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...
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*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 :)
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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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