I ate cricket! (In chip form, mind you)

We had a treat for lunch today: my cricket chips, which I pre-ordered way back in mid-winter, arrived this morning. Amusingly called Chirps, these chips come in three flavours and are the creation of a new company called Six Foods.

As you can see in the picture, the chips came with a nice canvas tote bag. I quite like the slogan on it: "Bug Appétit." I'll definitely be carrying that around in public! Also included was a sweet handwritten letter, thanking us "Bug Lovers" for supporting the company, and also providing some interesting information on their process from dream to product:

We've worked with a food pilot plant for eight months to create the recipe & it has been a huge learning experience for us. We've experimented with 50 different recipes, obscure ingredients (teff anyone?), and called over 400 manufacturers till we found the right partners.

Thank you for being patient with us through this process. As a token of our love + appreciation, there's an extra Six Foods tote for you.

Bug Appétit!
Laura, Meryl, + Rose

Wow, Laura, Meryl and Rose, you are some hard-working entrepreneurs! Good for you.

The Chirps packaging advertises that Chirps contain "3X more protein than regular potato chips," but really, they should be compared not to potato chips but to tortilla-bean chips. So I'm doing that. According to caloriecount.com, Kettle Tortilla Black Bean chips contain 3g of protein, 18g of carbohydrates and 7g of fat. Beanitos are another chip worth comparing with, as they also contain beans, although not corn. According to the Beanitos web site, Black Bean Beanitos have 4g of protein, 15g of carbohydrate and 7g of fat. Chirps chips contain 6g of protein, 12g of carbohydrates and 6g of fat. So yes, Chirps win, in terms of having the most protein. They also have less fat and a better carb to protein ratio.

At this point you may be thinking, "Never mind all that, how do they taste?"

When I ordered Chirps, I opted for the variety pack so that we could try all three flavours: natural, cheddar and BBQ. So we had to decide which one to open first. I thought the natural bag first would be a good choice, as it would allow us to better appreciate the unadulterated flavour of cricket. So we did that, and... they're quite tasty. Better than original Beanitos, I would say. They have little black dots in them, but those are the chia seeds, not the crickets. No visible bits of cricket can be detected in this product, so if you're squeamish about that, you can set your mind at ease. They look and taste somewhat like tortilla bean chips, but with a slight difference, and I'm not sure how much of that is the chia seeds and how much is the cricket. Also, they are stiffer and crunchier than the typical tortilla chip. In terms of hardness, they remind me of Mary's Crackers.

So I can recommend Chirps by Six Foods as a gentle introduction to the world of bug-eating for anyone who would like to take the plunge but is not ready to stuff a whole cricket or mealworm in their mouth, a la Millennium Farms. That's quite advanced for us weeny Westerners, and I'm happy to leave that for later.

Ingredients in Chirps, Natural Flavour

• Navy Beans
• Sunflower/ Safflower Oil
• Corn Flour
• Chia Seeds
• Pea Flour
• Cricket Flour (Gryllodes Sigillatus and/or Acheta Domesticus)
• Salt

Allergy Alert

The Chirps packaging advises that "If you have crustacean shellfish allergies, you may also be sensitive to crickets."

Recipe: Kale Chips (Garlic Flavour)

Kale chips are a tasty, nutritious alternative to potato or tortilla chips—but they cost nine dollars a bag at the health food store. It makes more sense to make your own.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch kale, washed and dried
• 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 1/2 – 1 tsp. garlic powder, depending on taste
• Salt (optional)

What is a "bunch?" Not a very precise measurement I realize, but the quantities are not crucial here; tweak as desired. A bunch is about what you'd get wrapped up at the supermarket. If on the other hand, you buy a whole plant at a farmer's market, it will be a good deal bigger, maybe twice as big.

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. You can use a toaster oven, but you might need to halve the recipe to get it to fit.

Place oil and garlic powder in a mixing bowl. Sprinkle in a little salt if you want. I don't think it's really necessary. Mix. Remove kale leaves from stems, tear into bite-sized pieces and add to bowl. Save the stems for something else. Add them to a soup or something.

Toss the leaves with the oil until well blended. I think the best way to do this is with your hands.

Spread the oiled leaves onto a baking tray and bake in oven for 10-15 minutes. You might want to flip them halfway through. Keep an eye on them so they don't overcook. They're done when they're crispy all the way through and brown at the edges but not right to the middle. Delicious!

I developed this recipe on my own. Then, when I decided to write it up and post it, I did a search online and discovered that there are already a bazillion kale recipes available. So, I'm not as original as I thought, and maybe my drop in the bucket is not really necessary. Still, here it is, for what it's worth, and I hope it's worth something.

How to Make Gluten-Free Bread: a Quick Primer and Three Recipes

Gluten, that super-long protein string that gives wheat bread its delectable fluffiness, can also make some people sick. In celiac disease, the consumption of gluten creates an immune reaction in the intestines and flattens the villi, the little hairlike things that are responsible for absorbing nutrients. No villi, no nutrient absorption. You can see how that would not be a good thing, but it gets worse. People who have celiac disease but continue to eat gluten are at increased risk for colon cancer and type I diabetes. So if you have this condition, it's really important to lay off the gluten.

An interesting fact about gluten: no human being can digest it. That's right: even if you're not celiac or gluten-sensitive, you're not breaking the stuff down. Not being birds, we're not designed to eat grains. It's just that in most people, the little strings sit around quietly in the intestine not causing trouble, while in a minority of people, the intestine gets fed up with the alien presence and launches an immune system attack.

So what to do if you belong to this minority? Whether we're designed to eat grains or not, most of us don't want to give up eating pizza and sandwiches.

The trick is to find another substance that will bind your dough together the way that gluten does. Two types of ingredient that will have this effect are gums (xanthan, guar, etc.) and eggs. In most cases, you'll need to add either a gum or some eggs to your dough, or the resulting bread will crumble to bits, and that's a pain when you're trying to butter it. (For the one exception I know of to this rule, see socca bread. That's a flatbread though.)

Most gluten-free recipes also include some sort of starch, typically a mixture of some of the following: potato, corn, tapioca and arrowroot starch. Starch lightens up the bread so it can rise higher. It is not a requirement though, as we'll see later.

As for the flour, a blend of flours are typically used. One popular flour in gluten-free recipes is garbanzo-fava flour, a mixture of chick pea flour and fava flour. This flour, often referred to as garfava for short, is said to rise well. Rice flour is commonly used as the base flour. Buckwheat is sometimes added for extra fibre. Sorghum flour, from the seeds of a grasslike grain, is added for flavour, as it has a natural sweetness.

This is about all I know about gluten-free flour blending, which appears to me as an arcane science akin to alchemy. Still, I say, don't be afraid to experiment. The worst that can happen is that you'll have to throw out a loaf of bread. And most of the time it isn't that bad. At the least you can usually turn it into breadcrumbs and bread fish with it, or make it into turkey stuffing.

But maybe you don't want to bake. Baking is a lot of work. You might want to go to the supermarket and buy a gluten-free bread in a bag, premade. Fair enough, but there a couple of things you should know:

• Most store-bought gluten-free bread is disgusting. It's like chewing on a mattress, only with less flavour.
• Most store-bought gluten-free bread is very low in fibre, because it is made primarily out of white rice flour*. This goes a long way towards explaining its lack of flavour as well.

That said, I do know of a great gluten-free bread mix that you can buy in a supermarket. It's not a premade bread, so you still have to do some work, but it's worth it. It's better than any other gluten-free bread I've tried. It's Bob's Red Mill Homemade Wonderful Bread. The name sounds boastful, I know, but they're telling the truth.

If you're just starting out with gluten-free baking, you may be reluctant to go out and purchase a weird and freaky ingredient like xanthan gum. I know I was. So try the following two recipes, which can be made without it. They also don't contain any starch. The third and final recipe is a more traditional, gummy, starchy, gluten-free bread recipe; basically, it's my attempt to duplicate Bob's Red Mill Homemade Wonderful Bread, and I think I didn't do too bad a job of it, if I do say so myself.

Recipe #1: Rolls

This recipe is really passover rolls with gluten-free flour taking the place of the matzoh meal. You see, during Passover, in commemoration of the escape from Egypt when the Jews had to make a quick snack before fleeing, leavened bread is forbidden. That means no yeast or baking soda. However, Jews have a long history of getting around the letter of the law while doing what they want: witness that string that Hassidim put around their neighbourhoods during Shabbos. So naturally they found a way to make rolls light and fluffy without yeast or baking soda. It just takes a lot of eggs.

This recipe is adapted from the recipe for passover rolls in Second Helpings, Please! Revised edition. Mt. Sinai chapter #1091, B'nai B'rith Women, Montreal, Canada.

• 2 cups gluten-free flour (whatever kind you want: I used 1 cup brown rice flour and 1 cupbuckwheat flour. If you like it sweet, throw in some coconut flour)
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup oil
• 4 eggs

Combine dry ingredients. Bring oil and water to a boil and add to dry ingredients. Mix. Beat in eggs one at a time. Let stand for 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Oil a cookie sheet.

Oil or wet your hands so that the dough won't stick, and shape rolls. Place on cookie sheet. Bake for 1 hour or until brown.

The resulting rolls are nice and crispy, and surprisingly puffed up inside. Now, you may be concerned about using such a lot of eggs. I find you can reduce it to three eggs and still get good results. Just replace the missing egg with 1/4 cup of water. You can also replace as many eggs as you like with egg white, for a lower-cholesterol roll.

Recipe #2: Socca

This recipe is from Mediterranean Light: Delicious Recipes from the World's Healthiest Cuisine by Martha Rose Shulman. Shulman does great cookbooks.

• 2/3 cup chick pea flour
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 cup cold water
• Pepper
• Olive oil

Beat together the flour, salt and water with a whisk or blender until there are no lumps. Add freshly ground pepper to taste.

Now, some timing issues. The oven has to preheat for 30 minutes, but the pan has to heat up for 15 minutes. So as soon as you've got your batter beaten up, turn the oven to 475 degrees F, then set a timer for 15 minutes. Oil a pan with the olive oil; a 12-inch pizza pan will do nicely. When the timer goes off, stick the pan in the oven and set the timer for another 15 minutes.

When the timer goes off again, yank the hot pan out of the oven (don't forget your oven mitt!) and pour in the batter. Put it in the upper third of the oven. Shulman says to bake for five minutes, then turn the oven to broil and broil for 3 to 4 minutes. I don't think I bother to do this. It's been a while since I made this bread, but I think I probably just bake it for 8 or 9 minutes.

Full disclosure: the reason I don't make this bread often is because it's wildly addictive and I ate myself sick on it the last time.

Recipe #3: Sandwich Bread

As I said above, this is my attempt to make something similar to Bob's Red Mill Homemade Wonderful Bread.

• 1 1/4 cup chickpea flour
• 1/4 cup fava flour (or: replace the above with 1 1/2 garfava flour)
• 1/2 cup sorghum flour
• 1 cup starch (I don't think it matters terribly which one you use. To get closest to Bob's recipe, try 1/2 cup potato starch, 1/2 cup minus 1 tbsp. Corn starch and 1 tbsp. Tapioca starch)
• 1 tbsp. Xanthan gum
• 1 1/2 tsp. Salt
• 2 1/4 tsp. Yeast
• 1 1/2 tbsp. Maple syrup
• 1 beaten egg + egg whites to 3/4 cup
• 1 tsp. Cider vinegar
• 3 tbsp. Olive oil
• 1 2/3 cup water

Warm up the water. I like to put it in the microwave for about half a minute. It should be about bath temperature, not so hot that you can't comfortably wiggle a finger in it. Add the yeast, stir and let sit 5 to 10 minutes while you blend the rest of the dry ingredients together. Mix the eggs, egg whites, maple syrup, cider vinegar and oil in a separate bowl. When the yeast is ready, add to the wet ingredients and then mix the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until well blended. Bob's Red Mill actually says to use an electric mixer, but I find a fork adequate to the task.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Oil a loaf pan and pour in the batter. Smooth out the top with a rubber spatula. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 20 minutes. Place in oven and bake for 45 minutes. Bread is done when it makes a hollow sound when you tap it. Let it cool in the pan for 20 minutes before removing and cooling all the way on a rack.

Variations:

• Egg-free version: You can reduce or remove the eggs by substituting water. One egg is equal to about 1/4 cup of water. If you remove all eggs, you should also up the xanthan gum by a teaspoon.
• Starch-free version: Starch is not essential to gluten-free baking. It is just used because people are accustomed to light and airy baked goods. You can substitute the starch with the same amount of brown rice flour.
• Egg-free, starch-free version: You can do both the substitutions described above at the same time. However, the result is not as tasty, in my opinion. It might be worth replacing some of the egg with apple sauce, although I haven't tried this myself.

Rest assured that all suggested substitutions (aside from the apple sauce one) have been tested in Vivian's kitchen have have been found to give acceptable to delicious results.

Further Reading

The best gluten-free cookbook I have found so far is unquestionably Babycakes by Erin McKenna. It's more dessert-centred, featuring cup cakes, cakes, muffins and pies, but there is also a chapter on tea breads (breads made with baking powder rather than yeast). All recipes are scrumptious. On top of all that, Erin goes to some lengths to make her desserts as healthful as possible; most are sweetened without sugar. Note that not all recipes in the book are gluten-free; some call for spelt flour.

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* Can I just say something here? Why does white rice flour exist? Why does white rice exist? Why doesn't everybody just eat brown rice? Is it part of that self-destructive human condition that also leads to the existence of movies like Jackass 3D? What I find particularly weird about white rice flour is that even brown rice, really, doesn't have much fibre. It's a lot lower in fibre than rye or even wheat. So if you find fibre that unappealing, brown rice should be fine. [back]

Silliest New Product Award 2009

Once again, the time has come to bestow the Silliest New Product Award. A long time has passed since I last gave out this award, for Bagel-fuls. But please understand that this award is not just for any minor foolish product. If it was, I could give it out weekly. But no--a Silliest New Product must scale the Everest of foolishness. And at last, we have a contender.

Once again, the product in question is a food product. I will have to start keeping an eye out for foolish devices or articles of clothing. I don't want to limit myself to food, although admittedly it's something I get passionate about. This food product is even sillier than Bagel-fuls was. It add a whole new dimension to silly food, in my opinion. There's no denying that our society is loaded with silly food, even dangerous silly food. Yes, we keep trying to find ways to stuff more caffeine into our beverages. Yes, our desserts are so sweet that sugar is often the first ingredient. And let's not forget poutine.

The thing is, though, we know that that sort of stuff is junk food. People may joke that poutine is a meal, but they don't eat it as such too often, unless they actively want to die young. As much junk food as we eat--and we eat a lot of it--at least we are aware, however dimly, that it's not a real meal, and not something we should be eating very often.

But what if some daring and black-hearted individual should redefine the meal? What if you could eat something that was incredibly bad for your health, but still feel as if you'd had a perfectly adequate meal and were not doing anything wrong? For such is the cunning of my award recipient that he, whoever he may be, has entirely redefined the concept of "meal" in just such a revolutionary way.

Oh, we've had meal redefinition before. Don't get me wrong. I am aware of the bold stroke that created the TV dinner: meals apportioned out in a partitioned foil tray. (That was before the advent of microwaves, of course; now it's a partitioned plastic tray.)

Still, the TV dinner, and its offspring, the nukeable dinner, continue to give lip service to the idea of food groups. Some form of vegetable matter still constitutes part of the meal. Said vegetables may be limp and tasteless and people may not eat them, but at least they're there.

Then there's the junk food meal, with its three food groups: hunk of meat with filler, bun, and fries stuffed into a little cardboard packet. Admittedly, the vegetables are absent, but at least some degree of food groupage remains. Also, look at the name. We recognize that this is junk. We don't take it seriously. That's important. In this age of rising obesity and diabetes rates, it may be little enough to hold onto, but it's something.

The real coup has come with the throwing out of food groups altogether. Now, it seems, we are ready to accept the concept of a meal consisting of just one food group, and in a form almost totally devoid of fiber and nutrients. At least, somebody thinks we are, and frighteningly enough, he may be right. It is a stroke of Lex Luthor-like genius. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... drumroll, please... Domino's Pasta in a Bread Bowl.

That's right. What's pasta made of? White flour. What's the bread bowl made of? White flour. So you have a situation where someone can consume a great big lump of refined flour product with a little bit of creamy sauce on top (also containing white flour) and consider that he or she has eaten a meal.

This is bad, folks. This is very, very bad, although perhaps it is the logical end of decades of addiction-fueled, simple-carbohydrate binging. But I don't think we can just blame the consumer in this instance. I refuse to believe that Domino's has been hounded by people crying, "Stop serving us our pasta in real bowls--we want it in pizza dough! It's the only way we can get enough bready stuff!" No. I think what's going on here is that Domino's is actively trying to kill us.

This brings up the question: Why is Domino's trying to kill us? My best guess is, for the fun of it. I think they're serving up those bread bowls and then hunkering down like Kilroy and peeking through the little window where the waitresses leave the orders, watching as the customer eats his "meal" and giggling maniacally to themselves. Perhaps saying things like, "Oh my God, he's eating it! What a moron!" Much like Colbert Report viewers did when that suicidal guy ate a fifteen-pound burger.

Now, you may argue that this is a shortsighted way to do business. Sure, you have a little fun watching the mayhem. Sure, your customers' addiction to simple carbohydrates gets even worse, and you do a brisk business for a while. But then they die, and where is your business then? OK, there's a new generation, but if they do the same thing, they'll die untimely deaths as well, and eventually the shrinking population is going to impact your bottom line, right? It's not a good long term plan, is it?

To which I'd respond, hey, it's worked for the producers of cheap alcohol. So far, anyway. And let's face it, most businesses are based on short-term gain. Hell, the whole economy's based on short-term gain. That's why nobody wants to do anything about global warming.

But I sense myself drifting off-topic, so let me just return to the point and say, Dominos, you suck. Once, you seduced me with your Extravaganza pizza. But with Pasta in a Bread Bowl, I have lost all respect for you.

Recipe: Vivian's Spinach Dip From Scratch

This recipe came about because I wanted to make spinach dip for a barbecue. Spinach dip is usually made with dried soup, but after I bought a packet, I read the ingredients, which I've gotten into the habit of doing these days, and was put off by the presence of monosodium glutamate, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate and sulfites. (For more information on some of these chemicals, see my earlier blog entry on food additives.)

I decided it would be an interesting challenge to create my own, soup-mix-free dip. And here it is. You can replace the goat yoghurt with standard cow yoghurt or the more traditional sour cream, but I find that the goat yoghurt imparts an unusual and delicious flavour to the dip. It is also easier to digest (for humans, that is) than cow dairy and lower in fat than sour cream.

• 1 1/4 cup goat yoghurt (or 1 cup thick sour cream)
• 10 oz spinach
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 clove garlic, minced or put through press
• 1/4 cup onion, finely chopped
• 1 cup red bell pepper, chopped
• 4 oz water chestnuts, chopped (optional)
• 1/4 tsp salt, or to taste
• Freshly-ground pepper to taste
• 1 large round bread (optional)

Line a colander with cheese cloth and put the yoghurt into it. Place the colander in the sink or a bowl and leave for an hour to strain. If you are using thick sour cream, skip this step.

If you are using fresh spinach, tear off stems (unless it's baby spinach, in which case you can get away with leaving the stems on). Wash and leave some of the water on. Cook until wilted--a couple of minutes on the stove top, or ten to fifteen minutes in a preheated solar oven*. If you're using frozen spinach, thaw. Either way, squeeze out excess water and chop.

Mix the sour cream and mayonnaise together in a bowl. Add garlic, onion, red pepper, water chestnuts, salt and pepper and mix well. Blend spinach into mixture. Chill for a couple of hours.

If you are using a bread bowl, prepare it just before serving so the bread won't get soggy. Slice the top off and cut or scoop out the inside, leaving walls of reasonable thickness, at least an inch I'd say. Spoon dip into hollowed-out bread. Cut up the leftover bread (from the top and inside) to use for dipping.

If you're not using a bread bowl, serve the dip in an ordinary bowl with tortilla chips, crackers, pita chips, toast points or... anything you want, really.

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If you try this recipe, please let me know what you think by posting a comment. If you think the version with dried soup in it is better, feel free to let me know that too.

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*We bought a solar oven this summer. I am thoroughly enamoured of it and yes, I used it to cook the spinach for this dip. The brand we bought is Sun Oven, but as that's the only type of solar oven I've ever used, I'm not going to advocate it over other brands. The Sport Solar Oven looks good too. It is more basic as well as cheaper, and the reflector is sold separately. If you want to make your own solar oven, you can find oodles of directions on the Internet.

Healthy Songs

In my last entry, I presented an Honourable Mention list of songs that were a little bit off, and yet were not messed up enough to make the Dysfunctional Top Ten list. In this entry, I will finally get a little more positive and attempt to present, for contrast, a few healthy songs.

If it's so easy to dip into the pool of top 40 hits and come up with a whole whack of songs depicting dysfunctional relationships, how hard can it be to come up with a decent list of songs depicting functional, healthy relationships?

Very hard. Part of the difficulty is that there are, let's face it, way more songs about unhappy relationships than the contrary. Then too, just because a song is about a happy relationship, does that automatically make it a healthy song? Or is it just as probable that it's a load of sap?

Take Honey by Bobby Goldsboro. If one takes the lyrics at face value, the relationship was a happy one before poor Honey kicked the bucket. The same could be said for Having My Baby by Paul Anka. Apparently this couple is delighted to be starting a family. The trouble is, both these songs stink to high heaven. Especially Honey. Here's a sampling of lyrics for your delectation: "She was always young at heart/Kinda dumb and and kinda smart, I loved her so." What can one say about that but, "Oh my God?" Words can never encompass the wretchedness. And then, "One day while I was not at home/When she was there and all alone/The angels came" (Source: Bobby Goldsboro lyrics - Honey @ OldieLyrics.com). Why bother waterboarding prisoners? Just play them Honey over and over again. They'll tell you anything.

And Having My Baby is little better. Check this out: "The need inside you/I see it showing/Whoa, the seed inside you/Baby, do you feel it growing?" (Source: Paul Anka Lyrics, You're Having My Baby Lyrics @ STLyrics.com). Help!

So those songs are definitely out of the running, as is anything else of excessive sappiness or outright badness. A couple of other possibilities I came up with were Danny's Song by Kenny Loggins and Hey There Delilah by Plain White T's. Danny's Song is a pleasant, easy-listening depiction of a fellow who's in love and eager to start a family with his beloved, but who has the decency not to brag about his seed growing in her. Here's the chorus:

And even though we ain't got money,
I'm so in love with you, honey,
And everything will bring a chain of love.
And in the morning, when I rise,
You bring a tear of joy to my eyes
And tell me everything is gonna be all right.
(Source: Loggins & Messina Lyrics - Danny's Song @ OldieLyrics.com)

That's nice, but it is veering dangerously in the direction of sappiness with the line about "a tear of joy." That's exaggerated. Maybe if you have a reunion with your beloved after a long separation, you'll cry tears of joy, but not if you see her every day. Can you imagine getting up every morning and crying tears of joy? Come on.

I also don't care for the line, "Think I'm gonna have a son." That strikes me as sexist. A loving father wouldn't care about the gender of his child. What if he has a daughter? Will he be able to hide his disappointment from her?

As for Hey There Delilah, it's a song about a musician who's a thousand miles away from his love, Delilah. He tells her:

Hey there Delilah
Don't you worry about the distance
I'm right there if you get lonely
Give this song another listen
Close your eyes
Listen to my voice, it's my disguise
I'm by your side
(Source: Plain White T's Lyrics - Hey There Delila @ PLyrics.com)

I find the song moving, but all the same, it depicts a long-distance relationship. It's easy to idealize someone when you're a thousand miles away from them. If these two were to get their wish and be able to live together, who knows if the relationship would survive? It has not yet been tested.

An interesting fact about Hey There Delilah is that the song was not even written about a real-life relationship. The woman in question, an athlete, was already spoken for, but that did not stop the song writer from turning his crush into a musical fantasy (Source: Hey There Delila - Wikipedia: Inspiration for song).

So if Danny's Song and Hey There Delilah don't really belong on my list of healthy-relationship songs, what does? Well, it's a very short list. In fact, it's a "list" of one.

Lovely Day

This song, by R&B singer Bill Withers, hit the charts in 1977 and has gotten plenty of airplay ever since (Source: Lovely Day (song) - Wikipedia). It has been covered several times, and was even used in a Gap ad. There's no sap here, and not even any detail about the couple's life together. All he has to say is that when he's not feeling well, for example that "the day that lies ahead of me/Seems impossible to face/And someone else instead of me/Always seems to know the way..."

Then I look at you
And the world's all right with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day
(Source: Bill Withers - Lovely Day Lyrics @ MetroLyrics.com)

And that's the way love is, really. It's not about pain. It's not about suffering for the sake of your love. It's not about being "strong enough" to put up with your partner's insanity. Love is supposed to make you happy, and when you're in a healthy, genuinely loving relationship, seeing your beloved really does make you feel better, in just the way Withers describes. Trust me, I know. After many years of dysfunctional relationships, I now know. Withers describes it better, more simply and more accurately, than anything Shakespeare ever wrote in his plays and sonnets, or anything that Cyrano de Bergerac ever called up to Roxanne in her balcony as he hid in the shadows below. (What a dysfunctional relationship that was!) There will always be a place in my heart for Lovely Day.

More Dysfunctional Songs: Honourable Mention for Weirdness

Back in May, I presented my top ten countdown of popular music's most dysfunctional songs, as scientifically determined by the fact that I remembered hearing them on the radio, and thought the relationships they described sounded ever so messed up.

At the end of the countdown, I rashly promised to do a follow-up post presenting some Honourable Mentions, as well as a few, rare healthy songs. A promise is a promise, so here we go.

The criteria for my Dysfunctional Top Ten were:

1. The songs had to be big hits--popular enough to have been in high rotation on the radio, and preferably to still be heard on the radio from time to time;
2. The lyrics of the song had to scream dysfunction, either displaying an unhealthy attitude towards romantic relationships (like Love Hurts), or outright describing an unhealthy relationship (like Wonderful Tonight or Beth).

Well, the following songs certainly hit the big time in the real world, but are not quite screwed up enough to hit the dysfunctional big time. They don't scream dysfunction, but they do whisper or murmur it. Their attitude towards relationships may not be disastrous, but it is peculiar.

Like You'll Never See Me Again

This song, a hit in 2008, was written and performed by Alicia Keys (Source: Like You'll Never See Me Again - Wikipedia). This is the same Alicia Keys who came out with A Woman's Worth in 2002, a song that contains the line, "a real woman knows a real man always comes first." How fabulously retro and sexist! She may not have made the Dysfunctional Top Ten list, but if she keeps this up, perhaps she can look forward to some kind of Dysfunctional Lifetime Achievement Award.

But on to the song at hand. Keys doesn't want to be taken for granted in a romantic relationship. Who does? As she says, "Lord knows another day is not really guaranteed." So here's the formula she imposes upon her lover:

Every time you hold me
Hold me like it is the last time
Every time you kiss me
Kiss me like you'll never see me again

Aw, isn't that romantic? No, it's awful, as you will realize if you stop to think about what it would be like to actually live that way. Every time you touched the person that you love, you would have to pretend that you're never going to see them again. Imagining it as thoroughly as possible, even believing it at least for a brief period of time, would be the only way you could obey the injunction to "hold me like it is the last time." But if you could manage this, it would make you terribly sad. The more you love the person, the sadder it would make you to imagine that you're about to lose them.

If indeed, the time you have with someone is limited and another day is not really guaranteed, then you should be enjoying your time with that person rather than getting all weepy over the thought of losing them. Ironically, by not wanting to waste or take for granted the time that she and her lover have, Keys guarantees that she and her lover will waste that time, by being sad about something that hasn't happened yet. Isn't that a stupid thing to do? Songs like this should come with a warning label: "Don't try this at home."

I Touch Myself

This song was released by Australian band The DiVinyls in 1991 (Source: I Touch Myself - Wikipedia), and is the song for which they are most remembered. If you don't remember it from its airplay and video, you may be familiar with it through the movie Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery; It's featured in the scene in which Austin seduces the fembots.

Like Cruel to Be Kind, which made number 3 in my Dysfunctional Top Ten list, it suggests a domination-submission relationship. This is also true for the next Honourable Mention song. However, while the protagonist in Cruel to Be Kind was suffering, the ladies in these two offerings appear to be quite enjoying themselves. This makes their relationships good (clean?) fun rather than dysfunctional, hence their appearance in the Honourable Mention list rather than in the Top Ten.

The singer makes a number of interesting declarations to the object of her affection. "When I'm feeling down/I want you above me," she says in the first verse. Hmm. In the second verse: "You are the one who makes me come running," like a puppy dog, one presumes. The third verse is worth quoting in its entirety:

I close my eyes and see you before me
I think I would die if you were to ignore me
A fool could see just how much I adore you
I'd get down on my knees, I'd do anything for you

Of course she'd get down on her knees; that's her job, as a submissive. The first couple of lines of that verse are a little more worrisome. Seeing him before her when she closes her eyes suggests an unhealthy degree of obsession. And anyone with such a desperate need of attention that she feels she'd die if her lover ignored her has serious self-esteem problems. Still, these could be just lines that are part of the role she has to play, similar to "Yes, Master." After all, she knows how to take care of herself when he's not around:

I don't want anybody else
When I think about you I touch myself
Oh I don't want anybody else oh no oh no oh no
(Lyrics source: I Touch Myself Lyrics - DiVinyls @ Elyrics.net)

Yes, she's enjoying herself, all right.

Perhaps because the DiVinyls were a one-hit wonder, at least outside of their native Australia, there is a lot of misinformation on the Internet about this song. Many, many lyrics sites attribute the song to Blondie. Duh, Blondie broke up in '82 (Source: Blondie (band) - Wikipedia). How could they be responsible for a 90's hit? This is one of those pernicious Internet myths, similar to the one that attributes the song Bitch to Alanis Morrisette. (It was Meredith Brooks.) And that's not the only thing they get wrong; several turn the line "You are the one who makes me come running," into "You are the one who makes me happy honey." Good grief, that doesn't even scan.

That's why I want to recognize Elyrics.net for a job well done. While zillions of other sites simply copy content from each other, thus ensuring that the same mistakes and even in some cases the same typos proliferate all over the Internet, this site took the trouble to get the lyrics right. Good job, guys.

Because the Night

This song has gone through a number of reincarnations. Bruce Springsteen wrote the original version, but was not happy with it. He gave it to Patti Smith, who reworked the lyrics and had a hit with it in 1978. Then 10,000 Manics covered it in 1993 (Source: Because the Night - Wikipedia). It is their version that gets the most airplay these days.

The song was always erotic, but Smith made it more so. Springsteen saw fit to dilute the eroticism with lines like, "I work all day out in the hot sun." (Who cares, eh?) Smith replaced that with, "Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe/Love is a banquet on which we feed."

She also added some kinkiness. Springsteen's chorus began, "Come on now, try and understand/The way I feel when I'm in your hands." Patti Smith kept that for the first refrain of the chorus, but for the second refrain, she changed it to "Come on now, try and understand/The way I feel under your command."

The sentiment apparently resonated with Natalie Merchant. When 10,000 Maniacs performed the song, she sang "under your command" in both refrains.

Stating that you are "under the command" of your lover falls comfortably into the realm of kinky. Not that there's anything wrong with that. As long as it's all between consenting adults, knock yourself out (though not literally). But it's a pity, I think, that Smith had to spoil this song for the karaoke crowd. It's embarrassing to get up there and sing about how you feel under somebody's command. I know karaoke didn't exist in 1978, but still. It's a great song, and I think it would be nice if vanilla people could enjoy it too, and even sing along, without discomfort.

But she's a strange one, our Patti Smith. Here are a few lyrics from her version of Jimmy Hendrix's Hey Joe:

Honey, the way you play guitar makes me feel so
Makes me feel so masochistic
The way you go down low, deep into the neck
And I would do anything and Patty Hearst
(Source: Patti Smith Lyrics - Hey Joe @ MP3Lyrics.org)

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That's about all I have to say about dysfunctional songs. Coming soon: compiling a list of healthy songs. Can it be done? We will see.

Dysfunctional Top Ten, Part 2

Time to continue the countdown I began in my last post, Dysfunctional Top Ten, Part 1.

Number 5: When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman

This song was recorded in 1978 by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, and became a hit one year later. It was not, however, written by any of the band members but by Evan Stevens, about whom I am unable to find out anything (Source: When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman - Wikipedia). Thematically, it's similar to Number 6 in this countdown, When a Man Loves a Woman, and so it's appropriate that they fall so close together in the list. Both songs assert that falling in love with a woman is something of a disaster for a man. The major difference is that Stevens is more specific: beautiful women are the problem. Still, did Percy Sledge experience his agony by falling in love with a plain woman? Certainly not. It is alleged that Sledge wrote the song after his girlfriend left him to pursue a modelling career (Source: Percy Sledge - Wikipedia).

It appears that some men get a little confused about the difference between love and lust. Stevens and Sledge, and perhaps also Eric Clapton (back at Number 8), would have done well to get clearer on the point. It could have saved them some pain.

Indeed, the protagonist of this song is suffering a good deal, even more than the protagonist of When a Man Loves a Woman. Neither of them can trust their women, but this guy can't even trust his friends, as he tells us: "When you're in love with a beautiful woman/You watch your friends." Why? Because:

Everybody wants her, everybody loves her
everybody wants to take your baby home (Source: When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman @ Gunther W. Anderson's Home Page.)

He can't trust his lover. He can't trust his friends--which means, really, that he has no friends. He can't seem to trust anybody--a very unhappy position to be in.

Number 4: Beth

This ballad, released in 1976, was not a typical KISS offering, yet it became their biggest hit (source: Beth (song) - Wikipedia). Beth is another loving sufferer. Her man spends his time playing rock and roll with his bandmates while she sits at home all alone. The lyrics tell the story from the musician's point of view, as one might expect:

Beth, I hear you calling
But I can't come home right now
Me and the boys are playing
And we just can't find the sound
Just a few more hours
And I'll be right home to you
I think I hear them calling
Oh Beth, what can I do?
(Source: KISS - Beth Lyrics @ metrolyrics.com.)

The tone of the song is mournful and pitying, but I think the subtext is nevertheless detectable: Beth is a pain in the butt. The musician wants to get on with work on the sound and she won't stop phoning up and whining at him. It's quite clear where her man wants to spend the bulk of his time, and it's not with her. Indeed, by the end of the song, he breaks the promise he made in the first verse: "Beth, I know you're lonely/And I hope you'll be all right/'Cause me and the boys will be playing/All night."

One wonders about the legitimacy of Beth's complaint. We only hear his side of the story, after all. Perhaps he really is gone so often, and puts so little energy into the relationship, that it is fair for her to complain that "our house just ain't a home." On the other hand, perhaps she's too clingy and needy. Doesn't she have any friends and hobbies of her own?

What's certain is that mutual feeling is lacking. The musician simply isn't interested in spending as much time with Beth as she would like him to. Further, he's willing to lie about it. He puts her off saying he'll only be a few more hours, but ends up spending the entire night away. His promises are casually broken, her feelings not important. Surely this relationship is doomed.

Number 3: Cruel to Be Kind

This song was Nick Lowe's biggest hit, peaking at number 12 on UK, US, Canadian and Australian charts in 1979 (Source: Nick Lowe - Wikipedia). I find it frankly kinky in a way reminiscent of 10,000 Maniacs' take on Because the Night (about which more later). I might have left it off the list if I felt it simply portrayed some kind of sadomasochistic roleplaying, which may take place within a functioning relationship. However, the consensuality of the torment is in doubt.

The protagonist declares himself mystified by his love's behaviour. "You say your love is bona fide/But that don't coincide/With the things that you do." Further, "I pick myself up off the ground/To have you knock me back down/Again and again..." But the chorus is where it gets interesting. When he asks her to be nice, or to explain herself, she says:

You gotta be
Cruel to be kind
In the right measure
Cruel to be kind
It's a very good sign
Cruel to be kind
Means that I love you
Baby, you gotta be cruel to be kind
(Source: Cruel to Be Kind lyrics @ lyricsmode.com.)

It doesn't sound like a good situation that this fellow finds himself in, and yet he almost appears to be enjoying himself. The song is a bouncy, infectious little number. Still, it can't be good for his self-esteem to be knocked down again and again, whether literally or figuratively, and he does profess to confusion and to being at his wit's end. So I'm going to assume this activity is not consensual, and award Cruel to Be Kind the Number 3 slot.

Number 2: Lovefool

At this point, you may be wondering if dysfunctional relationships are a thing of the past. After all, the most recent song I've mentioned so far was recorded in 1982 (Sexual Healing). Don't I wish! If there are more neurotic songs in ancient than in recent history, it's because ancient history is a lot longer than recent history. So fear not; these next two songs are more recent--and they top the list! Maybe we're getting more dysfunctional rather than less, or at least more willing to sing openly about it.

Another interesting thing about these two most recent songs is that they are both sung and written (or co-written) by women. All the previous selections were written by men. Female dysfunction is at last coming to the fore. You go, girl! To a shrink, as quickly as possible.

In this strange, very unfeminist piece of work recorded in 1996 by Swedish band The Cardigans (source: Lovefool - Wikipedia), the protagonist cries, prays and begs her increasingly disinterested boyfriend to: "Love me love me/Say that you love me/Fool me fool me/Go on and fool me/Love me love me/Pretend that you love me/Leave me leave me/Just say that you need me."

Her mother is, quite rightly, concerned: "Mother tells me I shouldn't bother/That I ought to stick to another/Man, a man that surely deserves me, but/I think you do." She appears to be saying that her boyfriend is better and more worthy of respect than she is. After all, he deserves to have her despite the fact that... he doesn't really want her that much. She, on the other hand, does not deserve the opportunity to find someone better (an opportunity she is unlikely to have if she can't let go of this guy).

It's all a bit convoluted, and to find a clearer truth, we need to look beyond what the lyrics are, on the surface, saying. She is afraid to leave him. Most probably, she is terrified to be alone, afraid that she will cease to exist without someone to see her reflection in. So she clings to him no matter what, even to the point of losing her grip on reality. She begs for the opportunity to live in a dream world, where she can pretend she is loved when she really isn't. Even that is better than the alternative.

When you lose your grip on reality, you begin the dangerous slide into insanity, and that appears to be happening here. Although she declares in the chorus "Leave me, leave me/Just say that you need me," she concludes in the second verse, "I don't care if you really care/As long as you don't go." So, leave... but don't leave. No wonder she also declares in the second verse, "Reason will not lead to solution/I will end up lost in confusion" (Source: The Cardigans - Lovefool lyrics - Lyrics on Demand). You already are, honey.

It is interesting to note that her mother, although wanting to help, does not appear to have a better conception of a healthy relationship than her daughter does. Consider that mother says she should, "stick to another man." What does this mean? Usually, "stick to" is a colloquialism meaning to stay with what you currently have. But this woman doesn't have another man. If she did, she'd be comfortable letting go of the one who no longer loves her, knowing that she wouldn't have to experience the terror of being alone, even temporarily. The fact that she clings so desperately to the current disinterested man indicates that there is no one else.

So what does her mother mean? The only possibility left, as far as I can see, is the more literal meaning of the word: find another man and stick to him, cling to him, glue herself to him. Mother does not see the clinging and terrible neediness as a problem, only the choice of target. But then, if mother had been capable of modelling a healthy relationship for her daughter, she wouldn't be in this position. We get our conception of relationships from the earliest relationship we witness: that between our parents. If our parents had a dysfunctional relationship, we are liable to waste years of our lives duplicating the sort of relationship we witnessed. In short, we are screwed, as is this unfortunate creature.

Number 1: Strong Enough

This Sheryl Crow single hit number 5 in the US in 1995. It has since been covered by Cher, among others (maybe because she couldn't resist covering a song by an artist with a name so similar to hers?) and the Dixie Chicks have performed it live. Travis Tritt, whoever that is, recorded an answering song, Strong Enough to Be Your Man. God help him. (Source: Strong Enough (Sheryl Crow song) - Wikipedia.)

This song takes a little time to get into its dysfunctional stride. The first couple of verses seem not so unreasonable: "God, I feel like hell tonight/Tears of rage I cannot fight" and "Nothing's true and nothing's right/so let me be alone tonight." Fair enough--she's having a really bad day. Everybody has those from time to time.

But things deteriorate from there. "I have a face I cannot show/I make the rules up as I go." And worse: "When I've shown you that I just don't care..." Don't care about what? Presumably the man himself. What else could this refer to? And then the chorus: in spite of all this, "Are you strong enough to be my man?"

This is so wrong on so many levels. First and foremost is the implication that a strong man will stay with a woman who treats him like crap. (Maybe "do you have low enough self-esteem to be my man" didn't scan well enough?) Then there's this plea: "Lie to me/I promise I'll believe/Lie to me/But please don't leave." That makes two songs that frame lying as a positive thing, something that allows the relationship to keep limping on instead of getting a decent burial. This is actually a first-rate portrayal of how people behave in dysfunctional relationships: there is little openness or honesty. Instead, anything that allows the status quo to continue is embraced, being it lying to your partner or to yourself.

And as if that isn't enough, she attacks his manhood! Later in the song, the refrain changes to, "Are you man enough to be my man?" She is saying that if he leaves her, despite the fact that she's inconsistent and crazy-making ("I make the rules up as I go") and has shown him that she doesn't care, not only is he weak, he's not a real man. Whoa, talk about manipulative! And certainly, immature people in dysfunctional relationships are manipulative. They basically have to be, because once they've given up on honest, open communication, they have no other way to get their needs met.

On a side note, the site where I looked up the lyrics allows comments, and the first comment claims that this song refers to Sheryl Crow's trials with breast cancer. According to commenter kooki, "she's asking her boyfriend if he is strong enough to understand what she's going trhough" [sic]. I say, bullshit. It's plausible if you look only at the first two verses, but beyond that the theory falls apart. What about "Lie to me/I promise I'll believe"? What about "I've shown you that I just don't care"? How does that fit in with cancer?

It doesn't. Furthermore, while Sheryl Crow was diagnosed with breast cancer fairly recently--in 2006 (see Wildflower section of Sheryl Crow - Wikipedia)--Strong Enough came out in 1994. So, nice theory, and self-serving for any Sheryl Crow fan, but... totally wrong. Sorry.

If this and other comments are any indication, fans do sense that there is something about these lyrics that is not entirely kosher. There are several attempts to explain away or gloss over the troubling aspects of the song. Some of them are quite amusing, and not just for the bad grammar and spelling, so if you've got a little extra time, you might want to read a few. See Sheryl Crow - Strong Enough lyrics @ sing365.com.

While the other songs in my list are dysfunctional in just one way, Sheryl Crow serves up a smorgasbord of immaturity and messedupedness in this wonderfully multilayered paean to relationship dysfunctionality. For this, Strong Enough is the hands-down winner.

So that's it for the dysfunctional countdown. Readers, if you see yourself in any of these songs, I hope you will take action. Remember that, whatever Sheryl Crow might say, sometimes the strongest thing you can do... is leave.

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Coming Up: Later, I hope to have an Honorable Mention section, and perhaps a list of all those wife-beating songs I ended up leaving out of this list. I would also like to present a list of healthy songs, as contrast. Unfortunately, it will be much shorter. I don't expect to even have ten. So stay tuned for more song discussion.

Dysfunctional Top Ten, Part 1

Do you ever listen to a popular love song, perhaps something that's in heavy rotation on the radio, and think, wow, that is messed up?

OK, maybe you don't, but I do. Popular songs often portray, if not celebrate, remarkably immature, neurotic and generally dysfunctional attitudes toward romantic love and relationships. I have long thought it would be fun to compile a Dysfunctional Top Ten list. Well, I finally got around to it.

In order for a song to make the list, I decided, it must be both dysfunctional and a big hit, something that was, and preferably still is, played over and over again on the radio. That helped narrow the field; there may be lots of incredibly screwed-up, obscure songs out there--in fact, I know there are, having listened to Black Flag--but I didn't have to worry about them. If it wasn't something that most people have heard on the radio, it didn't count.

Even with these criteria, I ran into problems. At one point, it appeared that songs about beating or killing women would dominate the list. There are a lot of such songs, and some of them are extremely popular. Granted that beating your wife or girlfriend is dysfunctional, and killing her even more so, I didn't want such extreme stuff to take attention away from the subtler, more everyday ways that people make their relationships miserable.

What to do? I toyed with the idea of selecting just one song to represent all the musical wife-beating. But that didn't work out. For one thing, how do you choose between Run For Your Life by The Beatles and Only Women Bleed by Alice Cooper? Any such selection could only be arbitrary. For another, where would it go in the list? If I put such a song anywhere other than first place, I would be guilty of minimizing such abuse. But if I made it number one, I would have the same problem as before, with showy wife-beating taking attention away from everyday neurosis.

I decided that wife-beating deserves its very own category. Perhaps later I'll do a separate post devoted to the Battering Top Ten, if I feel like it. I make no promises. Anyway, this is why there are no wife-beating songs in the list. And now, on to the songs.

Number 10: Love Hurts

I'll 'fess up--this song may be dysfunctional, but I love it. What a great ballad. Still, it clearly was not inspired by a happy, healthy relationship.

I've always thought of this as a Nazareth song, so I got a surprise when I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered that it was first recorded by The Everly Brothers in 1960. That's 15 years before Nazareth did their version. Apparently I'm not the only one who loves it--Wikipedia's list of covers of Love Hurts is so extensive they had to use a table to hold it, a table that extends over four screens. (See Love Hurts - Wikipedia.)

Most people have been through bad relationships at some point in their lives, and can identify with the lyrics: "Love is like a cloud/It holds a lot of rain" and "Love is like a flame/It burns you when it's hot." Sure, sometimes it's like that. However, in the bridge, the protagonist denies that it can ever be otherwise. "Some fools rave on happiness/Blissfulness, togetherness/Some folks fool themselves I guess/But they're not fooling me," he says, and then concludes, "Love is just a lie/Made to make you blue." (Source: Love Hurts lyrics @ stlyrics.com.)

To claim that love hurts in certain situations, with certain partners, is fair and accurate. To claim that love can never make you happy, that it is in fact a lie, earns you a place in the Pantheon of Dysfunction.

Number 9: Why Do Fools Fall In Love?

This song was first recorded way back in 1956 by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, but has been covered by multiple artists since then, including Diana Ross, who covered it in 1981. (Source: Why Do Fools Fall in Love (song) - Wikipedia)

The song asks, essentially, since we can take it as understood that love can only be a bad thing, why are people stupid enough to get into it? This question, why do fools fall in love, is juxtaposed with questions about things that can be taken for granted: Why do birds sing so gay? Why does the rain fall from up above? The implication is that the foolishness of falling in love is as much an incontrovertible fact of life as the birds singing and the rain falling. (See Why Do Fools Fall in Love lyrics @ metrolyrics.com.)

It's this attitude that earns this song the Number 9 spot. Why Do Fools Fall In Love? and Love Hurts have a similar message, but at least in Love Hurts, the protagonist makes a case for his conclusions. The second verse of Love Hurts begins, "I'm young, I know/But even so/I know a thing or two/I learned from you." His condemnation of love is based on his own experience. That makes Love Hurts a notch less dysfunctional than Why Do Fools Fall in Love?, a song that not only doesn't make a case but never considers the possibility that anyone might see things otherwise.

Number 8: Wonderful Tonight

Ooh, I'm going to get in trouble now. So many people love this song and think it's sooo romantic. And it's Eric Clapton. How dare I criticize the guitar god? Well, I don't care. This song is a train wreck.

The first verse is largely about the woman's appearance and her attention to it: "She's wondering what clothes to wear/She puts on her makeup/Brushes her long blond hair." After all that, she asks him, "Do I look all right?" like an insecure child seeking validation for her existence. Yes, he assures her, "You look wonderful tonight." And that's what it's all about, as the second verse reveals: "We go to a party/Everyone turns to see/This beautiful lady/Walking around with me." He's already focused laserlike on her looks in the first verse, and now he returns to her looks in the second verse and states it flat out: she's beautiful. Can there be any question of this man's priorities? He's with this woman because she's beautiful. No doubt he loves looking at her--he appears to be watching her intently in verse one as she fixes herself up--but he also loves knowing that other people are looking, seeing him with his delicious little trophy wife draped over his arm. There's no indication that anything else matters.

I think it's interesting that we know only one specific thing about her appearance: she's got long blond hair. That's important. Blond hair is highly valued in our society, especially on women's heads. If she had brown hair, she wouldn't have the same cachet. I wouldn't be surprised if he dumped a brunette to go out with her.

The bridge goes, "I feel wonderful/Because I see the love light in your eyes," (pardon me while I puke,) "And the wonder of it all/Is that you just don't realize/How much I love you." (Source: Wonderful Tonight lyrics @ lyricsfreak.com.) Well of course she doesn't. For one thing, she's terribly insecure, as her question in verse one made clear. For another, he doesn't love her, he loves her looks, and she probably senses that.

Songs that come right out and knock love are, to my mind, less dysfunctional than songs that describe or celebrate troubled relationships with no apparent awareness of how dysfunctional they are. For its chilling portrayal of a shallow, status-seeking man and his beautiful but desperately insecure wife, this song earns the eighth spot.

Number 7: Sexual Healing

I didn't plan for Wonderful Tonight and Sexual Healing to come out next to each other, but I'm happy they did, because they both make me twitch with revulsion. Sexual Healing is a song about a guy who won't let his lover get a good night's sleep because he "needs" to get laid.

But let him speak for himself: "Get up, Get up, Get up, Get up, let's make love tonight/Wake up, Wake up, Wake up, Wake up, 'cause you do it right." These lyrics make me want to yell, "Leave her alone, dammit! She's sleeping!" Has it ever crossed his mind that maybe his lover doesn't want to be roused in the middle of the night for sex, that maybe she'd rather sleep?

Apparently not. It's all about him. "Baby, I'm hot just like an oven/I need some lovin'." He's got a keen awareness of his own needs, as the lyrics make clear. He goes on to add that when he's not feeling well--say that "blue tears are falling," or his "emotional stability is leaving" him--he knows he can get relief from her and her services. "If you don't know the thing you're dealing/Oh, I can tell you darling that's it's sexual healing."

I'm sure I read somewhere, although I'm not sure where, that the mark of a sexual addict is that instead of learning to deal with his problems, he escapes them by seeking sex. He doesn't care particularly who it's with (although if he's got a steady lover, that's obviously convenient), he doesn't care about connecting emotionally with his sexual object, he cares about getting his fix and making his feelings go away. Gaye describes this grasping, selfish stance so well: "You're my medicine/Open up and let me in" (Ugh!)

I knew most of this song's lyrics, certainly enough to disgust me, but reading them in their entirety has been illuminating. Apparently I missed a bit of ad lib about masturbation. The sites are divided on whether he says, "Please don't procrastinate/'Cause I may have to masturbate" (Sexual Healing lyrics @ stlyrics.com) or "Please don't procrastinate/It's not good to masturbate" (Sexual Healing lyrics @ metrolyrics.com). If it's the latter, Sexual Healing should be higher up in the Top Ten list. (What's wrong with masturbation? Any man who wakes his woman up from a sound sleep demanding sex needs to become better acquainted with it.) If it's the former, it fits in well with the overall selfishness displayed throughout the song.

But enough. If I read any more of Gaye's lyrics, I'll have to go take a shower. Let's move on.

Number 6: When a Man Loves a Woman

I guess this is a classic. One comes across it often. When I looked it up on Wikipedia, I was surprised to find out how old it is. It was first recorded in 1966 by Percy Sledge. (See When a Man Loves a Woman (song) - Wikipedia). It has been covered by several artists, including Montreal-based singer Luba. What was she thinking? I wondered at the time.

I hate this song. What a negative portrayal, not only of love but of women. "When a man loves a woman... she can bring him such misery," he tells us. According to this song, nothing could be a bigger disaster for a man than to fall in love with a woman. He won't be able to keep his mind on anything, he'll spend his last dime, sleep out in the rain... sounds like a good argument for turning gay, doesn't it?

After all, Sledge assures us, all that abuse and badness is only going one way. "When a man loves a woman, he can do no wrong... he can never own some other girl." (Source: When a Man Loves a Woman lyrics @ stlyrics.com.) Own? I assume he means sleep with. A man in love, he appears to be claiming, is incapable of cheating. This should come as quite a surprise to the many cheated-on wives who have had to listen to that old chestnut, "It didn't mean anything."

Personally, I find the song misogynist, if subtly so. Unlike Led Zeppelin, Sledge didn't go in for starkly condemnatory statements like, "The soul of a woman was created below" (from Dazed and Confused). But the message is clear that falling in love means that the man--that saintly man who is incapable of doing wrong--is going to be used, abused and cheated on. Not a glowing endorsement of women as a gender. Also interesting is the use of the word "own" in relation to women (or "girls") and its suggestion that sex puts a woman in a one-down position.

Still, it's got a good tune, one that a powerful singer can have some fun with, as Luba did. This probably accounts in large part for its staying power.

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Oh my goodness, I'm only halfway through and I've topped 2000 words. That's enough for now. Look for the other half of my dysfunctional countdown in a few days.

Can You Believe It? Chemicals in Canned Foods

As fear is de rigeur these days--fear of terrorism, fear of disease, etc.--and swine flu is the illness du jour, James decided that we should stock up on a lot of canned food and bottled water in order to be prepared for any upcoming pandemics that may bring civilization to a crashing halt.

I don't buy a lot of canned food, and this shopping trip reminded me why. Many canned foods that are not desserts have sugar in them, in flagrant disregard of common sense and the obesity epidemic. It is also disheartening to see that high-fructose corn syrup has crept north across the border and is insinuating itself into more and more prepared foods, though studies show it destabilizes your blood sugar levels and encourages weight gain even more than plain table sugar does.

But it was the raft of mysterious chemicals in the cans that really made an impression on me. Actually, the worst offender didn't come in a can but in a jar. We happened to wander into the multicultural section of the supermarket. I saw they had gefilte fish, which made me come over all nostalgic. Gefilte fish was no big deal when I lived in Montreal, but here, Jewish things, edible or otherwise, are harder to come by. So I got a jar of Manischewitz Gefilte Fish. I picked that brand because it was the only one without sugar, but it turned out to be an unfortunate choice. There are worse things than refined sugar. I know that now.

It should have been good. How can you go wrong with carp, mullet, whitefish and pike? All tasty fish, or at least hairdos of the 70's. But it had an unpleasant, metallic taste, like a thallium patty. What could have imparted such a disgusting flavour? It wasn't the fish. It couldn't have been the onion or the egg whites. It probably wasn't the monosodium glutamate; sometimes I get a reaction to MSG, but I've never noticed that it had a taste. But it could have been the sodium hexametaphosphate. Or perhaps the sodium tripolyphosphate.

If my hair falls out, I'll let you know.

Manischewitz wasn't the only offender. Most of the canned foods we bought had some kind of laboratory oddity in them. I thought it would be interesting to round up all the chemicals in all the canned and bottled foods we bought and find out more about them. So here they are, in alphabetical order.

Chemicals in Cans

Autolyzed Yeast Extract

In No Name Chicken Stew. A flavour enhancer similar to MSG, which is also in No Name Chicken Stew. Why do they need the same thing twice? They must not have a lot of confidence in their stew. According to Wise Geek, autolyzed yeast is created by adding salt to yeast, which causes the yeast to digest itself^[1]. Some sort of undisclosed further processing creates the final product. Autolyzed yeast extract is chemically similar to MSG and may therefore produce similar symptoms.

Calcium Chloride

In canned tomatoes, all brands I've checked. Used to keep canned vegetables firm. Disconcertingly, it's the same stuff they put on the road to melt ice in winter. Can be an irritant, though presumably in larger quantities than one finds in canned food. Considered safe.^[2]

Citric Acid

In Aylmer's Canned Tomatoes. Naturally occurring in fruits and vegetables, especially citrus fruits. Added to foods as a flavouring and preservative^[3]. My can of tomatoes explains that citric acid is an acidulant. Acidulants, also called acidity regulators, change or maintain the PH balance of foods^[4]. This is a bit confusing. Tomatoes are acidic on their own. Why do they need an acid added to them? Could they lose acidity otherwise? Anyway, no safety concerns there.

Disodium EDTA

In Unico Bean Medley. EDTA is short for ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid. Now there's a mouthful. One study shows that sufficient quantities of the stuff cause negative effects in rats. All rats dosed with the rat equivalent of 500 mg died within nine days^[5]. And 500 mg is not all that much. Vitamin C comes in 500 mg pills. The study concludes that "because of its effect on calcium, the use of disodium EDTA as a food additive is not recommended" ^[6]. Oh dear. Perhaps the bean medleys will have to go back to the store. The study adds that calcium disodium EDTA is safer than plain old disodium EDTA. That's good, because I just noticed it's in my mayonnaise.

The Health Canada Food Additive Dictionary explains that disodium EDTA is a sequestering agent^[7]. Sequestering agents "combine with metallic elements in food, thereby preventing their taking part in reactions leading to colour or flavour deterioration"^[8]. So though it does bad things to blood calcium levels, at least if you're a rat, disodium EDTA is permitted in our food so that our canned beans will stay pretty. Uh, yeah. That's worth it. Not.

Granted, this is quite an old study. But I can't find anything more up to date. There's surprisingly little information out there about disodium EDTA as a food additive.

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)

In No Name Chicken Stew, all Campbell's Soups, and Manischewitz Gefilte Fish. A sodium salt of glutamic acid. Glutamic acid occurs naturally in seaweed and was traditionally used in Asian cooking. MSG is added to foods as a flavour enhancer^[9]. Although it is considered safe, in sufficient quantities it can cause a reaction known as MSG symptom complex or--more colourfully--Chinese restaurant syndrome^[10]. I have experienced that myself. I get a weird, itchy feeling in my throat. Other people get headaches. Asthmatics may experience temporary worsening of their asthmatic symptoms^[11]. I have only had problems in Chinese restaurants; presumably the amount found in some restaurant dishes is larger than in canned food. I suspect that the original seaweed extract caused fewer problems than the MSG cooked up in labs, but progress marches on.

Sodium Hexametaphosphate

In Manischewitz Gefilte Fish. This is another sequestering agent (see Disodium EDTA). Its Wikipedia entry claims it can cause chest pain, and in sufficient amounts, pancreatic cancer, but the citations are missing^[12]. According to Cosmetic Database, there are a number of concerns regarding this chemical: it is persistent and "bioaccumulative," which means that it builds up in your body tissues^[13]. As well, studies in animals show that it affects the brain and nervous system in high doses ^[14].

Sodium Tripolyphosphate

In Manischewitz Gefilte Fish. Used as a preservative in meats and fish. It is also added to soaps and detergents to improve their cleansing ability!^[15] Polyphosphates are irritating to the skin and may induce metabolic acidosis^[16]. Which, by the way, can be fatal.

Sulfites

In No Name Chicken Stew. The specific type of sulfite was not mentioned; the ingredient listing simply said "sulfites (in potatoes)." Sulfites are used as a preservative. In some cases, they just make the food look prettier. If you've ever seen dried apricots in a health food store, you've probably noticed that they are dark brown, in contrast to supermarket apricots, which remain bright orange. That's because the health-food apricots have no sulfites in them. They still taste good though.

Sulfites occur naturally in wine and some foods. Yet they are a health concern. They can cause headaches, skin irritation and breathing difficulty^[17]. Asthmatics are at greater risk of having a reaction to sulfites, a reaction that can sometimes be fatal^[18].

Bon appétit!

Notable Exceptions

Having gone on at length about the additives in canned food, some benign and some scary, I feel it's only to fair to mention that some of the canned food we bought had no chemicals in it at all. If you prefer your food unadulterated, here are some products to watch for.

1. I have to hand it to Blue Menu. They really do make healthy products without unnecessary additives. Their soups are free of MSG and their canned beans contain nothing but beans, water and salt, in constrast to Unico's beans with their rat-sickening disodium EDTA. Furthermore, Blue Menu's canned corn kernels contain no added sugar. Yet they still taste sweet, probably because they come from good quality corn.
2. A can of Del Monte's Pineapple Chunks contains nothing but pineapple chunks and pineapple juice.
3. President's Choice Just Apples "Appletreet" consists of little individual plastic cups of applesauce. It's not canned food per se, but it is similar to canned food, being sealed in airtight containers, and does indeed contain just apples. Too bad about the silly name though.
4. NATUR Peanut Butter comes in a glass jar and consists of nothing but ground peanuts. Unlike most peanut butters, NATUR contains no hydrogenated oil.

References

1. ^ http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-autolyzed-yeast.htm
2. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_chloride
3. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid
4. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acidulant
5. ^ http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/40abcj10.htm
6. ^ Ibid.
7. ^ http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/addit/diction/dict_food-alim_add-eng.php
8. ^ http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/addit/diction/dict_def_codes-eng.php
9. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate
10. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate#Health_concerns
11. ^ Ibid.
12. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hexametaphosphate
13. ^ http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/ingredient.php?ingred06=706070&nothanks=1
14. ^ Ibid.
15. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_tripolyphosphate#Uses
16. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_tripolyphosphate#Health_effects
17. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfites#Health_risks
18. ^ Ibid.

More on Repressed Emotions

Here are some things that I didn't find space for in my last post on repressed emotions.

Writing From The Body by John Lee and Ceci Miller-Kritsberg is ostensibly about becoming more creative, but also covers the freeing of repressed emotions, since this also frees one up to be more creative. This is a wonderful book that deserves to be much better known than it is.

Here is my favorite exercise from the book (in my own words, since I gave my copy away and haven't bought a new one yet). Choose a memory from your childhood that you want to write about. Sit and think about it for ten or fifteen minutes. Come up with a short sentence, the shorter the better, that sums up how you feel about this event. Scream the short sentence. If you live in an apartment or otherwise don't want to make too much noise, scream into a pillow. Sit with the release of emotions that follow. Finally, write about the event.

I came up with a modified version of this exercise to use when you don't have a memory in mind. Instead of starting with a memory, start with whatever symptom you have. As I mentioned in the first post on repressed emotions, a repressed emotion can manifest as a physical symptom like headache or back pain. What you can do is focus on the symptom for a while, and then ask that part of your body if it can give you a few words or a short sentence related to the feeling. It can take a few tries before you get an answer, especially if you're not accustomed to communicating with your body. It helps to get into a meditative, relaxed state. It also helps to suspend disbelief, because your body can come up with stuff that sounds weird and illogical to your mind. Resist the urge to dismiss; instead, take the words you're given and scream them. The rest of the exercise is the same.

Screaming can be helpful for releasing repressed emotions. Just ask the Primal Therapy people. What I appreciate about this exercise is the way that it works in verbalisation. Sometimes you feel something and you don't know why. Finding words can clarify what is going on.

Finally, I have a suggestion for people with chronic muscle tension. If you're one of those people, you can spend an inordinate amount of time stretching your ridiculously tight muscles out in an attempt to feel like a human being. It helps for a little while, then everything bounces back. Or you have a massage, which is not cheap, and everything bounces back. So the next time you stretch, try making some noise: a sigh, groan or even a scream if you feel like it. If the tension is connected to repressed emotion, making noise will release some of that emotion and loosen you up better than stretching alone. Try it next time you stretch. I'd like to say, try it next time you get a massage, but I find that massage therapists are not always up to speed on the repressed emotions thing and sometimes they will freak if you start crying on the table. I don't know why; they should know better. I imagine the reaction would be even worse if you screamed. You might end up like Jerry Seinfeld, unable to get another massage appointment.

Repressed Emotions

In part 3 of my Yoga Snobs series, I mentioned repressed emotions and the importance of releasing them. I thought it might be helpful to follow up with an entry delving into the subject in more detail.

Symptoms of repression

First of all, how do you know if you are repressing emotions? Not because you feel them. If you could feel them, they wouldn't be repressed. Still, they leave traces. When you bury emotions, you're like that guy in Poe's "Telltale Heart." Something always emerges to haunt you.

Physical Symptoms

Chronic problems like muscle tension, back pain, headaches and digestive problems, for which your doctor can find no organic cause, may be symptoms of repression. Obesity often has an underlying emotional cause; it's fairly common for people who were sexually abused as children to be obese. Such symptoms are called psychosomatic. Even serious conditions such as cancer can have a psychosomatic component. This shows how important it is to release repression: not only your happiness and general wellbeing but your health or even your life could be at stake.

Strong, Inappropriate Emotion

Now that's weird. How can emotion be a symptom of repressed emotion?

Some emotions are more socially acceptable than others. This can vary depending upon who you are and what sort of background you come from. For example, it has traditionally been more acceptable for women than men to express sadness (especially when tears are involved), and more acceptable for men to express anger. So men may repress sadness under anger, and women may repress anger under sadness. On the other hand, I grew up in a home where sadness was derided as weakness while anger earned respect, so that, although I am a woman, I repressed sadness under anger for many years.

If you often find yourself caught up in a strong, even overpowering emotion that seems out of proportion to the situations that trigger it, you're probably repressing something.

Obsessive Thoughts

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a complex condition with many causes, perhaps even physical. One of those causes is repression, though you'd never know it to read most of the information available out there. It is currently trendy to treat mental conditions primarily with drugs and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, in keeping with today's treat-the-symptom philosophy. This is unfortunate, as it means that all too often the underlying issues are never dealt with. And when the underlying issues aren't dealt with, they always emerge again, in another form.

It's possible to have the obsessions without the compulsions. Obsessive thoughts are a clever technique of the mind to distract you from whatever you don't want to feel.

How to Release Repressed Emotions

The first thing you have to do is give yourself permission. You have to allow yourself to cry, even loudly or as unrestrainedly as a child, even without knowing why you are crying. This is important. If you insist on behaving in a dignified and restrained manner at all times, you will likely just push the repressed emotions back under.

The next thing to do is to look to your symptoms. They are your body's way of screaming at you that something is wrong. Listen to them.

If your symptoms are physical

Focus your attention on the part of the body that hurts. Feel it fully. This is the opposite of what we usually do. We naturally want pain to go away, and the pharmaceutical industry helpfully steps in with a raft of drugs to help us not feel. If you can go off pain pills and completely feel your pain, you may finally receive the message your body is trying to send you. But you have to be willing to receive whatever comes and not push it down again, whether what comes is an image you don't like, a thought you think is ridiculous, or the urge to scream.

Expect resistance. You've spent years repressing. You're good at it. Your defensive mechanisms will kick in. Probably the most universal one is the wandering mind. Everybody who tries any kind of meditation gets this. I have an interesting one: I get tired and start to yawn. It helps to recognize defensive mechanisms for what they are, so you can stop them from derailing you.

Raphael Cushnir suggests that you can get at repressed emotions by asking yourself two questions: "What is happening right now?" and "Can I be with it?" If you take one of his workshops, he'll give you a handy magnet you can stick on your fridge to remind you to ask the two questions. He has also written a number of books on the subject, including The One Thing Holding You Back, which I recommend. (I can't recommend the other ones because I haven't read them.)

If your symptom is strong, inappropriate emotion

Find somewhere private. This is especially important if you cover up other emotions with anger; by removing yourself from the situation that is making you angry, you can avoid doing or saying something you'll regret later. Handy tip: public washroom cubicles are a good place to escape to. Once you're alone, feel the emotion fully (are you noticing a pattern here?) If you feel the emotion fully for long enough, the other emotion that it is covering up is likely to come to the surface. When that happens, feel that emotion fully too, emoting as necessary.

While feeling the first emotion, you can try asking yourself directly if some other feeling is underneath. Talking to your own body is not a sign of insanity at all but a good habit to get into.

If your symptom is obsessive thoughts

If you've got OCD, you may need professional help. If you only have obsessive thoughts, you may be able to handle it yourself. Either way, try this: when you catch yourself in an obsessive thought or compulsive action, ask yourself, "What am I feeling right now?" This is similar to Cushnir's two questions mentioned earlier.

We live in a society uncomfortable with the expression of emotion. We are told to "put on a happy face" and "laugh and the world laughs with you; cry and you cry alone." It is time for a change. In her book Transformation Soup, SARK writes, "I think that until we cry as often as we laugh, we are not fully alive" (p. 136). I like this thought. I don't know how literally to take it. I don't know if the correct ratio of tears to laughter is 50/50 or 40/60 or 25/75. But I know that we need to become as accepting of tears as we are of laughter. We need to feel freer to cry, to scream, to express whatever is in us.

...But I'll Have a Handicapped Christmas

I had my second blog topic all planned out, but you know what they say about life happening while you're making other plans.

We had a tremendous snowstorm on Saturday night. This Tuesday, I attempted to walk downtown, but faced my nemesis in the form of a huge ridge that the snowplows had left between the street and the sidewalk. I'd already climbed over two ridges to get that far, and the sidewalk in between them had been plowed, so I naturally assumed that the sidewalk beyond this ridge was also plowed. This was the grandest ridge of all, but I worked my way up it sideways, congratulating myself on my cleverness, and stepped towards the smooth white surface beyond. In midair, too late, it occurred to me that the flat white surface was too high to be a sidewalk. Then I plunged feet-first into powder snow up to my crotch, felt my right foot twist as I hit the sidewalk beneath, and pitched forward chest-first into the snow.

The familiar pain I felt as I struggled to my feet told me I'd twisted my ankle again. This is the second time I've seriously twisted my ankle. I don't want to go into the first time in too much detail, so let's just say it involved a moving vehicle. My ankle had looked as if it had an Idaho potato growing out of it.

I managed on adrenaline to stump all the way back home through the snow. Once home, I checked the foot and found the swelling to be surprisingly small. It seemed disproportionate to the pain; I could not flex my foot or spread my toes. I managed to get around via a bizarre pointed-toe shuffle.

What both incidents of sprain had in common was a feeling of longing for the moments before the injury, which felt so close and yet so unattainable. Had it really been just ten minutes ago that I'd been walking out the door on two strong feet? How come I couldn't get that moment back, correct the mistake, restore my strong and healthy body? It was only ten minutes away.

The next morning, I had a good look at the foot and saw that the ankle was no longer swollen at all. The only swelling was on the actual foot. This made me concerned that I might have broken a bone. James took me to the emergency room at the hospital, where we were lucky enough to be seen within an hour. The doctor told me it couldn't be a broken bone. In the area of the swelling, he explained, the bones are very large. You can't break them unless you, and I quote, "fall off a roof or get in a high-speed car accident." It was a sprain, but in the foot rather than the ankle. He recommended the usual sprain treatment (rest, ice, elevation, compression--often abbreviated to RICE) and we picked up a pair of crutches at a nearby drug store.

Today, I'm much better and can walk around the house comfortably without crutches. We went out for a short walk and I found I did need the crutches for that, what with the uneven ground and the ice.

So I hope that soon I'll be walking and kvetching normally. It's an odd thing about serious injury or illness--you stop complaining. You can't afford to complain because you'll really get yourself down if you do. When things are going relatively well, that's when you can complain, and feel like complaining, about the small things. I think it's one of the ways we seek balance in our lives.