by Laurelin

I honestly don’t know why my friend Dan even still wants to be around me. Every single time we hang out I turn into a drunk monster and wind up doing something completely and utterly retarded. Past events have included drunk yelling, drop kicking, punches in the head, “where is this going” talks as I’m getting kicked out of a bar, and most recently screaming at him that he was a pussy as I made him carve his initials into my foot with a giant knife. I have only a slight recollection of this happening, but it’s true; there it is to this day, a tiny “DK” on the top of my foot, a reminder that at the age of 28, total idiocy is still very possible.

He should definitely win an award; I have embarrassed him at multiple bars while he’s been working, woken up his roommates and neighbors in his quiet Cape Cod house and been found alone and drunk in the kitchen attempting to eat cold pasta salad with my hands like the scene where ET the Extra Terrestrial discovers food and beer in Elliot’s fridge. Dan and I are clearly just buddies at this point, this is not the type of behavior that says, “Hey, you should date me, I’m very stable.” I mean, I know everything should be taken with a grain of salt, but really, some things are just stupid. Sometimes I’m just really, really stupid. The other night in a blacked out state he decided that I should be the best man at his future wedding. “Start preparing that speech,” he slurred. “It better be good.” One of the guys, always.

I guess I don’t have the best track record with men. It’s been a year since my last serious relationship, and looking back I feel as though it was really just a blip on the radar screen. Learning experience, blah blah, everything happens for a reason. I guess it does: One line will forever define that relationship, one line spoken at the bar one night by my ex’s best friend. This guy was a monster, a terrible drunk and constantly blowing lines, but he always told the truth. I guess I was looking bummed out one night at the bar, because he came up to me and gave me a sympathetic hug.

“Don’t worry, Laur,” he said. “It wasn’t meant to be. You guys were great together but you know, the other night he mentioned that you were the best thing to ever happen to him, but that you weren’t the type of girl that you marry.” He smiled reassuringly and wandered off. I stood there, and as that comment slowly absorbed the world around me blurred. I thought I might pass out. Two years of my life, years spent happy, in love and with my best friend… not only was that all over now, but that’s what he thought? Did he know that all along? I have never forgotten that, and it honestly haunts me. I thought I had had something amazing, but he was just killing time. I am not the type of girl you marry. What the hell was he thinking?

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by SnakePlissken

Every day I’m surrounded by goddamn vegetables. You see, I’m in charge of quality control at a major West Coast vegetable processing plant. Sort of like my own personal hell really. Why, just yesterday I was overseeing the processing of around forty ton an hour of Oregon’s best field-fresh green beans for eight hours plus. That’s a fuck-ton (an arseload in metric for all you Euro folk) surrounding me every moment of the day; dripping their juices on me from weird white whirling belts, stinking up the place with goodness, and generally just being too goddamn healthy. Surrounding me also, is a sea of tiny immigrant laborers like underpaid Oompa-Loompas with no health plan making this bizzaro Willy Wonka- world factory hum and whistle. They are also heavily involved with the weird white whirling belts, but for the most part none have dripped their juices on me.

By the end of an eight-hour shift I need something shitty after being surrounded by a vegan’s wet dream for such an unbearable amount of time. Not only must it be shitty, but it must be greasy and hopefully processed beyond reproach and recognition. Luckily the strange smelling ultra-cheap grocery store was open at midnight and I found these little beauties tucked in between the frozen cow knuckles and the recently expired Banquet Salisbury Steaks.

I love things that taste like other things. Such as, oh, mayo that tastes like bacon. Or when something purple actually tastes like grape. In this case, these evil little nuggets are obviously Totino’s Pizza Rolls that taste like tacos. As a precaution I opted to consume the Imodium A-D before I even opened the bag.

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by Laurelin

I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly crazy person. I don’t yell or scream at people I’m dating, I’m not jealous, I don’t nag, and I don’t get upset when ex- girlfriends are still in the picture. I was horrified by the female lead in He’s Just Not That Into You, and I am a firm believer in the idea “if it’s not fun, why do it?” Relationships are supposed to be fun. If it’s not fun, why the hell are you still dating? I’m not a crazy girl. Or, at least that’s what I have been telling myself for as far back as I can remember. I guess if you break it down, I’m just as crazy as the next girl. I just hide it damn well.

I have been caught being crazy once about six years ago, and let me tell you, it whipped me into shape. As much as I like throwing myself under the bus when I write these articles, what I did was so absolutely insane that I can’t even think about it without my cheek burning in shame. All I know is that I was busted, and the look on my boyfriend’s face when he caught me red handed was enough for me to realize then and there that acting like an untrusting maniac was the most un-sexy quality a girl can have.

I had stepped out of the room and he had jumped on my computer to check his e-mail, and as I walked back into the room our horrified eyes met over the glow of the screen and my heart fell like concrete into my stomach. The digital age makes it too easy to have access to whatever you want, and I had left whatever I wanted to know about him right up on the screen for him to find. It was all there, e-mails, conversations with ex girlfriends, everything. He should have broken up with me on the spot, and I’m not sure why he didn’t. I guess I got lucky. Unfortunately, that experience engrained something in me, and from that moment on I didn’t act anything but totally laid back about everything, ever. I didn’t ever want anyone looking at me the way my boyfriend looked at me that day.

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by Nicole Powers

The people of Venice, CA slept soundly last night after authorities broke up a major criminal cartel that had been operating in their midst. Raw milk and cheese lord, James “Rawesome” Stewart, and his accomplices, Sharon Ann Palmer and Eugenie Bloch of Healthy Family Farms LCC, were arrested yesterday following a raid on premises in the predominantly metro-hippy, hipster-hippy, genuinely hippy, and wannabe hippy beach district.

The multi-agency action –– a collaboration between the FDA, the FBI and the LAPD –– is part of a major government crackdown on healthy food. Agents had successfully scored illicit cheese and dairy products on several occasions during a year-long undercover sting operation centered around Rawesome, a members-only organic produce speakeasy operated by Stewart out of a location at 665 Rose Ave. After consuming the goods they obtained, the reduction in allergy and asthma symptoms in the operatives involved provided probable cause for the warrant required for Wednesday’s armed raid.

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By Nicole Powers

America devotes an inordinate amount of resources to its wars on controlled substances; namely its wars on drugs – and raw milk. Yep, you read that right. The prohibition of alcohol may have ended in the US in 1933 with the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment, but it’s still alive and kicking when it comes to unpasteurized milk.

The retail sale of raw milk for human consumption is illegal in the vast majority of states, and though some states do permit direct farm sales and/or herd shares, federal laws prohibit the sale and transport of raw milk across state lines. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers unpasteurized milk or cream –– and any uncooked products made from it, such as cheese, yogurt, and ice cream –– to be categorically unsafe. Their official line is that “raw milk can harbor dangerous microorganisms that can pose serious health risks to you and your family.”

However, by their own figures, a mere “800 people in the United States have gotten sick from drinking raw milk or eating cheese made from raw milk since 1998.” When you compare those numbers to the statistics on alcohol and cigarettes – which can be bought legally in all 50 states – the government’s position on the sale of raw milk appears to be inconsistent to say the very least. And the discrimination against raw dairy is even more profound when the health benefits are taken into consideration. But while the fight to decriminalize other controlled substances grabs headlines and galvanizes support, few are even aware of the prohibition against real milk. Kristin Canty, a small farm advocate from Massachusetts, hopes to change that with her compelling new documentary, Farmageddon: The Unseen War on American Family Farms.

Canty didn’t set out to make a film, merely to heal her son, who suffered from asthma and severe allergies. When traditional medicine failed to help, she embarked on a voyage of discovery that led her to raw milk. While fighting to heal her sick child, she also had to fight the seemingly unreasonable and intransigent attitude our government has towards healthy-minded boutique farmers who produce this hard to come by commodity in the face of much adversity. Frustrated and angered by reports of raids, and shocked at the increasing ferocity of the persecution of those who were doing nothing more than producing fresh food, Canty was compelled to expose the truth. For her, it wasn’t just about the disparity in treatment between big agriculture (whose factory methods have actually been responsible for the majority of serious food scares in recent years) and the mom & pop organic and sustainable operations, but an issue of a mother’s right to choose healthy food.

Read our exclusive interview with Kristin Canty on SuicideGirls.com.

**UPDATE**
Following the multi-agency armed raid on Venice Beach, CA fresh food collective Rawesome, which resulted in 3 arrests (see story), there will be a series of special screenings of Farmageddon at the Electric Lodge cinema on Saturday, August 20 (see details). Proceeds will go to the Rawesome Community Fund.

by Laurelin

Driving down the quaint streets of Chatham on Cape Cod is always a reality check for me. The gorgeous colonial style historic homes with vast lawns and wrap around porches lay quietly by the sea, so perfect in their rustic yet modern décor, looking as though a horse drawn buggy would be a better fit in the driveway rather than a SUV. I have always wanted a home like that. I want something old fashioned by the water, somewhere were I can drink sangria on the porch with my husband and look out at the sea. I could stare at these houses forever, just dreaming of a life that right now, seems so out of reach.

I left a seaside town to move to the city, traded the ocean in my backyard for a concrete ocean and non-stop traffic, horns and sirens. Constant college party screams and shouts lull me to sleep instead of the waves and the cry of seagulls. Instead of tasting salt in the breeze, you might get the occasional AC water drip from the apartments above you. I am used to this city life now, and I do miss it when it’s gone, but I can’t see myself retiring and settling down here forever. For me, right now, this is what I have convinced myself I need. This city has always catered to my single needs. Even when I had a boyfriend this city did nothing to help “us” live a quieter happy couple life. We’re late nighters. Our only consistency in life was the same bar stool we would sit in after work. We had no place in a place like the Cape. We didn’t belong there, we belonged here in this tragedy.

It’s a much different story than just city life vs. country life. To me it’s like two different worlds. Move me to one of those houses on the Cape without me feeling like I’m completely done with this city bar scene and I would be lost. My only question –– is it going to be enough? What am I waiting for? More money? The perfect person to bring with me? If I wanted that life so badly things would have been different. I could have moved home to Rhode Island this year but I couldn’t do it. I was supposed to move to San Diego this September, but the thought of leaving Boston just became too horrifying for me. It was just easier to stay, to keep doing what I’m doing. Why stir the pot when things are pretty much alright the way they are? This city has become the ultimate enabler, allowing me to live a crazy life from which I want no rescue.

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by Jensen

This post is going to be completely different than the usual Doing it with Jensen posts. I’ve got this friend, Ocell, who co-writes Food We Chew. He always posts all of this amazing looking food but I’ve never seen any real evidence that he can cook. So I proposed that we do a blog together. Basically, I wanted an excuse for a cute dude to make me food, and I saw pictures of these amazing looking bagels he had made and decided I needed them in my stomach. My life is tough! Anyways, I’m behind the camera this time, not in front! Sorry gentlemen, this one is for the ladies. Or something.

If you don’t have a bread machine, you’re pretty much fucked. And not in a good way. No bagels for you, sorry :[. I’m sure there are plenty of awesome non-bread machine bagel recipes, but this is not one of those.

If you want the full recipe and directions, check out AllRecipes.com.

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