Funny Food: Friend or Foe

In the search for things green pertaining to Human Ecology, (and all things nerd) I came across these tasty treasures which I think are a perfect analogy for my world view. Thats right, star and heart shaped cucumbers. Not what you would expect in our hi-tech world- you're thinking:

• Genetically Modified


• Possibly mixed with other animal/plant DNA


• Plain old fashioned weird

The truth? Women applied the idea of cookie cutters, stencils, sausage making to the idea of growing vegetables. And what did these little cucumbers do? They adapted. They took on the shape and just went with it. They casually sit in the salad, blythely thinking: "No big deal, I'm all heart." "Yeh, my mom was always ROOTING for me to be a star..."

This not only exemplifies our ability to take something ordinary and transport it to extraordinary, but it shows that things which are natural have the ability to adapt to their environment if it's still a healthy place for growth (do you see the connections I'm making? I am on FIRE!) This thought process could be applied to numerous areas of study, and makes me delve deeper into imagining what people (as natural entities) are capable of.

Edmonton has been hit with an evil cold snap recently (pleasantly veiled as some sort of adventure on my friend K's blog.) and all I can do is think of what people had to endure years ago when they lived here in mud houses and log cabins (with no heat, insulation, sleeping bags of fluffly manufactured fiber, and big winter jackets which have undergone all sorts of sciency warm inducing research and development). We have developed solutions so that we suit the environment we are in. In Edmonton, we rise to the challenge of meeting the cold head on and woolying up to keep our toes! Humanity has the ability to take a situation and adapt to it.

Which brings me to my most important point. We are a fledgling cucumber, stuck in a world of finite resources and an exhausted environment. That is the shape we must mold to. At this time, we are ignoring the mold, perhaps because we don't want to take on the shape, or because we can't imagine the changes which need to occur within society in order to fit it. But we must take this on as a responsibility to our world, and to prove to ourselves that we are as ingenous and capable as we believe.

Ok. So this post is a little flaky, but you can't blame a girl who really enjoyed her semester and just finished two really strenous exams. My sanity is holding on by a thread.

Next week: Why Humanity should hand over their decision making to J.amie S.pears (Come on, a man that can make britney dress like a real person [read: bra, underwear, pants, shirt, and shoes] may be better equipped than even my favorite community organizer [rhymes with yo-mama].)