WHY SPAZ ABOUT CANNED TOMATOES? OR HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD, PT ONE

So most of you have heard of BPA, also known as Bisphenol A. It's the stuff that is released from all kinds of plastic bottles, food containers and toys that is now a permanent part of you. Yes, if we tested your blood, you would have BPA in your body. Why is that bad? Take a look at this list of things we think are caused by BPA:

• breast cancer
  
• prostate disease and cancer
  
• diabetes
  
• obesity
  
• hyperactivity
  
• impaired, altered, and compromised immune system and functions
  
• miscarriage
  
• impaired female reproductive development
  
• sperm defects
  
• lowered sperm count
  
• chromosome abnormalities
  
• chromosome sorting errors
  
• Down’s syndrome
  
• Turner Syndrome
  
• Klinefelter Syndrome
  
• genitalia deformity
  
• early onset of puberty
  
• impaired learning and memory
  
• increased aggression
  
• reversal of normal sex differences in the brain structure
  
• elimination of sex differences in behavior
  
• changes in response to painful or fear-provoking stimuli
  

Yeah, why would I think that was bad?

Basically, BPA seems to be a disruptor in the body - it keeps the body (at a deep level) from functioning normally. What's worse, is that these effects have been known about for years. The only way they managed to keep this stuff on the shelves was that the FDA under the Bush administration did a report on the safety of BPA and had people who were paid by the plastics industry write it.

Okay, so just think of the people who you know who are affected by one of these conditions. Think about the skyrocketing breast cancer numbers. As a matter of fact, think about all the conditions that are much more prevalent now than they were in our parents generation. We have long suspected that there are chemicals that have been widely used in these past 40 years, along with other man-made environmental causes, that are causing a radical change in the baseline of our health.

So why do I bring this up? Do I just want to give you one more thing to be depressed about? No. I want you to save yourself, save your neighbors, save your children, and your children's children. I want you to change the world the only way that is possible these days. And that is to make it more profitable for corporations to stop poisoning us than to continue the ways they have been - with their eyes ceaselessly on the bottom line, hoping to wait out the clock to the last available minute when the FDA rules that BPA is indeed dangerous, all the damage to human beings be damned.

MORE POETRY THAN YOU THOUGHT POSSIBLE! A New Year's Resolution.

Nervous System" (excerpt)


by Michael Dickman


When you look down
inside yourself
what is there?


You are a walking bag of surgical instruments
shining from the inside out

As some people who know me well know, I have had plenty of time in my life to contemplate the body and our relationship to it. It was never something I sought out, but it has become the primary relationship in my life. Isn't that strange? Not strange that it should become my primary relationship, but that it ever wasn't.

This is a weird plea in a blog that is mostly irreverent and trying not to frighten you away with too much information, too much intimacy. But today I am going to risk it.

This year, I think you should get to know yourself. And by saying that, I mean get to know your own physical being that has been nice enough to carry your brain for all these years.

We live at war with our bodies. After all, bodies are appalling in their inconsistency. They change,  they grow larger and smaller at the same time, drooping and falling towards our feet as we grow older.  The pizza we ate thoughtlessly in our late teens now keeps us awake all night. A friend called me recently and wondered why she was so hung over after just a few drinks - something that wouldn't have caused her any pain a few years ago. Ah, yes. Things, they change.

The body is demanding, too. It wants us to take time for it, to make changes in our schedule. It is always, always selfish. It wants more sleep, more exercise, more food and less food at the same time. You have kids? A job? A dog? Yeah, it doesn't care. It just wants you to pay more attention to it.

So this year I propose that we all enter into that difficult conversation with our physical selves. That we see what it wants. That we make sacrifices to it. That we do the hard thing, we do the inconvenient thing to give our bodies what they are asking for.