Disengagement.

Over the last several... weeks... months... I suppose that I am not really sure exactly how long. I have been disengaging from political and social news and discourse. My radio spends less and less time tuned into the local public radio news channel and more time on the local school district's Jazz station. I've been reading more literature and less non-fiction. I've been getting healthier... nearly 50 pounds lighter, eating nutritiously, and riding my cool new beach cruiser bicycle.



What's the problem you ask? I don't feel guilty about being so disengaged. But some how I feel like I should? Don't get me wrong... I still hold the same values, in fact I've started doing some honest to goodness volunteering... so am I nuts? Should I be guilt stricken that I have not read the 2000 + pages of the health bill that just passed? Or that I still haven't finished another complete feminist book since the Bell Hook's Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center?

Where do you all find the balance between keeping your center and being engaged in the world? What ways do you asses these things in your life?

How close are you to your food?

Yesterday, I was feeling creative and decided to vegetize homemade macaroni. I bought pasta shells, 2 different varieties of "Italian blend" shredded cheese, a bag of shredded parmesan cheese, red and yellow peppers, fresh zucchini, and soy milk.

I went home, sauteed the vegetables in olive oil and ground pepper, boiled the noodles, added the milk and the cheese (and a little butter) to the noodles, and found that the cheese was clumpy and sticking to the spoon, and just not mixing well at all. I was used to the powdered kind, or the creamy "sauce packet" kind that came in the box.

Then is hit me: I had never, before only embarrassingly recently, considered cheese as a possibility for a pasta topping. Tomato sauce, alfredo sauce, beef sauce, sure. Cheese? Huh? That didn't even occur to me.

Even though I've been eating macaroni and cheese for my entire life.

My mom even made homemade macaroni and cheese. She used Velveeta, though, because it melted easily. It wasn't real cheese, and the easy meltability wasn't indicative of a "cheesiness," but rather a feature of the food product.

It only just now occurred to me that I can put cheese on pasta and that cheesy pasta isn't just some weird invention. And I've been eating macaroni and cheese my entire life. What does that say about our relationship with food today? (All right, I'm only talking about my relationship with food today, but I hardly think my experience is unique.) Macaroni and cheese didn't come from a blue and yellow box. It came from PASTA AND CHEESE. Kraft simply made a product out of the combination, and we allowed Kraft to redefine macaroni and cheese for us, to the point that cheese and pasta without the blue and yellow box stopped making sense.

Oh, if you're curious, the macaroni that I made was amazing:

Why I hate advertising, pt. 4986

Thanks to my chemistry-nerd husband, I now have a better understanding of the chemical makeup of... makeup. Anti-aging creams, in particular. Allow me to attempt paraphrasing this newfound knowledge:

For the most part, products that claim to "erase wrinkles" or "invigorate" the skin for the purpose of decreasing the signs of aging, are creating a temporary illusion of skin tightness. The astringent qualities of the product tighten pores, creating a more even, youthful appearance, and a waxy or oily substance remains on the skin, allowing the effects to remain in the skin until it's worn or washed off, hours later.

I shamefully bought an undereye revitalizer... thing, the other day. I never thought it would happen to me, but since I turned 26, I've been preoccupied with the fear of looking "old." I'm self-conscious about undereye circles and "bags," and I noticed a mouth wrinkle, omg. So I actually bought a product that promised to lessen the appearance of undereye "puffiness" and circles.

I went home and read the instructions. It said to apply to a clean, dry face in the morning (and you can wear it under makeup, it says!) and at night, before bed.

I used the stuff this morning after I showered, before work, keeping in mind my newfound chemistry knowledge. It did, in fact, "burn" a little, in the way that suggests something medicinal, which I guess we're supposed to find reassuring. The instructions said to "pat" the area until it was absorbed. The thing is, after using the recommended amount of product on my "eye area," there was so much that I could pat for 20 minutes without making much of a difference. So I resorted to light rubbing, and then eventually started to just spread the stuff a little outside the prescribed "eye area."

Anyway, my eyes were less puffy, and for the rest of the day, I felt a slight pulling at the corners of my eyes. It was the waxy coating that the eye crap left behind.

What really gets me is not that it's just an illusion, but rather the fact that they instruct the user to apply is in the morning and at night. We've already established that the results are temporary and dependent on the product remaining intact on a person's face. The product does not work like Zoloft; it's not released throughout the bloodstream at intervals and dependent on a regular schedule of consumption. The cream works until it's washed or worn off. If you tell someone to wash their face, and then (quick!) put some more stuff on, the user will only continue to see the results of the product. Even though it's useless to wear while sleeping, as the further instructions are to use morning and night, on a clean face. So, that would require you to wash your face in the morning before reapplying it.

Clearly, they are attempting to simply make you believe that there are benefits to using this product more often than (you know to be) "necessary" so that you will use more of their product, and therefore have to buy it more often. And using it at night, as they needlessly suggest, will cause the user to think that the product is really making a long-term and sustained difference, as promised.

Their clever little advertising tricks drive me up a wall. It's the epitome of manipulation for personal gain, and it's infuriating.

Can science answer moral questions?

It's about 23 minutes long, but well worth it:

[ted id=801]

I think he's on to something, but that it ends up going in circles, and there's no real answer to the questions he's asking, and he doesn't attempt to answer them.

What do you think?

I need a Breathalyzer for my laptop

A few weeks ago, I stopped by Target on my lunch break. I was in the book section and came across Glenn Beck's Arguing With Idiots. I picked it up and leafed through it a bit. I'd been listening to him every other morning or so at work to see what all the fuss was about, so I knew what his whole shtick was.

The content of the book is colorful and cartoonish, which I think is fun and inviting, and I was thisclose to buying it, just for laughs. I mean, why not? Plus, I'm obsessive about keeping tabs on things/politicians/celebrities/ideologies that I hate. I've been known to buy Cosmo for this reason.

Anyway, I ultimately decided that I was not going to give this man any of my money, and I sighed and put it down. I had gotten Ann Coulter's Godless from the library, so I thought that if I really cared enough about what Glenn Beck has to say, I'll do the same with his books.

Well. Last weekend, as we were finishing off the leftover booze form the party the previous night, I may have had, I don't know, a few too many... and went on a little Amazon shopping spree. I bought all kinds of great books that I look forward to reading, but also managed to apparently lose any principles I had, and yesterday, I received Glenn Beck's: Arguing With Idiots, An Inconvenient Book, and Common Sense.

Yeah. I got drunk and actually willingly gave money to Glenn Beck.

I've decided that I will certainly read these books, because I own them now, and then I will mutilate them in one way or another and make an art project about it. I'll be sure to post a picture.

I lack sustained motivation

I am thinking of a million different fascinating things to talk about, but lack the sustained motivation to write an entire blog post.

I am currently thinking about my Intro to Philosophy final paper. I have finally narrowed down a hesitant thesis/hypothesis: Should people be trusted to know what's best for themselves, when considering the impact of everyone's personal and individual decisions on their immediate or larger communities?

The goal, as this is an introductory class that covers just the basics of major philosophers from ancient times to contemporary, is to use a few philosophers' (Plato, John Locke, and Rousseau, for starters) writings to set a basic timeline for this ongoing discussion, and eventually (15 or so pages later) attempt to not only argue for my side, but actually choose one.

What do you think about this thesis? Should all people always be trusted to know what's best for not only themselves, but themselves in relation to their communities and the larger communities that they may not come in immediate contact with, but ultimately affect?

What else are you thinking about lately?

What I'm Reading

I've been really busy with school, planning this "surprise, we got married and didn't tell you for a year" party, and trying to manage all the "wait, so you got married? When?" and the "Huh?" and the "...Wait, what's your last name?" and the "WHAT THE FUCK?!" and the "wait, what?" questions, that I haven't been paying much attention to the blogosphere lately. I have, however, thought of a million things to blog about later, when I have more time, and I've also read a couple of great articles that I would like to forward onward in the meantime.

Jos at Feministing writes about a new Kotex ad that makes fun of tampon commercials, but still can't manage to say "vagina" once.

Shout out to the now-public husband, who's started a blog where you ask for his advice about anything, and he gives it to you. Like Dear Abby, but modern and better. And it's fun and anonymous.

An author on Feministing Community highlights how she is at odds with the frequency in which feminism is presented as a "members only" club to interested, but new women and men. I especially love this article because, as anyone who's read other blog posts I've written previously would know, I'm especially interested in making sure that we don't place obstacles in front of people who want to learn about feminism.

Corporation running for Congress

Oh my god. I can hardly contain my laughter. This is the best, most well-played response I can think of to the recent Supreme Court ruling.


This just in (why is the internet so full of hilarity today?!); check out A Trailer for Every Academy Award-Winning Movie Ever.

Oh! So, I got married.

Jesse and I got married a year ago and kept it a secret from everyone we knew for a year. We informed most people by mailing them an invitation to our one-year wedding anniversary. The reaction was certainly mixed among family and friends, but overwhelmingly, everyone seems happy for us (once we got them to believe it wasn't a joke). I wanted to share this because the story itself it cute and adorable.

Check out the officiant's LJ post about it here for a nice summary of the event. I announced it at work today, and the reactions were hilarious and interesting enough that I'm sure they'll find their way into an upcoming post about men and women announcing to their communities that they're married. Not that announcing a marriage a year after it occurred is exactly a common societal practice...

Keeping a secret like that for a year was fucking hard. I'm relieved to finally be able to say it out loud now :)