Friday, December 21, 2007

Sweet!


America's Best Vegetarian-Friendly Small Cities


#2 Eugene, Oregon

Eugene residents are soy happy, because they get to live in a thriving, fun city while enjoying numerous vegetarian-friendly restaurants, health-food stores, and farmers' markets.

Eugene is America's vegan-pizza capital, with Cozmic Pizza, Pizza Research Institute, and Sam Bond's Garage leading the way. If you're craving Chinese, get out your chopsticks and dive into the food at the all-vegan Lotus Garden, which features Hunan "beef" as well as vegan spring rolls, pot stickers, and wonton soup. Holy Cow Café, located in the University of Oregon's Erb Memorial Union student center, is always a good bet. Laughing Planet Café was named "Best Veggie-Friendly" hot spot by Eugene Weekly for its healthy-and-tasty burritos, soups, and salads.

Going out to get groceries? Then you're in luck, because Eugene's natural-food stores are as big, bright, modern, and plentiful as the chain supermarkets. The Saturday Market, along with several produce stands in the area, will inspire you to eat only the freshest, tastiest produce. One of Eugene's largest industries is natural-foods manufacturing. Rising Moon, which makes pasta products, Emerald Valley Kitchen, and Golden Temple Granola are all based in Eugene.

For a sweet addition to any visit to Eugene, help yourself to the variety of vegan desserts that abound all around town. Wake up to the vegan pastries at Morning Glory Bakery, or get yourself a slice of the Sweet Life's high-end vegan cakes and pies.

Photobucket

Damn...

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Wendy Erin Bush

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

The memory of your big beautiful laugh makes me ache with happiness.

I miss your pure unfaltering enthusiasm (a unique power I've never known in another humyn being) and those warm smiley hugs that made the world melt into sweetness.

Love you always.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

12/6/2007

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Pretty Colors

My ears are tingling with joy and anticipation...

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

9/11/07 Webcast - Videotape

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Wait for the Bling!

U.S. Sets Record in Sexual Disease Cases


Gee, I wonder how that happened?


Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

"Pussy for Sale!"

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Oh, how sweet is that?

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Word.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

just the way it is

I have the happy privilege of leaving work at noon every Tuesday to attend Spanish class. There are about 12 students total, so when I arrive, three or four early birds settle in for the next two hours of verb conjugations and vocab exercises. This sometimes leads to light homework discussion or polite chitchat. Today however proved to be a bit more…interesting.

The conversation was in progress as I took my seat. A woman in her early thirties named Nicky was complaining about a one-credit course the school requires for graduation. Apparently there are many of these eat-your-money courses to choose from and they cover a single topic to be debated in class. Since I’m a transient student at the school, I was out of the loop and continued to unpack my collection (a sign of complete nerditude!) of useful dictionaries. That is, until I heard the topic of the class…

War Innovations.

Yeah.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

It gets kind of ugly from there.

Nicky said it was difficult to have a real debate because the “kids” didn’t know much about what’s going on in Iraq. Some of them, who identify as “pro-war”, tried to argue that the US went to Iraq to find Osama bin Laden. Blah, blah, blah. One classmate even thought Osama was a country…YIKES. She went on about the assignment, mentioning the controversy over giving security clearance to contractors and finally added the disclaimer, “but you know, I’m not against the war.”

I looked up from 501 Spanish Verbs.

I snapped.

“Controversy? Maybe the US government shouldn’t invade another country, murder and rape the people who live there, bomb their homes and cities, or lock people in cages and torture them - and maybe the greedy multinationals with their grossly bulging pockets and drooling fangs shouldn’t be allowed to suck the natural resources of that country so coveted, that Iraqi blood must be spilled in the process.”

As I came up for air, she replied with complete nonchalance…

“Well, you know, it’s been happening forever. That’s just the way it is.”

My heart pounded with anger under my breast. I felt myself reeling, possessed as the words tumbled from my mouth,

“No. You are wrong. Not all societies are imperialists. People do have the ability to make other choices. You can try to justify violent aggression by saying ‘well, that’s just the way it is’ but it still doesn’t make it right and it doesn’t mean ‘the way it is’ is the way it should be.”

Her face flushed red as she turned to the front of the quiet classroom. The discussion faded into mumbling and class began.

It's amazing how talking to someone can make you feel alone and crazy. I will never understand the immediate, uncritical, and reactionary willingness to justify murder for profit and the resulting subjugation of peoples and lands. Never.

My mind became trapped in that moment.

Later, Nicky complimented my shoes like we were longtime girlfriends. As the fog cleared from my brain, our eyes met. She smiled. I felt the need to vomit and repeated the words... el síntoma.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Berry Brazilicious

I have fallen prey to Açaí madness. This sorbet is dense berry-cocoa velvet on my tongue.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

A deep purple purée is sweetened with blue agave nectar and green cane juice. The organic berries are rich in omegas, antioxidants, and fiber. They are also amazingly delicious!

Sambazon's Sustainable Açaí Project sounds pretty awesome too - although I only read about it on the company's website…so, you know.

Allow the sorbet to soften 5-10 minutes before eating...if you can wait!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Tampanian Homesick Alien

Fighter jets have been pounding disconcerting vibrations into my apartment all day as they tear through the sky in pairs. Seriously, what the fuck is going on?

Luckily, I have David Attenborough's wildlife documentaries to keep me happily distracted. For anyone who is unfamiliar with his work - get familiar! So far, I have gobbled down The Life of Birds, Life in the Undergrowth, and The Life of Mammals. David reveals the intimate complexities of social interactions, motivations, and specializations of animal life around the planet, without coming off cutesy, dramatic, or dry. I have found them all completely enthralling and I feel like I'm gaining a deeper understanding of life and my significance/insignificance. The world is amazing. We all have different ways of doing the same things.

It's difficult to live in a society completely steeped in human dominance. Trapped in a little box next to another little box, I often feel so isolated from my home.

Flower gathering rock rabbits...



Leopard slug love...

Monday, September 3, 2007

So Succulent

Jen invited me to the USF Botanical Gardens yesterday for the Cacti and Succulents show. I am now making friends with a very spiky Alluaudia.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Jen purchased a hanging Hoya plant called Hindu Rope. The grower said that it blossoms in knotted bunches and drips with gooey sweet nectar. She's going to make a clipping for me!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Beautiful!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Texas Executes 400th Person in 2007

Including at least one non-violent offender. Of course, he's black and the not-his-victim was white.

The Case of Kenneth Foster: Texas Prepares to Execute Man for Driving a Car Near Scene of Murder

The number of people killed in the Texas death chamber since the return of the death penalty in 1982 will surpass 400 by the end of the month.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

www.freekenneth.com

www.texasmoratorium.org

www.amnesty.org/campaign

___________________________________________

UPDATE! Texas Spares Life of Kenneth Foster

From Democracy Now! ...

The governor of Texas commuted the death sentence of Kenneth Foster yesterday six hours before Foster's scheduled execution. Governor Rick Perry made the decision after the state's parole board voted six to one in favor of sparing Foster's life. This marked only the third time Perry has commuted a death sentence. Since he took office in 2000 Perry has overseen 162 executions. Anti-death penalty activists hailed the decision as a major victory. Dana Cloud of the Save Kenneth Foster campaign said QUOTE “This case demonstrated to the world just how arbitrary and capricious capital punishment is." Foster had been sentenced to death for a crime the state of Texas admits he did not commit or plan. In a recent interview with CourtTV, Kenneth Foster talked about how he wants to keep helping raise his 11 year-old daughter.

Kenneth Foster:

"So I'm trying to breed another little activist here. I'm trying to breed us another Barbara Lee or Barbara Jordan or Maxine Waters or Sheila Jackson Lee… We need to actually raise our children more to get involved with the system. A lot of people like to point fingers — "This is what's wrong with this." We need to get our family involved with the system, raise our kids to go to school and be politicians and legislators and Senate members and House reps. We have to do that, and that's something that I been putting on her head, and I think I got her."

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Strawberry Jam out 9/07!

For Reverend Green/The Purple Bottle


Peacebone


Exciting!

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Saturday, July 7, 2007

"Dick Will Make You Slap Somebody" - Alexyss Tylor

Okay, I have nothing to say about Alexyss Tylor's show VAGINA POWER other than "um, whoa", but you really should watch these clips allllll the way through. If you do not take this advice, you will surely miss some very interesting...nuggets.

VAGINA POWER

"Dick Will Make You Slap Somebody"




VAGINA POWER

"I am the Pussy Pilot."

Alexyss and her mom talk pussy...



VAGINA POWER

"Penis Power - The penis will reduce you to a cum freak."

Sunday, June 10, 2007

My Dad Works at the Fertilizer Plant

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Take the tour...

For some reason, the Center for Science in the Public Interest didn't include information about the aquaculture industry's impact on ocean health in this interactive tour of the food supply. After all, Americans alone eat over 17 billion marine creatures every year - outweighing the global production of beef. I've been reading about the practices of intensive fish farming and open ocean fishing recently and I am seriously horrified (though not completely shocked) by what I've discovered. Really, all of this is very depressing.

Food, Ethics and the Environment Conference at Princeton: Concerns for Oceans, Climate and Animal Welfare from the University Channel

More...
Fish farming, or “aquaculture,” has become a billion-dollar industry, and more than 30 percent of all the sea animals consumed each year are now raised on these “farms.” The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization reports that the aquaculture industry is growing three times faster than land-based animal agriculture, and fish farms will surely become even more prevalent as our natural fisheries become exhausted.

Aquafarms can be based on land or in the ocean. Land-based farms raise thousands of fish in ponds, pools, or concrete tanks. Ocean-based aquafarms are situated close to shorelines, and fish in these farms are packed into net or mesh cages. All fish farms are rife with pollution, disease, and suffering, regardless of their location.

Aquafarms squander resources—it can take 5 pounds of wild-caught fish to produce just 1 pound of farmed fish—and pollute the environment with tons of fish feces, antibiotic-laden fish feed, and diseased fish carcasses. The fish-farming industry’s demand for fishmeal and oil provides incentives for fleets to take millions of tons of small fish that otherwise might provide food for cod or haddock, and much needed protein for people in developing countries.

Fish on aquafarms spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy enclosures, and many suffer from parasitic infections, diseases, and debilitating injuries. Conditions on some farms are so horrendous that 40 percent of the fish may die before farmers can kill and package them for food.

Yet commercial fishers kill hundreds of billions of animals every year—far more than any other industry—and they’ve decimated our ocean ecosystems. In fact, 90 percent of large fish populations have been exterminated in the past 50 years and a recent report published in the academic journal Science, estimates that by the year 2048 our oceans will have been completely over-fished.

Today’s commercial fishers use massive ships the size of football fields and advanced electronic equipment and satellite communications to track fish. These enormous vessels can stay out at sea for as long as six months, storing thousands of tons of fish onboard in massive freezer compartments.

Commercial fishing boats leave their ports in pursuit of specific species of fish, but their hooks and nets bring up thousands of pounds of other marine animals as well. Sharks, sea turtles, birds, seals, whales, and other nontarget fish who get tangled in nets and hooked by long-lines are termed “bycatch” and are thrown overboard. They fall victim to swarming birds or slowly bleed to death in the water. Scientists recently found that nearly 1,000 marine mammals—dolphins, whales, and porpoises—die each day after they are caught in fishing nets. By some estimates, shrimp trawlers discard as much as 85 percent of their catch, making shrimp arguably the most environmentally destructive fish flesh a person can consume. Shrimp fishing amounts to only 2% of the global wild seafood catch, but is responsible for 30% of all by catch in the world's fisheries.

Commercial fishing is wiping out biodiversity, as miles of nets sweep up all the fish in their path—and take coral habitats with them. Commercial fishers have devastated the ocean’s ecosystem to the extent that large fish populations are only 10 percent of what they were in the 1950s. Wild Atlantic salmon are so few that 300 farmed fish are sold for every 1 caught swimming freely. In March of 2005 The New York Times revealed that 6 out of 8 stores were selling farmed salmon labeled (as the more expensive) wild salmon. Salmon is most commonly farmed by confining 50,000 animals to a single cage or net. The wild salmon population is, unfortunately, largely unsustainable due to the demand for wild caught fishmeal feed, oil, and the threat of disease and parasites from escaped farm fish. Seafood Watch suggests buying wild-caught salmon, but unless you have a trustworthy supplier, you are probably purchasing farm-raised meat.

The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter (Singer and Mason)
http://www.nofishing.net/CommercialFishing.asp

Saturday, April 21, 2007

RAWvolution

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket


Inspired by Laurie's whole food cleansing fast, I finally decided to unpack my food processor and explore RAWvolution. The book was a gift from Tyler's sister and I have read it 100 times, but being a terrific procrastinator, I had not yet tried a single recipe. So, last weekend I filled my grocery cart with the RAW essentials: walnuts, cashews, macadamia nuts, sunflower seeds, almonds, nama shoyu, agave, lemons, coconuts, veggies, fruit, raisins, garlic, raw tahini, and herbs.

The first recipe I made was the Harvest Corn Chowder, a creamy puree of fresh corn cut from the cob, walnuts, pine nuts, garlic, nama shoyu, coconut water, and lemon juice. I also added a touch of chili pepper for heat. Then I made tacos on collard green leaf tortillas with sunflower seed cheese, spicy ground walnut meat, and guacamole. These were BEYOND delicious. I also whipped up Pasta Marinara with Zucchini noodles, macadamia cream Eggless Egg Salad, and No Bean Hummus made with pureed zucchini instead of chickpeas. Everything was incredible!

I’m excited to make a few desserts this weekend….between paper writing (my very last undergrad paper ever!) and sleeping.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Dinosaurs in Eden

$27 Million Anti-Evolution Museum to Open Soon

By Andy Mead

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Animatronic dinosaurs and people co-exist in the Creation Museum's displays, just as dinosaurs and people did in the Garden of Eden, according to the group behind the museum.

Tyrannosaurus rex was a strict vegetarian, and lived with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

There were dinosaurs of every kind aboard Noah's ark. Some dinosaurs managed to hang around until just a few hundred years ago. The legend of St. George slaying the dragon? That probably was a dinosaur.

Exhibits showing all this and more will be at the Creation Museum, a $27 million religious showcase nearing completion in Northern Kentucky.

The museum, in Boone County near the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, is being built by a non-profit group called Answers in Genesis. It is scheduled to open on Memorial Day. Museum and Northern Kentucky tourism officials are expecting it to be a boon to the region, bringing in at least 250,000 visitors in its first year.

It already is getting media attention. Newspapers and television stations from Europe, Asia and Australia have visited, and CNN was there Friday.

But mainstream scientists, who have dubbed it The Fred and Wilma Flintstone Museum, say the museum's message is just plain wrong.

The museum is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible: The world was created in six, 24-hour days, some time between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Humans appeared on Day 6, and they didn't evolve from anything.

Ken Ham, an Australian who is Answers in Genesis' $120,000-a-year founder and president, says the museum opening will be a significant event in Christendom.

"No one else has ever built a place where you can experience biblical history and merge it with the science," he said.

47 Percent Agree

But Eugenie Scott, a former University of Kentucky anthropologist who is director of the California-based National Center for Science Education, said the information provided in the museum "is not even close to standard science."

Scott visited the museum recently as part of a British Broadcasting Corp. radio program. Although she didn't get a tour, she saw enough to know that the museum will be professionally done. And, she says, that's worrisome.

"There are going to be students coming into the classroom and saying, 'I just went to this fancy museum and everything you're telling me is rubbish,' " Scott said.

Daniel Phelps of Lexington, president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, says the museum will embarrass the state because of the "pseudoscientific-nutty things" it espouses, and because it portrays evolution as the path to ruin.

But the Rev. Bill Henard, senior pastor of Lexington's Porter Memorial Baptist Church, said that Sunday school classes and other groups from his church are likely to visit.

"I think people will enjoy ... being able to see a different side from what some scientific findings have shown," he said.

Henard said he believes in the literal story of creation, adding that "I think you would be surprised to know how many people hold to a young-Earth creation."

More than a century and a half after British naturalist Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, which suggested that life evolved over millions of years from one-cell organisms, quite a few people agree with Henard, pollsters say.

When the Gallup Poll asked people about their views on the subject last March, 47 percent of Americans polled said that God created humans pretty much in their present form some time in the last 10,000 years. That belief was strongest among those with less education, regular churchgoers, people 65 and older, and Republicans.

Recruiting Dinosaurs

Like a natural history museum or an amusement park, the Creation Museum will use people's fascination with dinosaurs as a draw.

There will be 80 lifelike dinosaur models, some of which move their heads and tails and roar.

"The evolutionists use dinosaurs to promote their world view; we're going to use that to promote our world view," Answers in Genesis spokesman Mark Looy said.

More than 50 videos will be shown at the various exhibits, and a "special-effects" theater will have seats that shake as visitors are hit with tiny mists of water. The opening show features an animatronic young woman struggling with her belief in God, while two angels that she can't see are on the screen behind her. Ham describes it as the only part of the museum that is "lighthearted" and "edgy."

The museum has a planetarium. But its programs, unlike those at other planetariums, will say that the light from the stars we see did not take millions of years to get here.

There also is a reproduction of a portion of the Grand Canyon. The message there is that it was created very quickly, from the waters from Noah's flood. The fossils in rock layers there and in many other places around the world are of animals that drowned in the flood, the museum says.

Some of the exhibits would be the envy of any natural history museum.

There are, for example, 10,000 minerals from a collection that was donated to the museum, fossil dinosaur eggs from China that Ham says are worth $40,000, and a donated collection of dinosaur toys that has been valued at $50,000.

There also will be an exhibit suggesting that belief in evolution is the root of most of modern society's evils. It shows models of children leaving a church where the minister believes in evolution. Soon the girl is on the phone to Planned Parenthood, while the boy cruises the Internet for pornography sites.

The museum already has generated international publicity and criticism.

Comedian Bill Maher, who often mocks religion, came by last month. Looy said he snuck in for a half-hour interview with Ham, who didn't know who he was.


The museum and Answers in Genesis also are the unflattering subject of a chapter of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. The book, published last year, is by former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges.

Tom Caradonio, president of the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Commission, said the museum is expected to bring plenty of people to the region, including religious conventions.

Asked about the contention that the museum will embarrass the state, Caradonio noted that Lexington allows betting on horses at Keeneland Race Course, which some find objectionable.

"I learned a long time ago in this industry that if we had to make moral judgments, we would probably end up selling nothing," he said.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

I am not a regal princess...

Holy shit.

I guess a daughter's sexuality is property of her father? Gross.

May I recommend a showing of this at the next Purity Ball?








Monday, April 9, 2007

our future now

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Saturday, April 7, 2007

back to babyhood

I'm moving to Missouri in October.

Please visit me!

The Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an Intentional Community committed to environmental sustainability and egalitarian living. Feminism and cooperation are two fundamental philosophies of this living community project.

In 1997, the founding members purchased 280 acres of land in rural Missouri. The Dancing Rabbit is currently home to 19 people and three dogs. The community has a flexible structure and allows for multiple living arrangements including sub-communities, cohousing, and individual households. The goal of the project is to create a self-reliant society of 500 – 1000 residents. The long-term goal is to create a village made up of smaller communities, formed by individuals or groups, within the village. There are already two active sub-communities in the village, organizing small organic business cooperatives and group income sharing.

While social diversity is promoted through the development of these sub-communities, all members must agree to the basic covenants of the larger village. These six basic rules include, no use of automobiles other than the biodiesel powered vehicles available through the on-site cooperative, no use of fossil fuels, all agriculture/horticulture must be produced organically, all power consumed by the village must derive from renewable and sustainable sources, no lumber harvested from outside of the bioregion (unless it is reused/reclaimed) may be used in the community, and all members must adhere to the waste disposal system of reclaiming organic and recyclable materials.

Dancing Rabbit uses a self-defined feminist/egalitarian committee-based system to reach group consensus. The process for making decisions that affect the entire village has changed over the years. The village required full group consensus for all decisions during the early period of development. It soon became apparent that many members preferred ceding some of the power of full consensus to smaller committees. This reduced the amount of time each individual spent in meetings, while creating specialized groups to work on specific issues. However, every village member is guaranteed the opportunity to provide input and no decision is finalized unless each member can agree to the terms of a committee’s proposal. This often requires debate and compromise, as the village members believe that each person offers “a piece of truth” to the discussion. Through this system, everyone is empowered to make a direct contribution to the development of the project.

To stimulate the local village economy and reduce dependency on the larger US economic structure, community currency is being produced in hour value denominations. This helps to foster an equalizing effect on the importance of each individual’s contribution to the village. In this system, one hour of childcare is equivalent to one hour of biodiesel production. Jobs created within the village do not rely on conventional gender role expectations found in the larger patriarchal culture. Individuals of any gender identity are encouraged to pursue work that interests them. This, of course, is also a reflection of the project’s core feminist ideals. As a way to reduce the cost of living, the village also participates in the Conservation Reserve Program. The community has a contract with the federal government that pays an annual stipend to “perform erosion-control measures, plant trees, and encourage wildlife conservation.”

So, I'm selling my shit and heading west by foot. If any of you would like to join me, I'm going to start a sub-community called Froogins.

This is a dancing rabbit...
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

This is also a dancing rabbit...
http://www.dancingrabbit.org/

egg cycle

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

About Me