The best of the week at EcoSalon, hand-quoted for your perusing pleasure.

“What to make of news that the Saudis are building a women-only industrial city in the Eastern Province of Hofuf – with similar plans for four more cities elsewhere?”

“It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM.”

“With that, I vowed to concoct my own variety (and acquire an ice cream maker to get the consistency just right). So, here we are, nearly 730 days later.”

“The seaside city is still dotted with my French Canadian relatives who must still believe that religious statues bleed and cry when we sin and masturbate.”

“Hummus is grey and tan and dull; it is the color of hopelessness.”

The post The Friday 5: Say What? Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

The best of EcoSalon’s stories this week.

Have you caught the buzz about Bully, the new film aiming to bring this life-wrecking activity out into the open? Fighting off censorship that would have kept it from reaching its target audience, it is now sparking the discussion its creators hoped to engineer. Get the full story here. (And three cheers for Canada, which currently has two competing anti-bullying bills going through its legislature).

If you’re a card-carrying foodie and you’re put on an elimination diet – end of the party for your taste-buds? Not so, as Sara Lingafelter explains – it’s helping her remember the pleasure that comes with slow food, starting with this citrus-free hummus substitute.

In the words of Sherlock Holmes – when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Since the impossible seems to be part of the deal when it comes to Arizona’s recent law on conception, we must consider everything to be the truth. Check out Mallory Ortberg’s pre-natal advice for the mentally adventurous.

If you work for Kashi, you’ve probably had a stressful couple of weeks. After revelations about the company’s genetically modified and pesticide-reliant ingredients went viral, they’ve been fighting a publicity meltdown. Is it as simple as questionable sourcing practices that need to be cleaned up or just plain eliminated? Jessica Marati takes a closer look.

Finally, you may have heard that the world is warming up (yes, really) and the glaciers – the largest reservoirs of freshwater on Earth – are in retreat. Check out these 25 pictures of gorgeous glaciers from around the world. Last chance to see?

The post The Friday 5: Elimination Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

Shop safely, America. But do shop.

The Christmas shopping season is almost upon us, ready to claw open our clamped, unwilling mouths and cram them so full with cheer that we collectively choke on our own merriment and saliva. Many retailers have maximized their potential hours of profit by opening their stores in the morning before closing the night before, including 80% coupons in the small plastic bag of giblets found in most frozen turkeys, chaining cashiers to their stations with lightweight chromium steel “efficiency tethers” and allowing would-be shoppers to sublet entire portions of parking lots for tent cities, RVs, and small condo shares.

Of course, you can and will do at least a portion of your holiday buying online, but the safe point-and-click of the Internet shopping cart carries with it none of the thrill of victory, or the savage pleasure that comes from hearing the pathetic, mewling shrieks of the defeated. Black Friday unites the twin American obsessions of waiting in line and staying inside, while elevating the act of purchasing bargain electronics to a savage yet sublime battle of wills. With that in mind, here are a few tips to ensure that this year you crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women. You know, secrets for shoppers.

10. Prepare for distractions and have an exit strategy. Let nothing deter you from achieving your goal. “Can you please move these trampled corpses out of the aisle? They’re blocking the Call of Duty display.”

9. Odds are that things will get violent, and that sooner rather than later. Bring a knife. They’re best for close-quarter combat situations, like jockeying for position in line at the Best Buy. A knife can also double as a box-cutter if you reach a display before the employees have had a chance to remove the products from their manufacturer’s casing, and of course, nothing’s going to push that mother of three away from your iPad 2 faster than a quick, lateral thrust to the kidneys.

8. Plan your route. Is it more practical to take your own vehicle, or commandeer somebody else’s once you take to the streets? If you take your own, you’ll have to do your own modifications, and active protection systems don’t grow on trees. What kind of self-propelled artillery will you need? Do you plan on plating your vehicle with composite armor or are you sticking with steel? Bearing in mind that every major transit artery will be blocked solid from now until January, does it make more sense to fund and develop helicopter support? These are things you should be thinking about now, not when you’re trying to navigate the fume-filled and gang-dominated blood mazes that once comprised your local downtown area. Of course, you may already live in Los Angeles.

7. Hydrate. Forget the Sunny D; these times call for Gatorade. Get it in you.

6. Shed your innocence. If you think you’re going to find a single parking space without screeching horrific obscenities at numerous elderly disabled veterans, then you don’t have the stomach for this. Why don’t you just stay home? You could order all your presents a week before the holidays and present everyone with a printed invoice (“So it was supposed to ship on the 22nd, but I guess something in the warehouse got tied up – anyhow, I hate to spoil the surprise, but here’s the receipt – you should be able to expect it by mid-January, the lady on the phone said”) or knit everyone an incredibly itchy scarf. Accept your limitations.

5. Hone your focus. What do eye contact, verbal speech, and the human ability to experience the feeling of mercy have in common? There is no place for them this day.

4. Remember that this is a marathon, not a 5k or even a half-marathon. Promotional sales have been extended over the last few years from Friday-only to cover the entire weekend. Some even begin on Thanksgiving Day, an absurd and tragic reminder of the arbitrary nature of brand pricing.

3. Multitask. Worried there may be a better deal online than what you’re being offered in the store? Oh, my friend, you had better believe that there is an app for that. Now you can shop online while you are shopping in person. Efficiency. Singularity. Unity. Soon, our gracious corporate overlords will find a way to make every day like Black Friday, and every technological device a potential Target. We’ll always be shopping. All things single, all things alike. It’ll be like the movie Groundhog Day, only real and wonderful and full of bottom-priced DVD box gift sets of Sex and the City with all nineteen movies and interactive Stanford Blatch-voiced Crocs.

2. Retain the element of surprise. Upon retiring for the evening, steal your family members’ cell phones (or alarm clocks, for the older set) and reset the time. Won’t they feel like suckers when they wander downstairs as late as 7 a.m. only to see you surrounded by your numerous purchases and covered in the blood of strangers.

1. Alternately, keep your head down, pick up a drink, and pray for January. Better make it two drinks, just to be safe. It’s going to be a long winter, but all winters eventually come to an end.

Image: afroboof

The post Tips for Surviving Black Friday appeared first on EcoSalon.

Oh the things you can do when you’re broke.

You know how everyone keeps saying that there’s an upside to this recession? Well, when you lost your job eight months ago, you also lost your health insurance, in part because of a backdoor federal move to make unemployment punishable by death. It’s also true your parents have been driven into early retirement and foreclosed on their home, forcing you all to simultaneously move into each other’s soon-to-be-repossessed basements. And yes, lately you’ve been spending a lot of time watching the bedraggled remnants of the American middle class trampled to oblivion by an economy now populated exclusively with yacht-focused investment bankers and McDonald’s robots.

“But at least you’re spending more time with your loved ones,” people are saying.

“Cutting back makes you appreciate the simpler things in life,” the same or profoundly similar people tell us.

“I actually find holding a gallon of milk at a steady simmer for a full hour to be a very soothing process,” says the recession embracing artisan yogurt maker.

Though you’re probably going to be busy with all these family love-ins and culinary meditation opportunities, here are 15 more things to do with all the free time you have now that your chosen occupation no longer exists anywhere on this planet. Enjoy!

15. Some sort of forced outdoorsy group activity through Meetup or Groupon – God, I don’t know, a discounted group date for a skydiving session? No, really, it’ll be fun (it won’t).

14. Go to your local library. Oh, I forgot, it’s closed after 3pm and also on weekends. Try your local bookstore? Do you have any books at your house? I see. What about the Yellow Pages? That still shows up on your doorstep every once in a while, right? There’s got to be something interesting in there, like a piano moving company you can go watch hard at work or a list of churches you’re thinking about joining (now that you need faith).

13. Do you still have a phone? If so, does your plan include unlimited minutes? Pick an ex. Any ex. See how many times you can call them in an hour and really process your feelings with each voicemail. Try using different voices and see if they can still recognize you!

12. Menstruate. That’s at least three days right there. “What are you up to this weekend, Carrie?”

“Oh, I thought I’d just shed my endometrium lining in case I choose to use my body to make life. You?”

11. Too broke for brunch? I have three words for you: farmer’s market samples. Almost every stand has them, and if you work your way down the line slowly enough, they might have forgotten your face by round two. Also, if someone puts down a cup of coffee while bagging their produce, it’s fair game.

10. Put the internet to good use. There are literally thousands of useful YouTube tutorials available for free. Want to look like Audrey Hepburn? Fix your iPhone screen? Mend a shoe? It’s all there for you. You can even learn how to pick a lock, which would be incredibly helpful if you get evicted (because, you know, you’re still broke).

9. You don’t need me to tell you to go outside, right? Go outside! There’s still a few weeks left before blizzard season.

8. If you live in the Bay Area, FunCheapSF aggregates local free and ultra-cheap events on a daily basis. These can be pretty hit-and-miss, but for every municipal Winter Festival Parade, there’s a free astronaut class.

7. Host a swap party with some friends/coworkers/friendly people you met on the bus last week. Swap books! Or, if your friends have terrible taste in books, swap clothes. If your friends have terrible taste in clothes, swap food. Which I guess is technically a potluck, so:

6. Host a potluck! It’s like getting all the credit for throwing a dinner party without having to turn your oven on. Make some cute name tags, pull out some paper lanterns and Christmas lights, and all of a sudden you’re the “Friend Who Has It Together.” See? This isn’t so bad.

5. You might as well try to meditate, because the worst-case scenario means you take a nice long nap on your floor in your yoga pants. Maybe vacuum first, just in case. But still, floor naps are nothing to shake a stick at.

4. Make your own caramelized onions. Make them in the oven, because it’s ridiculous to stand in front of the stove stirring something for hours unless it’s going to turn into a Polyjuice Potion. All you need are onions, butter, oil, and salt. Onions are so cheap! They last forever! Put it on pizza. Put it on sandwiches. Put it on mashed potatoes. Put it on everything. You can’t stop and you don’t even want to.

3. The third Thursday of every November is Beaujolais Nouveau Day. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the yearly release. Remember, it’s not a drinking problem if it’s tradition. It’s cheap! It’s purple! You could drink it forever. Go get some. Now. Drink it with friends. Drink it alone! Say “Beaujolais Nouveau c’est arrive!” over and over again until you can trill the r’s satisfactorily, or you’re too tipsy to care.

2. Do you have rich friends? Maybe they can buy you expensive wine, you know, for comparison to the Beaujolais Nouveau. Maybe you could find rich friends if you snuck into more regattas and galas. Avoid fundraisers, though; they usually charge per plate.

1. EcoSalon is free? I’m just saying…

Image: Design Trust for Public Space

The post 15 Cheap Things to Do (On a Shoestring Budget) appeared first on EcoSalon.

You have a child. Congratulations! Now you just have to raise it.

You’ve been living in the lap of green luxury with your partner. You spend a minimal amount on food because you’re so good at gardening, farmers’ market shopping and home cooking. You recycle, compost and ride your bike everywhere. Life is good. Simple, affordable and semi-logical. Then one of you brings it up: children.

“It’s a good time to start,” says one of you. “Plus, we’re not getting any younger.”

Children: a perennial favorite. Children are wonderful! In celebration of this, let us ponder on all the reasons they’re not.

20. They might have that one family gene that Uncle Bob has. The one where he thinks he is part alien, part groundhog. Or was a spy. While also being a famous rock star.

19. Someday, somehow, you know that it is your children who will act as the agents of your own death. They’ve already stolen half of your chromosomes. Who knows to what other lengths these tiny genetic replicants will go? You’ll have to watch every move they make. Haven’t you known since your own childhood that all it takes is step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back? Children cannot possibly be trusted to maintain your spinal integrity. The world is full of aging sidewalks bulging with rips and tears, and your bone density is low enough as it is.

18. What if they’re all cisgendered? What will you blog about then? 

17. The manifold and shimmering joys of spinsterhood will never be yours.

16. Your daughter is going to have an iPhone by her fifth birthday, and she’s going to use it exclusively for internet bullying.

15. Capitalism, you know, man? Capitalism.

14. American children eat practically every day. Do you have any idea how wasteful that is? Do you even know how many small female-run businesses you could support in Nigeria with that kind of money? Seven. You could support seven, and they would all make the most amazing shoes. Well, not shoes exactly. More like slippers. Incredibly comfortable slippers. But you decided to have children, so instead of reviving their local economy, all of these women got malaria and died, leaving behind 26 motherless children, none of whom have any slippers.

13. There’s an 80% chance that any child born after 2011 is going to end up posting at least four videos of themselves wearing a cat mask to Xtube. I’m sorry, but there it is.

12. What’s your family’s stance on negotiating with terrorists? What if one of your children is kidnapped? Do you pay the kidnappers, or do you write off your losses and focus on the survivors? What’s your absolute price ceiling? Do you adjust for yearly inflation or stick to a flat rate? If one of your children is ransomed, won’t that set a dangerous precedent for his or her younger siblings?

11. They probably don’t even know what Dim Sum is.

10. Your children are going to absolutely hate Radiohead.

9. If you take your baby on a plane with you to visit your family on the East Coast, and your baby cries, and the man in the seat in front of you whips his head around and glowers unpleasantly, you’re going to feel really uncomfortable for the entire six-hour flight. Also, the flight attendant will forget to bring you your ginger ale, but you’ll feel too self-conscious to remind her to bring you one the next time she checks in on your row. You don’t deserve a ginger ale, because you’re a terrible mother who can’t even keep her own baby from crying, you terrible mother of a crying baby.

8. Think of all the juice boxes, granola bar wrappers and other packaged crap they’re going to beg you for. YOU, the queen of recycling and organic eating!

7. Your son is going to have a Flickr account if Yahoo doesn’t kill it first, and it’s going to be absolutely terrible.

6. None of your children will finish graduate school before the age of 35. The only degrees available will be an MBA in gaming apps or a doctorate in dessert photography. All of your offspring will be unemployable. This is also right around when Social Security will give out.

5. Any child born after the Global Banking Act of 2017 must serve three years as an unpaid intern in Bank of America’s deep-sea titanium mines.

4. You’re still going to die, you know.

3. You know that cats suck the air right out of babies’ mouths, don’t you? So you’ll always have to worry about that. Cats are witches, and witches hate babies.

2. What if only one of your children is gluten-intolerant, but you convince all of them that they’re gluten-intolerant because it makes arranging dinner easier? What if then your daughter goes to a birthday party without your supervision and accidentally has a cupcake and realizes that you lied to her and the revelation drives her to madness?

1. You can’t just walk away. Ever.

Image: photologue

The post Children Are Great, Except When They’re Not appeared first on EcoSalon.

New Age in the new age.

Event: Liveblogging Maidon’s first sexual encounter. October 22nd, 9:30 EST.

Your response: Maybe attending.

Hi everyone! Just wanted to send out a quick reminder to all of you “maybes” out there that this weekend is the big day and how much it would mean to Maidon if you could share in this family moment with us. I know how busy all of you are! However, those of you who were lucky enough to co-experience Maidon’s natural home birth with us certainly won’t want to miss out on her entrance into reproductive maturity. Circle of life!

A lot of people have been asking us why we chose to live blog and simulcast (via Skype for all you international attendees! I’m looking at you, Aunt Denise!) Maidon’s first intimate encounter rather than just releasing the traditional Twitter announcement or flock of white doves. Well, on one of the most recent Monday night drum circles, Ken challenged everyone in the family to pioneer ways to improve our SEO practices and drive traffic in the coming year. Someone certainly earned the Medicine Wheel of Facilitated Expression that week!

Those of you who attended Parrish’s first birthday party/anti-circumcision demonstration a few years ago will remember how precious these live-streamed shared experiences can be (not to mention the keepsake crocheted foreskin cozies). Who could forget last year’s ultra-marathon to beat menopause we launched on Kickstarter? Or Ken’s vasectomy gluten-free bake sale? These are treasured moments in our family history that are all the richer for being available online in incredible detail for anyone to see, whether friend, relative, neighbor, colleague or spambot. That’s why we add the name of every unique visitor to our blog on the Bailey family quilt. We couldn’t do this without you, MarinDad47.

Afterwards there will be a small ceremony as we share the remaining freeze-dried strips of placenta jerky that Migda, our family doula, prepared after Maidon expressed her autonomy in transitioning “out” of my uterus. Please feel free to stay as we compost the remnants of Maidon’s hymen and use it to sustain the seedlings in her Garden of Self-Nourishing Womanhood, formerly Ken’s heritage chard plot. Commemorative photos and homemade quince jelly will be available for those of you with placental allergies.

Blessings to you all, and don’t forget to tweet, retweet, stumble, digg, star, review on Yelp, like, tumble, post, repost, check in, share, upmod and upvote!

Image: webtreats

The post You Have an Evite from the Baileys! appeared first on EcoSalon.

PG&E’s safety codes and corporate responsibility seem questionable at best.

Pacific Gas & Electric, the same people people who brought you Hinkley groundwater contamination (the one with cancer, not the one with Julia Roberts) would like you to know that they feel just terrible about all of the recent explosions. And also some of the older ones, like the one that mutilated nine Bernal Heights firefighters in 1963. And definitely the San Bruno blast that killed eight people last year. But darned if those ancient, cracked pipes just won’t stop shattering unexpectedly and turning leafy neighborhoods into nightmarish, flame-ravaged hellscapes when you put off fixing them for five or eight decades!

Chris Johns, the president of PG&E, explained that the company was “deeply sorry” to have caused the explosion, in a tone that came off roughly as apologetic as Reed Hasting’s latest blog post about changing Netflix DVD delivery. Look, PG&E would like to fix the hundreds of rusty, improperly welded pipes crisscrossing the Bay Area left over from the Truman administration. In an ideal world, would a substantially smaller number of their products and services kill people? Of course. Would they set fewer homes on fire? Sure, why the hell not. But we don’t live in that magical fantasy land with “safety codes” and “corporate responsibility” and “PG&E not making your house blow up.”

Do you have any idea how many memos that PG&E employees have sent each other over the last 20 years? At least 250,000, according to the 250,000 memos they were forced to recently submit to the California Public Utilities Commission. Well, give or take a few internal messages. Specifically the ones concerning historical, metallurgical practices and upkeep, or “why our pipes keep setting everybody on fire.” What do you expect from them? To keep records of all of these memos in some sort of, I don’t know, centralized mainframe data center? A series of computers? When they’re already running themselves ragged trying to put out all the fires?

But they really are working on making things better. They bought three solar power plants! And what is the sun if not a big, friendly, helpful series of explosions? So stop worrying. And just ignore that odd, faint hissing noise and vague metallic smell. It’s probably nothing.

Image: Indybay.org

The post PG&E Trying Very Hard Not to Kill Everybody appeared first on EcoSalon.

Did you know that nobody in Washington, D.C. is overweight? Also, people are fat because they are lazy slobs, period.

Get hip to this: people used to walk more, back in the “Old Days.” They also died of syphilis and croup and had slaves, but whatever. New fattie James Polk blames his freshly expanding waistline on a recent move from Washington, D.C. to suburban Mississippi, where “overly-ample ‘waddler[s]'” are carted to “the front door of Wal-Mart” in an article titled “Fat People Don’t Walk” at the New American Village. Because fat people don’t walk, they just get airlifted to their next donut, amirite?

Presumably, thin, black-clad city dwellers are always jogging chicly to their next Urban Funk Double-Dutch slash Brazilian jiu jitsu class/exciting laptop-necessitating job/rooftop garden party. The article is couched in terms of “city planning” and “medical costs” and “I’m really just concerned about your health here, guys,” (which, worry less, okay?) but it’s swimming in fat – and poverty-bashing. Apparently it’s bad enough to be fat, but going to Wal-Mart while being fat is unpardonable and merits public shaming.

Look, walking more is great. It’s good for you, it doesn’t pollute, it frees up resources – I’m all for walking. I’m all for being healthy and active. But putting fat/poor/tasteless/rural on an oppositional axis to slim/attractive/urban/culturally-and-morally superior is not only incorrect, it’s cruel.

I’m not sure what the point of this article is supposed to be. Let’s rebuild Los Angeles to fit an East-Coast gentleman-of-leisure’s specifications? Force calisthenics on Southern rural-dwellers with few resources? Reproduce widely-disseminated stereotypes about what fat people must be like? Or just point and laugh at all those dumb fatties at Wal-Mart?

Image: kayugee

The post No, <em>This</em> Is Why You’re Fat appeared first on EcoSalon.

This week’s medical news comes with a heaping side order of mixed messages. Tanning is bad! (But you already knew that.) Sunscreen is also bad! There’s a lot of conflicting medical advice out there about sun exposure. My advice? PANIC.

Medicine and health writers make a living from informing readers about the innocuous, daily habits that are killing you right now. It’s their bread and butter. So it’s important to take alarmist headlines with a grain of salt. But not too much salt, because you’re already eating too much and it’s slowly killing your sodium-bloated body. You’ll know it’s working when you’re afraid of everything.

Proponents for increased Vitamin D intake like Dr. Mark Hyman of The Huffington Post claim that Vitamin D deficiency can contribute to “cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, depression – and multiple sclerosis.” The human body naturally produces Vitamin D during sunlight exposure, so those of us who slather on the sunscreen religiously are missing out, especially because the only food sources that provide Vitamin D are herring and cod liver oil. Eating herring is (probably) worse than skin cancer or rickets.

For those of you who live in places where sunning yourself outside isn’t possible about eight months out of the year (hello, Minnesota readers!), you might be tempted to build up your Vitamin D levels by visiting a tanning salon. You’ll also build up your melanoma levels, unfortunately; the American Association of Cancer Research links indoor tanning with a “74-percent higher risk of skin cancer.” Thanks for playing!

There’s no need to despair just yet, however: NYU dermatology professor Dr. Darrell Rigel claims many studies show that elevated levels of Vitamin D don’t make a difference. So stay in. Or go out. Or go out, but only swathed in white cotton and SPF 45. Or rub yourself down with cod liver oil and go tanning. Just stop getting your medical advice from the Internet, okay?

Image: Evil Erin

The post Things That Will Probably Kill You, Vol. 3 appeared first on EcoSalon.

I don’t know about you, but when elderly lesbian doppelganger slash Republican Lindsey Graham is one of the few Senators espousing a common-sense, ecologically-minded legislative opinion, I pay attention. Complete with a double spit-take and a heaping helping of “WHAAA?”

Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski, firing the next salvo in the knock-out grudge match between Alaskans and the Earth, has sponsored a bill that would overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s right to regulate air pollutants. Even though that’s, you know, what the EPA does. The core argument is that Congress should be regulating environmental policy, not an actual environmental regulatory group. Here’s where the startling sanity of Lindsey Graham comes into play: “If we stop them [the EPA], are we going to do anything?” Three guesses and a prize of their choice to the lucky winner.

The Murkowski bill counts at least 40 co-sponsors (including Democrats from Arkansas, Nebraska, and Louisiana). Several other Democrats from coal states have not yet stated which way they will vote, leaving open the possibility that the bill will find the 51 votes it needs to pass.

Since Obama’s climate bill hasn’t yet passed, the EPA’s Clean Air Act is the only governmental means of cutting carbon emissions currently available. There’s also nothing stopping Congress from crafting its own energy legislation in addition to whatever actions the EPA takes. But a consensus on energy policy in Congress is a long way off. Depending on which way the vote goes this afternoon, the reality of effective greenhouse emissions regulations may become just as distant. With Democrats scrambling to protect corporate profits and Republicans speaking up for sensible environmental protection (and no legislative consensus or leadership in sight), the score could very well be Alaska 1, Earth 0.

Image: dbaron

The post The Audacity of Doing Your Job: Lindsey Graham Steps Up For the EPA appeared first on EcoSalon.