Category: sad

Is your Toothbrush Killing our Future Generations?

fatveganfrogLeave a comment

There is no perfect toothbrush, but some choices are better than others. Plastic toothbrushes take over 400 years to decompose… They end up in landfills and release toxic chemicals into the air resulting in harsh damage to the environment. In addition to getting washed away into the ocean, the toothbrush is endangering marine life and contaminating our food. 

After seeing this piece of art made by an African artist, it was really eye-opening. Africa has a huge trash pollution issue, along with the rest of the world… This art piece is a commentary on plastic pollution. 

Knowing that every plastic toothbrush impacts the environment and that one billion plastic toothbrushes are thrown away every year in the United States alone, creating 50 million pounds of waste- what can we do?

Bamboo Toothbrushes: bamboo is biodegradable. (bristles are not biodegradable) 

If bamboo toothbrushes end up in the trash, they aren’t significantly more environmentally friendly than plastic… but if you compost the handles of bamboo toothbrushes by first remove the nylon bristles with pliers then composting the handles… it makes a huge difference. Plus it is really beneficial for our environment. 

Then there are the toothbrushes that are recycled and/or recyclable:  Some options I love:

Bogobrush (bogobrush.com) 

Bogobrush is a Company that makes its brushes from compostable bioplastic using leftover plant material from American farms.

Or consider (preserve.eco) Toothbrushes made from recycled yogurt containers which are easily accessible online or in local stores Ojai: Being in Westridge and Rainbow Bridge. Also if you mail your old toothbrushes, not only will they be recycled into new products, but you will also receive a coupon for their online store. 

After using these types of recycled toothbrushes another option to help continue supporting the recycling market is by sending them to organizations such as Gimme 5 drop-off/mail-in program. Whole Foods And other companies have Gimme 5 bins located in their stores. You can just look up ones near you. 

Note: *Buying recycled stuff when we need to buy new products is the smartest move.*

So now you know the best eco friendly toothbrushes on the market: what do we do with our old ones?

Three months of brushing your teeth is not worth 400 years in the landfills. So an option would be to reuse your toothbrush in different ways until you switch to an eco-friendly toothbrush: 

You could easily label your toothbrushes for their different uses around the house: Here are a few options:

-Cleaning Household Items

-Remove dirt from shoes/Soccer cleats!

-Fingernail brushing

-Deep clean your desk/Clean beauty supplies

-Spot-treat stains on clothes

-Clean Your Hairbrush out 

-Brush Your Eyebrows

These are just some out of hundreds of household uses…

Best of luck on your zero-waste journey! It can be difficult sometimes but if you put in the effort, it’s well worth it. In the meantime, I wish you fresh breath and zero cavities.

Conflicted

mypetlobster1Leave a comment

happy birthday

I wish I could say it to you, but we are on a strictly no communication basis.

The only thing we share now is our existence and hatred towards each other.

It’s sad… my greatest love turned into my strongest hate.

happy birthday, you’re an adult now.

I hope you move far far away and buy a house of your own thousands of miles away from here,

but I hope you’ll be happy.

I still wear the necklace you got me for my birthday. People tell me I should get rid of it, and I probably should, but I can’t because its the last piece of you I have left, and, as much as I want to, I can’t bring myself to let you go.

I want you gone but I want you happy,

I want you to feel awful for what you did, but I want you to come back to me.

I want to hate you, but I want you to love me…

because I love you still.

So happy birthday, thank you for the memories, the laughs, the smiles, and thank you for the love we shared.

I hope one day it will overcome the hatred we share.

Photo credit: seansi.org

Youth

mypetlobster1Leave a comment

Back then, war was a card game, race issues were about who ran the fastest, and protection meant wearing knee pads,

and a timeout was the worst punishment we knew.

Back then, our parents were our heroes, the safest place was in mom’s arms, and the highest place on earth was dad’s shoulders.

Back then, we shared toys, not boys. Back then we said “thank you” more than “I’m sorry,” “yes” more than “no,” and “I love you” instead of “I hate you.”

Back then, guys played sports, not girls,

back then, we looked forward to every day instead of dreading it,

back then, we were scared of the dark, not the world,

and back then we couldn’t wait to grow up.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

nah

unicornownerLeave a comment

sometimes, we all need to do something that we don’t like at all.

It’s Monday afternoon right now, I’m lying on the carpet in my room alone. 

The LEAP that I used to like but not anymore, started about 10 minutes ago. I should be there, but I don’t really want to move. Due to my old commitments, I force myself to get up and walk there.

And then, I have to come back to my room to change into sports dress, and then go to sports that I don’t like at all. 

Right after that, I need to run back to my room and take a quick shower and get dressed up in a rush. Then go up to the cafeteria to set up for the dress dinner. Yeah, right, a dinner that I don’t want to go at all.

Then it will be study hall, and I have to complete a bunch of assignments that I don’t want to do at all. But guess what, I have to finish all of them tonight since they are due tomorrow.

Why I have to do all of these things that I don’t even like at all? I guess this is how life should be.

photo credit: slowrobot.com

Spooky

slimjimsilversLeave a comment

Last year, something horribly tragic occurred on a large road about a quarter mile away from my house. In the early morning, around 4am a car crashed into a tree carrying four teens, three of them dying on impact. It was horrific, I didn’t learn about it until later that day. However, the night of the accident I had a horribly lucid dream in which I woke up in my bed and it was pitch black. The only reason I could see anything was because of the pale blue tint to the pitch black night, my windows were open and I could see out into my street. All of the sudden a shuddering scream arose in the distance, so prominently loud, accompanied by millions of other screams; the world was crying around me, falling into indescribable chaos. I was confused to begin with, until I could feel the feel screams shift as if they were a wave, the amplitude approaching my street, and it was in that moment that I completely froze. It felt as if every soul, petrified in doom, burst out in a thunderous cacophony of deafening terror, a vocal representation of the gothic interpretation of hell. I was unable to move. It felt as if the screams were searching, surveying the world for a single living thing, for me, and any movement I made would lead them straight to me. So I waited, I sat there and waited as the apex of noise approached, peaked, and as it passed I simply awoke. I checked the time to see if I could return to sleep and I saw that it was only 4:30 in the morning so I could get back to sleep, it took a while but I returned to sleep peacefully, although still bothered by the dream I just had. I woke up that morning with the dream lingering in the back of my mind but without much worry attached to it, so I went about my day as if nothing had happened, because to me, nothing had. We went out to lunch, on a different road from the wreck, and when we returned we came down that road where my father told me about the conversation he had with one of our neighbors earlier about the wreck and how it had happened there early in the morning yesterday. And as the words left his mouth the feeling of dread became so strong that I couldn’t speak. I just sat there dumbfounded as we approached the site of the crash where a candlelight vigil was being prepared.

Photo Credit; Depositphotos

a tandem bicycle hits the ground twice as hard

icaruswithwarmwingsLeave a comment

A heart

Is a pendulum

Passing time.

I’ll be fine.

My eyes tear bloody holes:

Holes in her face.

Holes in her heart.

Holes in all the wrong places.

For no fucking reason they do,

For no fucking reason do the superman-style lasers of

Feelings

Drip from these unfeeling sockets and soil the layered newspapers that line my skull.

And for someone that thinks they know everything

The frown on her face is a hole in my universe.

And for someone who wants her to be everything

When she is not

It tears down the walls.

These paper mache walls,

Like a pre-kindergarten volcano,

Stolen from the porch before the vinegar could ever hit the baking soda.

Who would take a volcano?

She took the volcano.

And I don’t know how or why, or what I could do about it, even if I knew

How?

Or Why?

But I do know that, 

For some reason,

I and She exist somehow in tandem,

Somehow in unison;

Like a two person bike,

I am falling fast towards the ground

Hoping that somehow by sheer force of will

I can overcome gravity for the two of us.

And I could right this bike.

Even as the rubber runs away from me,

As the sound shoots through my ears:

That great pendulum’s brawny swing stops the movement,

Stops the fall of our bike,

Stops the air that supports us.

And it leaves my heaving chest

Pounding in her dry cold breath

As the only thing that supports this bike

Stopped in space and time.

Photo via Amazon.com

optimistic and curious

unicornownerLeave a comment

I am optimistic and curious

I wonder how this world works

I hear raindrops dancing on the roof

I see the lightning hiding behind mountains

I taste the sky covered with dark clouds

I smell the wild wind blowing over

I want to fly under the sunshine

I am optimistic and curious

I pretend we have good weather today

I believe tomorrow will be better

I feel unicorns do exist

I touch the clouds with my fingers

I worry I can’t do it alone

I cry for my melted ice cream

I laugh when others cry for their melted ice cream

I am optimistic and curious

I understand sometimes life can be hard

I say everything will be fine

I dream that peace will be around us all the time

I try thinking about nothing

I hope I can change the world once upon a time

I am optimistic and curious

photo credit: miro.medium.com

I Want to Believe

mypetlobster1Leave a comment

dear world, dear life, dear faith,

tell me your secrets,

fill me in on your knowledge,

and cast me away with your limitless being.

dear god,

whoever or whatever you may be,

listen to my problems, answer my prayers, make right all the wrong,

and give me hope.

oh please

give me hope that you can fix the evil in this dark world we live in.

oh god…

I want to belive in you,

I envy and pity those who do,

because, how great would it be to live

and believe that someone in the sky will make everything okay,

to believe that you are protected by one overarching being,

to blame your stupid mistakes on the ideology that

“everything happens for a reason, it’s god’s will,”

to not fear death because heaven awaits the good…

How great, how easy, how amazing would that be,

but how naive do you have to be to believe.

dear self, dear time, dear life

i’m afraid

my being is all in my hands.

Photo via Pinterest 

Itchy

icaruswithwarmwingsLeave a comment

I have a bad case of itchy foot

The itchy foot runs through my leg

When I itch the itch it numbs my toes

Through my foot it goes

And all the way into my calf

It feels like the beginning of poison oak

The sweltering alergic reaction

That has plagued me since days old

I feel the familiar itch

The friendly ooze

The glorious disgusting hot irritated mess that is poison oak

But not quite

It’s just one singular bulb

One little plague bubonic

A tiny little boil

A reminder of bare feet in mosquito territory

A reminder like a cracked phone screen

Or a scar on your arm

Something you see everyday

A reminder of something you forgot

Like her face in my camera roll

Like looking back at just how perfect it has been

Because so often I took photos when things were good

When I wasn’t staring at a blank google doc

An image stamped in my skull

When it was incredible

Or when it was supremely funny

Or when it hurt like a mountain insurmountable

And when I scroll back and see these myrtle memories

For an instant I feel that excitement that takes me back

That yearning for days old

But not for a million dollars

Not for an ounce of that love that I felt

Would I miss a second of the now

It’s weird

But I scratched the itch

And honestly it doesn’t itch anymore

BoJack Horseman

horseman69Leave a comment

The sixth season of BoJack Horseman has just arrived. It’s a story about a horse… man. 

Season 6 is going to be the last season of the masterpiece. It really makes you think when you watch BoJack Horseman. It makes you think about your life, it shows how BoJack lives in all of us.

Creating a connection between the audience and the characters is, I believe, a prime goal for the shows. Why else would we watch it, just to see strangers suffer?

However, there is more to it. There is something about BoJack Horseman that haunts you. Some say it’s the Nihilism, to that, I partly agree. But what if life is indeed meaningless? Then it wouldn’t be Nihilism at all. It would just be… life.

BoJack Horseman is not just a show. It may be the most realistic fiction there is, and that’s why we love it. We savor the realism in the story of BoJack Horseman, and suffer for it.

I hope for BoJack to get a happy ending, and for all of us, too.

Photo credit: Time.com