Okay, first of all--and people are probably going to think I'm nitpicking, but I don't care--really, is the iPhone that important? You would think that the release of this product was some sort of cure for cancer, or something. It's another fucking consumer item that will be obsolete within a year because Apple will rush out a newer, "better" version within six months...c'mon, people, get your priorities in perspective. When the long lines to purchase it makes the second news story of the evening, I realize we're hurtling even further into (notice I say "into," not "toward") the decline of western civilization. Soldiers are dying every day by the dozens, and we just wanna tune out and bliss over a new fucking gadget. Jesus.
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This NutraSweet purge has become my new soapbox issue. I'm still going through serious physical and emotional withdrawal, but every day of abstinence gives me more courage to continue. That, and really delving into the history of this product. I just finished a book by Janet Starr Hull, called Sweet Poison, and while the title's kind of lame and her writing isn't always the greatest, it's damned informative. NutraSweet's hands have always been deep in the pockets of Washington (did you know Donald Rumsfeld was once the head of G.D. Searle, NutraSweet's parent company? Gee, from the drug industry to war games--that's not disconcerting), and it appears that a number of early tests conducted by independent scientists showed that aspartame had the ability to:
a.) cause holes in the brains of mice
b.) give brain tumors and/or cause death in primates
c.) create fetal abnormalities
but, of course, money and power talks, so the "food additive" (originally designed as a drug for ulcers), was pushed through.
I wonder, along with Hull, if many modern diseases--like fibromyalgia (of which I'm a sufferer)--are the result of years of aspartame consumption. I'm furious at the industry and at myself for 25+ years of ingesting this stuff. I'm done.
Read Hull's book if you're interested. The meat of the book--her research into the development of aspartame and the suppression and lies that led to its release; its potentially devastating side-effects (did I mention people have gone blind from methanol poisoning in extreme cases?--methyl alcohol comprises 1/3 of the product)--is riveting.
Fuck aspartame. I want to have a healthy body and mind.
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I started a garden this weekend, in my buddy Kenn's backyard. You never learn how out of shape you are until you spend several hours digging up Kentucky soil during a drought. I'm eaten up with mosquito bites, too--but there's a certain satisfaction in rolling around in the dirt and planting tiny seeds, hoping they'll grow into something worthwhile. It's so late in the season, I fully expect nothing to happen, but so much of my life has been a shot in the dark--I say, "why not?" Current things I'm waiting on: squash, okra, tomatoes, "wild" onions (meaning the long kind), basil and catnip. I want to add tiny pumpkins in the corner of his yard, maybe this weekend. He's going to hate me when they start taking over, but I'll love it. Every day is Halloween for Alexandra.
5 comments:
Yay for Halloweenies!!
This weekend, I became concerned about an eye twitch I've had for the last month or so. When I was in college, this was indicative of an allergy to peanut oil. But I have neither ingested, nor am I any longer allergic to, said oil lately, so that can't be the case now. Then I started wondering what it is I eat every day that could be the culprit. Turns out I have NutraSweet in my coffee daily.
I might join you in this quest of yours. Because what I've read about it is terrifying. I also want to make this fucking eye twitch go away. You'd think I was a goddamn tweaker!
I have had occasional problems with this, too. Usually, it's when I'm under a high level of stress, but I have also noticed it increasing when I've been drinking a lot of Diet Coke.
I have been floored by all I've read; it's absolutely flabbergasting. Buy some stevia darlin', for that coffee of yours!
As always, thanks for the comment.
I wanna bash those iPhones over people's heads, I really do! It's just something else that'll get chucked into our landfills, in a year or so, after everyone's found a new doo-dad to drool over.
Another fine post. New gadgets are cool and everything…technology is a pretty amazing thing…and even I had a blog entry dedicated to its unveiling a few months ago…but the fact that it can generate this kind of media attention and consumer frenzy is pretty…well…sad. Shows you where our priorities lie as a society, doesn’t it?
Thanks, Neil, for your willingness to be open to my rants!
It's true gadgets are cool, but you hit it on the head--it's the knee-jerk frenzy that surrounds the release of said gadgets that makes me believe we've become so desperate for status, for a defining object. I wish people got this enthusiastic about ideas, like art, love, peace...
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