Disclaimerville

So, I posted last week that I'd been having a hard time moving from tissues to handkerchiefs and rags... and this week I've found that I'm doing it. I just ran out of tissues and --- why do I think there should be another word before "tissues" - like "nose" or "snot" or "face" - oh, is it "facial tissues?" - augh. Anyhow... I ran out of 'em and haven't bought more and have been using my rags as tissues - and with the pollen count high as it is (I was going to write "higher than Bush's IQ" which would be interesting because it would be one of the first cheap Bush jabs I would have ever written/given airtime to - which is odd since he's out of office now... timing. Ti-ming. ti-MING) - with the pollen count as high as it is, I've been blowing my proboscus a lot. (Are you kidding? I actually spelled "proboscus" correctly on the first go? This can't be right... -- ok, I just checked, it's NOT right - which means the spell check on this blogger is NOT to be trusted. Oh, blogger, how you've failed me...) It's "proboscis." And it's only used "facetiously" with regard to the human nose. Well, since I don't have a facetious nose, I have a rather humorless nose, actually, I'm going to change my sentence to read:

"with the pollen count higher than Bush's IQ, I've been blowing my nose a lot."

Now...if I were really the geek I claim to be, I'd find out on what scale the pollen count is measured on to find out if it even makes sense to compare that number to an IQ number. But, I'm in a rush and, frankly, I think it's enough to acknowledge that it may be a totally erroneous comparison.

Besides, any number is higher than zero.

XTreme Recylcing

I'm in the midst of writing a couple of poems about the environment - about sustainability, actually - which has me thinking a lot about recycling. And whenever I think about recycling, I think about toilet paper.

Yes, toilet paper.

In my house we use rags for paper towels and cloth napkins and we use handkerchiefs or rags for tissues, as often as we can remember (for some reason, that one is more challenging), and I use cardboard applicator tampons (I'm slowly graduating to gladrags and, possibly, menstrual cups... TMI?). But we still use toilet paper.

Google "toilet towels" and nada.

Google "cloth toilet paper" and this comes up:

On average the US alone spends over 5.7 billion dollars on toilet paper alone each year. That is expected to double by the year 2010. We are literally flushing away the earth's numerous biologically rich habitat's down the toilet.

Contrary to popular belief, old growth and non harvested forests are used in the production of paper goods. These forests are replaced with tree plantations. The problem with tree farming is that these produce 90% less species than a natural forest would. Not only are we wasting trees but we are killing off important species of plants and animals that are imperative to the life cycle of the forest.

Regardless of the resources used to generate toilet tissue, it also makes us, as consumer's, dependant on one more thing and to the big box and retail stores. There is a growing trend in the natural family living communities across the country to institute cloth toilet paper in the home. Many families have made the switch happily.

Furthermore, this site comes up with directions as to how to make the move to cloth toilet paper.

Using recycled toilet paper is a good step. It is. But I think in this age of Xtreme everything, I'm going to consider going the distance and using cloth toilet wipes.

That is, once I get my car to run on compost.

(actually, probably before that...) :-)

Anti-Aging Cream

553,000 - that's the number of results come up when I googled "Anti-Aging Cream."

5 - that's the number of results that come up when I googled "Pro-Aging Cream."

Hm.

I was getting a facial - yes - a facial - a "deep pore" facial to clean out my pores and leave them feeling...well...vacuumed, really. And the facialologist, what the hell do I call her? - kept talking about "anti-aging" cream. And I just wanted to shout out:

FIRST of all: Is the cream anti-aging? In which case, it has no expiration date and should be good 'til I'm dead.

SECOND of all: What if I WANT to age? What if I like the process of walking the earth for longer and longer periods of time and I want my body to represent this?

WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT AGING?

I had a friend "confess" to me that she just turned 50. Seriously, it was a confession. Like she'd done something wrong by turning 50. Like she had to come out to me that she was 50. I was like, "Wow. Congratulations! 50. That's an awesome milestone. I'm excited for you."

This was not the response she was looking for.

And there is something wrong with a world in which aging is something that we try to hide.

Aging is like death - it happens to us all - and we should EMBRACE it. LOVE it. I know it's easier to say that if you love your life, but which do we have more control over:

Loving our Lives
Not looking like we're aging

???

I say: learn to love life and then stop worrying about aging - or at least about looking as though you're aging.

(I did buy the Dermaceutical skin balm and the exfoliant...for healthy skin. Of course.) :-)

Power to the Peaceful and Love to All,

Pandora

Welcome to Zen Scooterism

What is zen? An approach to religion, arising from Buddhism, that seeks religious enlightenment by meditation in which there is no consciousness of self.

What is Scooterism? An approach to life, arising from my experiences, that seeks acceptance, exploration, and loads of laughs in which there is nothing but the self. (See Liebniz)

So, why Zen Scooterism? Because, as the great Salvadore Dali stated of himself, "Pandora Scooter is contradiction." (Replace "Pandora Scooter" with "Dali" and you get what Dali actually said.")

Truly, I'm fascinated with Buddhism and I'm fascinated with the self and I know the two are at odds with one another, but I'm not entirely sure that I can't attain "enlightenment" -- what is that? when I achieve the place where I take nothing personally? I love taking lots of things personally: complements, love, constructive criticism, applause... augh -- while conceding that there is, actually, a self - albeit not the self that I usually think of as being there, but one that does still exist and helps push me forward.

So, welcome to Zen Scooterism, where contradiction is not feared, it's embraced; where confusion is not shunned, it's accepted; where self-depracation is the law of the land and self-love and generically specific love are the goals.

Power to the Peaceful and Love to All,

Pandora