Funny but important video about makeup

This youtube video speaks for itself but I will say this...

There is no FDA regulation for makeup products which can contain lead, aluminum or other harmful heavy metals. If you or someone close to you regularly slathers on the rouge check this video out.

Finally Someone with a Brave Analogy

Jonathan Safran Foer's book, Eating Animals, is not refreshing, inspiring or even original. These adjectives might describe his fiction but in his first foray into non-fiction Foer attacks the issue of factory-farming and the sustainability of eating meat - and in doing so he opens your heart to the issue like no one has before.

The movement against the meat industry, as it is currently structured, began some time ago and is lead, at least as far as scholarly publishing is concerned, by a man named Michael Pollan. If you want a concise and even-minded understanding of the history and rise of the factory farm then Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma is a good book to pick up. What Jonathan Safran Foer lends to the movement is a humanistic perspective that appeals to the unenthused more than the unconvinced.

Whether Foer is discussing the way food connects his own family or how it impacts the lives of other real-life characters you come away with a more profound understanding of the responsibility we must all assume when we sit down for a meal.

If you still cling to the notion that you are a meaningless cog in the food industry this is a great book to pick up. But I warn you that you will be forced to consider your own morality with a frequency (three times a day) and difficulty (akin to the pangs of hunger) that is infrequently asked of a reader and Foer acknowledges the difficulty of the subject with multiple points of view.

Being a fan of powerful (if not always entirely accurate) analogies Foer's comparison of eating meat and committing rape rang true with me. To paraphrase, he compares the indulgence of your taste buds by eating animals that are raised inhumanely (99% of all animals according to Foer) with the indulgence of your sexual desires regardless of who suffers to sate your need. He calls this an easy argument to sweep under the table but a hard one to respond to. The point should be well-taken - we have reached an age where we can no longer claim ignorance as to the practices that bring protein to our plates and, armed with the knowledge of how this industry harms the environment, the animal and the human, we have to now accept responsibility and decide if we want to continue to indulge ourselves at the cost of much more widespread suffering.

Pick up the book and let me know what you think.

A single ill-conceived joke

Why bother with a dust buster...


























...when you can hire a busty duster?!

Carve It All Apart

A tiny , round pumpkin filled with seeds ready to burst forth. A stomach ripe with future. Insides so sticky and knotted by moist orange pulp. A knife begins to tear away the flesh; the art of mutilation. Create a face by pulling apart the perfection. Then fill the inside with all the spirit you can find - not love but candles. Round, supple life cannot be truly stolen. Jack O'Lantern comes alive again at night and frightens children. Without fail they carve it all apart.




There was once an Irishman named Jack who was so greedy and stingy that when he died even the devil would not grant him entrance into hell. So jack wandered the earth forevermore spreading his brand of evil whenever he could. He no longer needed to sleep so he travelled at night holding out his lantern made of... well, actually, squash. It's weird how these things end up being retold.





Happy Halloween!

Chubby Whole Wheat Waffles

Waffles. A diner classic. A college dining hall stand-by. A canvas for a mountainous glob of whipping cream and fresh berries. I like my waffles extra crispy with a pad of butter skating over the indentations leaving evidence of its trail in every nook it passes. Some maple syrup drizzled on top in fine strands that cling to the highest parts of the waffle like tightropes laid out across its surface.

What I don't like is super-dense, gooey cubes of batter hardened by lukewarm iron trays with little square indentations poked in at the end in a desperate attempt to create the facsimile of a waffle. Unfortunately, that is all I could do.

I bought a waffle iron one day on an impulse to further clutter my kitchen. More important in my purchasing decision was the price: Seven dollars!! How could I go wrong for Seven dollars? Let me count the ways. This grotesque abberation in cookware is almost certainly created with the play-doh crowd in mind. It is an Easy-Bake oven in drag and it caught me on the corner in a moment of weakness. So despite a fairly interesting. healthy whole wheat waffle recipe I am forced to suffer damp, browned-at-the-edges dough for years to come.

A word to the wise. In cookware there is often a reason for price discrepancies and hopefully this can serve as a cautionary tale to all those bargain hunters out there.

This is That Beach

You know that mystical aspiration of a beach that appears almost exclusively in daydreams as you splash through the slush of yet another chilly winter?

Milieu

Talk about Beautiful. This is my kind of milieu. I think of all the various terrains that I could live in, from desert to swamp to plains to valleys to forest to coasts and beaches I prefer a nice mountainous region.