Author: lakecat

I am a writer living in Brooklyn. I have a beloved cat, I am Irish, democrat, vegetarian and atheist

Categories
Food And Recipes Health

Why Soda Is Bad for You

Is soda really bad for you? Yes. Very bad. All of it: Pepsi, Coke, Sprite, Seven Up, Mountain Dew, Root Beer. It’s all bad for you. How do you know? Pick up a can or bottle and read the ingredients. 2-methylimidazole. Do you know what that is? You’re not supposed to know. You’re not supposed to read the ingredients.

Let’s start with how much sugar there is in soda. Except they don’t say sugar. Aspartame, cyclamate, saccharine, acesulfame-k, sucralose, by any other name it’s sugar and it’s all nutritionally empty and it all contributes to obesity and diabetes. And it’s addicting. Those soda execs are no dummies.
Consider also that all colas contain phosphates or phosphoric acid. Too much of these can lead to heart or kidney problems and trigger accelerated aging.

The artificial sweeteners don’t break down in our bodies. They end up in waste treatment facilities and then in our waterways. The bromated vegetable oil in Mountain Dew (called BVO) is an industrial chemical known to cause memory loss and nerve disorder.
Aspartame raises blood glucose levels and when your liver has too much glucose, the excess becomes body fat. Non diet sodas can cause fat build up around your liver and your skeletal muscles.

Aluminum cans are lined with a resin called bisphenol. It’s known to interfere with hormones and linked to obesity, diabetes and some kinds of reproductive cancer.
The caramel coloring in brown colas contains 2-methylimidozole and 4-methylimidazole. They have been found to cause cancer in animals.

There are so many other things you can drink besides soda. Is the health risk worth it? Read the ingredients on your next can of soda. Do you know what they are? Do you know what effect they have on your body? Do you trust the big soda companies to have your best interests in mind?

Categories
Entertainment

Goodbye and Good Luck

Lindsay Lohan is 26 years old. That’s not very old to be be a joke. It’s not very old to be a train wreck. Not very old to be charged with 2 DUIs, misdemeaner cocaine use, theft, parole violation, third degree assault, reckless driving and providing false information to a police officer. Not very old to plead no contest to theft and parole violation. And it’s not very old to be an alumni of the Betty Ford Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center.

She is the poster child for troubled and drug addicted movie stars. She comes by it honestly. Her mother is an alcoholic. Her father an alcoholic and cocaine addict. When Lindsay was 3 she was a fashion model. When she was 10 she was a soap opera actress. When she was 11 she was a movie star. She has been a cash cow for her family since she was very little. That can be confusing for a child. Childhood is when you are supposed to be discovering who you are. It’s a time to feel safe and taken care of, a time to discover what you like and how you feel and what you think about the world. It’s not a time to be worrying where your next job is coming from and how much money are you making and is it enough? When Lindsay was 3 her parents separated, and they would reunite and separate several more times before they would divorce. Her father is a wall street trader who has been convicted of criminal contempt of court and sentenced to 3 years in prison. He has also been convicted of DUI and domestic violence.

Her mother produced a reality show called Living Lohan in 2008 which she starred in with her 15 year old daughter, Ali. She brought a camera crew from Entertainment Tonight along when she visited Lindsay in rehab, much to Lindsay’s chagrin. A child needs to feel valued by her parents for herself. When a child is valued for her fame, she can be forgiven for wondering if she would be valued if she weren’t famous. And thinking that the answer would be no.

I know. Lindsay is an adult. When you’re an adult, you’re supposed to take responsibility for your life no matter how dysfunctional your family is. The truth is, that’s hard to do when you live in a goldfish bowl. It’s hard to unlearn behaviors you’ve been surrounded with since you were a child. The best thing I could wish for Lindsay is that the media leave her the hell alone. I know. It’s not going to happen. But wouldn’t it be nice if they would temper their snarky coverage of her with a little compassion? Guess it doesn’t sell many papers.

Categories
Christian Religion

My Religous Phase

I went through a religious phase when I was 5. I went to a Catholic school. Everyone I knew went to a Catholic school. My family was Catholic and so was every family in our neighborhood. We went to Mass every weekday morning and I went again on Sundays. The Mass was in Latin and I didn’t understand a word but that only made me respect it more. The words were exotic and beautiful to me. We all knelt and sat and stood at the same time during Mass. We all recited the same words in unison. It was written down in our missals. We received communion at Mass which meant we were fed a small white wafer which was supposed to represent the body of Christ. Only I didn’t quite understand the represent part and I believed that the wafer was somehow transformed into a piece of a 2000 year old body. You had Christ inside you six times a week. How cool was that?

I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to be a saint or a nun. I had great romantic ideas about nuns. On the other hand, saints appealed to my imagination. The Christian martyrs were killed by the Romans because they wouldn’t renounce their faith. Some of them were eaten by lions and some of them were roasted alive and some were crucified. Except for the pain part, this also appealed to me mightily. Once you were a saint, you sat at the right hand of God and people prayed to you and you could perform miracles. I thought that it would probably hurt to be roasted alive or eaten by lions. I wasn’t sure it was a good trade off. I wanted to be able to perform miracles, but how much would it hurt to be eaten by a lion? I wasn’t sure. There was always being a nun. No horrific death required. I would be cloistered (shut away from the world) and I would pray all the time and I would be very holy.

I practiced being holy. I went to church and prayed for long stretches of time. The longer you prayed, the better. I asked God for silly things and told him all my troubles and made all kinds of promises to him. I said the rosary. Saying the rosary was basically repeating the Hail Mary sixty times and the Our Father six times. The Catholics are big on repetition.

You were supposed to contemplate the stations of the cross in those days and I spent a lot of time doing that. The stations of the cross, for the uninitiated, are depictions of Christ’s journey up the hill as he carried the cross on his way to be crucified. They are especially gory and sadomasochistic. The blood running down his face from the crown of thorns and his bloody back from the lashes. The nails pounded through his hands and feet. How does a five year old meditate on torture? Well I felt very very sorry for him. Poor Jesus, I thought. We must have done something very bad if he had to do all that to make up for it. I wanted to be the lady who gave him a drink of water. I wanted to be the lady who wiped his brow or the lady who cried at his feet.

One day I was praying all by myself in the church and I looked at that little gold container on the altar where we were told Christ was. It seemed to me Jesus must be very lonely in that little gold box, even if it was very pretty. I climbed over the railing (which you weren’t supposed to do) and I climbed up on the altar (which you weren’t supposed to do) and I sat next to the little gold box and I swung my legs and talked to Jesus. I told him everything that was on my five year old mind. I told him I loved him and I would always be his friend. I told him I wanted to be holy. I told him I was either going to be a nun or a saint and either way I’d be a virgin because nuns and saints are always virgins. I wasn’t sure what a virgin was but if that’s what Jesus wanted me to be, then I was going to be it.

My homeroom teacher Miss Staid came in and saw me and she nearly had a heart attack.

Categories
Entertainment the oscars

A Coupla White Men Sitting Around Voting


Have you ever wondered who elects the Oscar winners? The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has about 6000 members. 94% of them are white. 77% of them are male. 86% of them are over 50. So don’t think of it as Best Picture. Think of it as What an Old White Man thinks is Best Picture. An Old White Man’s Idea of Best Actor. An Old White Man’s Idea of Best Cinematographer. And so on.

Don’t get me wrong. A lot of old white men are wonderful people. It’s just that they’re the minority now. They’re certainly the minority as far as gender is concerned. And soon they will be the minority as far as race is concerned.

So why are they still running things (well the government and the Fortune 500 anyway)?
Silly, because people who have power don’t give it up voluntarily. Why does it matter? Because the movies have such a powerful impact on our culture. And if only one group gets to decide what is the best , where does that leave the rest of us?

It’s no accident that most of the nominees and winners are white men. Members of a tribe like their own tribe the best. They help them first. It’s human nature. Human nature it may be, but healthy for the culture it is not. Ang Lee aside, where were the nonmale, nonwhite nominees that weren’t either best actress or best supporting actress nominees? A tiny percentage? Who does that benefit?

And whose idea was it to have Seth McFarlane host? His shows, Family Guy, American Dad and his movie Ted are insanely popular among you guessed it, white men. Young white men. Time to attract some new blood to the tribe. So we get hilarious jokes about how Jennifer Anniston was a stripper (she wasn’t) about how actresses throw up to lose weight, a CIA agent was just a nag, and 9 year old will be dating George Clooney soon.
And a delightful song that reduced women at the top of their profession to a crudely referenced body part. Come to the Oscars and be humiliated.

Are they really this tone deaf? Well– there he was so, yes, they are. Lately I have been watching the Oscars just for the pretty dresses. Some of the most beautiful women in the world with a team of experts working on them and the result is they look absolutely stunning. Hey do you think it’s a coincidence that the Best Actress award usually goes to someone who’s young and beautiful? ‘Cause that’s what old men like. Just wondering.

It’s 2013. The days when old white men decide for all of us what has value and what does not are fading. At least I hope so. I can’t think of a good reason to watch the Oscars now.

I can catch the dresses the next day on dozens of websites.

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