Tuesday, September 15, 2015

You Can't "save" a life.

For the record, you can't save a life, you can only extend it.
All life ends, and every one of us will end, it's just a matter of how (when is erelevant) as far as any individual life is concerned.
The only reason we value longevity in others is because we're trained to.
Dieing alongside our tribe is instinctual, but in a state-controlled system (one that thrives on the continual labor of our bodies, commodifying our existence and our livelihoods) ...suicide, death, and choosing not to procreate is tremendously detrimental.
The second we (anyone part of a large nation state) start to take control of our own bodies and our own futures, the system falls apart rather quickly; It's our national duty to stay alive as long as possible to support the state.
Live fast and die happy, friends.
It'll be over before you know it.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

The Best Yelp Review I've Ever Read!!

This is a copy and paste yelp review from a chicks visit to the Snoqualmie Casino seafood buffet.
Just so good I had to repost it :) ------->    
<3
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"(docked a star cuz the line took forever and a day)

Sunday was King Crab buffet night at the Snoqualmie Casino (regularly priced at $34.95 per person). With a combination of coupons, card points, and discounts, I calculated that a king crab buffet gorge for two people would come out to a grand total of $12.95. Total steal!

As the proud offspring of an extremely large first-generation Asian family, I have been trained from birth to take full advantage of an all-you-can-eat buffet in the most economical way. So on that lovely Sunday evening, my buffet routine went a little like this:

(1) Stop eating the night before. This applies for buffet breakfasts, brunches, lunches, and YES- dinners, on the following day. You may ingest some water if your stomach acids start acting up to the point of moderate discomfort.

(2) Drive to buffet. Pay cashier.

(3) Quickly scan the layout of the buffet area, and identify the seafood section. You will NOT dare to even LOOK at the other food choices available, as they are most likely carbo-loaded inexpensive "filler" foods, intended to trick you.

(4) However, do load up on a plate of desserts to begin with. Because, if you do your buffet-ing right, there is no way you will enjoy it after your hefty meal.

(5) Request a table that has an unobstructed, direct path to the king crab booth.

(6) If beverages are complimentary (which they usually are), skip and ask for water instead. Carbonated, sugary beverages are a sly tactic to get customers to fill up on cheap liquids and eat less. You will not fall for this!

(7) Pick up a plate of king crab. Devour.

(8) Repeat Step 7 until your body starts showing strong signs of rejection (inability to swallow, shallow breathing, desire to vomit).

(9) Crawl out and call it a night.

Now, as I was happily getting into my third plate of delicious, meaty crab leg, a teenage girl and her parents sat down in the booth next to us. Apparently, they were buffet virgins, as I overheard the father explaining to the two women what a buffet was. "No one is coming to serve you", he said to his disappointed daughter. "You have to get up and take a plate, and you can get whatever you want, okay?". The girl sighed, got up, and came back....with two slices of pizza. I openly rolled my eyes in disgust. When the waiter came over to offer her a complimentary beverage, she refused and whined for a chocolate milkshake until her parents forked out $3.75 for one. Inconceivable! I murmured to JL, "Si fuera mi hija (if that were my daughter)...PASH!*". Smack the daughter for consuming carbohydrates at a seafood buffet, smack the mother for raising her daughter wrong.

When I have children, I will purposely malnutrition them so that they can get the child's buffet price for a few extra years. I will burn their Pokemon cards and Hello Kitty pencil boxes if they dare to eat on the day of a buffet. And if they do not eat their money's worth, I am leaving them unattended at a Chuck-E-Cheese, with zero tokens and no cell phone. They shall learn, the hard way. But they shall learn.

That is all.

* PASH [n.]: the sound of a chancla (sandal) as it hits the wrongdoer upside the head, usually to teach a lesson."
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Omg, this woman is amazing.

Thoughts on suicide

I find suicide a joking matter because I don't take life too seriously. Why would I?
None of us will make it out alive.
To each their own adventure! 

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

How to eat healthy... without changing what you eat.


My trick to healthy eating... it's quite simple in concept, but requires planning.

...don't make any changes to the particular dishes and foods you love, just choose to increase the quality of the ingredients you're using in them.

Challenge yourself to not eat ANYTHING out of a container or out of a wrapper... instead use fresh hand-picked market fruits and veggies, fresh seafood and meats cut straight from the butcher or farmers market (quality means grainfed and unprocessed or minimally processed), fresh cut cheeses from local markets, quick homemade yogurt (make it in a crock pot while at work for dirt cheap), use high quality whole grains, rice, legumes and pastas from bulk bins, and make sure to have a well-stocked pantry of spices and meal starter basics like soy sauce, vinegars, oils, mustard, pickles, peanut butter, olives, etc that make the bases of most other sauces/glazes/favors, etc... the stuff that easily helps us make those basics we often forget we can easily prepare ourselves.. like ketchup, teriyaki, marinara, peanut sauce, etc... which otherwise (in processed form) lack the nutritional value and flavor profile we crave in quality meals.
When we eat from bottles and boxes we're missing out big-time on flavor profiles and freshness, plus the processed versions often contain excessive fillers, starches, binders, corn syrups, oils, excessive salt, dyes, etc.. which not only make food taste poorly, but are generally less nutritionally dense after processing (by nature to be shelf-stable).

Follow the zero packaging (cooking and uncooking) challenge and you're pretty much guaranteed to eat insanely healthy.. but more importantly, you're eating fresh n' tasty as fuck! :) Mmmm.

<3

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Mmm... Human Bacon!!

I choose to abstain from eating non-human animals because I practice veganism, and unless an animal in our care dies of natural causes, or accidentally, we're killing it.
I would, however, love to try human bacon someday... the only consensual bacon possible. First, you donate all the medical goods; eyes, major organs, all the usable crap.. then you butcher it up and make delicious human burgers, bacon, sausage, spam, you name it. Yummy, delicious, and free-range!!

I think the family should always get the opportunity for first dibs before it's eaten elsewhere, but you get the idea... it's consensual ethical flesh with a history. We know exactly where it came from. We know how fresh it is. We know it's medical record. Basically, it's the best meat anywhere. 
How awesome!!

I'd also love to prepare human cheese to go with that bacon. I've had a fascination with induced lactation... not only does lactation reduce lifetime breast cancer risks; it's hyper-local and on demand!! So, so want to pump.

Why we waste the perfectly good skin, muscle, and fat of those who die around us everyday (who aren't diseased or overly cancerous or contaminated of course) is simply beyond me. That's a lot of tasty protein simply going to waste, and it's pretty un-green to waste bacon; especially considering how much money and food went into making it. 

Plus, if we really loved our family and friends, wouldn't we want a part of them in US forever? A funeral shouldn't only have cake; it should have bbq'd loved one on the menu too. Spare no culinary expenses!! If they're lacking in fatty juicy yum, then jerky that shit up!

Choosing to ethically abstain from raping, torturing, and killing sentient non-human animals (as most people joyfully choose not to do) doesn't really fly with me (anyone intelligent and empathic enough to know raping, hurting, and killing things isn't okay generally does indeed stop, unless they're dilusional sociopaths or sheep) ...but that doesn't necessarily make me not like flesh.... flesh, from anything is yummy. Flesh. Mmm.

We're hard-wired to enjoy the taste of ourselves, which is why we eat the lubrication excreted from each-others genitals, breasts, and mouths all the time. 
This is the dame reason we enjoy the fatty tissues, organs, brain tissues and muscle fibers of ourselves too. 

We're obviously into eating some consensual human. Our bodies are instinctually going to taste good to one-another. Pigs, of course, are about as physically similar to humans anatomically as any other mammals (aside other great apes) get, and so they taste about identical to humans in almost all ways. Therein lies our bacon obsession. We simply love to taste ourselves... it's pretty addicting, isn't it? Everyone who's anyone loves fatty bacon.

I think the act of making others suffer is pretty disgusting, but flesh... consensual flesh; I'd happily eat some juicy fat human for breakfast any day. I hope we start to realize what a great protein source we're wasting!!

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

On genetically engineered crops (after my Geography of Food and eating class today)

Oh, the things that make my vagina wiggle about every which way... food, anal, politics, great sex toys, and pseudoscience.

Below is a little response to a lecture I had today in my Geography class. 
My professor is amazing; spirited, intelligent, and she smiles a lot (something I just can't appreciate enough from others).
I've really enjoyed my time in class so far, and I'm learning a fuck-ton about the links between colonialism and its effects on eating, globalization trends and food, the effects the private sector has on food disparities, the ethics of patenting life and commodifying the very things that we need to live, etc... it's fascinating stuff.
The one downside is that my professor seems biased on the genetic engineering front.... we spent a half hour in lecture going down a long list of "why people think this shit might be bad," and never really showing the overwhelming scientific consensus saying pretty much the opposite. Not even a little bit. We only learned opinions, not any hard data.
Now, I can't say shes in the wrong about trying to show us different sides of the argument, as plenty of folks have reason to hate/distrust, or question huge multinational corporations who are linked with a crappy past. 
Monsanto may have mass-marketed LEDs, universally used plastics, and countless other breakthroughs we rely on every day, but they also contracted to mass-produce agent orange and DDT back in the day, so I get why they have a bad rep. (Even though Id argue the use of DDT has saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and is the most amazing weapon against Malaria we've seen to date.)
Many others rightfully question the efficiency and ethicacy of our government regulating system, and I get why... the feds also gave a thumbs up to secret syphilis inoculations within marginalized gruops, so yeah, again.. shitty ass rep; but I still felt the lecture was very misleading to others in the classroom who know little to nothing on this stuff. 

There is a very large number of people (scholarly scientific type people) that say over and over again that use of transgenic crops are much safer than their "organic" counterparts, most simply because they're so intensely studied and manipulated with crazy precision. Organics, particularly those produced through mutagenesis, can't say they've been tested for any kind of safety standards like transgenic are routinely. We're talking 7 whole years until a patent makes it from lab to market... that's a lot of knowledge about a plant!!
I'm only an anthropology undergrad, but from all I've read from peer review, done projects on, and studied in depth from those well-versed on the science, I can only say this is some of the safest, most studied stuff in the history of mankind. 
Thousands upon thousands of papers, countless research.. hundreds and hundreds of independent studies outside the corporate world, and the potential for so, so SO many lives being saved, and we try to ban it!?
I would have loved to see golden rice covered in the slides, as this seems very pertinent to the class material, but it didn't. 
I know genetically engineered crops aren't any sort of magic-bullet solution to all of humanities many food security issues, but can we please at least make educated decisions about how we want to further the issue of transgenic crops instead of believing these nutty documentaries and hyped up media titles? It's good to hear both sides, but this class only heard about the nutty riots, marches, a few of the only protesting farmers on the topic, and none of them were based around accurate date.. literally NONE of them. Oh, internet... I love you so so much, and I hate you so much for letting loonies spread propoganda, pseudoscience, and go on about topics they know little to nothing about :/

Also, as a side note, as some of my bloggy followers may or may not know.. I lead the 2015 Seattle counter-protest for March Against Monsanto earlier this year, called March Against Myths about Modification; we had some bad-ass scientists come out to share in the march, charged up grad students, and some animal-rights activists (me included) show up to publicize VeganGmo.com, the wonderful Biology Babe joined our group, Bill Nye made an appearance in our Chicago Branch, and countless other amazing science-forward individuals showed up to make a case for the humanitarian necessity genetic engineering can bring; especially to those non-white folks with actual scary hardships living without all the privilege we have here in the US. As if we get to protest others rights to food choices! 
It's just something else seeing the March Against Monsanto group outside the Bill and Melinda Gates building.. blows my mind how privileged white girls can protest sending lifesaving food crops to sub-saharan Africa. Super classy.
Golden rice stands out as the most influential at the moment by far; (oh, and by the way, fuck you, greenpeace! "Let's promote blindness!!")

I'm on a lot of banned lists, and I have some things on the internet that would probably get me in legal trouble if the right people happened upon them, but dammit... I'm not going to stand around and let fear of the unknown prevail. 
I'm about saving the most lives RIGHT NOW, and stopping the most suffering we can RIGHT NOW by convincing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and SouthEast Asia to not ban GE tech simply because rich white girls from Evergreen and aging hippies with their kayaks in for repair (the entirety of the folks we saw at the protest) don't like it's politics or ideology. Tell this to the Starving kids in war-torn DRofCongo.. tell it to their faces... see how awesome your white priviledge looks on you then. 
This technology can potentially save millions, and to be against it for false reasons is just the most backward garbage I've come across in a long time. People are dying. 
Use your privilege to study the science and come up with other creative solutions if you don't like transgenics, but do it because you actually understand recombinant dna technology, and not bc you just watched some idiotic propoganda-promoting alarmist documentary film spouting lies, crazy people, and outright fake stats to make a buck.
So, in the spirit of my rambling vomit.... here is what I sent my professor...
----------------------------------
*Just wanted to throw a few facts around from our lecture today (8/4), and dispel a few myths:

Monsanto has made a pledge to never release terminator seeds to the public ---->

Monsanto has never sued farmers who had patent seed on their land due to contamination -------> 

There has been a vast scientific consensus on the safety of genetically engineered crops for some time now, and after thousands of papers topic, there has literally never been a link indicating they pose health risks or allergenic properties.
(There was one exception linking cancer, and it was later retracted ------> 
http://www.nature.com/news/study-linking-gm-maize-to-rat-tumours-is-retracted-1.14268)

First, Pew Research ---> http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/pi_2015-01-29_science-and-society-00-02/

European Union Commission ---> http://ec.europa.eu/research/biosociety/pdf/a_decade_of_eu-funded_gmo_research.pdf

American Medical Association ---> http://www.isaaa.org/kc/Publications/htm/articles/Position/ama.htm

National Academy of Sciences ---> http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309092094

World Health Organization ---> http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/biotech_en.pdf

Food and Agriculture Org. of the United Nations ---> http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y5160e/y5160e10.htm#P3_1651

Toxicological Sciences Position Paper ---> http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/71/1/2.full 

"Science, Safety and Trust" ---> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584506/ 

"20 years of research" ---> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23414177 

"Polarized debates, not GMOs, are the poison to be avoided." ---> http://www.nature.com/news/poison-postures-1.11478 

...and if these papers aren't enough, here's a giant list of 1,783 more studies saying GE crops aren't harmful to us or environment ---> http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Ge-crops-safety-pub-list-1.xls 

Okay, all done :)
-------------------------------
I'll post her response next... (spoiler, its not super surprising or fact filled, but I do commend her in trying)
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Sunday, July 19, 2015

Overweight is healthier than average weight!!

Because everything has an associated risk profile. Being fat has risk. Being thin has risk. Being American has risk. Being ALIVE has risk. So too does skydiving or smoking or speeding in a car or not replacing the batteries in your smoke detector.. all have risk profiles and stats attached.

So lets look at stats.. its statistically better for you to be overweight than being underweight or of average weight for one thing.. fat people live longer than thin... again, statistics. See sources for this below.
All those impoverished and often starving folks in places like Haiti, the Philippines and Bangladesh... yeah, they would give anything to be fat... considering they often watch members of their family die of starvation.

Did you know that as of today the average life expectancy of the 27 poorest countries in the world ranges from 46 to 60 yrs old? Want to know what is is in the US and Canada? approx 80 years.... that's a 20-34 year difference... and guess what the average obesity rate in these 27 countries is? It hovers around 7%. Here are my sources  ----->

http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.688?lang=en
and
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2228rank.html
and
http://www.webmd.com/diet/20090625/study-overweight-people-live-longer
and
http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20090518/obese-heart-patients-may-live-longer

So someone please explain to me again why fat isn't healthier than "average" BMI ... because pretty much every scientific study and stat done on this topic says absolutely otherwise.

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Meaning and Ethics in Life and Procreation (Spoiler: I don't agree with breeding humans)

Thought of the morning:

Meaning is a made-up conceptual framework that draws from confusion, fear, and sensory feeling. Life has no "meaning," in the same way blue has no inherent blueness.
Humans try to associate purpose in an attempt to justify our existence. There is no point or meaning to homo-sapien consciousness anymore than there is meaning to termite consciousness (which some may argue is very well established and unfairly downplayed on the back burner of higher-primate agendas.) To single out the higher primate identity and prerogative is speciesist and deductive.
That being said, our inherent randomness in the vastness of the cosmos is arguably what makes the human experience unique and worth continually living for some.... SOME.
For others (often those without a popular voice in philosophy, physics, etc) life can resemble a hellish, painful, and vastly unpleasant pursuit into the spirals of nightmare and insanity. Anyone who says differently is coming from a place of privilege and/or speciesist constructs.
It's this ever-present possibility of extreme suffering that prevents me (ethically) from reproducing or from encouraging the growth and expansion of future (potential) sentient beings.
For those in the world already viable, alive, and able to feel pain I propose either:

- Our consistent communal dedication to their non-suffering (fuck business, monetary gain, globalization, capitalism, retirement, etc, etc... any parents sole purpose in life should be to provide 100% of their being, love, support, time, etc, to the offspring they made, until the day they die.

- The choice of comfortable and painless ethical euthanasia as a right at all times in our life

- Or choice of ones own legal, cherished, painless, and non-stigmatized suicide (this should be something we also respect at ANY AGE, something we celebrate and throw a party for, etc) To go against any of our offspring's wishes to die; specifically the parents own wishes to benefit, worry or whatever else, and not always put the child's interest first is simply neglectful and crazy selfish.

Meaning and theory come from places of privilege, and I believe looking after those most vulnerable (children, non-human animals, disabled, etc.. those who lack the chance to evaluate meaning) is our essential duty, especially those supporting the ethical continuation of life via childbirth.
I came to my own ethical conclusion not to procreate at around age 12-13, and my philosophy has been relatively consistent ever since. I see breeding (as sentient intelligent beings) as intolerably selfish and cruel; yet it's difficult or impossible to lay blame on others as many of us are simply the products of other irrational emotional creatures, brought up similarly unable to reason outside themselves and think outside their genitals. This choice I have to not have children is arguably just as privileged, if not anthropocentric; as many women's bodies on the planet are owned or used by men.
Ideally, the best case scenario I can think of (for everyone's sake) is instantaneous universal implosion; until then I choose to continue my life simply because of my love of others, a vicious catch 22, nearly 7 billion strong.


Friday, July 3, 2015

Judgement of Bodies....

"Healthy" is relative. The 250 million kids throughout southeast Asia/Phillipines who have or will go blind from vitamin A deficiency over the next few years would beg and plead for American fast food every day just so they have a better chance at appreciating sight. Folks prove my point beautifully when they voice opinions of who's in better shape or who's going to live longer based on looks alone.. Unless you're a doctor, this discussion of "who's healthy vs unhealthy" is irrelevant, and based on opinion more than hard data. This is why I choose to avoid opinion and use only stats and peer reviewed literature in my research.
Health is so, so very relative. 
Stop judging bodies.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Fat is benign, fat stigma isn't.

So.... fat stigma is so much a thing.

People don't die from fatness, they die from systems failure... be it respiratory, circulatory, neurological, etc.
Fat doesn't kill you. Fat has never killed anyone.
We would die without fat, as our brains are almost entirely made of the stuff.
Fat is vital for survival, and it doesn't CAUSE death.
Something like a heart attack (aka circulatory failure) can kill people, and it happens to BOTH fat people AND skinny people.
Being fat, or medically "obese," statistically speaking, gives you a slightly higher life expectancy ON AVERAGE than someone of "normal" BMI.... because satistics; they don't make shit up.

Feminist Porn!! :)

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Thursday, June 18, 2015

Fat Stigma

No matter the size, fat or plus size models don't automatically equal sick or unhealthy anymore than stick thin models equal anorexia... we're all different sizes... all sizes of people have disease.
To specifically stigmatize and say fat individuals negatively influence us or specifically corrolate to disease is also a privileged view because much of the rise of "obesity" in the first world is linked to poverty, systemic racism, and the growing number of food deserts in urban areas.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Not all are as they appear... a double-standard in disability.

I was replying to a post a friend made today on Facebook about how someone had asked her how "such a lovely healthy young woman such as herself needs a cane?" .... and how she had kinda chosen to ignore the comment instead of letting it ruin her day.
I just wanted to point out to others that I suspect many, many more people than we realize out there are developmentally disabled, or mentally ill in some way and just don't understand or can't comprehend generally "normal" or socially accepted talking or social skills... these folks often seem mean, rude, or negative, but really, they are just trying their best to communicate... very much as a child does. If you're having a hard time picturing what I'm talking about think back to those folks talking to themselves on the street corner or begging for money... homeless individuals are more likely than not to suffer from some kind of metal illness or developmental issue.
In my past line of work alongside these folks, I know that many lower-functioning individuals look and dress and act like functioning and fully self-aware adults, but often have the mentality of young children... so when someone says something like that to me (something I'd register as otherwise rude or hurtful coming from an intelligent adult) I generally assume this person is younger inside and I look at them and treat them as such.. not out of any disrespect, but to meet them halfway. A teaching moment is often appreciated by these folks.
If a younger kid says this to us our reaction is often very different than when an adult does the same, but really, I find many adults with childlike minds that successfully live and pass as "regular" adults too. It's a very invisible situation and their disabilities are often as invisible as our disabilities, the difference being; these folks often can't express their delay/illness the same as we can precisely  because they are intellectual, and so instead pass as rude or insensitive to us.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Chemicals!?! Safety is relative!!

There are many "all-natural" things you can drink safely without general harm but that you certainly would NOT want to... testicle milkshakes, vinegar, diarrhea, salt water, puss, epicac, etc... these things might all make you violently sick, but generally they're not at all deadly.. just really, REALLY gross. Ick.
Modern glyphosate mixtures in stores have embedded emetic agents and strong odors added to them to make them smell very unpleasant, but generally this stuff is very safe.
Caffeine is 25 times as toxic as glyphosate per liquid unit, and vinegar is 10 times as toxic; vinegar is also much more carcinogenic to humans than glyphosate.
This is fact. This has nothing to do with lies or opinions... this is simply truth; ask any chemist. Monsanto picked glyphosate specifically because it's so low-risk to humans.
If you'd like to see the breakdown of a great lil' scientific comparison of glyphosate vs vinegar, please read this fun and simple at-home project ----->
Vinegar vs Glyphosate
And remember... this is all general mainstream information available in libraries, online, in books, etc.. a basic understanding of general chemical composition (which most lack) certainly helps, but anyone with an internet connection can read toxicity reports on this stuff ;) Cheers!!