Godammit, I’m Mad!

Now that I’ve learned about cocoa harvesting, I can’t buy chocolate that isn’t Fair Trade Certified.  Knowing that everything we buy is tainted with injustice somewhere along the line is troubling. You can’t give up everything; but child slavery is a good place to draw the line.

The Ivory Coast provides 43% of the cocoa beans used to make the world’s chocolate. The US Department of State estimates that more than 109,000 children in Cote d’Ivoire’s cocoa industry work under “the worst forms of child labor,” and that some 10,000 are victims of human trafficking or enslavement.

In 2001, in an attempt to avoid government regulation and intense media scrutiny, major cocoa companies made a voluntary commitment (the Cocoa Industry Protocol) to certify their cocoa “child labor-free” by July 2005, but that deadline passed with little fanfare. The deadline was then extended to certify 50% of farms “child-labor free” by July 2008. The cocoa companies trumpeted a few pilot programs, but continue to purchase and reap profits from child labor cocoa.

Hershey has been the slow to implement changes and has been the subject of an email campaign. Now, they have issued a press release, announcing a $10 million investment in West Africa to improve cocoa farming but it’s not clear that this will help any actual people.

Fuckers!

“Americans alone spend $13 billion a year on chocolate.” Ha, at least half of that comes from me, personally.

I need chocolate to live. I am not exaggerating. Without chocolate and coffee, there would be no reason to get out of bed or even breathe. My favorite form of chocolate is Toblerone and it isn’t Fair Trade Certified. It’s owned by Kraft, which helps to diminish its appeal, somewhat. Maybe I’ll have to write to them and beg them to get on board.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Favorite chocolate?

Bed, Bath & Beyond is recalling its Dual Ridge Metal Boutique tissue holders, which were found to be contaminated with radioactive material.

The contamination was first discovered in California when two packages bound for stores in Santa Clara and San Jose containing four tissue holders triggered radiation alarms at truck scales, according to a Jan. 6 report posted on the NRC website.

In the notice on its website, Bed, Bath & Beyond said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the tissue holders do not pose a threat to anyone’s health.

No threat to anyone’s health, no no no no.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman David McIntyre told The Associated Press that there is little to no risk to human health, but it’s better to avoid unnecessary exposure to radiation.

Got that? It’s better to avoid radiation. You know, if possible.

If you’ve been following the Republican debates, you have been amused, nauseated, and enraged. You have probably shifted in your ranking of which candidate is the stupidest or most repugnant. It’s almost like watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills: You think Camille is the biggest cunt but wait, it’s Kyle!

I hate Mitt Romney. I really fucking hate him. I can’t stand his repressed anger and his conman demeanor. The thought of Mitt Romney as President is horrifying.

Newt is a bastard, Perry’s a moron, Santorum is a douche, Ron Paul is nuts and Jon Huntsman is just clueless (or he wouldn’t keep reminding people that he speaks Chinese.)

I am asking because I genuinely want to know: Which contender do you hate the most, and why?

This photo is all I could come up with for a New Year’s gift.

May 2012 be the year you see the dopeness in everything, and not the wackness. xo

Last night I discovered a girl named Chrissy who killed herself after several years of paralysis caused by a swimming pool accident.

I learned about her in a forum on the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation website. I came upon the website a few months ago, and struggled with the mystery of why some people want to go on living and some do not.

Chrissy was a beautiful girl who had recently fallen in love and was looking forward to everything. The story of her accident and its aftermath is horrifying but it happened and I had to read it. Horrible things happen but few things can be this horrible. Still, Chrissy endured for several years. In the end, she simply didn’t want to continue a life under the circumstances dictated by her condition.

On her blog, she explained:

A big part of me died back on June 5, 2005 and my life was never the same. Everything has felt empty, and bittersweet. Every memory tainted with sadness, over everything that I’ve lost, everything I miss doing, and everything I had planned to do, and hoped to be.

I understand. Max left me a message saying something similar, even though his disabilities weren’t as extreme as Chrissy’s. For him, they were intolerable.  Going back to her blog just now, I couldn’t help but cry. What a brave girl she was. I salute her honesty and her incredible, heroic struggle.

~

Tonight, I learned about a photographer and writer, Édouard Levé, who shot himself a few days after completing a novel called Suicide. The novel is fiction but obviously reflects Levé’s preoccupation with suicide. Perhaps he he planned his death as an artistic statement. Or perhaps he lingered too long on the subject of death, turning it over in his mind until it seemed like the only rational conclusion to his obsessive and inward-looking existence. He was only 42 but seemed to have focused closely on life’s absurdity.  Here is what the narrator of Suicide says:

“You didn’t like the selfishness of your suicide. But, on balance, death’s reprieve won out over the painful agitation of life.”

It bothers me that Levé threw his life away even though he wasn’t paralyzed. It bothers me that I can’t understand why some people are resilient and some aren’t. It bothers me that you can’t leave this world without smashing everyone around you. It bothers me that no one has the power to decide which suicide is justified. It bothers me that I don’t know where Chrissy is, meaning I don’t know where Max is. It bothers me that I can’t forgive Levé for hanging himself because I can’t find the compassion for his obscure suffering.

It bothers me that I have to keep pondering death like a difficult math problem that might yield an answer if I stick with it. It beckons to me and repels me and it continues to break my broken heart.

Today I had the privilege of another colonoscopy. My mother had colon cancer, so this is her gift to me. I looked forward to the propofol, but little else. The fasting and the nauseating potion you have to drink are an ordeal, even for someone who is used to ordeals.

I felt strongly that I would have cancer. Then, as I waited for the lady with the propofol, I felt Max’s presense. I felt so sure I was going to join him, I figured I would die during the procedure.

The Doctor appeared and exclaimed at how pretty I looked. I told her that I wore lipstick* just for her. The next thing I knew, I heard her voice telling me: “It’s all over, your colon is beautiful!”

If I can’t just be dead, at least I know I have a beautiful colon. Feel free to admire it in the pictures  below!

* M.A.C. Russian Red

Remember that factory in China where 17 workers committed suicide? Remember how we were assured that compared to the general population of China, this rate of suicide was actually very low?

Foxconn is Apple’s largest supplier of iPads and iPhones. Apple wants us to think of it as a utopian company run by the benevolent prophet Steve Jobs. It doesn’t want us to look at the grim truth about how its products are manufactured.

They aren’t brought to us by storks! They aren’t made in the US, either. They are made in Foxconn’s three Chinese factories, the most modern of which is an antiseptic nightmare of dehumanizing work conditions. Another worker jumped to her death on November 24, but I only found out because I was looking for images from China Fashion Week.

Joel Johnson wrote in Wired Magazine about the sense of guilt that drove him to visit the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, an industrial city in southern China. The company has put nets around its buildings to break the fall of potential jumpers. It has opened counseling offices and forced workers to sign contracts that forbid suicide and warn that families of suicides won’t receive any unusual compensation.

Maybe we’re supposed to think that the million workers employed by Foxconn are lucky to be employed. That only works if you think you’d feel lucky to work a ten hour shift with forced overtime, where you raise your hand to use a restroom. You’d have to feel lucky to live in a dorm room with seven strangers and can only watch TV in a common room with bench seating.

Two independent reports found that worker conditions at Foxconn were incredibly poor, and that Apple had failed to keep its promises regarding Foxconn.  In the first quarter of 2011, Apple posted a record high in revenue of $26.74 billion.

As a reviewer of electronic gadgets, Joel Johnson was burdened “with an outsize provision of guilt—an existential buyer’s remorse for civilization itself. I am here because I want to know: Did my iPhone kill 17 people?”

After touring Foxconn, his answer was Yes.

I’m glad I don’t own a single Apple product. I would never buy one now. If I meet Steve Jobs in hell, I’m going to tell him what I think. Meanwhile, I hope you will pass this story on. We can’t easily opt out of civilization but we can choose which companies to do business with.

Mary Coble is a dedicated artist whose 2005 performance piece, Note to Self, involved being tattooed with the names of 436 gay, lesbian, bi and transgendered people who died as a result of hate crimes.  The performance took 12 hours.

On the one hand, wow. On the other hand, is this art?

Here is a parallel, under the category of Too Much Information:

Late at night, I like to pick at my legs. “Like” isn’t the right word. It’s more, I have to pick at my legs. This has been going on long enough that I know it’s a form of OCD because I don’t want to do it but I do it anyway.

It started with a tweezer and a couple of ingrown hairs. I hate shaving my legs but I hate ingrown hairs even more. Soon, you get a little scab and the next night, you need to  pick off the scab. Pretty soon, it’s war. My legs are a battlefield and no one is winning. I stopped for a few months but then started again.

I know this is a response to intolerable anxiety. I know I should wear mittens at night, or take up knitting or wear high boots until I get into bed.

Nevertheless, I haven’t managed to stop.

Mary Coble has inspired me to ask the question: IS THIS ART?!? How about if I call this a six month performance piece, with my husband the sole spectator??

I think that having only one spectator makes it super arty!

I already feel kind of important about my work!

What do you think?

Meet Cindy Jacobs, a self-proclaimed prophet and right-wing supporter of fellow moron Gov. Rick Perry.

Watch her explain how Rick Perry’s Jesuspalooza broke the curse of “Native American Cannibals.”

Cindy and other members of the Apostolic Reformation movement will descend upon Washington, D.C. with  ”DC 40: Forty Days of Light Over D.C“, to do whatever it is they do.

Laugh, but be afraid.

Why did they stop there? Why not add zebra?

This “shoe” makes me want to cry.  $469.95 at solestruck.