Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Great minds think alike

So, I've been busy designing Paleo t-shirts, Primal t-shirts, ancestral diet / nutrition t-shirts, even Low Carb t-shirts. You get the idea. I've been making stuff that *I* like and hoping my Paleo, Primal people will enjoy them as well:

Paleolithic diet lifestyle auto badge, primal, caveman

Our new Paleo auto badge. I'm ordering two for myself to put on my cars. Also available on t-shirts, drinkware, bags, and more! There's one for Primal, too!

locavores, local small farmers, farming, environment, green, sustainable cool graphic design
Locavores, buy their food locally. No not down at the local supermarket, but from their own neighborhood farmers.  It's good for your community and good for you, local small farms, sustainable agriculture, help the whole planet. This earthy green and brown graphic design is perfect for any green, environmentally aware, locavore.

barefoot runners, minimalist footwear, bare feet, running, VFF, Huaraches

Here's one for my barefoot runner Tweeps. I don't run, myself (exercise makes me spill my drink ;) but I am a HUGE fan of minimalist footwear. Whether it's Vibram Five Fingers, Huaraches, plain ol' thin thong sandals or good old bare feet, bare is BEST!

These are just a few of the recent designs I've done.  One of the last ones I did was this one:

grokette, paleo, primal, ancestral, hunter, gatherer, dandelions
Grokette with nommy dandelions to honor our heritage as gatherers. I wanted a softer, more feminine design for us Girl Groks.  Well imagine my delight when a wonderful Twitter Tweep, @modernmatriarch debuted a gorgeous, handmade, glittery pink design of her own at the same time!  Great minds think alike!

Snazzy Grokette t-shirt, handmade, win for free! Paleo, primal.

How cool is that?  Shiny!  And the best part?  You can win this t-shirt for free. It's a smallish large and doesn't quite fit it's creator so she's giving it away!  Just stop by her blog an comment on your Paleo/Primal lifestyle and how it's changed you.

Hers is so nice. I think she totally should sell these on Etsy.

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posted by MrsEvilGenius @ 4:37 pm   2 comments

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Do the poor eat badly because #realfood is too expensive?

Ahh ... the age old question.

On of my Twitter Tweeps (@keithnorris of Theory to Practice thank you for the link! *mwah!*) tweeted a link to this article: "eating nutritiously a struggle when money is scarce".

In it they highlight a family in PA who live "well below the poverty level" and have $600 in food stamps to feed 5 people. They go on to talk about the 8 year old boy, Alex, and how he's "one of 17 million children who live in U.S. households where getting enough food is a challenge."

I call total boolsheet on the whole affair.

(For the record, we here at the Secret hidden Lair make just a hair's bredth above the 2010 federal poverty line for a family of 7)

Let's take a look at some items in the article:

Oh, before we start, number one, the 8 year old pictured can't be too hungry; he's overweight. (He's also fishbelly pale. Probably never goes outside and plays and is severely vitamin D deficient but all that's just conjecture on my part.)

Go back and take a look at Alex.

Now here's my own son, Boy, also age 8 (notice the base tan - he's very fair skinned normally):



Here's all my boys just in case you're unfamiliar with my blog and think I'm hiding a chunky one:


(Apologies for the severe croppage - both baby boys were buck arse nekkid!)

OK, on with the debunking.

"Alex's mom, Connie Williamson, says she tries to give her son healthy food but doesn't always succeed.
"When he gets up on his own, he'll go find what he wants," she says. "He'll get a hot dog bun, or get a piece of bread. He'll get an ice pop or something."
And that's exactly what he did early one morning, before his family headed out to the local food pantry. Alex ate a blue ice pop for breakfast."

OK, uhm ... mommy FAIL.  Why is Alex getting up on his own?  I make it a point to wake up before any of my family so that breakfast is getting started when they wake.  Perhaps his mom works nights. Fair enough. Does dad, as well?  Also, my children have been taught by me to NEVER get food without asking first. Even if I did sleep late, my 8 year old would never dream of grabbing a chunk of frozen sugar as his first meal!  My kids get out of bed and begin getting set up for a healthy day by getting out plates, peeling bananas, passing out daily vitamins, etc, whilst I'm checking my email!

Oh and if the family got up to go to the food pantry why didn't mom make her son a good breakfast?  If you can afford hotdog buns (HFCS white bread bundles of death) and ice pops then why didn't you buy some FOOD instead?

"Connie Williamson says it's not easy on a tight budget. She spends hours driving around each month looking for deals."

Well that's a huge waste of petrol.  Wouldn't that petrol be better spent on food?  If you watch the sales papers and plan your trips you don't HAVE to do this. hey, better yet, since she has a car, why doesn't she go to one of the eighteen Wal Mart stores in her own town?!  They match prices so you don't have to shop anywhere else.

""You can get leaner cuts of meat, but then they're more expensive," she says. "You can get fresh fruit every couple of days and blow half of your budget on fresh fruits and vegetables in a week's time, easy.""

... says mom.  "Oh, horseshit!", says Blue.  Get the cheap, fatty chunks of meat - they are better for you. Buy produce in season, buy locally (o hai, howzabout the Carlisle Farmer's Market?)  The family even has a garden for Cthulhu's sake:

"For example, the Williamsons have a garden behind their apartment in downtown Carlisle. They grow lots of healthy food — zucchini, peppers and Brussels sprouts. But when Alex was thirsty after a walk, his mother gave him a plastic water bottle filled with orange soda."

FAIL much there, mom?  What's wrong with, oh, WATER?  Oh sob, sob, I have to feed my baby boy orange soda and make him fat and unhealthy because I am soooo pooooooor and can't afford ... tap water?

It gets better (or worse):

"Elaine Livas, who runs Project SHARE, the local food pantry, says she sees it all time.
"A gallon of milk is $3-something. A bottle of orange soda is 89 cents," she says. "Do the math.""


Do you have kids, Ms Livas?  No human over the age of 2 needs milk!  We do need water and ... wait for it ... it's FREAKIN' FREE!

"(in)the Williamsons' kitchen in Carlisle ... contradictions swirl about like stew. The refrigerator and pantry are often filled with food — but the family sometimes has to go to the local soup kitchen to make ends meet."


Oh!  Oh!  I can answer this conundrum: it's easier to spend your 600 quid of food stamps on junk like popsicles and chocolate and then get your 'real' food at the local food pantry and soup kitchen.

"Alex ... admits he has enough to eat. It's just not always what he wants. He says he especially doesn't like it when his mother makes Brussels sprouts for dinner.


His 14-year-old sister, Beanna, tries to explain.
"He more or less just worries about if there's going to be enough food that he likes or if we have something that he likes," she says. "He's really picky about what he wants."
As Beanna talks, Alex goes to the refrigerator for some chocolate. He gets upset when his sister tells him he can only have one piece."


He's picky about what he eats?  Uhm, hungry people are not picky about what they eat.  They are grateful to have food.  


So I find this whole article bogus and not a little enraging. Do I think there are no hungry people in America?  Absolutely not.  I know there are.  There are kids who really don't get anything to eat before school because there is no food in the house either due to poverty or because mom bought drugs, cigarettes, or alcohol instead.

Do I think that all this poor health should be blamed on poor moms? Absolutely not. There are good women out there who are forced to work 2 and 3 jobs just to pay the bills.  They have to leave their kids in the charge of others, or worse, on their own for hours a day.  For some of them this state of affairs in not their fault and they are doing the best they can.

But people like the Williamsons?  I can't be absolutely positive given the info in the article but they sure seem to me like the dozens of families I've known in my life who choose to lounge about and live off the system and then cry "poor" for every handout they can get giving NO thought to the health of their children.

I work very hard every day.  I am a self employed graphic designer, I keep my house, do all the grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, cleaning, etc for all 7 of us, plus I work on our small farm. Yet I manage to cook three good meals a day because it is so important for my children's health.

How do I do it?  I can't afford grass-fed beef or organic vegetables but we have fresh eggs, put  pig in the freezer each year, plus I buy most of our produce from local farmers. I take leftovers and extras from anyone who's willing, I dumpster dive, never pass up garden overflows, and even trade if I can.

I feed my family whole, real food three times a day and I do it on less than $600 per month - the amount of foodstamps the Williamsons get.

For seven of us.

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posted by MrsEvilGenius @ 4:35 pm   5 comments

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Bibliopost number 2 - Dieselpunk / Steampunk!

I swear I have a proper blog post brewing, I swear!  I just need a second to get it written ...

For now, I just wanted to update you on what I'm reading (original bibliopost in case you missed it) ; I've finished Alas, Babylon a post-apocalyptic story written in 1969.  It had a sort of painful innocence to it - we here in 2010 are much more hardened to the possibility of amageddon - but it was pretty good. Kudos for the attempt at racial equality.

I also finished The Hunger Games, and, great Cthulhu, I almost couldn't put it down!  It was fantastic!  I fully intend to buy the other two as soon as I get some money.

Briefly, it was set in a nicely-concieved Dieselpunk world where, after WW III, all the land that's left in America has been devided up into districts. Each district has a specail production (coal, agriculture, etc) and all are ruled by a central district where the priviliged live. Each of the other districts must send two of their children (1 boy, 1 girl) to compete in a winner-takes-all-losers-die game for the entertainment of the rich and as punishment to the poor (for a past rebellion).

I love post apocalyptic stories - Steven King's The Running Man and The Long Walk are two of my very faves with the national-horrible-game theme - but I was blown away by this one. The characters are likeable (or hateable as the case my be) and tension runs through the book like a live wire.  The young girl (whom I expected to annoy me) was smart and capable (read: the anti-Bella-*gag*Swan) but not so much so as to seem unbelievable.

I highly recommend this read!

I'm still slogging through Son of the Circus (John Irving) and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Steig Larsson) and still wondering what everyone loves so much about the latter one. *grimace*

I have started Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson) and must stand corrected.  I have NOT ever started this book. (Sorry, Dad) I have never read this book at all before.  I had it confused with another one, I guess (something about a guy living in an underground world?  Something about a bridge down there? Sci-fi? Fantasy?)

So the good part is that I have finally started Snow Crash and am enjoying it. The bad part is that out there somewhere is a book that was highly recommended to me that I've started twice but never finished. Gah!

So, what are you reading?  Do you enjoy post apocalyptic / dieselpunk type stuff too?  Any recommendations?  I need more stuffs on muh Kindle!

Oh, and speaking of dieselpunk and steampunk, check out our newest steampunk and dieselpunk t-shirts over at Evil Genius Tees!  (Yes, I see that the formatting is borked over on the EG Concepts blog. argh!)

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posted by MrsEvilGenius @ 10:55 am   1 comments