Apologizes for what is a head, it may make you feel a little uncomfortable...but, for those who failed sex education or perhaps were busy playing with yourself...there may be something important to take note of for a safe and happy Valentine's Day.
This is dedicated to all you active people and your little friends too. Above is a photo taken from the vantage point of where I ate lunch the other day, in Cambodia where the STI rate is among the highest in SE Asia.
I have heard all too often from too many of my friends about their unprotected sexcapades.
Even from my friends who spent time working on HIV/AIDS care and prevention as well as reproductive health for one reason or another don't cum prepared.
When used correctly, “rubbers” should give the sensation that it is not on, and when you have safe sex…it will feel better after.
So for those who haven’t done so, read the Fucking directions!!!
Some keys to doing it right are: 1) Squeeze the air out of tip…apply some lube inside and out. 2) If you need to turn on a light…then do so. Once you start unrolling the wrong way you have contaminated the condom...for both parties it's best to see what you are doing. 3) If you think it’s sending the wrong sign that you came to the party prepared, well then you need to bone up on MacGyver…if he didn’t come prepared with his special tool, well, he would have been fucked many times. 4) Women, can be part of the act…most guys don’t know what they are doing…so trusting that they are doing it right could be a big mistake!
I ripped these instructions from the web. Sorry for the quality, squint your eyes and you'll see it just fine, or search out other directions or videos. Ok Condom!
Over seven years I have experimented with many kinds of diet identities. Declaring vegetarian a year out of high school, I assumed a mostly vegan diet for much of those years. I tried the raw food diet, nothing cooked above 110 degrees Fahrenheit, which lasted about two months. Over the time of vegetarian based diet I considered myself to have a healthy balanced diet. I ate organic produce from the local farmers and thought I was getting plenty of protein and fat from non-animal sources.
Upon reflection, I realize about five or more of those years of being vegetarian, I was plagued with narcoleptic like symptoms which made studying or working stationary very difficult for I would fall asleep too much and be tired consistently. The tests from the doctor read I wasn't anemic and that my diet appeared to be fine.
I stuck to my vegetarian ways, because I believed it was healthiest, given the amount of antibiotics and hormones pumped into the industrial meat system, as well as the environmental impact of the meat centered diet. I also thought about the amount of energy in terms of water and food that was poured into making meat when eating lower on the food chain requires much less energy.
The industrial meat and agriculture industry, is quiet awful. Amongst other things pumping petro-chemicals into our food, GMO corn feed that produces sick animals, and has shown to cause intestinal bleeding in humans, as well as growth hormones and antibiotics to have the animals fatten as quick as possible to be slaughtered in a factory line.
In the past year I have had a chance to work for a San Diego Organic Farmer, and seen the ways of my conscious food community around the farmer's market and San Diego. I have seen pasture fed chickens, cows, goats etc..
During a lull of a six week fight with swine flu back in October, I was offered free range chicken liver and heart cooked in raw butter by the intuitive wisdom of Chef JEM (A Raw Milk and pasture-fed animal husbandry enthusiast).
I hesitated, because after seven years I was given up the title of vegetarian.
After visiting Cambodia last year and having little option to eat vegetarian and I began to eat insects, some frogs and fish from the rice fields.
I became more open to the idea of eating a little higher on the food chain. Bugs are plentiful, frogs were tasty, and fish were wild in the rice fields.
It took the repeated encouragement and rationale by Catherine and me to accept that my body was asking for something different, perhaps the nutrients were not all being assimilated because of my lack of animal protein.
Although, vegetarian diet may work for some, I realize that every body is different! I am sure my eastern European roots didn't have access to fresh produce and ate animals in their diets given their climate adaptations. I realize that no matter what some people claim about the ability of vegetarian diets to provide everything needed to live, that some people need animal protein, and some claim that unless you have animal protein you can not properly absorb other nutrients.
....
So, with the chicken heart and liver attached I sat in peace and went for the heart. As I bit into the strong organ, a vision of me taking the animal to slaughter became clear. An act as if I had done it many times before.
Chef Jem later told me about the Vegetarian Myth by a friend of his Lierre Keith, who after almost twenty years of being a dedicated vegan faced the evidence on which people claim to hold their political, nutritional, and ethical reasons for being vegetarian. Only having read summaries of her arguments, I found them to be quite a convincing rebuke to my held claims being a closest to a political vegetarian. .
Chef JEM also introduced me to the teachings of Weston Price. As a medical anthropologist and dentist, Price was shocked to see rampant decay in the mouths of his patients time and time again. Price set out around the world where he documented people's teeth and discovered some amazing western colonization via the pallet that (processed and refined food ie. sugar) was disfiguring the faces and teeth of children leading to all sorts of disease and ailments.
In contrast the parents of these children who had traditional diets made up of all the non-processed foods had perfect jaw lines and teeth.There is a lot more to that story, however, being back in Cambodia, I noticed quiet the same.
Everywhere I have traveled into the “developing world” I have seen Coca-Cola and Pepsi, refrigerators, signs on houses, painted on the sides of rural huts houses, even in very remote places, all given for free by the good grace of the CO. These channels of pushing products along with 7 Eleven who distributes Dole Fruit Co. products in plastic wrapping, and a bunch of other GMO food that hold a true history of hegemony of economic and social influence around the world. People replacing traditional diets with processed food, refined sugar, and achieving those foods are held as a luxury. Very fucking backwards!
To top off my tirade I include what I noticed on my cooperation to visit Disney Land before I left the states. Rumor has it that the park receives Coca-Cola for free to sell. My childhood favorite the Tiki House exhibit is sponsored by Dole Fruit Co..
Sugar and big Ag. Companies (United Fruit Co) in central and South America (among other regions) have done some really amazing work. This includes sponsoring the slave trade for sugar and plantation life. Military coups where the United Fruit Co. fronted the bill and water privatization to cut of water to villagers to put in a bottle for $1 a pop. Having it at Disney Land which does a great job at ingraining these kinds of foods and behaviors into children s quite disgusting.
I digress.I have seen that the mouth is a vehicle for many things. It allows you to express who one thinks they are through the voice, and consume what food that makes up a physical being.
I have had close friends and family recently experience phenomena of where the mouth seems like a root to the dis Ease.
And back to Cambodia…on the way back from a visit to the country we stopped by a little road side turn off where a bunch of women, some with children were selling live fish and eel and
vegetables, herbs, and honey, straight from the fields. They were making pennies on their food however, I looked around and saw perfect smiles, broad beautiful jaw lines and what looked like happy healthy people.I don’t think on less then $2 a day (according to UNDP figures) they could afford a dentist or orthodontist.
I thought how many years of pain and how much of my parent’s money was spent on braces and then seeing bright perfect smiles, from many of these women who’ve probably never seen a dentist.
The photo of the hanging meat is the butcher where we got our material for the BBQ.
We ate cow heart, liver, tongue, steamed fish and its roe and fertilized duck egg,washed down by coconut water I cracked open with a machete. This other picture of the cows are about as big as cattle carriers I have seen here....two abreast...but I have yet to find any milk!
There is little refrigeration around Cambodia, so everything is consequently very fresh and rich with taste and nutrients. Chickens run free with their chicks and cocks crow every morning at dawn.
The cows are pasture feed and every part from the tongue to the intestines are eaten.
I have been staying with a Cambodian doctor and his family. His philosophy, "eat everything!" I take that to mean from the earth or sea if it was made on to be on this earth then a little is healthy for me. Tonight I ate some herb that is traditionally used to treat malaria, it was a flower, bitter, but added an interesting freshness to the fish and eel.
Bon appetite!
My first encounter with raw beef…lime, chili, and maybe some greens, really tasty!
I never thought I would eat the fertilized duck egg, this is the one thing I couldn't handle eating... well, I went for it, as Catherine had done in front of me many times before. It tasted like chicken soup with scrambled egg...really quite delicious.
I have arrived in Cambodia after a month of preparationion. Of course, I am not quite prepared, but here I am in a land that is like a 30 year back to the future time warp from its neighbor Thailand.
I boarded the early train to Cambodia, a six hour ride for about $1.40.Leaving into the sunrise, and open windows to smell the new day and all of its colors.
Crossing the border where they were screening for H1N1 with a survey that they weren’t actually checking.
A bus into Siem Riep on the newly paved road cut the trip from 5 to 2 hours last year.
The pleasant town of Siemp Riep is the hub for visiting the temples of Ankor Wat,
I had visited last year, so, I just enjoyed the night and had a refreshing night.The next morning I got a ticket to the capital city of Phnom Penh.
During the trip I saw rice fields, vast as far as the eye could see.Some of the dry land was on fire, and the train kicked ash into the open windows as passed through 10 Kilometers of blackened fields. Burning the rice fields is a way to restore nutrients into the soil, the charcoal left behind from the burn helps the soil retain nutrients.
However, lost is the energy that the fire released in heat, as well as carbon and ash thrown into the sky.
The good news is that part of the effort with Re3-Generation when working with the farmers and rural communities aims to incorporate using the plant waste in a biogasification rather then just open burning.
Biogasification is a process that harnesses the thermal heat and gas called syngas (carbon monoxide and hydrogen) produced by heating plant waste in the absence of oxygen, like in a kiln.
So, what is produced is useful heat for many industrial purposes and a clean gas called that can power a generator for electricity, which normally diesel fuel would be used. Fifty percent of the carbon matter is locked down in the form of charcoal, and now called biochar.
Spreading that biochar into the fields helps retain nutrients and raises the crop yield, and is a great way to store carbon.This kind of agriculture application mimics an ancient practice called Terra Preta, used to farm the unfertile Amazon soils.
Jan 24th
The second day into Cambodia I have many emotions surging through me.
A new language to learn, a slightly different culture, a feeling of being alone, and in poorer country to start this project.Shouts of “Barang!” which is the default for every foreigner, even though it means “French.”Cambodia was colonized by the French, and so naturally, seeing my big noise, they might confuse me for French.
