Month: March 2015

DIY Tuesdays: How To Hippie

Karen

About a year ago I finally caved to my inner hippie and stopped using traditional deodorant/perspirant, because: chemicals! They are bad, right? (Actually, my skin was pretty irritated.) I traded commercial chemical-laden stuff with commercial stuff from Whole Foods, which had fewer irritating ingredients–and was about 1000% less effective. I tried brand after brand and they all made me feel like this after about an hour:

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On a whim last week, I decided to try making a recipe for DIY deodorant I had seen on Pinterest and dismissed as a step too far into hippie-dom. But holy cow, is it effective. It beats all the Whole Foods brands, is about as effective as traditional stuff,  AND I had all the ingredients on hand (I subbed cornstarch for arrowroot powder), so it cost zero dollars. Hippie DIY win.

The Good Life

Karen

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”  (Omar Khayyam)

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Tiny pies (from Trader Joe’s) for Pi Day
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All the brunch beverages

 

Friday Unrelated Information

Karen1 Comment

1. Sometimes, when you want to buy yourself some long-admired new shoes for surviving the first week as the only copywriter because the other one at your job quit and didn’t finish all his projects before he left so you wrote not only his new projects but his old projects plus your own projects, too, those shoes go on sale at J. Crew and it feels like a sign the universe approves of your shoe buying.

That’s how I’m interpreting it, at least.

2. If you wanted a long read about deeply obscure Delta (Mississippi, not airline) blues musicians and the people who research them, this is it. I really like how the article includes clips you can play.

 

Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac

Karen

6a010535ce1cf6970c019b004f4759970bIt’s the birthday of the cat-loving man who defined the Beat Generation (and he doesn’t even get a Google Doodle? come on!). It was lines like this in The Dharma Bums that encouraged my inner hippie, starting back in high school:

“The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.”

Happy Birthday, Douglas Adams

Karen2 Comments

NB_42-schwarz.jpgQ4Pv0eThe author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy  series was born today in 1952. I remember picking up the first book in high school and thinking, “Hey, this is cool.” Stuff like this was the soul of wit to a 17-year-old me:

“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
“Why, what did she tell you?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”

If you haven’t read any and you like science fiction and/or Dr. Who, go pick it up–at the very least so you can get all the “42” jokes out there.

 

Arches!

Karen

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Pine Tree Arch
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Landscape Arch
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Delicate Arch
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Boca Arch
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Covert Arch

We went to Moab for the weekend to celebrate my friend’s birthday, just like last year. The light and clouds weren’t quite as incredible this year, but that’s really splitting hairs in a place like this. It was a grand time in a grand place that continues to fascinate, as Ed Abbey puts it so well:

“Even after years of years of intimate contact and search this quality of strangeness in the desert remains undiminished. Transparent and intangible as sunlight, yet always and everywhere present, it lures a man on and on, from the red-walled canyons to the smoke-blue ranges beyond, in a futile but fascinating quest for the great, unimaginable treasure which the desert seems to promise.”

Friday Unrelated Information

Karen

1. The Ringling Brothers Circus announced today that it will be phasing out elephants in its shows by 2018. Retired circus elephants will live in a conservation park in Florida. I heartily approve this news. Let’s have the big cats phased out next and then let’s work on getting sea parks to release their orcas.

2. Something to remember:

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Thursday Poem

Karen

A poem about stargazing and mountain climbing? Check and check.

Mountain Day
by W. S. Merwin

With one dear friend we go up the highest mountain
thousands of feet into the birdless snow
and listen to our breaths in the still air
for a long time beside the observatories
later we stretch out on the dark crumbled
lava slope looking
west at the sun yellowing the clouds below
then go down past the wild cows to the cabin
getting there just before sunset
and eat by the fire laughing at what we have
forgotten to bring
afterward we come out and lie
braided together looking up
at Cassiopeia over the foothill.

 

The Parody

Karen1 Comment

It was only a matter of time before people started making fun of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The book’s a translation from Japanese, so there’s a bit of a stiff cadence to it, and the concepts have a high “woo” factor for people not inclined to like a lot of woo with their organizing. Trust The Toast to create a hilarious parody of it. Some high points:

“Have you ever owned anything? This is why you cannot forgive any of your former lovers. Things like ‘having chairs’ is preventing you from living your best life, and also you should throw away any item of clothing you’re not currently wearing. If it’s not on your skin, you don’t really love it, do you?”

“Possessions are 100% fatal. Turtles don’t keep anything they can’t use, and they helped Charles Darwin discover the Galápagos Islands. Throw away all of your grandmother’s jewelry. Now she can sleep in peace.”

“Place every cloth napkin you own in a sacred circle on the cleanest table you own (tables should be either a rock from the sea or a book that is enchanted by one or fewer spells). If the napkin does not rise up of its own volition and perform a flawless Japanese tea ceremony for you, you were not meant to be. You should burn it, along with all of your professional regrets.”

It’s ok, Magic Tidying Book. I still believe in you, even if I can laugh at your parody.