Candy Detox: Day 5

Today's dose of gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, vegan, kosher, certified organic and fair trade candy is a Larabar Jocalat Food Bar. (Not to be confused by the Larabar Jocalat Soap Bar, I guess). I got it at Trader Joes on the aisle of all their stuff that they sell in bar-form.

It tasted OK, I think they were going for the look and taste of a brownie here. I ate about half of one of these before work and it kinda tasted brownie-like, but it had a weird tangy aftertaste and I figured it was all of those vitamins I wasn't used to.

But then.

About an hour later I started having... um... bubbly guts. Bad. After several hours I finally recovered and I read the ingredients list on this stupid thing. First ingredient: dates. It's basically a giant bar made up of the most squishy fiber-y fruit you can imagine. Yeah. And I only ate half of this thing, and a serving size is one whole bar. I would have had to have had my mail sent to the bathroom at work had I eaten the whole thing.

Candy Detox: Day 4

OK, so I might have found the first healthy candy that doesn't make me want to yank out my tongue and stomp on it: Bija Omega Truffles. I found these in the refrigerated section at Whole Foods near all the good lip balm and the wacky health supplements they sell. I liked the fact that these candies were marketed as being like a vitamin and not an 'energy' bar or whatever. Plus I really like hazelnut flavored anything so I got these.


The first bite of these were a thick milk chocolate shell with some sort of flaky "99% organic" stuff in the middle. It was smooth, creamy, oily, and sweet with a little bitterness to it, which was at first pretty off-putting, but it's the same exact taste of the skin of a hazelnut and it went nicely with the sweetness of the chocolate and made me ignore all of the "Udo's Oil 3-6-9 Blend" I was ingesting and was sure to be shortly Slip 'N' Sliding out of my colon in a few hours.

And just what is this Udo's Oil, you may ask? At first, I had thought it said Udon's Oil so I thought it might be full of those really big fat Japanese noodles. Michael, who I made try one of these truffles, said that Udo was a guy's name in Germany, so I was worried that it was like, one of those things that was supposed to make me get a big boner or grow a testicle or something. (I keep checking, and I'm still an innie, thank Flying Spaghetti Monster.) Finally I looked it up and it's like, some kind of essential fatty acids that body builders swear by to help them lose fat (huh?) but help their skin to keep from looking totally leathery. So I guess it's supposed to give me a nice, shiny coat and help with any potential 'roid rage.

Candy Detox: Day 3

Today I had a Bumble Bar (chai with almonds) from Trader Joes. I bought it mainly because I want the walls of the living room to one day be the color of this wrapper. Home Depot said they could mix up some paint color just like it, no sweat. You know those paint mixer machines? Why hasn't someone made little ones for mixed drinks? Note to self: Invent paint mixer drink machines, invent equally silly glass/bucket-style container to fit in them, along with appropriate beverage. Make millions.

What was I talking about again? Oh, Bumblebee Tuna. I like the word 'bumble'. Yeah. All these organics must be making me think so much clearer now! It's a bunch of seeds glued together in some sort of sweet glue that is not made of any sort of soy, meat, dairy, gluten, or corn syrup, so I have no idea what the hell it could possibly be made out of other than like seeds and insect spit and hippie tears. Some helicopter mom actually wrote this about these bars:

Please note: Soy Lecithin is used as a processing agent with Organic Canola Oil. I was concerned about the soy used in the Bumble Bars and asked about it. They do not use conventional soy lecithin which is highly likely GMO; they agreed typical soy lecithin was a big concern. Instead they use non-GMO. They have tried to make the bars without it, but they need it in order that the mixture doesn't stick to the pans. They only use it in processing the bars. I felt much more comfortable when I learned that they use only 2 teaspoons for every 5000 bars, quite a minute amount. And my kids love them so I think it's a great snack (and I know they are getting calcium and important nutrients.) Please note that each bar may contain traces of peanuts since they are created on the same line. Again, I was concerned about the peanuts and asked from where they came and the peanuts are indeed from Arizona so no concern about the toxic mold that grows on southern peanuts. They are not recommended for diabetics. Can be stored at room temperature or in the refrigerator.

Wow. I can't imagine what this mom would do if she got a hold of the ingredients list of a McNuggett.

These are OK, they remind me of those things that you stick in a parakeet's cage that are bell-shaped and made out of seeds. Also the Bumble Bar is too big. About half-way through it my teeth started to hurt from all the chewing and I lost interest. Maybe if I was a brontosaurus I'd have the grindy molars capable of masticating this whole thing, but alas, I do not.

Candy Detox: Day 2

I had no idea what the fuck a mulberry was when I bought these things, but so far I'd never met a berry I didn't like: blueberry, strawberry, cranberry, raspberry, blackberry, Boo Berry, Halle Berry; it's all good. Plus, it was covered in dark chocolate, so in spite of all the goofy Earth-humper sayings on the package I bought a pack of Organic Dark Chocolate Covered Mulberries at Whole Foods to try.

Well, they certainly smelled wonderful when I opened the bag, and I totally appreciate any sack o' snacks that thoughtfully includes a handy little zip-top so you don't have to shame your self by snorting them down in one sitting. Maybe these would be my "thing" from now on. I'd be that girl who eats the chocolate-covered mulberries. "I'm going to Whole Foods to get some more Dark Chocolate Covered Mulberries. You know I've just got to have my Dark Chocolate Covered Mulberries."

Oh, but then I tasted one. First off, the package claimed that these things were "purely nourishing chewy sweetness." I didn't bother even reading the nutritional value of these things, but they sure as fuck weren't chewy. They were totally crunchy on the inside. Crunchy like exosketeton crunchy. And let me be the first to tell you that mulberries taste wonderfully of hand soap. Yum yum. So tangy! So bitter! And the taste willl linger on your tongue and the back of your teeth in spite of repeat tooth brushings thanks to the exuberant amount of "Pure Food Glaze" (organic and FairTrade Certified by BCS Oko-Garantie GmbH!) that will coat your entire digestive tract.

So, fuck mulberries. Fuck 'em right in the ear.

Candy Detox: Day 1

My first day in Candy Rehab started with Ruth's HempPower Chocolate Raspberry Bar. I was hoping that, because I bought this in a co-op in Little 5 Points where all the hobos pee in the parking lot and not at a health food conglomerate like Whole Foods I'd have actually bought a, you know, "magic" hemp bar that would help me get through the first couple days of Candy DTs, but no such luck. My big clue should have been big kosher-approved seal on the front.

I opened the package and the bar smelled like the inside of a Pier 1. Like all potpourri and wicker chairs and sari fabric. And the taste? Well... I think it tasted like a pine cone. And not even a pine cone that tasted like raspberries or chocolate! I don't know what Ruth was smoking, possibly she was hoarding all the THC she sucked out of my hemp bar, but this hot mess didn't even remotely taste like anything but broom straw. Speaking of which! Right before I went to bed, I had some amazing intestinal distress that was finally quelled by an entire bottle of Pepto. I place the blame squarely on Ruth and her abomination!

Wow, I Haven't Blogged Since Last Year!

Man, that joke is always funny every year. It's a shame that it only has shelf-life of early January, tops.

Yeah, so, about that gap in blogging... a lot has been going on in The Sea Hag 'Verse that my lawyers have advised me against posting about, for my blogs can be used against me later in a court of law, but I can tell you this: do not go to Vegas and drink White Russians alone in Caesar's Palace or you might find yourself married to a Jewish stranger from Austin, Texas who claims to be working on a deal between Manischewitz and Office Depot to manufacture envelopes with glue that is both grape-flavored and kosher.

This is the one and only wedding photo we got. We had a drunk Rodeo Nationals guy take it. You could have served Christmas dinner on his belt buckle. He was so hammered he took this craptacular picture and then turned around and started to pee in a potted plant. And yes, that appears to be a viking horn on my head, and no, I didn't marry Flavor Flav.

Actually, as far as husbands go, he wasn't that bad! He had a respectable amount of teeth, held my hair back when I puked on my Chucks, and he helped me steal a washcloth off of the housekeeper's cart to clean them off. Honestly, I would have been content to have stayed with him until at least the SXSW Festival but apparently when we both sobered up he remembered that he was already married and there was some sort of polygamy thing that is generally frowned upon by Jewish Santa or "the law" or some such shit, so we had to get a divorce. Ah well, I will always remember him as my favorite wasband of 2008... whatever his name was. Mazel Tov, dude. We'll always have Pai Gow.

Anyway, now that that's all taken care of (well, as much as I can legally admit to here, anyway) and I've sobered up from all of the Pre-Divorce Sob-Fest Parties, Post-Divorce Celebration Parties and New Years Parties, it's time to take stock of my life and figure out how to make Sea Hag better in 2009:

1. No more new piercings for a year.
I've got to coat myself in anti-bacterial soap like three times a day and it's getting expensive. I need to let my current holes heal before I get any new ones.

2. Take random pictures without looking in the viewfinder.
I'm going to put the 'point-and-click' back in point-and-click. I'm going to take my digital camera with me and just snap off some random shots and see what I get. I think it'll be a neat project. Here's some from my living room:






3. Listen to more Journey.
I am in desperate need of more Vitamin Steve Perry.

4. Go on a a 2-week Candy Detox.
In addition to making poor matrimonial choices in 2008, my ass size hit Threat Level Orange. I'm not like every other douchepacker out there blasting through Target on the way to the organic yoga pants section, but clearly I need to curb my candy-loric intake. So, starting tomorrow I am going on a 2-week Candy Detox! Only healthy candy for me, thank you very much! Say goodbye to high-fructose corn syrup and hello to my new friends hemp, carob and soy! Share in my joy as I blog daily about how much better I feel when I eat things that are good and good for me! OH BOY I CAN'T WAIT.

Oh, and that whole Crab Odyssey thing? Yeah. Turns out some of them are starting to molt. Basically they shed their little exoskeletons in one piece and they curl up tight in the backs of their shells while they wait for their new shells to harden up. Why does this make the crabs act like they ate the brown acid? Well, think of when you've gone to one of those all-you-can-cram buffets and they have the crab legs, and you have one that you crack open just right and you pull out that perfect slippery piece of crab meat. Yeah, that's what the crabs are like right after they've molted. One big piece of sweet, floppy crab meat... that the other crabs are dying to dunk in melted butter and devour. Seriously, they were all wearing little bibs with pictures of themselves on them. I had to make a little fence around the molting ones out of a plastic water bottle to protect them from the other ones, and those little bastards still tried to dig a hole underneath it! I think one was trying to bake a cake with a file in it too.

2008: A Crab Odyssey

Mankind has long had a tradition of wandering alone into the wilderness tripping out on hunger, pain and/or fistfuls of various psychotropic substances seeking answers from the other side about the big questions in life: why are we here? Where did we come from? What is my purpose on earth? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

Apparently, hermit crabs go on vision quests, too.

I have five hermit crabs: Atticus Pinch, Bret, Jemaine, Cookie Monster and Ivan. In spite of the fact that they are identified as the 'hermit' variety of crustacean, they are actually quite communal and love to sleep in a cuddle puddle in the back of their aquarium under the plant, which is where the heater is. Hermit crabs are also boring as hell, by the way. When I went to the pet store to buy them I purposely got the ones that were the biggest bastards because I wanted only apex predators. But since I got them home all they do is dig holes and sleep in them except for the five minutes a day when they wander over to the water dish and put their feelers on it, then they go to the food dish and get some Crab Chum with their little pinchy claw, then they go back to sleep. I've tried toys and baths and humidifiers and everything with these buttheads to make them more entertaining, but so far no luck.

I couldn't get them to keep still for this picture, as you can plainly see.

A few weeks ago I was cleaning their aquarium and giving them new, fresh sand and scrubbing the tiny crab turds off of the bottom of the tank (on a sidenote, where are crab's buttholes? I mean, I figure they must be inside their shells where the rest of their ass is, but if it is, how do the poops come out of there? Is there like, a shell sphincter that I don't know about?) and after everything was all nice and clean I put them all back and, like the farteaters they are, they crawled behind the plant and went to sleep.

But the next day I noticed that Jemaine was not in the pile with everyone else, but way off in the opposite corner under the little pile of driftwood. To get a better idea of the geography of the aquarium, I have included this diagram:


The crabs primarily reside in quadrant A, which is commonly referred to as 'Under The Tree'. Quadrant B is where the crabs spend the rest of their time at the water and food dishes, and it is called 'The Sponge'. Quadrant C has their salt water dish and most of their empty shells and is known as 'The Shell Graveyard' and D is 'The Sticks'. No crabs ever go there, man. I guess it's the crab-quivalent of going out my front door and deciding to walk to Mongolia. So when Jemaine was found in The Sticks, I wondered what was up.

Jemaine was at The Sticks for a week. Every so often another crab would go over and cuddle with him for a little bit, but for the most part they left him alone. I was concerned that he might be sick or maybe he had a fight with Ivan, but after a week he was back Under The Tree.

That was certainly odd, but what was even weirder was that the next day Cookie Monster was hiding over in the Shell Graveyard. Four days later he went back, and shortly thereafter Atticus Pinch managed to completely bury himself in the corner near the water dish. He's been there for three days.

Seriously, there's a crab in there somewhere.

I have documented this whole affair with my camera, and, after much whining and pouting on my part Bret finally told me that crabs must complete a ritual when they hit puberty where they smoke some crab peyote buttons and wander off by themselves to commune with the astral plane. I thought he was full of shit and threatened to use the flash on my camera some more, but he said he could prove it and gave me the diaries of Jemaine, Cookie Monster, Atticus Pinch, and Ivan while they were tripping balls. (Apparently Ivan was the lucky one and got to stay in the fourth corner Under The Tree.) Bret, being the youngest crab, isn't old enough to go on his vision quest yet.

So for the next few weeks I will be sharing with you my crabs' revelations about life, the universe and everything. It'll blow your mind, man.

EDIT: Thanks to all the readers who informed me that peyote is not smoked but is, in fact, ingested. Shine on, you crazy diamonds!