barbecue sauce is simply the masculine version of chocolate. As a chef, I imagine (and it may be pure imagining) that Tony knows this, and that's where his comments came from not from some misogynistic idea that one kind of food is for chicks and another for dudes. I fancy myself a bit of a chef, and I'm well aware that there are as many different types of barbecue sauces as there are chocolates. Different regions have their specialties, spices, means of preparing them -- and we can't forget that chocolate and barbecue sauce converge in the delectable South America Mole' sauce.

Consider barbecue separately, and take in the idea that it is "chocolate for men". This doesn't mean that the ladies should "back away" from the BBQ, not indulge our pretty little hands in some beef spare ribs, or delight at licking the sauce off our fingers after a pulled pork sandwich falls apart. It doesn't even mean that more men than women enjoy a cook-out (although, they do seem to monopolize the grill with their grunts of "fire good"). What this means is that barbecue has the same elements, taste-wise, as chocolate does, and plays the masculine notes. It's the same flavors, the same areas of the tongue and brain are activated, but on the masculine side.

Now we consider chocolate. It has just as much ability to be sweet, tangy, hard, wise, bitter, salty as does barbecue sauce. It has multiple uses, multiple forms, and while chocolate makes for a better milkshake, at its gourmet roots it is the same as barbecue sauce -- except playing the feminine side of the taste buds and corresponding brain cells.

This is not a feminist issue -- unless it's an issue of telling a feminist to get her head out of her ass and remember that chocolate makes for a good barbecue sauce.

While you do that, I'll be enjoying my chocolate barbecue sauce on this.

Reminder: Godwin's Law is in effect

I've written about this before, as have a number of other bloggers. And while I don't really have a lot of commentary on the current healthcare debate, I do want to remind both sides that comparing your opponent's positions to that of Hitler or the Nazis automatically invalidates your argument, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

But some people just don't understand why people get so uppity about using the Holocaust as a frame of reference for current geopolitics, despite the fact that it's completely inappropriate and inaccurate. Because while Barack Obama may have very good speaking skills (so did Mary Kay Ash, Martin Luther King Jr, and President Bill Clinton), he does not have plans to wipe off the planet all but those who possess a very specific group of genetic characteristics. No one in America is being arrested for political dissidence or forced to wear clothing that indicates their ethnicity, religion, or sexual identification (people may do this on their own, but as far as I know there's no law mandating it).

Still, there persists this horrific meme on the right (which just as surely existed on the left during the Bush administration, and if I wasn't clear enough that it wasn't okay then either, that is my fault), that Barack Obama = Hitler, Democrats = Nazis, and healthcare reform = ha shoa (the Holocaust). This simply isn't so. It's insulting to the memory of those who suffered and died during the Nazi regime, minimizing their pain to tug on the emotions of people who don't know any better. Continued violations of Godwin's Law make a person look like an uneducated jackass (I'm talking to you, Glenn Beck). And when someone calls you out on it, don't act all surprised that you're having your ass handed to you over the issue (especially if you're trying to make the Obama = Hitler argument in a discussion with a Jew), making it a personal argument rather than a political discussion.

We can have political discussions in this country. We should. But there are rules. You can't just throw the Obama = Hitler argument into the mix and see what happens. That's why Godwin's Law exists, so that arguments don't get side-tracked by something that has nothing to do with the current conversation and does nothing but raise the hackles of all involved. The entire point of Godwin's Law transcends political ideology because, at its heart, it's about protecting the intellectual debate and not allowing emotions to distract people from the issues.

Meanwhile, violations of Godwin's Law are intentionally distracting. It is disgraceful to think that anyone would attempt to score cheap points by comparing a political adversary to the person responsible for enslaving, raping, starving, torturing, and eventually murdering and desecrating the remains of 6 million Jews, and another 6 million people he decided weren't racially or politically "pure". It isn't about charismatic leaders or disagreements about the direction of the country. Violations of Godwin's Law accomplish only the further desecrating the memories of those victims and their survivors, and that's why people (especially Jews) get touchy about the whole thing. It was irresponsible for people like Mike Malloy to call George W. Bush "Hitler", and it's irresponsible for Glenn Beck to do the same to Barack Obama. The only person whose evil was ever comparable to Hitler's was Hitler. End of story, and ignorance of history is no excuse.

So, if someone calls you on the carpet for making this comparison, take a moment and think about their perspective. How would you feel if half of your family was wiped off the face of the planet by a man whose evil only surpassed itself, and not even 100 years later the president is compared to the man responsible for the death of your family? You'd be pretty angry. Then think about how you would react when someone tried to minimize your experience of that anger by accusing you of trying to shut them up on the issues.

A person should not engage in debate if they don't know what their doing. Confusing opinion with fact, fact with emotion, and valid arguments with specious analogies demonstrate just that. So, when in doubt, remember the old saying "better to remain silent and have others think you a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt".

Edited to add an example of the above-mentioned meme:

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Being depressed makes you stupid

Our nation's daughters are continuing a trend that has prevailed throughout history: they make poor decisions based on what makes them feel good. Now, of course this trend, this habit, is not unique to young women, just about everybody does it, but it is my opinion that young women are especially vulnerable to the destructiveness of this habit.

Recently, I was sitting in a coffee shop and overheard a brother and two moms discussing a young girl and the bad boy who has chosen her as his next victim*. I relate this as an allegory, an instance of a girl making a poor decision because a boy is telling her whatever he has to to make her feel worthy and reward him with exactly what he wants.

I don't know about you, but I do know one thing about myself and my relationship history: it was when I felt the worst about myself that I made my worst relationship decisions. Torn down by depression, eating disorders, disappointment in life, shitty parents with drinking problems; I've made my fair share of mistakes and like 1 in 6 American women have been raped. I'm not saying that my judgment is what cause the rape (in fact, had it not been me, that douche certainly would have raped another woman and probably has -- it seemed to be his modus operandi), but my desire for approval, my need to feel good, feel pretty, and be validated helped me to fall for this bullshit he toted; put up a smoke screen so I couldn't see what was really going on. Every time, my need for validation has lead me into disastrous relationships, taken me on fateful dates, and only lead me deeper into the original problem.

My point here is not that the poor judgment of girls or women is to blame for our misery or the continuation of it. In fact, I mean to point out the opposite. Feeling bad about yourself, your life, your purpose, your body will inevitably lead to poor judgment and bad decisions.

More directly: depression makes you stupid.

Media that is aimed to make women feel badly about themselves makes us stupid. People who belittle women and girls so often that those women and girls believe that bullshit are directly to blame for the poor decisions made by those women and girls especially if belitter is charged with the well-being of that woman or girl -- parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, youth leaders, etc. Negative consequences that are addressed in a negative manner (for instance "you got yourself [pregnant, raped, etc], because you're [stupid, a slut, drink too much, etc]") make it harder for anyone, let alone a teenage girl, to go back to a similar situation and make the right decision.

We need to begin by empowering our young women. Stop belittling them. Enough with the slut-shaming. Enough with promoting beauty over intellect; being pretty over being interesting, or making the two mutually exclusive. Build them up so they not only don't believe the negative bullshit pushed by peers, media, etc, but also so they can dismiss the bullshit of a guy who will (and does) say anything he has to in order to fuck her.

Teach women that they are valuable and that they can make good decisions and exercise good judgment. That way parents and siblings don't have to stage an intervention in order to keep a young girl from being raped by some bad boy who has become her only source of feeling valued.

______________________________

*I say victim because one of the things I overheard was the brother saying that this bad boy had bragged to the girl about having forced other girls to have sex with him.

My fat-shaming scale

Last night at dinner the Schmoogie started telling me about how awesome our scale is because it "uses some electrical measurment to determine your body fat [percentage]", so this morning, I decided to take that little feature for a spin.

I set it to adult, female, 5'7", and weighed myself (192.5, if you're curious). Then came the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 while it calculated my body fat.

42%

That would make me morbidly obese. For those of you who have met me, I am not morbidly obese (not even in a bride's maid dress). My doctor isn't concerned at all about my weight (which if I was morbidly obese, he would be), and I have none of the signs or symptoms of diseases brought on by obesity. (For the record, my cholesterol is too low, my blood pressure is perfect, and I can hold Downward Facing Dog for upwards of 5 mintes.)

According to the internet, bones take up about 15% of ones body weight. My giant breasts take up another 5-10%. And the last time I had my body fat measured, it was somewhere around 30% (this was about 4 years ago, and for the record, I haven't changed pant size). But according to my scale, I am 42% fat. Putting me at somewhere around 10% muscle by my just as accurate calculations.

So, later, the Schmoogie is curious, and tests himself. He inputs male, 6'2.5", and weighs himself. The all knowing electrical current tells him he is 16% fat. Furthering our little experiment, I change my gender in the scale, input the same height, weigh myself and it comes back with -- are you ready for this because it's shocking -- 30%. Now I'm thinking, if it was actually measuring the same body with the same measurments, the gender wouldn't matter. So, I want to know more. We switch the Schmoogie's gender in the scale and measure the same body, and even more shocking, the scale tells a woman who is 6'2.5" and weighs 181 lbs, that she is 34% fat. DOUBLE the Schmoogie's original measurment. That's a pretty freaking huge margin.

Then I get thinking: this machine was programmed not to determine weight and body fat percentage, but to make women feel ashamed of their bodies. A woman with the exact same measurments -- the same body! -- as a man who is pretty much at the "ideal" weight/fat measurments is, according to this machine's calculations obese.

But a woman who was 6'2.5", 181 lbs, with good muscle tone, isn't even obese according to the standard (bullshit) BMI scale.

It's obscene. I'm thinking about getting a different scale that isn't a sexist fucker.

And now for something completely different: A Blog About Something I Hate

Hair.

That is, other people's hair. That is, the hair of other people lying around, in drains, on my coat, on the internets, in commercials, drawn into my favorite cartoon. I've never dry heaved at a commercial until Anthony Sullivan began hocking the Turbo Snake on late night tv. I've never come closer to turning off an episode of The Venture Brothers than when Dean picks up and plays with a hair clog from the shower.

In the past, if someone else's hair got on me, I would freak out and look away while making someone else remove it from me. Occasionally, this still happens, but years of working in retail where far more disgusting things (like cash) are handled on a daily basis kind of desensitized me to at least that. But I have a very strong visual/visceral connection, so when I see an image of hair falling to the floor while a guy sits in a barbers chair in an H&R Block commercial and asks if a hair cut is a "job hunting expense", I just about lose my shit. Yeah... it's a problem.

This all started probably when I was 9 or so, and my sister's long black hair was everywhere. Vacuuming wasn't yet part of my chores, but if I had known this would reduce the amount of hair that was, literally, everywhere, I would have taken up the habit a lot sooner. Needless to say, a big deal was made about the mess. Somehow, I internalized this and began avoiding hair. Then, of course, there were all of my friends who had long, frizzy hair in junior high and high school -- I, personally, cut my hair very short at 12 and later at 15, and since haven't ever had it longer than my chin; the shortness, combined with the color (RED!) helps me to not freak out over my own hair.

Of course, all of this is made even more idiosyncratic because I live with a dog and human who each have full heads and backs of hair. Pugs shed more than just about any creature this side of Alpha Centauri; the Schmoogie, thankfully, not so much. And I'm lucky enough that having to clean hair clogs out of drains is a thing of the past -- living with Kia, as bad as that was on its own, was made infinitely worse by the fact that she never bothered to clean anything, let alone hair from the shower drain... I once had to dig a giant, dishwater-blonde hair clog out with a chopstick while wearing nitrile gloves.

Don't mistake me, I don't mind hair that maintains some delusion of continued life -- I suppose you could say that my aversion to hair is similar to the aversion of others to corpses -- and I'm certainly no germaphone germaphobe, I just don't like looking at, touching, being touched by, or having to acknowledge the existence of discarded strands or clumps of hair. (Actually, I don't like being touched by living hair either -- if another girl in a club swings her hair around and touches me with it, I will throw down. You assault me with your uncontrollable hair, I will assault you with my fists. That's how irrational I am about this!)

So, I don't know, would people please stop putting little clumps of hair on the damn tv. It's really starting to get under my skin... ew. Now I'm gonna have nightmares about hair under my skin. Great. Thanks usually harmless colloquialism.

Who the hell are women trying to please?!

Over at Street Carnage, there's a preview of a photo spread from next month's V Magazine where an industry standard sized model (size 0) and a plus sized model (size 12) go head to head in a pose-off. I think this is pretty cool, but at the end of the article we see this picture, plus a nice little post-script.

PS: I thought this picture was boring when I first saw it but I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks. The National Average one is irrelevant because midwestern fatsos skew the “figures” but how about the part where women’s ideal is not the male’s ideal? Who are they trying to please?

I'll tell you who: themselves.

Contrary to popular belief, women don't actually exist solely to please men. I know, it sounds crazy, but women see themselves differently than men, and this is going to sound even crazier: a lot of the time, the way a woman dresses, does her hair and/or makeup, and the general effort that she puts into her appearance isn't to please anyone but herself.

"WHAT?! You can't be serious!" shriek the menz and radfems alike. (The radfem admonishment is followed promptly by a call of naievete on my part, letting me know in that radfemsplanation tone that I am simply blinded by a society that seeks to keep me pretty in order to please men. I don't buy it.) I am 100% serious, and I'll give you one reason why: my hair is not naturally red. Most of the people I know wouldn't really care whether my hair was red or brown, and the attractive elements of my personality aren't impacted by the color of my hair. So who in god's name am I trying to please by having red hair? Myself.

There is an element of conditioning going on here too, though. There are a lot of women out there who think that they want to be a size 8 because the media tells them that the only way anyone would ever find them attractive is if their dress size is in the single digits.

Finally, the "national average one" isn't irrelevent. What this image does is show women who are a size 16 what they look like. The size 16 woman in this image isn't ugly or hugely obese. As a woman who is a size 14, I struggle with my body image, but I see this woman (and yes, I know she's been photoshopped), and I think, "oh, I guess I'm not so horribly fat afterall!" and my body image improves. Wow, you mean... wait, could this entire article not have been for the male gaze at all?! Yes, that's exactly what I'm getting at. The "national average one" is, in fact, the most relevant image in the entire spread.

Attn all assholes with guns

Stop killing/trying to kill cops. Seriously.

Two more police officers in Pierce Co. WA have been shot.

There is no Messiah until I see some freaking zombies

For the edification of those who are not Talmudic scholars, here's the way I understand the Rabbinic view of life, death, and the after-life:

• 1. You are born; your life begins when you take your first breath; life begins at birth, not conception so I'm not a murderer by virtue of having continued to have periods after becoming sexually active.
• 2. You live.
• 3. You die.
• 4. When you die, your "soul" leaves your body to go to the great Bingo hall in the sky (or something -- basically your soul does whatever a soul does when not bound to a body), and your body goes into the ground. This is just temporary though. Dante said that the Jews slept in the vestibule of Hell until the Judgment. But Dante was probably an anti-Semite. I'm pretty sure that when Jews die they go play Canasta and MaJohng with other dead people.
• 5. Then the party is over cause the Messiah has arrived and is all judgmental and whatnot. My Rabbi said that the Messianic times are gonna be "pretty rough", so when he told me that your body and soul get reunited and won't necessarily look the way you looked when you were alive my mind went to one place, and one place only: zombies. It doesn't matter why this happens, (but you can read the Talmud to find out), but just contemplate it for a while. Think about all the things you know about the supposed "end of days" and the [second, if you're a Christian] coming of the Messiah. Dogs and cats sleeping together, crises of biblical proportions, yes? And ZOMBIES. If there's another way bodies and souls can get reunited and still preserve this view that the Messianic times are gonna be as bad as Rabbinic tradition says it will... I'd like to hear about it. Cause I'm really not interested in leaving my MaJohng game to go be a freaking zombie. Messiah or no Messiah.
• 6. Permanent afterlife - if you were good, you get the good stuff, if you were bad you get burned and turned into ashes that everyone walks on for eternity (which, for the truly evil, I can't imagine a better permanent afterlife than perpetually staining the soles of the righteous). Which is followed by
• 7. ???
• and finally
• 8. Prophet.

All that being said, I should point out that there is no real consensus among Jews on anything the after life. Whether it exists. What happens. Whether there will be zombies at some point. This is just my take on a centuries-old idea that some Rabbis came up with while studying the Torah. It may or may not have any bearing on what actually happens.

Comment Policy

It occurs to me that I need to make a post about comments.

First of all, please leave me your feedback. Pretty much all comments are published, (exceptions noted below), and I want to foster conversation. It's important that there be other opinions out there aside from mine.

That being said, I have a few guidelines for comments:

*If you compare anyone or anything to Hitler or the Nazis (unless we're having a discussion of Hitler or Nazis), your comment will not be published. As a Jewish person with distant relatives (and a boyfriend whose Polish great-grandad) were exterminated by Hitler and the Nazis, I find it distasteful and insulting to compare anyone, short of an actual mass-murdering fuckhead to someone who attempted to wipe not only my people, but several other peoples from the earth. It's not okay.

*Ad hominem attacks are generally discouraged, unless you do it in a very clever and funny manner that is completely relevant to the topic at hand.

*Flame baiting and flame wars will not be published. I don't tolerate that kind of shit when I have the option to avoid it.

That's pretty much it. So, keep it civil, but lively.

You know what would be awesome? If Troy Garity, the guy playing the porn-star/patient on this week's episode of House had actually done porn. Now, maybe he has and it's just not listed (wouldn't be surprised if that's the case), but it would be nice. It would be really cool too. Porn actors are actors too. Especially since the writers just happened to use this as an excuse to make the case that monogamy=commitment. When it doesn't.

Abandoning Objectivism

I read Atlas Shrugged in college with the intention of doing one of those ARI scholarships, but I never managed to write the essay. In fact, it took me 9 months to read the damn book, and I still haven't read all of the John Galt Manifesto. I used it as an example of a manifesto in a class I took Freshman year, but never read the whole thing.

Now, it's really late so I have to be honest here: I loved Atlas. It was so emo. So self-centered and self-important. So much like I was at the time, and the sex scenes were pretty hot too. I also enjoy the way Ayn Rand writes fiction, which is strange because I can't get past page 106 in Master and Margarita or even past the first paragraph of any Dostoevsky. (I can't even read modern fiction from Russia, despite how awesome the Nightwatch movies are.) Rand's style, while traditionally Russian (read: long and overly-detailed, with a slow-moving narrative) allowed the book to take on a life of its own for me. Francisco was played by Antonio Banderas; John Galt by Michael Shanks; Christian Bale was Hank Rearden; and I, at the ripe old age of 19, was Dagny having all that dirty, shame-embracing sex with those older, more successful, more powerful men who really, truly understood what Dagny did not: you have to destroy civilization to really save it.

Ah, what a load of bullshit. It's so funny how this person who was educated in a public system funded by the blood, sweat, and tears of everyone in the country (Rand moved to the United States when she was a kid, mind you, so the majority of her education took place here), emphasized this idea of "every man for himself". It's even funnier how, despite the fact that she claims each of the characters was self-taught in their given field, everyone who reads that book whether they admit it or not knows that the greatness of each of these great characters was won on the backs of poorer, dumber people.

Hank Rearden could never have built his Rearden Metal without people to work in and manage his factory. And someone was managing the money that his wife squandered.

Francisco's fortune was based on exploitation of the noble savages of Central America who, whether they actually count as people or not in Rand's world, built the empire that Francisco inherited rather than earning.

Even John Galt had some form of learning, had some form of acquired knowledge that allowed him to build his amazing motor. Without the contributions of previous scientists, Galt (Tesla) would never have done what he had cause he would have needed to waste his entire life developing 300,000 years worth of human technology. You don't go from fired-clay pots to a sonic lock in one lifetime. It's not possible.

And no matter how much she loved trains and civil engineering (which, on its face defies the entire point of the philosophy espoused in this 1069 page tome -- civil engineering in a "one for all and all for me" society? Preposterous! Figure it out for yourself!), Dagny Taggart couldn't survive without a man. Whether it was Daddy, her brother, Francisco, Hank, or John (hell, she probably banged Ragnar too, but that part got edited out so that Rand could keep the book under 1500 pages), Dagny was never "one for all and all for me" because of her inherent inability to function as an independent person because of that damned uterus. It all comes down to the line about how she knew that she didn't deserve John's affection. Dagny made herself less because she was always trying to live in a way that made a man want her. She fucked up her life, threw away her father's company, and shamed herself into intellectual submission. For what?

Chaos.

Rand doesn't go into what happens when all the lights go out in New York City. She doesn't manage to extrapolate that the completion of her "Objectivist" philosophy is absolute anarchy -- oh wait, actually she does, but it's totally a good thing cause that cuts out the rabble. The idea of a person being paid what they are worth is fine, but most people don't develop any monetary worth on their own. You're either born into wealth (like all of the protagonists in Atlas), or you gain it through schooling, the most effective form of which is through the public school system (and yes, I'll admit that I am over-looking the failings of public school, because that's not my frakking point here). Public school brings the most amount of knowledge to the greatest number of people, and those people will grow into their potential in ways that would be impossible if the only option was private schooling.

Libertarianism is fine for some things like drugs and sex, but the only way to maintain a truly free society is with a social safety net that includes public school and various social programs that keep people from having their potential actively denied them because they had the bad luck not to be born a Taggart. The bottom line is, there's no such thing as a "Self-Made Man". He doesn't exist. Each person in a society is only as free as the least among them. It may not be ideal for someone who likes to think of themselves as being completely independent, but it's true: injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

More to the point here, Objectivism is silly because it pretends to be "objective" when it's really subjective. Promoting selfishness above all else is not objective, because acting solely in your own interest requires a subjective point of view. Utilitarianism is far more objective than "Objectivism", because the reality is (when things are viewed objectively) the needs of the many do outweigh the needs of the few; at least until we get skin color and external versus internal genitals involved. That's why we put people in jail. That's why we go to war with countries that are smaller than us and don't really have nuclear weapons. That's why the Cold War was a cold war, because if it became a hot war everyone on the planet would have died so that some guy in either Moscow or Washington could prove his dick was bigger.

By lacking significant forethought and objectivity, Ayn Rand made a mockery of her own philosophy of selfishness. No one saves the world by building little canals along their front lawn, and even if Dagny did get to live happily ever after in Galt's Gulch everyone there lacked the ability to be objective enough to see beyond their own needs and thus lacked the ability to affect significant change and save the world. They merely sat idly by, fiddling while Rome burned.

Good book though.

Introducing the Post-Modern Chef

I've put up a food blog for recipes and such. Post-Modern Chef!

While I possess some impressive skills in the kitchen, all of my chef-training has been in the form of eating. I have a strong sense of taste and smell, and sense-memory, so it's easy for me to put different flavors together in my head before making those flavors into food.

Of course, in my domestic goddess duties, I pretty much can't make many traditional recipes. Most of what I'll post here will be free of gluten, wheat, spelt, eggs, dairy, cane sugar, cranberries, and/or garlic, because those are the dietary restrictions I'm presented with at home. That means that a lot of the recipes here will be helpful for those with these allergies, and some recipes can be modified for those who follow vegan dietary restrictions.

It should also be noted that because I cook by feel, most of the measurments are going to be approximate, and on the low side. Remember, you can always add more, but you can't take stuff out.

Anyway, bon apetit!

In defense of Carrie Prejean

Renee at Womanist Musings is absolutely 100% right and 0% wrong. Shaming Carrie Prejean, beauty queen or not, right-wing-tool or not; for a solo sex tape is hypocritical on the part of the left who are criticizing her.

First of all, by making a video of herself masturbating, Carrie is promoting a health body image for young women in the sense that it's okay to touch your vagina, but is also helping (whether she knows it or not) promote safer sex for teens. Believe it or not, abstinence is only one of the ways to prevent, with 100% certainty, unplanned pregnancies. Mutual masturbation is another method. Especially if you're separated by a video screen.

Is Carrie Prejean a hypocrit on this subject herself? I don't know. The only thing I've heard her moralizing about is gay marriage. I've never heard her say anything about teen sex, or masturbation. Is she a bad person? No. Is she dumb? Maybe. But neither of those are even remotely relevant to this issue here.

We've all been teenagers at some point, and while some of us had better self-control, or different ideas about what was an appropriate exchange between a 17-year-old girl and the object of her affection, it's no one's place to condemn Ms. Prejean for this. It's bad enough that her mom was in the room when the video was shown as a means of getting her to back down. It's even worse that Carrie Prejean's 15 minute fame-timer seems to be stuck on 14:49. But do we, on the left, really need to sink so low as to continue to make this an issue? Not just an issue of shaming an allegedly dumb, allegedly biggoted beauty queen, but an issue of hypocricy.

I make it my mission to enrich the lives of women. Now, keeping her in the news may be enriching Carrie Prejean, but what kind of a message is it sending to young women? Think about that before you go moralizing about this whole incident. And if that doesn't work for you, imagine what you would feel like if something explicit you shared with a boyfriend or girlfriend at the age of 17 was suddenly all over the internet. We've all done something like this, so shut the hell up and get back to running around like your hair is on fire on other issues... like the economy. Carrie Prejean didn't do anything wrong.

Keep digging, Glennykins

Glenn Beck says:

"...It's hard to know what anything is worthy anymore. You have to think like a
German-Jew in 1934 for or, um, maybe 1931."

I face-palm. That's just too offensive for words. Nevermind that he was trying to scare people into supporting his sponsors. Nevermind that he gets a paycheck for saying stuff like that.