As I’ve been doing the final proof of my manuscript for Walking With the Muse these past few days I’ve been shocked at how many little typos made it through multiple rounds of proofing and different sets of eyes.
Some of these short stories had already been published years ago, with mistakes. To think how close I came to releasing this out into the world in book form makes me a little embarrassed to say the least. I’m always surprised by how we can, at times, be so incredibly blind to things right in front of our faces. It's safe to say I felt a little Homer Simpson-ish.
I’m happy to say I think all of those pesky—substitutions, omissions, transpositions, doublings, missing spaces, extra spaces, and even those extra-pesky atomic typos are now a thing of the past. At least most of them. All’s well that ends well.
Later this week I’ll be concentrating on reviewing the final draft of the book's full cover spread. This is getting real now and I can barely contain myself.
I was walking the nature trail the other day and I felt like I was being watched—as it turns out I was. This curious fawn was checking me out from about ten feet away. My mom, who used to feed the deer behind her apartment told me this is the time of the year that female deer start giving their fawns a little more freedom. They allow the fawn to roam but watch from the edge of the woods. If the mothers sense danger they signal to the fawn to come running back to them.
After I got home I was relaxing on the deck with some tea and felt eyes on me again—the fawn showed up again in our back field. I think I made a friend. : )
This is the kind of stalker that I'm happy to have.
Incase you've missed it—which I don't think could be possible at this point—a recent UCDavis study revealed most of the foods sold in the US that claim to be made with avocado oil are, in fact, made with inflammatory seed oils.
You reach for that bag of chips labeled "made with avocado oil," the ones priced like they're a healthy elixir of liquid gold, and what do you get? A mouthful of cheaper oils that have been proven harmfully inflammatory to the human body. Eighty-nine percent of these processed foods—chips, mayo, dressings—fail the authenticity test. That's not a rounding error; that's a full-blown scam on the shelf. You pay the premium because you want do what's right for your health, the monounsaturated goodness, something better than the industrial sludge. Instead, you're getting the culinary equivalent of a three-card monte game run by suppliers who realized long ago that no government regulatory agency is watching out for the consumer.
This isn't some minor labeling mix-up. It's just another chapter of the same old American food racket. Take something people actually care about, water it down with whatever's cheaper, and bank on the fact that most of us won't notice for a while, then rake in those extra profits for as long as possible.
Olive oil's been exposed for decades so people are aware and already know what to look for. Avocado oil? Relatively new, healthy, expensive—perfect for the corporate grifters. Brands might claim ignorance, hiding behind layers of brokers and suppliers, and co-packers but ignorance is no defense when you're charging extra for purity that isn't there. The consumer gets screwed in twice. Higher prices for a product that is, in too many cases, a total fraud.
It's wrong because labels should mean something. Not some marketing fairytale on the package, but the actual stuff that we pay for and consume. When you sell people a lie about what they're putting in their bodies, you erode whatever scrap of trust remains in the system. We've seen this before with olive oil, maple syrup, with honey, with virtually any other ingredient they can swap out to save a few cents per unit. Enough is enough. It's time to demand the accurate labeling, proper testing, and regulations. Sadly, until this changes making these prepared food items ourselves or buying local from trusted sources are really the only viable options left here in America.
All for now. Make this a wonderful day.
(Gifs sourced from Giphy.com)
