Just when you thought you were safe...

For a few months now I've been perusing around the Internet, trying to track down exactly which companies own what. Did you know that McDonald's was the largest investor in Chipotle Mexican Grill until 2006? ("Chipotle Mexican Grill") I find it good to know, at least, that they no longer have a huge investment there.

Today on a Stumble spree, this article came up on my screen. Yes, read it and weep. My hard earned dollars are being spent on natural products owned by the corporate giants that I so stridently dislike.

There is a ray of sunlight, though, as the lower part of the page points out. The big corporations bought up those products because the market for them was growing. As much as I hate to give my money to Colgate-Palmolive, I'm telling them via purchase that I'd rather have deodorant without aluminum compounds. All I can do for now is hope that despite being wickedly deceitful, those companies will at least maintain the natural and/or organic qualities of the products they produce.

Ridiculously optimistic? Yeah, probably.

References:
"Chipotle Mexican Grill." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved 4 April 2009 from here

Cast of Characters

Matt is my gentleman friend, a rogue furniture mover, libertarian, society-hating viking throwback. He likes meat and beer, and dislikes when there isn't any meat or beer.
He also enjoys playing any musical instrument he can get his hands on.

Much to my dismay, he doesn't really give a damn what goes on or in his body, and is probably gonna die of a heart attack or cancer or cancer attack.








Renee is my best friend and roommate, a quirky Jewish misfit with cat lady tendencies. Not that there is anything wrong with cat lady tendencies.
She likes nature, Oreos, cats and pictures of cats, and making fun of girl shows while not-so-secretly being addicted to them. She dislikes being cold.

I met Renee at the Indiana Academy, but we didn't really become friends until we were at IU. And then she was like "wanna move in with me?"





This is Lucas.






I went to elementary school with him, and we were friends in first grade. After that, we became friends again after we graduated and he started dating Renee.

This is my feline associate, Magoo. I found him yowling pitiably in Indianapolis when he was a kitten. I did not know at the time that he is MF insane.
He enjoys napping, destruction, tearing around the living room in circles, chewing up bread products, and laying on top of whatever I happen to be doing.
He dislikes the vacuum and the foghorn.

This is my Momma. Ah, Mom. Where to start? An unconventionally hippie-esque lady with a penchant for vitamins who gave me and my sisters our start on eating healthy and obsessing over the ingredients in everything. She steadfastly maintains an organic garden against her sworn nemeses, the deer, meticulously constructing elaborate mesh cages over her strawberry plants, stringing the garden so full of deer barriers it looks like a trench from WWII.

All that and yet, every time a deer wanders out from the woods in the daylight, she peers out the window in obvious appreciation of the graceful animal.


There are others, of course. My other best friend Sarah, another long-time vegetarian granola-type, my sister Chrissy who is crunchy as hell and whom I already mentioned in my first post, my sister Terri, another dietitian/vegetarian like Chris, my brother and oldest sister, friends and family and work associates. These are all the people I love, all the people that inspire me and make me care about my world.

Introductory Musing

After creating, mulling over, and subsequently deleting three different blog ideas, here at last is the final product, the springboard for my digital dalliances.

It all started, I guess, when my sister Chrissy started producing a blog of her modest genius, Seattle Sundays. It was and is inspiring to see her write about her passions and her life way out on the West Coast. I started to think - what would I say in a blog like that?

I love to write, though I tend to expound my ideas in short, self-conscious paragraphs, the continuity broken by my buzzing thoughts all banging against the mental window glass. But maybe, just maybe, I can pull it together enough to write about my passions. The ignition started - funny story - with a stick of deodorant. I had stumbled across information on how exactly typical deodorants work, which brought on about two hours of obsessively Googling the ingredients of everything I owned.

It's freaky, man.

So, here is Bowl o' Granola, a blog for my hippie-dippy thoughts and natural product reviews. Granola, according to Urban Dictionary (one of those sites to which I have a weird addiction) is

"An adjective used to describe people who are environmentally aware (flower child, tree-hugger), open-minded, left-winged, socially aware and active, queer or queer-positive, anti-oppressive/discriminatory (racial, sexual, gender, class, age, etc.) with an organic and natural emphasis on living, who will usually refrain from consuming or using anything containing animals and animal by-products (for health and/or environmental reasons), as well as limit consumption of what he or she does consume, as granola people are usually concerned about wasting resources..."

The definition goes on, an elements of it may or may not apply to me, but there lies the general idea. Another two favorites are "crunchy" and "earth muffin," from the same site.

It's boho nouveau for me and you!