Kombucha

I'm very happy to report that a friend gave me a kombucha mushroom (known as a scoby) over the weekend and yesterday I started my first homemade batch. I'm really a junkie for this stuff. I often buy GT's (have you seen the picture of him and his mom, who was saved from breast cancer by kombucha, up at Whole Foods? His mom looks like Dolly Parton!) but it's pricey and sometimes not that fresh tasting. The process of making kombucha seems simple and every batch gives birth to a new scoby. The mother mushroom just keeps on growing though so you can divide her in two and pass her along to a friend. Which leads me to say, give me a little time and hopefully I will be able to provide someone else with a mushroom soon, just like my friend did for me.

Coincidentally, if I would have been born a boy, my parents were going to name me Scoby.

MELENCOLIA

If I had a dog, this would be me.

the pits

Hairy armpits are considered one of the tell tale signs of a women's hippiedom. I found a picture of Julia Roberts on the web, where the caption said something like, "from elegant to earthy just by raising her arm." I think this is a silly but powerful cliche. Julia just knows what I happened to learn from a good friend my freshman year of college: it's dumb to shave. Sometimes I do feel weird about people seeing my pit hair, especially in professional situations. Part of this is the fear that I will judged as a dirty hippie but also because people peeping my armpit hair seems personal, almost like they were checking out my pubes. This thought, according to one of my favorite entries in "The Joy of Sex," is perhaps not that far off. Under the term Cassolette Alex Comfort writes, "The natural perfume of a clean woman: her greatest physical asset after her beauty (some would say greater than that). It comes from the whole of her--hair, skin, breasts, armpits, genitals and the clothing she has worn: its note depends on her hair color but no two women are the same." In a related article on armpits (where he also describes their use for axillary intercourse) Comforts writes, " Classical site for kisses. Should on no account be shaved." Exactly. I will acknowledge the Joy Of Sex itself has a hippie aura for sure but it also covers bondage, leather and g strings so it's not all kama sutra. It is one of my favorite books and I think it makes a good point. Shaving armpits actually takes away from sex appeal, not adds to it.