"An alternative strategy of utopian potlatch"

The Tactical Ice Cream Unit dispenses progressive politics along with frozen treats. In its own words:

The TICU emerges at a time when most channels of distribution, communication, and social interaction are mediated and constrained by the fervor of financial exchange. Incorporating an alternative strategy of utopian potlatch, the Tactical Ice Cream Unit is envisioned primarily as a mobile distribution center for ice cream and information.

Look for them if you're around Southern California. (Via Boing Boing).

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Take the Poverty Line Challenge: for one week, stick to a poverty line budget, determined by figuring out what someone working for minimum wage in your area is able to spend on food. In the words of its creator:

I'm hoping to use the Poverty Line Challenge as an opportunity to tease out some of the decisions and factors that play into the food choices we make.

I don't know if I can subject the people I am responsible to feed to this, but I love the idea of eating well on the really cheap. In general I try to get the most from the least, but sticking to a strict budget would be an extra, well, challenge. (This one is yang to the yin of eat local.)

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Questions about your vagina? Send them to TBTAM.

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In enthusiastic defiance of TV-Turnoff Week 2006, we have been watching loads and loads, oodles upon oodles, of TV. Tuesday was one of the best small-screen evenings in recent memory, with hot, hot episodes of Idol, Gilmore and Veronica (and a Thief episode still on the TiVo). We saved the Idol ep and have been showing it to the little man at every break in our usual Max & Ruby marathon. He tries to sing along (it sounds more like groaning; if you didn't know him you might think he was complaining about something) and passionately holds his arms outstretched during Paris's rendition of "The Way We Were." We spare him the agony of the now departed Pickler's "Unchained Melody" and he doesn't watch the parts with the judges or, worse, the commercials.

The off-with-your-TV proponents in our neighborhood have offered the kids at the elementary school this incentive: go to the public library after school instead of home to veg out in front of the tube, and the librarian will give you a sticker that says, "I visited my public library." This can be redeemed for a cookie at a local bakery. So the people who think that television can make you fat are rewarding kids for not watching television by...feeding them cookies. Like Smirnoff said: What a Country!