Hello, everybody, nice seeing you again.
Apparently it is okay to eat spinach again, now that the organic farmers of California have been persuaded to stop putting human feces on their crops. I don’t understand why coprophagy is supposed to be healthy for you, but a lot of the hippies who produce organic food seem to think it is. Then they end up with killer spinach coated with E. coli 0157, or something like that unfiltered, organic apple juice that was killing babies a few years back. It turned out the hippies who ran the apple juice factory never bothered to clean the apple-juicing equipment, so it was full of deadly—but 100% natural—bacteria.
The third place I lived when I moved to New York was a room I rented in a huge apartment otherwise occupied by hippies. I had my own bathroom (it was a three-bathroom apartment—like I said, it was huge), but there was only one kitchen, so we had to share. One day in December I decided to bake Christmas cookies, so I went to the kitchen and set up my mixing bowl and rolling pin and ingredients along the counter next to the sink, and I was just starting to measure the flour when Rainbow Goldberg came in with her 6-month-old baby, Placenta Marie. She plunked the baby on the counter right next to where I was working and started filling a pot with water to boil some quinoa or something, and just then little Placenta, who was naked as mole rat, took an enormous crap right on the counter. Right next to my rolling pin.
I didn’t know what to say, or do, so I just stood there staring at the sloppy greenish pile … right next to my rolling pin. Rainbow glanced over, and I guess she saw my face, because she said, “Oh, it’s all right. It’s pure—she doesn’t eat meat!”
I packed up my stuff, and went out to buy cookies at the bakery, and never went in the kitchen again. I got a little hot plate and an electric kettle for my room, and washed up my dishes in my bathroom sink, and ate nothing that required refrigeration. They had cockroaches in their refrigerator anyway—the only time I’ve ever seen that, and I don’t know how they managed to keep the refrigerator that filthy, but they did. Shortly after the baby-poop incident they decided I didn’t really fit in, and they tried to double my rent, and I moved out. But that’s how I found out that hippies are okay with eating shit, as long as it’s pure shit.
That’s why I don’t eat anything but Doritos and beer. My favorite kind of Doritos—really pure Doritos—were the guacamole flavor, but recently they disappeared. I kept looking for them, and not finding them, and finally I decided to e-mail Frito-Lay and ask where the guacamole Doritos were, the same way I e-mailed the Peek Frean company when Peek Frean cookies disappeared. Then I was going to post their e-mail for you to see, so you would know what happened to guacamole-flavored Doritos, too. But it turned out I couldn’t e-mail any of my very urgent questions about Doritos, because the Doritos customer-service representatives don’t have e-mail. (!) You have to send them a letter, or else call them on the phone. So I phoned Mark, in Doritos customer service, and he said, “I’m afraid I have to tell you that guacomole Doritos have been discontinued.” He also urged me to write a letter to the company and request that they bring back guacamole-flavored Doritos. Mark has a great sense of humor.
That was last week. This week started off with news reports that coffee has been shown to help prevent Alzheimer’s. I don’t think coffee and Doritos sounds as good as beer and Doritos, but I guess I’ll give it a try. I want to stay healthy.
Thanks for reading my blog entry this time, and may God bless.
My wife shares your loss. Recently, when I undertook a short roadtrip from Canada to the US, she asked me to look for Guac Doritos, which recently disappeared from Canadian shelves. But none were to be found. I did score some lovely Takis at some Mexican groceries though - the guacamole ones are good, but muy spicy.
Posted by: David | October 05, 2006 at 01:03 PM
Firstly, Hi Bronwyn.. Nothing like a well written essay to perk up lunch hour.
Friends of mine went on a political speaking tour in the early 90s. What this meant was that they ennded up staying at the "punk house" in a nummber of cities. The house where the bands stay, where they don't believe in getting proper sleep.
Well, since my friends lacked the cash to just pay for their way, they did dishes. This may suprise you, and of course the census department does not keep this sort of data, but at least at that time there were copious amounts of dirty dishes at literally every "punk house" along the route. I stayed at a few of these places mmyself during my years in Joe Schmoe's anarchist federation. Typically every last dish in the house was used and in the sink. I beleive it was somewhere in the midwest, like Madison, where my friends were teaming up and doing the dishes when they discovered beneath the dishes a layer of something much more disgusting. Upon investigation, and questioning of individuals in the house the substance was revealed to be the remains of an abortive attempt to follow a recipe for vegan dog food. Oh did I mention every punk house has to have a pit bull? Because otherwise who would chew the furniture and eat the remote? Sometime between 3 and 5 a.m. there is often a 20 minute interval of silence in these places. Who would bisect it with barking were it not for the oh so misunderstood pit bull?
I must say there has to be a whole world of counter-cultural naivete I know nothing about. The political folks I've kept company with since the late 80s apparently have some base-level of shit togetherness which would preclude poop ever being found on a horizontal kitchen surface. On the other hand I've had to listen to all of the Clash's Sandinista more times than most.
While human excrement on the kitchen counter is probably way beyond rotting vegetables in the bottom of a slop sink I think it is safe to say that not just hippies but any folks who make a career of lingering in the youth culture ghetto they discovered sophmore year can generally be counted upon for this sort of thing.
Posted by: bartelby | October 05, 2006 at 01:17 PM
Dude... no. Just, no.
a) organic farmers compost their cow shit before spreading it on the fields, which kills the e coli
b) organic beef farmers feed their cows grass, which results in cow shit with low levels of the scary e coli (yes there is a non-scary e coli)
c) non-organic beef farmers feed their cows grain, which results in the scary infectious e coli (because the cows' guts are more acidic.)
d) non-organic spinach farmers not only spread the scary cow shit on their fields, they don't compost it (they let it collect in huge stinking "lagoons")
e) non-organic farms don't always provide portajohns for their (underpaid, illegal immigrant) workers, so those dudes have to shit in the fields, which is where the human shit comes from
http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2006/09/20060920_a_main.asp
So leave the poor hippies alone, eh?
Posted by: jayKayEss | October 05, 2006 at 01:21 PM
I used to live in Oakland, but in North Oakland which is right near Berkeley.
I used to hang out in my good friend's apartment a lot, and it was a big apartment that she had all to herself. Only thing was she let the "hip" street kids that lived on Telegraph stay at her place a lot because she was really into this one guy (who, by the way, had rich parents that lived in San Francisco.
They never paid any rent, NEVER EVER cleaned up, NEVER showered or brushed their teeth (there was a guy who literally had not brushed in 2 years), and complained about everything. And they were absolute pricks about food choice, political opinions, and that sort of stuff. And they never left, and they just brought back more and more people to stay over without asking or paying or cleaning.
In fact one time a bunch of these hippie street kids walked up to another female friend of mine (who actually made herown clothes, was totally financially dependant, and made all her own meals) and asked her if she wanted to be a part of this new commune that they were going to start in Santa Cruz. They said "Yeah it'll be great! You can be the one who cooks, cleans, and washs/makes all of our clothes!"
My friend with the apartment was absolutely in love with this guy even though he treated her horribly and we had to have a group intervention to kick everyone out. Thankfully hippies are spineless "pacifists," so it wasn't too hard.
Hippies are a subject near and dear to my heart. They're are just mindless blow-hards who never got over the high school angsty "hating your parents" phase who want the street-cred of being "pure and natural and peaceful and independent" but don't want to do the work. I can see how they can fuck something as simple as apple juice. Horrible horrible naive bunch. Thank Christ they're all huddled together in Northern California where they just complain to each other all day about Americana so that no one has to hear them whine except for the few that decide to go their for college.
Posted by: GEoff | October 05, 2006 at 02:03 PM
Not to further pick nits, but in response to jayKayEss (who covered most of my points): the primary spinach producer involved in the current e.coli outbreak is actually Natural Selection Foods, aka Earthbound Farms, aka the largest producer of Organic leafy vegetables in the country.
I read an op-ed somewhere recently, probably the Times, which suggested that the most likely source for e.coli O157:H7 (the really-bad kind, which as you said, grows primarily in the too-acidic guts of the factory-farmed grain-fed cows) on the spinach was probably contaminated irrigation water that had flowed downstream from a feedlot or factory farm's animal waste lagoon. Ahh, here it is.
Posted by: grady | October 05, 2006 at 02:23 PM
That Michael Pollen fellow did a good piece on this story on On The Media
This post might have well been called Greasy Kid Stuff too!
Posted by: BenjamenWalker | October 05, 2006 at 02:32 PM
let's not all fall for the fallacy of hasty generalizations at once, okay?
Posted by: jeremy fu*k | October 05, 2006 at 09:10 PM
My favorite Abbie Hoffman quote(to David Frost)..........
"Who are you calling a hippie?.....I'm not a hippie....hippies are FAGS!"
Posted by: Ducky | October 05, 2006 at 11:21 PM
what we really need is powdered avocado to be applied to ones own choice of snackies. all veggies should be sold in this form.
Posted by: lee | October 05, 2006 at 11:49 PM
I've been told that hippies are harmless (as opposed to say racist skinheads) but I still find them rather annoying. I think it's the way the hippies have made passive-aggressive into a lifestyle choice.
Posted by: Listener Paul | October 06, 2006 at 02:11 PM
17 minutes into your first show back...holy shit is it good to hear from you again. Tales of marijuana and PCP fueled boxer wearing mayhem! Yes!
Posted by: Listener Mike D. | October 13, 2006 at 06:18 PM
Whatever happened to Doritos' unfortunately named Texas Tang? Did the Bush twins complain?
Posted by: SheckyGrey | November 27, 2006 at 08:34 PM