refined is a 7-letter word

having two people and one bathroom sucks. as my mom - who largely subscribes to the belief that there should be a greater or equal to number of toilets to people - would say, "two butts! one toilet!" to summarize what could go wrong.

my people are potty mouths. my sister and i grew up cursing roundly whenever and wherever we felt the need - my parents pretty much set the standard there. my mom routinely refers to her children as "you assholes" and identifies certain individuals in society as being, "one of those, you know, jive-ass motherfuckers."

we also like to talk openly about daily bowel movements, what stops you up and what doesn't, why my dad is unhappy when my mom eats daikon or kimchi (watch out below!!!!), and laugh roundly about farting. oh, and there is lots and lots of fart referencing.

trevor comes from a more proper folk. bodily functions are discreet and taken into different rooms. they don't really exist in that no one discusses them, so there is no there there - the big fart cloud in the room, so to speak. so, in preparation for spending 2 weeks with my family over xmas, i stood poised and ready to see if his head was going to spin around and take off. i was slightly afraid and highly anticipatory of him meeting my closest cousin, who would routinely sit on her phone receiver and rip nasty ones in my ear mid-conversation, and talks openly about laxatives and shit nuggets.

our funniest family stories almost always involve some sort of bodily function. when i was about 10, my dad bought me the fart book for my birthday because i was notorious for falling into hysterics when anyone brought up that particular subject. or issued one forth. or even talked about forts, which my mom tried to do on one occasion, referencing an actual fort somewhere, but was unable to continue because her mindless child was rolling on the floor and shrieking.

we can't ignore what plainly smells. everyone in my family calls a spade a spade, because, well, they can smell that it's there and what's the point of pretending it's not? my mom once advised me to stay away from the corners when shopping at ross dress for less, because old ladies sneak into the corners and release tensions there. she waved her hand in front of her face and wrinkled her nose to augment the effect. "stinky! so stay away from them!" that has to make you laugh. who else's mom on the planet would first, even notice that there was a consistency with the corners in ross dress for less, and then second, pass the wisdom on to her kid like some rare gem falling from her lips? and in such a conspiratorial manner?

regardless, trevor survived the two weeks. he's even surprised and delighted me with a few bodily function references here and there. and frankly, anyone that's spent more than a handful of weeks in china has gotten seriously ill in the gastro-intestinal area, so it's not like he's never had to face the issue. (see photo above. those nasty bitches are enough to make you jump on the first plane home.) i also think he noticed that nothing makes me laugh harder or more genuinely than when a person verbally recognizes the wisdom of taro gomi: everyone poops.

morning news

one of the things that never fails to make me laugh hysterically (and irreverantly) is kim jong-il's fucking HAIR. he made news today for finally showing his frail, thinning-hair head along with the rest of him to some chinese officials. i decided to use this photo of a younger despot, when his perm was full and vivacious and no doubt had rainbows and unicorns running through it. oh, but they were emaciated and starving rainbows and unicorns, let us not be distracted by the fabulousness of his big perm to remember that he is one evil crazy fuck.

it struck me this morning, looking at the little 'ol frail thing he has become (and after watching christopher walken in a view to a kill last night) how it is fairly amazing that a single (and small in stature, too) individual can grow to assume so much power and breed so much fear so as to command death and destruction over entire countries. regions, even. fear is a powerful tool and kind of does a lot of your tyrannic footwork for you.

anyways, i won't start. in reading the paper this morning and seeing how old this fucker is getting (plus that rumored stroke), i'm hoping for the north koreans that the power handoff to his son will eventually wane and they'll be free to do as they will, soon. like, eat a whole bowl of rice each. is obama rubbing off on me? feeling optimistic for our oppressed north korean friends. oh, and the congo, too. i hope this morning's news bodes well for them.

inaugural goofiness

my sister is flying out to DC today to join in the inaugural festivities. she and her friends actually have tickets to THE event on tuesday. pretty awesome, eh? she called me from the airport to ask if i wanted any souvenirs - apparently my dad requested an inaugural yoyo, which he saw god knows where. i searched for inaugural souvenirs online and couldn't find any yoyo, but plenty of other goofy shit:





inaugural hot sauce


inaugural bobble head figure





obamas in pajamas x 1000 applications = shirts, jammies, hats, mugs...





seriously?



again, seriously?


an inaugural fan

diary of the unemployed

one of my daily decisions includes, "the gray sweats or the blue sweats?" this decision has been happily supplemented by the ross dress-for-less sweat pants my sister loaned me over xmas break, which i stealthily premeditated bringing home with me the minute i put them on. i doubt she noticed or cared, but i coveted them upon tearing off the "WAS $24.99, NOW $7.99" tag and jamming my two legs into them as fast as i could. yes, i am one of those.

one of the funny feelings i experienced while walking around the mall on sunday buying these was how distant i am now from the desperately-seeking-work-clothes person i become when i have a paycheck. i walked through my usual haunts of banana republic, nordstrom, gap, and anthropologie, admiring those dolman sleeves or that surplice top, pulling out snappy cotton button-downs and sailor pant-inspired jeans. plackets, tweeds, bracelet sleeves, kick pleats. words that i could throw out there with the best of the apparel merchants, not because i was one, but because i lovingly studied clothes, magazines, catalogs, and the accompanying vocabulary more devotedly than i should be admitting.

while i am not, like my father, the type of person who wakes up on weekends and puts on proper clothes (granted, his proper clothes are 501s and a flannel shirt, but he wears a belt and actual shoes and socks to putter around the house), i was - and likely still am, once the paycheck monster returns - a big fan of clothes and appearance. it was just strange to be walking around in familiar territory that i never realized i was missing. the boredom i feel here and now is linked not only to the absence of hours eaten up by a job i don't have, but also to the things that i do and buy when i am working: clothes, salon grooming, drinks out, vacations to warm places. my cousin emailed me this morning about her upcoming trip to hawaii and it, too, made me realize that i had long been out of my normal, american, working version of me for quite a long time. sure, i worked in china, quite a lot, actually, but your american life is upended for the international version of your life. vacations to waikiki and weekends in vegas give way to exploring the yunnan province or spending chinese new year in vietnam.

i realize i am not unique in my daily sweat pants decision, that there are likely hundreds of thousands to millions out there - especially after the 2 million U.S. jobs that were reported lost in 2008 - who sit at home all day, looking for work in sweats and a t-shirt sporting last night's chili recipe. (i credit trev for coming home after class and not having a semi-disgusted look on his face, as i likely would.) i don't really miss thinking about what to wear in the morning, debating the 3" heeled boots or the less-cool looking black flats with the laser cutout pattern, or observing whom in the office has fallen victim to VPL and who remains scrupulously thonged. it was more of an abrupt reminder of my past self i hadn't realized leaving behind: hello merino wool sweaters, greetings croc-embossed belts! i'd nearly forgotten about you. i used to care a lot about owning you at the lowest price possible, and here i am, appropriating my sister's $8 sweats.

snappy shoe gear

i think my last post title was happy new year, but i couldn't think of anything else, so there's a little rhyme for you. i did, actually, go a bit berserk on sunday due to some unnamed unhappiness and went out and bought new running shoes:



for all of that running that i've been doing lately (smirk). seriously, tho, i think my knee cartilage has healed up nicely (thanks, 2-a-day-glucosamine horsepills!) so i'm ready to alternate the old-people low-impact activity of walking with some interspersed running.

these shoes, let me tell you, nike has been a busy busy little company. i haven't worn nike for probably a decade, but the technology and innovation they spend their little dimes on is pretty impressive. there is this little chip you can buy that goes into the sole of your shoe (any nike shoe with a + sign has this built in, or i've read online how you can DIY a non-nike or non-+ pair to do the same) which links to a little ipod plugin add-on. basically, the chip in your shoe interacts with the plugin device and your ipod stores all this info on your workout - distance, calories burned, etc. you can create workout programs, supposedly, or listen to yourself run, whatever that means. anyway, the salesgirl at nordstrom showed it to me, and i was mightily impressed. still cheap and unemployed (so it stayed on the display), but impressed nonetheless.

here's a photo of the kit if you're curious:






i was having some buyer's remorse for purchasing new full-price anything in this crazy time of serious markdowns, but that is why i shop at nordstrom. they're nice and they take shit back if i change my mind or dislike the item after i've used it. trevor is encouraging me to keep them, plus the clothes i bought on super markdown. i think he's so relieved that my unnamed unhappinesses can be soothed at the local mall that he thinks a bit of shopping is a small price to pay for girlfriend happiness. also, since my birthday is coming down the pipes, i can always tap into that "you just bought me new running shoes" option. right?

aside from the little shoe chip, i was shopping for the most stable shoe i could find. i've been getting weird connective tissue weakness on either side of my ankles a day or so after running, so i guess if these super-stable shoes don't help, i can take them back. isn't it funny the way our bodies break down once we hit 30? ok, i might be speaking for myself, but i hate to see what kind of shape my joints and tendons are in when i'm 70. i think the glucosamine horsepills are here to stay, sadly.

happy new year 2009!

some pics from our cali vacay:




lola the elf with her little friend, henry



lamenting the antlers



on hwy 1 heading north



muir woods



trev's first glimpses of the redwoods

sizzling

this ain't our radiator. ours are covered in someone else's cat hair and peeling lead paint. in order to move in, trevor actually had to swear to our landlord that we wouldn't eat paint chips and sue them later.


so. yesterday i burnt my ass on the radiator in the bathroom. the fucking thing is located across from the toilet, so when stepping out of the tub, you have to dry off in a tiny little area between the searing hot radiator or the toilet (ewwww), so of course, being me the girl genius, i choose to stay closer to the radiator. i've bumped into it dozens of times before, and may i just say in my own defense that it's never been that hot before. i look like i sat on a george foreman grill. seriously. kudos to trevor for keeping straight face when i burst out of the bathroom shouting a string of curses and pointing accusingly at my own right glute.

i can't be mad at the radiator, though, no matter how hard i try. i've never lived with such a device before. they are hard-working and they keep my ass toasty! (bing! sorry, couldn't resist.) yesterday's temperature high was FIVE fucking degrees, and you could wear shorts in our apartment, despite its old-as-dirt windows that are basically sieves. i can't stay mad at the radiator. it keeps us warm despite the myriad obstacles threatening to freeze us.

californians don't know shit about radiators. we have really dumb heating systems like central forced air, or those lame electric wall units that basically just roast the wall around it. my first suspicions that non-california areas had it good were when my sister, who went to law school in boston, got fed up one day with our freezing-ass cold apartment in san francisco and started shouting, "what the fuck?! why the fuck is it so cold in here? i had an apartment in boston and i was never cold! it's 60 degrees outside and 40 degrees inside! what the fuck?!"

i remember when she called me at the start of winter her first year in boston, and she was like, "dude. cw. there's ice on the ground here, and the sun shines on it all day long, and it doesn't melt." i was impressed. that was indeed some cold-ass shit she was living in. but at least her apartment was warm!

because i appreciate being warm indoors (having been deprived of it most of my life), and because i am so thoroughly impressed with how effective these damn radiators are, i am willing to overlook such shortcomings as the drum solo / boiling kettle whistle noises that are apparently required for steam radiators to work. trevor occasionally gets annoyed when the radiators kick on in the middle of the night (there's one near the foot of the bed), but if i wake up to the sweet noise of heat coming on, i consider it a lullaby and continue to snore. so what if it looks like i grilled my ass on a weber. my eyes have been opened.

spectacularly... exhausted

my friend dana convinced another friend and i two years ago to head down to the post street williams-sonoma for the mario batali book signing. so we dutifully purchased our new molto italiano copies, stood in line, and met the famous chef batali ever so briefly. he was very nice.

since then, i've cracked the cookbook dozens of times, thumbing through the recipes and dreaming about a day when i'd have guanciale at my disposal, or if i'd ever head to a specialty butcher and fearlessly request those special lamb shank cuts. i've braved one or two of the simpler recipes - pasta, always - and today i decided to put the snowy, freezing day to use and make some food.

i decided on the turkey meatballs and basic tomato sauce. easy enough, right? cut to five hours later - i'm dead on my damn feet. his recipes are awesome, but i feel like i need to go into retirement for a bit just to get some energy back. damn. down an emergen-C just to replenish my electrolytes and shit.

i informed trevor that we are eating sandwiches or whatever the hell tomorrow that doesn't require cooking or dishes. call it the post-batali effect.

mixed pancakes, mixed news

sunday mornings are good when you have pancakes and coffee. trevor this morning asked how i felt about making pancakes or omelettes, which i indulge because i love the hell out of some breakfast and getting him to skip his uber-healthy kitchen sink breakfasts (yogurt, banana, grape nuts, whatever nuts he finds in the cupboards, possibly more fruit, chocolate chips on occasion) for a leisurely sunday eye-opener is just fine with me. i found the image online because we killed the entire batch, leaving not a one to photograph. yes, the recipe was supposed to yield about 12 pancakes, and we ate all of them. don't say i didn't warn you. i dug some random recipe for lemon pancakes out of the Joy of Cooking. I love my dad's half-wheat buttermilk blueberry pancakes, but i don't have blueberries or buttermilk or a hand mixer to beat the shit out of egg whites. once in china out of desperation i beat egg whites into soft peaks by hand with a whisk, and that was not fun. shall not repeat. i'm old school about things, but not commuting by horse-drawn wagon old-school.

so i'm heading back to see the fams next week, with trevor in tow. we have happy plans to see the redwoods, see the wineries, and gulp some oysters at one of the farms. i can't wait. i called and talked to my grandma yesterday, who, not surprisingly, didn't realize i was gone and where i was calling from. her senility is charming in small doses, and i'm anticipating in a somewhat evil manner how she'll take to trevor. i'm assuming she'll keep mini-forgetting who he is, and hoping that she'll be rude enough to ask, "who YOU?" preferably while we're eating. grandmas are fun that way.

in other non-pancake news, i received from cyn the very sad news that our favorite girl has cancer.



she is our love, and shy of her ninth birthday. her funny knee knob turned out to be a sort of fast moving cancer - we're guessing bone cancer, but mining info from vets in podunk, china is retarded. one of our friends from college lost his rottie to a rare cancer when she was quite young, so neither of us is surprised, but it's so sad. she's the best girl ever, and the smartest dog i've ever known. cyn's going to spend xmas hanging in podunk with kodi odi odi and her dad. i'm trying to dig out the corn cob-eating vid, but no luck as of yet.

a little entertainment

just a general discussion

it's been snowing lightly all day, the temperature in the teens and dropping now that the sun has gone down. after today, the weather on the weekend will be back up in the 50s and 60s. it was in the 60s two days ago and i wore a t-shirt in the park. all of this yo yo-ing can probably account for my current outfit of long johns, cutoff shorts, wool socks, and flip flops. i can't decide if i'm hot or cold, and my sinuses got pissed trying to figure it out and went on strike again. so i've had the blinds pulled up and have been watching the snow blow by with what feels like cement setting in the little cavities situated around my head. i'm already prone to being spaced-out, but having more or less a constant sinus infection can really push me into the alternate universe.

i did manage to fashion the trough of leftover canned pumpkin and the large bowl of leftover cranberry sauce into some damn good pumpkin cranberry bread. this is one of my questionable talents: when totally spaced out and left to my own devices, i tend to decide that random-ass shit is a good idea, like baking double batches of holiday treats. at least i execute the task well. trevor came home from his admin law final, crashed out for a couple of hours, and is now happily plowing through the loaf.

the answer is, probably

"i don't need a guy to get my shit done, to get what i want out of life," writes my friend, d. "so where is a guy going to add value? i need a guy who's going to partner with me and share the work. not someone who i have to take care of in addition to myself."

d and i were chatting today, catching up as she finishes her third year at a top law school, and as i flounder in a strange city, looking for work and questioning my direction. co-habitation was a common thread for both of us when we worked together nearly three years ago, she in a solid long-term relationship that was going well, and me in an unhappy, burdensome relationship that could attribute its longevity more to the american visa complications than any actual emotion on my part. now, as she has navigated her way around the dating scene in the limited pool of her law school, summer internship locations, and now a european exchange program, and i have (bravely, or foolishly, depending on the day) resigned from an amazing and overwhelming job in shanghai and relocated back to america to a strange city in the name of love and a future, we continue to commiserate.

two independent, intelligent women, we have always seen eye-to-eye on gender roles, simultaneously incredulous at what was expected of us as women in domestic partnerships or society in general, disgusted and critical of the apparent doubling of work for women in the doubling of apartment occupancies, instead of the division of labor that you one would predict mathematically, if somewhat naively.

we have sussed out that the type of male doesn't seem to matter. metrosexual, designer grooming product-using, french cooking technique-deploying boyfriends displayed similar feints at helplessness as the sports-loving, indiscriminate beer-swilling types. arrogant or humble, well off or deeply embedded in school debt, open or emotionally stunted, the results were always the same. when chores are split, say by the common i-cook, you-clean technique, we females seemed to create more work for ourselves. after meals are cooked and consumed - during which the majority of the pots and pans would be generously washed by the cook - the rest of the dishes would be blearily found the next morning to still bear traces - or outright remnants - of the meal from the night before. re-wash the dishes, sigh with annoyance. after a handful of these episodes, inquire politely about the dish-washing technique of the household male. dish soap depletion has accelerated, so it can't be that not enough soap is used. perhaps soaping the sponge and washing each item with the water shut off instead of throwing the liquid around and creating an ineffective and wasteful foam party would work better? snip, snap, the female is "nagging." the male doesn't believe that the dishes he washes require a second go-round. produce the proof and again we are nags. so the choice now is either to continue to inquire/guide/snap/nag, or to silently fume and re-wash dishes in silence.

i, for one, am not a martyr. he will learn to wash dishes properly so help me god. wanting a cereal bowl to be clean and not encrusted with last night's rice is not unrealistic. i am not going to compensate for his laziness and therefore add to my existing workload when he is the one that can correct his behaviors like the adult he is. ok, so perhaps it doesn't help that i frequently ponder aloud if he was raised by a pack of wolves, or just a single wolf. does he open cereal boxes with his feet or hand it to the nearest tasmanian devil for assistance? how many mornings will i stumble into the kitchen for a coffee mug and come away with grape nuts embedded in the soles of both feet?

interpreting the cleanliness level of the house is also an on-going discussion. at this point in time, i am the sole house cleaner (floor sweeper and mopper, laundry washer and dryer, bed maker, toilet scrubber and disinfecter) for the reason that i am unemployed and have nothing better to do, and the household male is in law school. i tell myself that when i find work, there will need to be a schedule mapped out and more guidance on what makes a sink disgusting and what makes it clean. how often a toilet should be scrubbed and why it is important. how to sweep hardwood floors where the dirt is actually captured and disposed of, and not just stirred around. call it nagging if you want, but we will not live in the continuation of a college frat house.

in doing this, in telling myself that the division of labor will be righted again when i have my own gig going on, i am soothing the equalist in my head. i am promising to her, no i am committing that i will not perpetuate gender oppression and will continue onward with my values and ideals. but every day is a compromise. now that studying for finals is upon us, i feel like an outright servant some days. i resent it, and being me, i let it be known. to be fair, he recognizes how dependent he is on my daily work, and how much more work i do than he, and how i feel about it, and even claims to feel badly. but how long will that last, and does that guarantee that the work contributions will change?

if i do procure a great, stimulating, career-forwarding job and the household male does the same, and we then outsource the domestic duties to someone else (who will likely be both female and of color), am i failing what i've promised to myself? am i perpetuating the oppression of another woman?

fatted and happy

oh brined thanksgiving turkey malurkey! how do i love thee? let me count the ways:

1. thy white meat dragged through pools of cranberry sauce and eaten with fingers
2. thy leftover scraps piled onto toasted wheat with mayo and black pepper
3. thy carcass the base of our post-thanksgiving jook
4. thy tail, cold and congealed and salty and delicious, excavated from the scrap pile at midnight and devoured in secret
   
5. other flesh of thine, mixed with stuffing and doused in gravy from thy bones, reheated for the next two days and eaten with flourish

we just started our leftover pillaging for the day and it has indeed been a most pleasurable exercise.

vroom vroom turkey

finding a brining container for a turkey is a bitch. i hit up three places before finding a stockpot big enough. i had an easier time doing this in china. i was hoping to find a version of the old school granite ware pot my dad uses, but apparently modern peoples who shop at target don't cook anything bigger than a chicken. i finally ended up driving to this weird restaurant supply office-slash-store-slash-warehouse and buying an industrial stockpot from this soft-spoken, dumbo-eared salesman. he's the type that acts polite to your face then probably makes really nasty female jokes behind your back. creepy.

i made the cornbread and pie crusts yesterday, and bought all the herbs and shit the day before at this joint called vitamin cottage natural grocers. wtf?! why does everything here have to have some sort of folksy reference in order to exist? that shit wasn't no cottage - it was a damn store. get over it.

anyway. i found nice chestnuts at the korean superstore (KOREAN CHESTNUTS on the sign in big letters. i guess they're better?) and they're roasted and ready to be peeled. drat. this sort of stuff is much more fun with my sister and my grandma at the breakfast table. here i have trevor cramming for finals, singing 'she's crafty' at the top of his lungs.

this afternoon i'll slide our 11-pound birdie into a vat of chez panisse brine and call it a day. TURKEY DAY!!!!!!!! the best holiday ever. i miss being at home, but since i haven't been home for 2 years on thanksgiving and my sister and cousin are in asia on vacay, i guess having a football-playing, kegger-craving bf who enjoys my food a lot but can't cook or chop to save his life is an ok replacement. he's a good cheerleader and is willing to accept that i don't want to attend a thanksgiving day kegger with some of his peripheral friends. the description of the meal as it was pitched to me went like this: "you should go to john's house for thanksgiving. they're getting a keg and a ton of red wine." no mention of food, and so i mentally vetoed our attendance right then and there. thanksgiving is a huge ordeal (in a good way) as i was raised, and it's all about the food. as a concession, we are going over afterwards with a pumpkin pecan pie to placate trev's beer cravings. i bet he just wants to do a keg stand or a beer bong.

i also don't like eating early. this other dinner will be at 4 pm, which i find bizarre. we always eat thanksgiving, christmas, and easter dinners at dinnertime, when it's dark outside and you're extra hungry. it's weird chowing down on piles of meat and grease-soaked carbs when the sun is still out. call me crazy, but that's my take.

anyway, off to peel these $)#%&^ chestnuts. at least they smell good.

catty is coming

not til late december or possibly january. southwest doesn't ALLOW animals now (wtf?) so i have to make other arrangements for her ass. but it's exciting! someone to keep me company during the days provided i remain unemployed through the new year. i just bought her a crate for her trip (finally), at the prodding of my sister who is sick of taking her ass to the vet all ghetto-style in one of these,


which is what i brought her home from the spca in. it's so battered she's learned to punch the top and work her way out.

we are really looking forward to getting a dog at some point, but it won't happen for a while since our building is cool with the felines but not so with the canines. sad. soon, hopefully. meanwhile we both gawk shamelessly at all of the pups that pass by in the park and the street, to the point where people probably wonder what the hell these two weirdos are staring at, and checking their noses and wiping their faces.

clean meat

a resource for you burgeoning beyond-organic / beyond-grassfed eaters out there, the best resource i have found thus far:

http://eatwild.com/

60 seconds

http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com/

cute idea. the topic for the day is "writing. if you had the opportunity to write as a career, what would you write?"

go!

i would write a human interest column in a paper or a well-respected blog. i would have the freedom to write about my pets as much as a cool design firm. it would be interesting, personal, and rooted in fact when it needed to be.

time's up!

my dilemma

so i am reading this book, one that will likely assume the title of most influential book of the decade. for me, anyway. i stole it from my dad, with promises to bring it back at christmas since he's only about a tenth of the way through.

it essentially details the progression of the industrialized american food chain from inception (roosevelt-era legislation in reaction to the depression and WWII) to today, and details some of today's more radical beyond-organic farmers. it also takes a close look at USDA guidelines for organic foods and the business of organic industrial food raising. it isn't preachy, it's more of a long, leisurely inspection - i suppose a nod to pollan's extensive journalism background.

yesterday trev and i went to safeway for weekly food shopping and to poke around at the turkeys that safeway was offering for the unlikely price of $4.99 or $7.99. in the back of my head, i am constantly re-positioning my food purchase decisions based both on what i am reading in this book and what i have learned from being a bay area-ite and having friends who are deeply immersed in beyond-organic, sustainable farming and food philosophies, and what is realistic for a household consisting of one unemployed person and one student. is whole foods any better than safeway, really? yes, likely, but whole foods is still a warehoused chain with national distribution, meaning that the organically-raised greens or free-range chickens are still trucked an average of 1500 miles to reach me. i agree wholeheartedly that i need to stop expecting food to be cheap and start thinking critically about where it comes from. i went so far as to google CSAs in colorado in an effort to buy locally. but then i think critically at my checking account, and think about the possibility of being jobless for another 3-4 months, and head to safeway or king sooper and whip out my preferred shopper card.

i am eating beef that feeds on corn instead of biologically-appropriate grass, stuffed with antibiotics to minimize infections caused by wallowing in its own manure. i am eating chickens who have never seen the light of day and are slaughtered at 7 weeks old, and are fed scraps of its own kind mixed in with antibiotics . i am eating produce slathered in pesticides and herbicides, picked by vastly underpaid migrant workers who live in deplorable conditions. i am paralyzed in the snack aisle, trying to decide between kettle chips made in boulder (locally produced!) but more expensive per ounce, or kettle chips distributed out of oregon which i can find even in china, on sale 2 bags for $6. i take so long deciding which are less evil that the elderly woman waiting for me to get the @(%*$ out of the way sighs and moves on to the next item on her list. i mumble constantly to myself, and analyze the ingredient list on every package, picking out as many corn-based ingredients as i can in an effort to disqualify each product. i select the tabasco brand bloody mary mix because it doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup. (there's thinkin!) i buy yellow squash that's grown locally instead of the california-grown artichokes that cost nearly $2 a pop. i sigh when trevor comes home with those same artichokes because he knows i love them.

it takes me over an hour to buy 10 items because i am constantly debating pros and cons in my head. mostly, the expense concern wins out. i tell myself i will buy locally when i have a job. when trevor's school loans are paid down. when we're middle aged and i'm writing books and he's negotiating mergers.

dilemma indeed.

um, just something funny

http://www.nonchalance.org/

i just linked from sherry's blogroll and i have no idea what this website is about or who does it, but i found the randomness to be hilarious.

let's take a moment (warning: rant)

very happy about most of last night's results, not only because of the historic nature of the major event, but also because for this event, we chose the candidate whose intellect, temperament, and unifying message were what we actually needed, not what was marketed down our throats.

however, to be a total downer, would like to draw attention to california voters, who approved by 52.2% to 47.8% the ban on gay marriage, effectively worded to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

the bored busybody segment:
on a superficial plane, i just don't understand why those (who aren't part of the religious aspect of the debate) care whom marries whom. don't agree with same sex marriage? then don't marry someone of the same sex! otherwise, mind your own business!

this segment of the gay-hating population remind me of a psychotic mother of one of my schoolmates (warning #2: a long-winded story), who absolutely loathed me for reasons i can only postulate on. one guess is that i dated her daughter's ex-boyfriend after he broke up with her. another is that she was a racist fucking bitch. and yet a third is that she had frustrations about her own personal failures AND was a racist fucking bitch. anywho, she befriended the mother of my best friend, and actually wanted to brainstorm with her on how to get me out of the picture. i think that's actually how she worded it. this weirdo wanted her own daughter to be best friends with my best friend. (actually, i think she actually wanted me to be killed, but that's just my take.) thankfully, my best friend's mom declined the invitation to brainstorm, but this insane woman could frequently be found sidling into our teenaged activities, trying to be the 'cool' mom who hung out with teenagers (? that's another issue altogether. see? i told you she was nuts). regardless, she was some nosy-ass weirdo who imposed her insane mental delusions where they did not belong, and made me ask myself, "why are there people out there so bored that they act crazy? why don't these people go and get jobs and work their asses off like my parents, who don't have time to attmept to engineer relationships between 16-year olds? why can't she use her time constructively, like volunteering at a shelter, or start smoking bomb and roasting chickens to satiate her munchies, or doing something more interesting with their time?" so my take on one portion of the prop 8 supporters is that they are fucking busybodies who need to get a fucking life and stay out of everyone else's.

the jesus freaks:
the major segment of same sex marriage opponents cite religion as the reason. i read that churches fear that prop 8's failure to pass will force their religious institutions to recognize gay marriage in their church, and will prevent them from disallowing gay marriage ceremonies. this makes me wonder about their core beliefs on homosexuality. i want these people to clearly state for me what you think of homosexuality (from where it stems, why people are gay, and etc.) and then answer my questions below:

1. do you believe that being gay is a mindset? that it is a result of watching too much tv or reading the devil's work or playing video games or hanging out with heathens?
2. do you believe that people can be de-programmed of their homosexuality?
3. do you believe that people are intentionally choosing to occupy a portion of the population that is discriminated against and continuously harassed? against whom there are violent acts every day? who are beaten to death in numerous countries as a matter of religious expression? why do you think a person would subject him/herself to this instead of taking the easy 'n straight road? you think they just enjoy a good challenge?
4. how does one rid oneself of gayness?
5. would you disown your child if he or she was gay? refuse to see him or her again?
6. bonus question: didn't god preach tolerance and forgiveness above all? don't most of you believe that the big jc got nailed to a cross and then forgave the people holding the hammers? did he withhold this forgiveness from the gay hammer-holders? does he only love his straight followers?
7. bonus + question: regardless of whether you bigots believe that a person "chooses" to be or is born gay, do you realize that you support stripping citizens of their civil rights? that they should not be allowed to do what straight couples can do in legalizing their bond for social recognition or legal protection?
   
8. bonus ++ question: what do you think of willa cather, ellen degeneres, rock hudson, abraham lincoln, elton john, harvey milk, kevin spacey, william burroughs, tobias wong, jodie foster, david sedaris, alan cumming, queen latifah, james baldwin, beth ditto, sheryl swoopes, tom ford, k.d. lang, annie leibovitz, cole porter?