TRUTH IN ADVERTISING DEPT.– Critics of the latest Hardees & Carls Jr ad campaign don’t think the supermodel actually means to eat that egg & bacon cheeseburger, sandwiched between buns of mortarboard. Obviously she’s neither eating that burger, nor blowing it. But don’t underestimate her acting skill, or the porn food purveyor’s poisonous intent. This is truth in advertising, and that’s the money shot because Hardees knows their customer.
My friends are no doubt a scrappy bunch. It’s no big surprise that guys like Jon and Adam and–holy shit–Skip, are pissed off and ready to burn a few barns down, so to speak. I don’t think I need to look up a bunch of fancy references to convince anyone that things are dire, dire, dire. The college students I went hiking with yesterday afternoon will have to live what, like 20,0000 years to pay off the stupid shell-game debt they supposedly owe. Some guy on Adam’s page was trying to convince me the whole business is thus because we never pay our bills. Bullshit. It’s like this because a buncha paranoid Fascist clowns have set up a little magick trick to try and convince us they have some legitimate claim to all the cheese. THEY DO NOT!!!
So there’s a fight working alright, and I’ve been in it since I was a potential in my Granddad’s genetic line. But I recently noticed–this is so weird–we’re all fighting the wrong guy, and he is us. If we collapse our little bubble here in our little gob of the quantum foam, we’re all screwed; not just us little guys. And we really do have enough guys to kick their Fascist asses on the way down. But guess what, we’ve all got it wrong!
Like it or not we’re all in this together. We’re each and every one of us as fucked up as the Devil!!! Shit he may have been the only sane one all along–but now I’m just picking at scales. Sorry. Didn’t meant to. Ahem. Point is some of us are fucked up differently than others. It doesn’t matter. That crackhead? Fuck-ed. The cop beating him down? Fuck-ed. Dominique Kahn-Strauss? Fuck-ed. Who else? The Pope? Me? You? Yeah, you’re starting to anticipate if not grok me.
I’m a tool. Sometimes I’m also a dick and an asshole. That’s another matter–I’m happy about being a tool.
A while ago I came back to Colorado from a trip back to Cleveland for the great John Covert’s 95th birthday party. The moment I returned to my adopted home town, every television set in the danged known Universe began to trumpet the imminent falling of the sky, talking heads of every political stripe and linguistic camp bewailing the unavoidable collapse of the American dollar and the entire foundation of all civilization along with it. I found myself with time on my hands, so I started tinkering with this blog as nothing more than an outlet for some frustrations, and a place to sling a bit of my ordinary schtick, mainly just at myself, assuming I’d be the only one reading. I played around on Facebook a little meaning nothing more than to hunt down a few friends from the distant past. That’s what FB is for, right? A series of rapidly developing events took place and I soon found myself in the position I mean to describe right now, as best as I am able.
I guess I can’t recall the first moment I was told I could write. It hasn’t really mattered til recently–everyone knows writing is one of those career choices pursued by quixotic artsy-fartsy types that were willing to sacrifice creature comforts on the off chance someone might give a shit, and that the big bucks might roll in, easy-pleasy. Like hitting the lottery or breaking into the billboard charts with your high-school garage band, right? Besides, writers as a breed must, by necessity, possess a form of self-deluded arrogance that they have things to say of such verity and import that people will be compelled to actually pay money to subject themselves to the grief of listening to the blather produced in the effort to be a big deal. It was never like that. I just wanted something to fill the time that wouldn’t dissolve my brains like the all to comfortable slide into awareness of regularly scheduled TV programming was beginning to do.
Somewhere in the midst of Facebooking about how we need a new econo-political paradigm it became apparent that bitching about this need had long been a habit of mine, as well as of many of my friends. I’ve always been a pretty good bitcher, too, in fact, when I entered the foundationless world of a self-employed remodeler it was a sense of the futility of bellyaching about how paint companies were managed. My brother and I had enough faith in our pooled abilities to believe we could do things better than the people running outfits for which we had worked to strike under our own banner. The key words in this were and remain “faith” and “believe”.
So it occurred to me that if I really believe my own drivel, I ought to live it out.
Well that was an eye-opener. Very little pursuit of that idea led me to examine just what I actually believe, which turns out to be quite a bit, and quite at odds with the established order of things. I started, as is my wont, to contemplate God, and the deeper nature of things. I thought about how this transposes to something manageable in this “real” world. We have to work at a job, right? We have to round up bacon we can trade for goods, services, support for our children, and so on. But wait a minute–20 years of self-employment, and I was broke, money-wise, and most of my relationships were broke in some sense as well, though in most instances I couldn’t tell how, or how to fix it. Seemed the thing I was best at doing was bitching. Where’s the fun in that?
But I do believe in God, right, even though I’ve managed to get myself thrown out of both Christian churches and sorta like devil-worshiping occult groups because my notions of God are…unconventional. Enough so I’m usually inclined to put quotation marks around “God” when I type the word, and to feel compelled to issue tedious disclaimers about how I differ from the general milieu of thinkers on the matter.
An experiment in ontological ideoplasticity.
This whole thing is about stuff I believe. I’m kinda stuck at that level, since there’s not much I know. Some of what I believe has to do with what other folks believe, so I’ll be pretty much doing what a lot of other folks do, in a lot of ways. In some
Whoa!!! Blah Blah F-ing Blah.
Mt 6
25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
My apologies to any devil-worshiping freaks I may have just offended. You’re wrong, anyhow–that’s for another moment. Point is–and I’m no ordinary Christian–this is stuff we all learned from the cradle. I’ll be using Christian doctrinal talking points throughout this whole conversation because that’s where I learned this shit. It’s also where I learned it was all crap.
I’ve had a real hard time with this one, cause by now I can usually say, “The point is….” Right now I still can’t do that. The whole collection of thoughts in my head begins to ooze its way into the point when I come at it this way. Bear with a little, OK?
Christians say they believe the book that stuff up the page a little came from is the sacrosanct Word of God, equated with the Logos–God on paper, if you will. With apologies to those real Christian human beings in the world, Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit!!!!! If you shitheels really believed one word of the shit in that book, this conversation would be intrinsically inconceivable. See that at the end of that last sentence? PERIOD.
On the other hand, I believe the Bible to be a beautiful collection of fine literature, some of which may be divinely inspired. We have all these cultural heroes, like Gandhi whom I linked to on FB earlier, Jesus, John Lennon ferchristsake. We pay a bunch of lip service out to them then grab a beer and flick on some stupid nonsense on TV, or punch a child, or throw rocks at a cop, or bust a protester. Fuck that, I decided I believe it. Whatever it is.
You may have noticed me carrying on about a new paradigm, money’s a bad metaphor, we’re all in this together, &c., &c. All that is real, real important to what this is about, but OMG kids! This was a bitch to get off. I’ll be hanging flesh on it all as I go, but be patient. what ended up here just now was way different than what I’d meant to do. A writer has to possess a pretty ridiculous quantity of arrogance in the first place, just to have the motivation to sit here pouring all of it out. I mean, I think this tripe I’m typing is valuable enough, and that you all will want to see it–need to see it–to occupy me at 3:30 in the fucking morning. Even worse, here and round about, (get wit’ me on Facebook, if you came from somewhere else), I’ll be arguing with Hegel, Gandhi, Paul the fuckin’ Apostle. Can you believe it? Whatever, I believe the finer points from all those guys. I’ll explain everything.
This hasn’t been the clarification I’d promised to put up, but it defines some of the questions, I guess. You can have it.
Now don’t forget. A little review: It’s All Bullshit!!!
(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)
GODDAMN RACIST CRACKERS. By which I mean bloodthirsty Georgian officials, the US Supreme Court and the POTUS himself. Last week a Texas audience cheered their own state’s record number of executions, on TV, the halfwitted bigots. Lynch mobs used to pose for picture postcards which they purchased and sent to relatives. A sampling of notes on the backside: “Well John — This is a token of a great day … I saw this on my lunch hour. I was very much in the bunch. You can see the negro hanging on a telephone pole.” and “This is the barbecue we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Love, your son Joe.”
Poor wolf man, he’s the bastard of the horror big three. Dracula and Frankenstein have antecedents in folklore but bloomed on the quills of novelists. The werewolf traces back to the Greek, yet no one will pull him from the doghouse, not that Hollywood doesn’t keep trying. Whenever I see the cinematic transformation of man to beast, from An American Werewolf in London to the latest Wolfman offering, I can’t help but recall the terrifying hairification of Jerry Lewis in the Nutty Professor, 
itself a spoof of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, regarded as the most literary of inferences to lycanthropy. But Robert Louis Stevenson wrote another short story seldom cited as a werewolf tale. Curious, because I think it holds the key to the man- wolf allure, when it’s not gay teen cheese. In his 1887 Olalla, RLS described the entrancing menace and tormented fate of the lupine-afflicted without mentioning the word.
Of course Stevenson’s angle separated man less from beast.
…the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me. They were unusually large, the iris golden like Felipe’s, but the pupil at that moment so distended that they seemed almost black; and what affected me was not so much their size as (what was perhaps its consequence) the singular insignificance of their regard. A look more blankly stupid I have never met. My eyes dropped before it even as I spoke, and I went on my way upstairs to my own room, at once baffled and embarrassed. Yet, when I came there and saw the face of the portrait, I was again reminded of the miracle of family descent. My hostess was, indeed, both older and fuller in person; her eyes were of a different colour; her face, besides, was not only free from the ill-significance that offended and attracted me in the painting; it was devoid of either good or bad – a moral blank expressing literally naught. And yet there was a likeness, not so much speaking as immanent, not so much in any particular feature as upon the whole. It should seem, I thought, as if when the master set his signature to that grave canvas, he had not only caught the image of one smiling and false-eyed woman, but stamped the essential quality of a race.
Fishermen have always called it the Slimehead fish. It’s sorta-scientific name is Darwin’s Slimehead. But when bottom-of-the-barrel scraping began for the ocean’s remaining fisheries, fishmongers created a market for the never-thought-palatable deep bottom feeder by renaming it the Orange Roughy.
That much you’ve probably heard before.
Really, what’s in a name? A fish by any other name will smell too. Is there a fish story without hyperbole, that does not smell fishy? The idiom comes from the experience-honed doubt that the fishmonger’s catch is not fresh. People know steak is dead cow, so does it matter that Orange Roughy is Slimehead, Monkfish is Goosefish, Rock Salmon is Spiny Dogfish, or Tilapia is Mouthbrooder?
Actually Israeli exporters wanted to give Tilapia a biblical makeover, asserting the Tilapia from the Sea of Galilee, should be called St. Peter’s Fish, but US regulators intervened. In the Gospel of Matthew 17:27, apostle Peter tells tax collectors where they can go. In more than that many words he tells them to go fish, and from the mouth of the “first fish they catch,” they will find the four drachmas he owes them. The FDA didn’t buy it either. By the way, if you doubt Wikipedia has Zionist preoccupations, sniff the first paragraph of their entry for Tilapia. Maybe we are about to see whether Wiki momentum can surfeit the vernacular.
The US government also intervened when fish wholesalers wanted to rename the Patagonian Toothfish as Chilean Sea Bass. It’s not a Bass. And the poor Teethfish, like the Slimehead, are now endangered.
Because man’s traditional food fishes have become depleted, we’re having now to make meals of the dregs. And the populations of these deep sea dwellers have less resiliency than the coastal stocks. In the case of the Toothfish and the Slimehead, it’s because they grow very slowly. The Slimehead can grow to be 150 years old. They don’t become sexually reproductive until they are 33, and that’s not in dogfish years. Fishing operations which harvest entire sea mounts decimate every generation at once, leaving none who can spawn.
Would it give you an unsettled feeling to consume something so ancient? If we’re talking a pre-Phylloxera wine, it could be a great thing. But a fish that old has been absorbing mercury from the height of the industrial revolution onwards. So there might be a health benefit for showing deference to your fish elders.
It recently upset me to learn that with modern agriculture we eat cattle before they’re two, when they’re barely adolescent. Now I wonder what’s too old. We revere elephants and tortoises for their longevity, such ancient beings we don’t eat.
I’m old enough to remember learning about the old carp in the fountains of Paris, who also lived quite long. French schoolchildren could marvel that some carp still lived who might have glimpsed Napoleon.
A Slimehead Orange Roughy caught today could have lived in the time of Lincoln. Certainly those fish drag-netted in the 1970s, when the Orange Roughy exotic star was contrived to rise, were contemporaries of John Wilkes Booth. Though swimming many thousand feet below sea level, Roughy might have encountered a fresh shipwreck of Lincoln’s era, carrying gold sent from the west coast to finance the Civil War.
Today finds Americans awaiting their and their fellow man’s emancipation from war, torture, illegal detention, economic enslavement, usury, exploitation, impoverishment, enfeeblement and poisoning. Since just the new millennium Americans learned quick to participate again in their political system. They elected what many thought impossible, an African American president. The voters placed all their hope in Barack Obama, and their faith in party politics foretold that Obama’s majority would deliver the mandate he was given. Obama’s first days were anticipated to rival FDRs. Obama’s legacy could already be measured for laurels because it meant simply reversing the calamity of his predecessor. By such a deliverance alone, it was visualized, Obama would stand beside Abraham Lincoln, America’s greatest president.
Abraham Obama may be an unjustly loft comparison, as wanting to believe Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. But what else was an expectant public to do? They put him in office, they believed his promises. He spoke of change, they wanted change. What swiftly Bush had done, they wanted undone. And Obama assured all that he heard them.
And has it worked out that way? Obama’s speeches begin where the last one ends. They’re long, they’re reasoned, but where at first Americans reveled at a suddenly well-spoken president, now they wish he’d stop talking and start doing. Apparently “yes we can” meant “you can wait” –more likely “hi Mom” or “cheese.” Now the hand which Obama raises so famously to give assurance, is looking more like just the hand.
It may be dawning on many that this junior senator from Illinois didn’t have to debate Frederick Douglas, build a log cabin, read Aristotle by candlelight, or climb a long leadership ladder to get to Washington DC. It may be occurring to them that Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, was the only accomplishment they’d seen of this unknown senator from the land of Lincoln.
An Orange Roughy served on fine porcelain may turn out to be the only thing our President Obama shares with Abraham Lincoln.
And very likely, you ate one too. So if stone-carvers are already bidding on the project to add someone’s face to Mount Rushmore, your likeness may be as appropriate as any.
I thought the advent of Youtube would finally lead me to the script for a TV special of the late 70s called Life, Love, Liberty and Lunch. I can find only scant trace of it online. And so I will post sans link.
L4 was a TV special which incorporated four scenes by leading playwrights Neil Simon, Tom Stoppard, Eric von Italie and one more. It might have been Peter Ustinov, and his is the only one I remember. The rest of the program played like Love American Style I think, or Short Cuts. I’m thinking the Liberty segment had to do with the 1976 bicentennial. But the last segment was like I’m Not Rappaport with a big smile.
In the last scene, two elderly gentlemen meet in Central Park, as they do every day, to play not chess, but a game of verbal oneupmanship. Today their contest is to paint the perfect lunch, and they describe every successive course with the zeal of famished itinerants actually pouncing on it. As dessert nears, each is determined to add the last touch. Peter Ustinov played one of the gentlemen and he asked his rival if after reaching cheese, dessert, sherry, and coffee, he could think of nothing else. No, said his opponent, already confident of triumph. Nothing else, baited Ustinov?
You forgot, said the great actor to his old friend…. A CIGAR! No truly great meal could go without, the other concedes, and the two walk of together, to part until the next time.
So many years later, mere mention of cigars still conjures that scene for me. It’s still hard for me to imagine that it could even be true, that cigars improve a post-meal glow, but I’ll take a distinguished elder’s word for it. LUNCH was about anticipating that others, especially others with seniority, can always have something up their sleeve to teach you.
Lack of money to pay for higher priced cornmeal is what is helping starve millions in Southern Sudan, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Somalia, and elsewhere in Africa. Many are just a few weeks from dying because they can’t buy the cornmeal at current prices.
See:
ZAMBIA: A better meal than maize-meal.
and:
Facing hunger in Kenya’s Kajiado.
Why not send the cornmeal in, instead of sending in the troops, setting up ‘no fly zones’, and spending money on ‘pirate control’? Not to mention all that money being spent on supplying those US troops spread all around the globe with their daily rations of hamburger with cheese? Where’s the humanitarian interventionism?
Because your government is so horrible you can do your own personal part in helping people out here. Go to any dollar store and buy a couple of dollar bags of corn meal, then go the post office, get the stamps and send it off to…
Starving Child Aid
c/o Barack Obama
White House USA
with a note…
Please make sure this food gets to countries in Africa where the poor can’t buy cornmeal because you are spending so damn much world $$$ on ‘missile shields’, wars on drugs, wars on a ghost called global terrorism, and the war against common sense.
Thank you,
Mr. President
Then again? …better yet, just send it straight to…
Starving Child
Postal service of
African Country with increasing hunger
It would get there then perhaps? Less corruption.
Muntadha al-Zaidi’s shoe may have missed George Bush, but it left a figurative black eye on the warrior emperor,
and, a literal shiner on White House spokes- gidget Dana Perino. She was hit by a microphone as secret service agents rushed to protect the president. Which could not have worked out better for the US media.
If the injured staffer had been a man, do you imagine the news photos of facial bruises would be so intimate? While the world media is focused on demonstrations to urge the release of al-Zaidi, the US media is zooming in close on Perino’s black eye. I’m thinking, you don’t have to be a wife-beater to admit to the provocative element in these pictures of a battered blond, about as tall as a child, female.
You need quite a distraction from the embarrassing imagery of world citizenry eager to kick Bush in the ass as he leaves office.
Perino was already familiar with USO Playboy Bunny cheesecake.
“It is terrible that Jesus is being wrapped up in gold foil and sold along with chocolate bunnies, edible penguins and lollipops,” said Aegidius Engel, a spokesman for the archbishopric of nearby Paderborn. German churches find ‘chocolate Jesus’ tasteless
Hey! What is it with Jesus and chocolate? Just last year a Chocolate Jesus got kicked out of an art museum in Manhattan. My Sweet Lord soon did return though to life!
These chocolates seem less tasteless to me than the Holy Wafers traditionally served at Church. Maybe a Jesus pizza might be a good business venture since we certainly need more food alternatives to the Holy Wafer! Or for Americans, perhaps a Jesusburger with cheese?
What’s really tasteless about the German chocolate Jesus is that it is made of White chocolate. Yuck! And then there was the Jesus pancake cooked up in Ohio 2 years ago. Couple Claims Jesus Appeared On Pancake And now we enter the Christmas Season!
I’ve been fantasizing for decreasingly brief moments of late, about the outcome of this election. There’s still time to make a wish. Join me! It’s one thing to win the lotto, and another to have everyone win.
Let’s assume a Democratic landslide. It’s not improbable. In the wake of the Bush deluge, the economic and moral collapse of a once diffident cultural hegemony, in light of the investment bank highway robbery and the American legacy plunged into permanent war, couldn’t it be imagined that Americans might have wised up about Republicans? What are these Republicans after all but thieves? How can conservatism be taken to represent anything anymore but ignorant apologists for entrenched corruption?
I think it’s a lovely thought to imagine P.T. Barnum’s adage proving trump, that all Americans can’t stay fooled all the time. And so, what then? How to dispose of Republican stragglers intent on making a last stand with their authority?
We ride them out of town on a rail. Send them to Iraq with personal instructions to stand in for the boys coming home. Make them rebuild Iraq with their bare hands. Make them do, as we forced the Germans to do as we liberated Europe, to help clean the mass graves of the concentration camps. Grind their noses into their immoral mess. Hope they contract a conscience and die of it. That’s for starters.
The smug pencil pushers, GOP operatives who paid the lip service to tolerating torture, condoned what the other imbeciles about them didn’t realize was legislated against already in common law. My sympathies will run insufficient you dopey fiends.
Mine is a bloody fantasy. Blind complicity to mass murder, mass ignorance, mass apathy, amoral immorality, the norm slacker. No more.
It’s time for righteous indignation to stomp on the banal serial injustice minions. We don’t want them crowding our pursuit of happiness, constraining us with conservative red tape which is just administrativ-ese for chicken-shit cheese place-holding.
Republicans deserve foreshortened lives. Not the noose for most, of course, but a doctor’s prognosis that, by measure of how much life they’ve sucked out of other people, how much spirit they have wasted, how much suffering they have caused, how many rights they’ve denied, how much they’ve taken from others, that much should be debited from what they have been banking as their due for their patriotic allegiance.
An eye for an eye. A tooth for a denture denied to an uninsured American. That simple.
We used to damn just the Neocons, but they rode on the shoulders of the Republicans, among others. Isn’t it the hour of reckoning for the Red Blue Meanies?
Fantasy Option Two:
Speaking of Blue Meanies, What if the Republicans win next Tuesday? What then? Cancel the champagne, hold the tar and feathers.
If the Republicans and their anti-democry programs escape the tether of the public’s grasp, it’s curtains most certainly for the land of liberty. But as we fall into post-industrial decay, I wish this fate for the Dems. Every last ordinary registered Democrat must repudiate their pseudo-party. Make their representatives don the lapel pins of their masters. Democrat and Republican politicians are the same.
It pains me to imagine being told that the Republican machine wasn’t built in a day, that Democrats must knuckle down for the long haul to build a similar base. Quietly and patiently put their people into the right local offices, that they might too, someday, rig the election in the Democrats’ favor. But this begs a question the Dems will never resolve. Republicans from top to bottom are smug, selfish dogs. Unthinking brutes by definition. That’s what it takes to run a well-oiled graft machine. Look at your fellow Dems and tell me they will have the stamina and self-interest to work those lower echelons with dumb tenacity. Republicans have staffed the halls of bureaucracy because it suits their temperament. How is a do-gooder supposed to lie, cheat and steal, for a living, elbowing his fellow man?
Calling it the Gitmo on The Platte might be a bit of hyperbole here, but look what the Democratic Party has prepared for US dissidents that will arrive protesting their lousy corporate politics? Tasers and cattle pens. I can hardly stomach being around you DP voting fools at all these days. You are the worst!
Liberals want to vote for a political party like this? Don’t you nitwit voting addicts of the Democratic Party assign any responsibility for this sort of ‘homeland security’ mentality to the Democratic Party itself, or will you just let these Barack-Hillary thugs hide themselves behind the Denver police without calling them out on it? You know that they really do control how their convention is actually policed, don’t you? Shame on you for voting for this come November!
BTW, the picture heading this commentary is taken from a Democratic Party web site, where this is what they have to say about the US occupation of Iraq…
‘The Democratic Party supports our men and women serving in the military. Our country, our state and our county are indebted to them for their valor and sacrifice. We stand behind our troops and wish them a safe and speedy return.’
Translated from the language of political bullshit, the Democratic Party is saying that it doesn’t give a damn about the Pentagon looting our American national wealth on behalf of the military welfare sucking corporations and that it doesn’t give a shit if the US government turns Iraq and its people into a total scrap heap. What a scummy political party you ‘liberal’ folk vote for again and again and again! You are hardly voting for the lesser of 2 evils but are voting for the evil itself. Right, Dennis? (That question is directed to Dennis Apuan, former brake on antiwar protest here in Colorado Springs when he was PPJPC director, and now a local Democratic Party candidate hoping to become a bigger cheese.)
It’s time to stop being polite about people like Dennis or Poor Richard, local court jester for Ken Salazar, DP Senator of Colorado. These people are part of the apparatus that wants to cage up protest in Denver against the war, and cattle prod US patriots locked up in the pens. Yes they are and we shouldn’t let these cruds pretend otherwise. There is no way I would vote for Dennis Apuan, who did a most shitty job when he headed up the local peace group, too. He’s no better than having a Republican in there, and your party can shock me for saying so, Dennis!
Looking for an organic source of dairy products leads inevitably to questions about the most substantive food items of the so-called food group: the fat-rich cheeses and ice creams. Where are the blurbs which eschew rGBH and talk of range-fed dairy cows?
Ben & Jerry are being prevented from using a NO-rBGH notice on their labels lest they infer there is something amiss with their competitors. No word yet of a cheese maker who wants to make the move.
The shift of businesses into private ownership represents the eroding stake which common Americans have in the Capitalist system. Stock holdings in most public corporations are predominantly in wealthy hands, but private corporations drop even the pretense of serving the middle class economy. Biggest ($90B) is Koch Industries which provides “beef, fuels, fertilizer and plastics.”
Forbes has a list of America’s largest privately held companies, 424 of which have yearly earnings over one billion dollars. We’ve grouped them by category for easier perusal, ranked by their earnings. Colorado is headquarters to twelve: TransMontaigne, First Data, Pro-Build Holdings, CH2N Hill Cos, Vistar, Sports Authority, Leprino Foods, Hensel Phelps Construction, TIC Holdings, MediaNews Group and NWH.
CONSUMER PRODUCTS:
Mars VA -Combos, Dove, M&Ms, Pedigree, Snickers, Uncle Ben’s Rice
Levi Strauss & Co CA Textile – Apparel Clothing
SC Johnson & Son WI Personal Products
Ashley Furniture Industries WI Home Furnishings & Fixtures
Rich Products NY Confectioners
MGA Entertainment CA Toys & Games
Mary Kay TX Cleaning Products
Alticor MI Personal Products
Conair CT Personal Products
JohnsonDiversey WI Cleaning Products
ViewSonic CA Computer Peripherals
New Balance Athletic Shoe MA Textile – Apparel Footwear
Dawn Food Products MI Confectioners to Starbucks, Krispy Kreme
Roll International CA -Teleflora, Fiji Water, POM, Suterra
Genmar Holdings MN Recreational Boats
Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing TX Textile – Apparel Clothing
McKee Foods TN Confectioners: Little Debbie, Sunbelt
Samsonite MA Personal Products
NewPage OH Paper & Paper Products
Bose MA Electronic Equipment
WL Gore & Associates DE Textile – Apparel Clothing
Milliken & Co SC Textile – Apparel Clothing
MTD Products OH Recreational Goods, Other
RETAILERS:
Toys “R” Us NJ Toy & Hobby Stores
Dollar General TN Discount, Variety Stores
Menard WI Home Improvement Stores
Neiman Marcus Group TX Department Stores
84 Lumber PA Home Improvement Stores
Hallmark Cards MO Entertainment – Diversified
Michaels Stores TX Specialty Retail, Other
Belk NC Department Stores
Burlington Coat Factory NJ Apparel Stores
Linens ‘n Things NJ Home Furnishing Stores
Sports Authority CO Sporting Goods Stores
Bass Pro Shops MO Sporting Goods Stores
Fry’s Electronics CA Specialty Retail, Other
Mervyns CA Department Stores
Follett IL Specialty Retail, Other
General Parts NC Auto Parts Stores
ShopKo Stores Operating WI Discount, Variety Stores
Petco Animal Supplies CA Specialty Retail, Other
Discount Tire AZ Auto Parts Stores
Guitar Center CA Music & Video Stores
Academy Sports & Outdoors TX Sporting Goods Stores
Rooms To Go FL Home Furnishing Stores
Hobby Lobby Stores OK Toy & Hobby Stores
Barnes & Noble College Booksellers NJ Specialty Retail, Other
Duane Reade NY Drug Stores
LL Bean ME Catalog & Mail Order Houses
Newegg.com CA Specialty Retail, Other
GNC PA Drug Stores
Goody’s Family Clothing TN Department Stores
Les Schwab Tire Centers OR Auto Parts Stores
Beall’s FL Department Stores
PC Richard & Son NY Specialty Retail, Other
Micro Electronics OH Specialty Retail, Other
Sutherland Lumber MO Home Improvement Stores
Boscov’s PA Department Stores
24 Hour Fitness Worldwide CA Consumer Services
Ritz Camera Centers MD Specialty Retail, Other
Schottenstein Stores OH Home Furnishing Stores
Cinemark USA TX General Entertainment
Marc Glassman OH Drug Stores
Bally Total Fitness IL Specialized Health Services
ClubCorp TX Consumer Services
Forever 21 CA Apparel Stores
BrandsMart USA FL Specialty Retail, Other
Steve and Barry’s NY Apparel Stores
HOSPITALITY:
Hilton Hotels CA Lodging
Love’s Travel Stops OK Lodging
Carlson Cos MN Lodging
Global Hyatt IL Lodging
Delaware North Cos NY Specialty Eateries
Ilitch Holdings MI Restaurants
Buffets MN Restaurants
GROCERS:
Meijer MI Grocery Stores
HE Butt Grocery TX Grocery Stores
Giant Eagle PA Grocery Stores
Cumberland Farms MA Grocery Stores
QuikTrip OK Grocery Stores
Hy-Vee IA Grocery Stores
Save Mart Supermarkets CA Grocery Stores
RaceTrac Petroleum GA Grocery Stores
Wawa PA Grocery Stores
Wegmans Food Markets NY Grocery Stores
Bi-Lo Holdings SC Grocery Stores
Stater Bros CA Grocery Stores
Sheetz PA Grocery Stores
Raley’s CA Grocery Stores
Golub NY Grocery Stores
WinCo Foods ID Grocery Stores
Schnuck Markets MO Grocery Stores
Demoulas Super Markets MA Grocery Stores
Brookshire Grocery TX Grocery Stores
Bashas’ AZ Grocery Stores
Houchens Industries KY Grocery Stores
Holiday Cos MN Grocery Stores
Marsh Supermarkets IN Grocery Stores
K-VA-T Food Stores VA Grocery Stores
Kum & Go IA Grocery Stores
Big Y Foods MA Grocery Stores
Gate Petroleum FL Grocery Stores
Foodarama Supermarkets NJ Grocery Stores
Thorntons KY Grocery Stores
Brookshire Brothers TX Grocery Stores
Minyard Food Stores TX Grocery Stores
Inserra Supermarkets NJ Grocery Stores
Stewart’s Shops NY Grocery Stores
FOOD SUPPLY:
C&S Wholesale Grocers NH Food Wholesale
US Foodservice MD Food – Major Diversified
Reyes Holdings IL Food Wholesale
Gordon Food Service MI Food Wholesale
MBM NC Food Wholesale
OSI Group IL Meat Products
Roundy’s Supermarkets WI Food Wholesale
HT Hackney TN Food Wholesale
Keystone Foods PA Meat Products
Perdue Farms MD Meat Products
Schwan Food MN Dairy Products
Eby-Brown IL Food Wholesale
Schreiber Foods WI Dairy Products
Vistar CO Food Wholesale: ROMA
Alex Lee NC Food Wholesale
Grocers Supply TX Food Wholesale
HP Hood MA Dairy Products
Services Group of America AZ Food Wholesale
Dot Foods IL Food Wholesale
Leprino Foods CO Dairy Products: mozzarella cheese
Rosen’s Diversified MN Meat Products
Ben E Keith TX Food Wholesale
Smart & Final CA Food Wholesale
Maines Paper & Food Service NY Food Wholesale
Foster Farms CA Meat Products
Koch Foods IL Meat Products
Red Chamber Group CA Food Wholesale
Shamrock Foods AZ Food Wholesale
ContiGroup Cos NY Meat Products
Pinnacle Foods NJ Food – Major Diversified
Great Lakes Cheese OH Dairy Products
GSC Enterprises TX Food Wholesale
Michael Foods MN Dairy Products
Bozzuto’s CT Food Wholesale
Goya Foods NJ Food – Major Diversified
Wells’ Dairy IA Dairy Products
FARMING:
Cargill MN Farm Products
Transammonia NY Agricultural Chemicals
Murdock Holding Company CA Farm Products
DeBruce Grain MO Farm Products
Scoular NE Farm Products
JR Simplot ID Farm Products
Golden State Foods CA Farm Products
Dunavant Enterprises TN Farm Products
Bartlett & Co MO Farm Products
DRINK:
Southern Wine & Spirits FL Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
Charmer Sunbelt Group NY Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
Republic National Distributing Company TX Wineries & Distillers
Glazer’s Wholesale Drug TX Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
E&J Gallo Winery CA Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
Young’s Market CA Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
Honickman Affiliates NJ Beverages – Soft Drinks
Wirtz IL Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
Topa Equities CA Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
HEALTH:
US Oncology TX Hospitals
Vanguard Health Systems TN Hospitals
Quintiles Transnational NC Medical Laboratories & Research
Golden Living AR Home Health Care
Medline Industries IL Medical Instruments & Supplies
Bausch & Lomb NY Medical Appliances & Equipment
Biomet IN Medical Instruments & Supplies
Iasis Healthcare TN Hospitals
Life Care Centers of America TN Long-Term Care Facilities
Select Medical PA Long-Term Care Facilities
Catalent Pharma Solutions NJ Medical Instruments & Supplies
Ardent Health Services TN Hospitals
FHC Health Systems VA Specialized Health Services
Concentra Operating TX Specialized Health Services
Gateway Health Plan PA Health Care Plans
SavaSeniorCare GA Long-Term Care Facilities
TeamHealth TN Medical Practitioners
Cook Group IN Medical Instruments & Supplies
MEDIA:
Cox Enterprises GA Entertainment – Diversified
Advance Publications NY Publishing – Newspapers
Bloomberg NY Information & Delivery Services
Hearst NY Publishing – Newspapers
International Data Group MA Publishing – Periodicals
Reader’s Digest Association NY Publishing – Periodicals
AMC Entertainment MO General Entertainment
Univision Communications NY Entertainment – Diversified
Quad/Graphics WI Publishing – Periodicals
Ebsco Industries AL Publishing – Periodicals
Landmark Communications VA Publishing – Newspapers
Taylor MN Publishing – Periodicals
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer CA General Entertainment
MediaNews Group CO Newspapers: Denver Post, Detroit News
INVESTMENT:
GMAC Financial Services MI Mortgage Investment
Fidelity Investments MA Asset Management
Capital Group Cos CA Asset Management
Edward Jones MO Investment Brokerage – National
LPL Financial Services CA Investment Brokerage – National
AUTOMOTIVE:
Chrysler MI Auto Manufacturers
Gulf States Toyota TX Auto Manufacturers – Major
JM Family Enterprises FL Auto Manufacturers
Tower Automotive MI Auto Parts
Cooper-Standard Automotive MI Auto Parts
Affinia Group MI Auto Parts
Guardian Industries MI Auto Parts
CC Industries IL Auto Parts
American Tire Distributors Holdings NC Auto Parts
Remy International IN Auto Parts
Plastech Engineered Products MI Auto Parts
Key Safety Systems MI Auto Parts
Interstate Battery Systems of America TX Auto Parts
KAR Holdings IN Auto Dealerships
BUSINESS:
PricewaterhouseCoopers NY Business Services
Ernst & Young NY Business Services
First Data CO Business Services
Allegis Group MD Information Technology Services
SunGard Data Systems PA Business Software & Services
Booz Allen Hamilton VA Technical Services
Grant Thornton International IL Business Services
Asplundh Tree Expert PA Business Services
SAS Institute NC Business Software & Services
Skadden, Arps NY Business Services
Reynolds and Reynolds OH Business Software & Services
Bain & Co MA Business Services
Jones Day OH Business Services
Freeman TX Business Services
Sidley Austin IL Business Services
White & Case NY Business Services
NCO Group PA Business Services
Alsco UT Business Services
Kirkland & Ellis IL Business Services
Affinion Group CT Business Services
RGIS Holdings MI Business Services
Mayer Brown IL Business Services
Lifetouch MN Business Services
Weil, Gotshal & Manges NY Business Services
Keane CA Business Services
Latham & Watkins CA Business Services
Guthy-Renker CA Business Services
Haworth MI Business Equipment
Vertis MD Marketing Services
Towers Perrin CT Management Services
Visant NY Marketing Services
CONSTRUCTION:
Bechtel CA Heavy Construction
Peter Kiewit Sons’ NE Heavy Construction
CH2M Hill Cos CO Heavy Construction
Whiting-Turner Contracting MD Heavy Construction
Gilbane RI Heavy Construction
Parsons CA Heavy Construction
JE Dunn Construction Group MO Heavy Construction
Black & Veatch KS Heavy Construction
Hensel Phelps Construction CO Heavy Construction
McCarthy Building Cos MO Heavy Construction
Yates Cos MS Heavy Construction
Hunt Construction Group AZ Heavy Construction
TIC Holdings CO Heavy Construction
Parsons Brinckerhoff NY Heavy Construction
Swinerton CA Heavy Construction
Zachry Construction TX Heavy Construction
AG Spanos Cos CA Heavy Construction
Turner Industries Group LA Heavy Construction
Barton Malow MI Heavy Construction
M A Mortenson MN Heavy Construction
Day & Zimmermann PA Heavy Construction
Warren Equipment TX Heavy Construction
Austin Industries TX Heavy Construction
BUILDING:
Pro-Build Holdings CO Building Materials Wholesale
Kohler WI General Building Materials
Clark Enterprises MD General Contractors
JF Shea CA Residential Construction
Structure Tone NY General Contractors
Jeld-Wen OR General Building Materials
Andersen MN General Building Materials
ABC Supply WI Building Materials Wholesale
Walsh Group IL General Contractors
Tishman Construction NY General Contractors
NTK Holdings RI General Building Materials
WinWholesale OH Building Materials Wholesale
Brasfield & Gorrie AL General Contractors
G-I Holdings NJ General Building Materials
Bradco Supply NJ Building Materials Wholesale
National Gypsum NC General Building Materials
Hoffman OR General Contractors
DPR Construction CA General Contractors
David Weekley Homes TX Residential Construction
Pella IA General Building Materials
BE&K AL General Contractors
William Lyon Homes CA Residential Construction
Weitz IA General Contractors
Mercedes Homes FL Residential Construction
Rooney Holdings FL General Contractors
Associated Materials OH General Building Materials
Beaulieu of America Group GA Home Furnishings & Fixtures
Suffolk Construction MA General Contractors
Kimball Hill IL Residential Construction
Drees Co KY Residential Construction
Shapell Industries CA Residential Construction
MWH CO General Contractors
Pacific Coast Building Products CA General Building Materials
WOOD:
Boise Cascade ID Lumber, Wood Production
Sierra Pacific Industries CA Lumber, Wood Production
North Pacific Group OR Lumber, Wood Production
Roseburg Forest Products OR Lumber, Wood Production
Columbia Forest Prods OR Lumber, Wood Production
Hampton Affiliates OR Lumber, Wood Production
EXTRACTION:
SemGroup OK Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Flying J UT Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
TransMontaigne CO Oil & Gas Pipelines
Drummond AL Nonmetallic Mineral Mining
Sinclair Oil UT Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Colonial Group GA Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Oxbow FL Nonmetallic Mineral Mining
Ergon MS Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Red Apple Group NY Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Mansfield Oil GA Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Truman Arnold Cos TX Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Hunt Consolidated/Hunt Oil TX Oil & Gas Drilling & Exploration
Red Man Pipe & Supply OK Oil & Gas Equipment & Services
Dresser TX Oil & Gas Equipment & Services
Warren Equities RI Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Merit Energy TX Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Arctic Slope Regional AK Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
US Oil WI Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Camac International TX Oil & Gas Drilling & Exploration
UTILITIES:
Energy Future Holdings TX Electric Utilities
Tenaska Energy NE Diversified Utilities
CONGLOMERATES:
Platinum Equity CA -USRobotics
Sammons Enterprises TX -Midland National Life Insurance, Briggs
Ingram Industries TN
Berwind PA -Elmers Glue
Petters Group Worldwide MN
Washington Cos MT -mining, rail, marine, equip
ELECTRONIC:
CDW IL Computer Based Systems
Freescale Semiconductor TX Semiconductor – Specialized
Avaya NJ Communication Equipment
Graybar Electric MO Electronics Wholesale
Kingston Technology CA Semiconductor- Memory Chips
Brightstar FL Communication Equipment
World Wide Technology MO Computers Wholesale
Infor GA Computer Based Systems
INDUSTRIAL:
Marmon Group IL Industrial Equipment & Components
Southwire GA Industrial Equipment & Components
Aleris International OH Metal Fabrication
Amsted Industries IL Diversified Machinery
O’Neal Steel AL Steel & Iron
Heico Cos IL Industrial Equipment & Components
Renco Group NY Steel & Iron
Metals USA TX Metal Fabrication
McWane AL Industrial Equipment & Components
McJunkin WV Industrial Equipment & Components
Electro-Motive Diesel IL Industrial Equipment & Components
Crown Equipment OH Industrial Equipment & Components
Rexnord WI Industrial Equipment & Components
Tang Industries NV Metal Fabrication
Soave Enterprises MI Steel & Iron
Indalex IL Aluminum
Euramax International GA Metal Fabrication
Advanced Drainage Systems OH Industrial Equipment & Components
Goss International IL Industrial Equipment & Components
Swagelok OH Industrial Equipment & Components
Utility Trailer Manufacturing CA Industrial Equipment & Components
CHEMICAL:
Koch Industries KS Chemicals – Major Diversified
Hexion Specialty Chemicals OH Specialty Chemicals
InterTech Group SC Synthetics
Berry Plastics IN Rubber & Plastics
JM Huber NJ Specialty Chemicals
Carpenter VA Synthetics
Wilbur-Ellis CA Agricultural Chemicals
International Specialty Products NJ Specialty Chemicals
Sigma Plastics Group NJ Synthetics
ICC Industries NY Specialty Chemicals
Nypro MA Rubber & Plastics
PAPER:
Central National-Gottesman NY Paper & Paper Products
Verso Paper TN Paper & Paper Products
The Kraft Group MA Paper & Paper Products
Gould Paper NY Paper & Paper Products
Appleton Papers WI Paper & Paper Products
TRANSPORTATION:
Unisource Worldwide GA Packaging & Containers
Schneider National WI Trucking
Swift Transportation AZ Trucks & Other Vehicles
Graham Packaging Holdings PA Packaging & Containers
Solo Cup IL Packaging & Containers
UniGroup MO Trucking
Altivity Packaging IL Packaging & Containers
SSA Marine WA Shipping
Dart Container MI Packaging & Containers
Plastipak Holdings MI Packaging & Containers
Crowley Maritime FL Shipping
Estes Express Lines VA Trucking
Global Aero Logistics IN Air Services, Other
Printpack GA Packaging & Containers
Pliant IL Packaging & Containers
Crete Carrier NE Trucking
WHOLESALE:
Kinray NY Drugs Wholesale
Consolidated Elec Distributors CA Wholesale, Other
VWR International PA Wholesale, Other
Anderson Cos AL Wholesale, Other
Quality King Distributors NY Drugs Wholesale
Software House Intl NJ Electronics Wholesale
Baker & Taylor NC Wholesale, Other
JM Smith SC Drugs Wholesale
D&H Distributing PA Computers Wholesale
Ma Labs CA Electronics Wholesale
Apex Oil MO Wholesale, Other
ASI CA Computers Wholesale
Orgill TN Wholesale, Other
MISC. SERVICES:
Enterprise Rent-A-Car MO Rental & Leasing Services
Frank Consolidated Enterprises IL Rental & Leasing Services
McKinsey & Co NY Research Services
Travelport NJ Consumer Services
HealthMarkets TX Insurance Brokers
West Corp NE Diversified Communication Services
Boston Consulting Group MA Research Services
Knowledge Learning OR Education & Training Services
Maritz MO Research Services
Education Management PA Education & Training Services
Laureate Education MD Education & Training Services
MISC:
JD Heiskell & Co CA NA
Vought Aircraft Industries TX Aerospace/Defense – Major Diversified
Ash Grove Cement KS NA
Deseret Management UT NA
Safety-Kleen Systems TX Waste Management
If you have a sense that embedded reporters may be reluctant accomplices to the war machine, here’s a jolt of indecorous complicity. Attractive blond reporter in sea of Green Zone testosterone lends her “me on tank” snapshot extra cheesecake by palming the big gun. One of several photos accompanying her article, this is the shot used to identify her UK newspaper column. Curiously, her column is not entitled media whore.
One of my favorite jump starts to the day is a breakfast of cottage cheese, fresh fruit and almonds. It’s is a simple meal, easy to prepare, and represents a near-perfect combination of protein, carbohydrate and healthy fat. It’s the almonds that provide the magic. In addition to a low glycemic index, which curtails a heavy duty insulin response, almond intake protects proteins from oxidative damage while delivering vitamin E and other antioxidants, magnesium, calcium, folic acid, protein, fiber and living enzymes.
Thank goodness that the USA has a near lock on almond production. 70% of the world’s almonds come from California. I can only thank goodness that raw almonds are readily available in our bountiful land, even at most corporate grocery stores.
Oh, but wait. The FDA recently decided that all California almonds must be either irradiated or chemically pasteurized prior to sale. Not so for almonds exported to other countries. No. This particular punishment is reserved especially for the American people.
What this means is that our pristine, nutritious and beautiful almonds are subjected to gross degradation by FDA rapists. Irradiation exposes food products to extremely high levels of radiation that kill bacteria, parasites and fungi. Never mind that animal studies have shown that irradiation may promote chromosomal damage and cancer. And never mind that toxic radiation demolishes the nutritional value of food.
Chemical pasteurization is even more dangerous. The technique used is called propylene oxide fumigation, which makes use of a chemical compound that the EPA has classified as a probable human carcinogen. Here’s another interesting note: Propylene oxide was once used in racing fuel, but in 1993 the National Hot Rod Association banned its use because of cancer concerns. Yet this poison is used to pasteurize almonds and other foods – EPA and FDA approved. Oh yeah, baaaaby, just gimme the purple stamp!
One comforting tidbit, we needn’t worry our purty heads over this because it’s all being done without our knowledge or approval. Ya’ll know that ignorance is bliss. The FDA — that trusty public servant — has allowed almond growers to pretend that it’s business as usual. California almond growers may still label their almonds “natural” and “raw” even though they’ve been corrupted by irradiation and chemical pasteurization.
The FDA is tired of being held accountable by the vocal few. They are more than willing and able to fly under the radar. And, obviously, California almond growers are happy to fly with them. One of them should stand tall and expose the FDA for the abusive piece of shit that it is. If they’d take that leap of faith, I’d buy their almonds — though they be unfit for consumption — until the poor drugged fallen cows come home!
NEUFREISTADT, SL- Wandering a little in Neufreistad last night I came upon a chain hanging from a clock tower. Pulling it would ring a bell far above. It was night in Second Life, the moon and I were alone in the NFS sim, mine the only avatar even in the surrounding sims. The obvious question arose, if I were to ring this bell with no one around, would anyone hear it?
Do I know enough to say? A sim owner or manager, that is to say the person who owns that virtual estate or the person given authority to run it, can monitor SL activity without being online. They have a bird’s eye view, or so I understand, an extrasensory perception relating to the realm for which they are responsible. Ordinary users can see and hear what’s in our vicinity, and can sharpen our sight depending on how lifelike we want our faculties. (actually we can eavesdrop too, with virtual bugs to spy on virtual happenings.) Sim admins have meta power.
Above them, Linden Labs, the real world laboratory which houses Second Life, oversees the mechanics of their virtual creation. Their view is that of lab technician over the maze, watching the mouse try to find the cheese, omnipresent and unobserved if only because of their irrelevance to the reality below.
I cannot say whether any are listening, but I do know that they could. Such is the unexplored, but not indefinite world of virtual reality. You may not have been there before, but someone has, and certainly someone tends to it and has an interest in checking in. And that’s not even to consider the NSA.
Is there a real world anymore where you can act on a thought unobserved? With Google Earth, as an example of surreptitious satellites, could a tree fall, anymore, unheard? Can you travel in your car, sit in your room, whisper out of earshot of your cellphone, and feel you have privacy?
In cyberspace, surveillance is inescapable. But in the virtual dimension, whose landscape is it that’s being watched? Does the virtual world exist on your computer screen as much as it lies your head? From which are the spooks reporting?
Want the quickest, healthiest breakfast? Try this: half a container of cottage cheese, half the blueberries, and a sprinkle of slivered almonds. These should be, respectively, without rBGH, organic, and raw* when possible. The second day this meal will be even more convenient, since the berries are already rinsed and you can combine everything in the dairy container without needing to dirty a bowl. Use a plastic spoon and you can take breakfast for the drive.
*The Bachelor Nutrition series is meant to provide simple authoritative culinary guidance without exhaustive explanation. Suffice to say, your food should avoid additives, pesticides, and processing, and should be fresh, not frozen. Which means not just organic, but local. Check eatwild.com for a clean source for meat and dairy. Check localharvest.com for local organic produce.
I’m sure you missed it, since most of us have long since given up on reading the idiotic editorials of The Gazette, our Far Right Wing local daily paper. But there it was this Tuesday morning as they attacked the notion of giving our country’s children government guaranteed health care. Oh horror of horrors they said, ‘This will keep people from buying health insurance for the tiny tots!’
This all from a paper that has no problem with giving trillions of government funds to the military industrial complex. They call their ideology ‘Libertarian’, too! But what about the science of these fools, the Science of Libertarian Fools?
Well lets see…..? Just at the moment that scientists see an explosion of infectious disease epidemics as being likely in the near future (in fact they see it as already underway), these fools of The Gazette ignore scientific opinion. They don’t give a shit that the Medical System of the US if more full of holes than Swiss Cheese.
They pooh pooh the idea that there is such a thing as Global Warming, too. Or that there is any planetary ecological crisis currently underway! They practice the Science of Fools, Pretend Libertarianism, so they oppose strengthing medical coverage at the time it is most needed! That’s how they support ‘national security’. They ignore common scientific sense.
Speaking of ignoring science. The Gazette Gang of Editorial Clowns wrote their editorial against providing federal medical coverage for America’s children almost exactly 2 years after Katrina. That was when political clowns such as The Gazette always supports had completely ignored scientific advice calling to strengthen the levees of New Orlean, scientific advice that had been given for decades.
Ignoring that scientific advice led to the Great New Orleans Flood, which no doubt the ignorant a-holes at The Gazette consider to be God’s will. It wasn’t, but New Orleans got washed into the gutter because of dumb dicks like the Gazeete editorial writers that always support what they call “Free Enterprise,’ while condeming and ignoring realy important scientific opinion. Goodbye, New Orleans.
Boy that paper sucks! Every time The Gazette writes editorial comments on ecology, medicine, or anything at all dealing with science, they just are on Cloud Nine. They are lost dealing with Political Science, too. In fact, they are as corrupted as you can get.
The ‘free market’ doesn’t like science at all. It just gets in the way of maxing out making profits for the well-to-do. Our children deserve more, and they deserve guaranteed federal mandated medical coverage. This is the science that will stop the spread of disease. Big Business hates it. They prefer the Science of Fools instead.
PS- See where these unoriginal editorialists of The Gazette got their unoriginal opinion from. A Socialist Plot
This is something I published a couple of years ago. Every bit as relevant as today. And every bit today as then, some things are timeless.
This one contains a “dirty” word, so you might go ahead and set your browser Content Filter to profanity blocking. Better to censor yourself than try to censor me.
But now, once again, we are going to have the hyperbole and rampant commercialism pushed onto our senses, over and over and over and endlessly and I bet you thought I was going to say over again and again and again and repeatedly.
I don’t know the exact date of the Super Bowl. Just that it’s about a couple of weeks. I know the Chicago Bears are going to be one team, because of the hype I got as soon as I opened one of my email servers.
I am sure everybody is going to get lots and lots of Emails saying Bears or ? you choose… or New Poll: Who will it be Bears or ?
There will be jockeying to find out what the commercials are going to be for the half-time show, there will be much breathless wide-eyed awe and stories about what the commercials and so much (ok, I lied, there are more than one “dirty” word in this) all kinds of who-seriously-gives-a-fat-rat’s-ass-about-it bullshit, to lead us up to the Big Game.
A lot of the commercials are going to be for beer. And other drugs, especially alcoholic drugs.
You know the ones, they say at the end of it “(name of brewer/distiller) urges you to DRINK (notice they put this word last) responsibly”.
It is dope dealing at its finest. The crack house and the opium den and the weed corner are blown away (sick dope reference) by this magnum opus of Purveyance of Demon Rum.
And it is on a Sunday, a Pagan holy day, co-opted by Christianity, for worship of our respective God or gods. Pastors in Churches across the land are going to schedule their services, especially the evening services, around this latter-day Circus Maximus. And their morning services too, because the worshipers are going to have to rush to the store after services so they can score their dope and munchies for the BIGGGGG DEALLLLL…….
So I got the Super Bowl part embedded in our consciousness, right?
Now to the Republican Morality part, for a quick tease, then to Janet Jackson and the Infamous Titty Incident, then back to a slightly longer rant on Republican “Morality”.
The owners of the NFL teams, virtually all of them, are supporters of the Republican party. And the R’s pay it back in spades by supporting legislation that makes the PUBLIC TREASURY pay for the stadia, (yes, I spelled that last word right, I’m practicing my Latin, are you?) the security, the traffic control, and in-stadium dope I mean Beer Sales. That last because some stadia, like the ill-fated Cotton Bowl in Dallas, are in dry precincts. Which is the real reason the Cowboys don’t play in Dallas, for decades it has been in Irving, and next year it won’t be in Dallas County even.
The cities have to pay for the construction of the stadia out of bond money, and they are always told that it will boost the local economy.
Also here in Colorado, there was a guy running for Senator, you might recognize the name Pete COORS. And yes, he is heir to the beer fortune.
On to The Titty Incident.
Janet Jackson, during the half-time 3 years ago or was it 4, I lose count of things like football. Got her costume deliberately torn at the end of a song and exposed part of her (gasp! the HORROR!!) breast. Now, I didn’t get to see this. I don’t watch football. The homo-eroticism of 22 very large gentlemen throwing their bodies at each other doesn’t do it for me.
There was much scandal. Much public outcry. Much Breast Beating in the halls of Congress, (yeah, I know, that last joke was horrible but I had to get it off my chest) even the Commander in Chimp of the United States saying that he hadn’t watched the incident, but it was a lovely breast.
Ok so I might have taken a little liberty with that last statement, but I don’t keep abreast of the off the wall statements of Mr Bush, every time I try to watch one of his speeches my brain tries to escape by crawling out my left ear.
The Moral Outrage sweeping the country was amazing, especially in the R party.
Like Mr Coors.
During the 04 super bowl, and I know I know, the Super Bowl calendar starts from S.B. I and S.B.II and so forth, with the not-very-subtle Roman numerals numbering system. Instead of A.D. or C.E., measured from the birth of Christ or the birth of Christianity, depending on your faith viewpoint. But I don’t worship the oblong ball. So it matters naught to me how the Hell many S.B. there were.
Mr Coors was OUTRAGED about this public impropriety. How dare they interrupt his half time show where he had a commercial or two over the years, with scantily clad women whose costumes showed a substantially higher percentage of overall Breast Acreage than Ms Jackson did, telling the poor saps watching that somehow they would have a shot at touching these breasts if they only buy his brand of Dope. For people who keep up with such things, these are the modern version of the Vestal Virgins performing their religious duty at the modern Circus Maximus, the Cheerleaders, who get paid a paltry amount for their Services on the field, but get much more opportunity working in commercials. Like for Mr Coors.
Since this was an Election Year, when all the Noble Laws about the Half Time show being lagged 4 seconds or so just to protect America from such an awful sight ever again….
And the Republican NFL team owners who pimp out these Vestal Virgins as part of their Circus, were also outraged, that Ms Jackson would Dare To Expose America to a sight of substantially less breast-age than their own cheerleaders and even most of the Female fans and even some of the (ewwweewwww) male fans show during every game. I mean, one team has its fans wear cheese on their heads, and paint their naked upper torsi green and yellow, and show over and over again one in particular a set of udders that would make a topless dancer envious (or nauseous) and who happens to be a guy (I think)
So this year we will be (or you will be, I plan to be out riding my bicycle, while the streets are practically deserted for four or five hours) watching a heavily subsidized, heavily censored, erotic commercial enterprise, knowing that the GOP Big Brother apparatus will be protecting us from such unseemly behaviour ever again occurring.
Specifically congressman Goode of Virginia. I’m not sure of the constitutional procedures for removing such.
However, I read one of the links on the left side of the homepage. On the colorado media reporting. Anyhow he shot himself and his whole party in the foot, big time. He very pointedly said that he, rather than defend the constitution as it stands, intends to pass a law specifically to prohibit the free exercise of religion. I know more about the Bill of Rights than the articles of the Constitution, but passing an unconstitutional law is strecht verboten.
The R’s have this big immigration push going. They keep tossing out that old bone about they have no objections to people who are here legally. And the equally false idea that the immigration laws are not racially inspired.
But what he said, and here is the impeachable part, “I am reforming immigration laws so no Muslim will ever again run for Congress!” whoa, partner.
He is declaring his personal intent to knowingly break the law. The arrogance of it blows my mind.
Next question, should we call them on it now or provoke similar responses from other sponsors of the bill?
Which would show a clear pattern on their parts. Either way, he has (probably unknowingly) killed that bill before it gets to committee. It needs a concerted outcry to push it over the edge, but there are enough people in america who are totally and completely cheesed off over the prospect of being told not only who we can vote for. but now being told who we are FORBIDDEN to vote for.
The best pizza in Colorado Springs is made by the Borriello Brothers at the foot of General Palmer’s statue, on Platte Avenue between Nevada and Webber, across from Palmer High School.
I followed some fans from a YMCA basketball game and was warned that addiction would ensue. I can report only that they were right, and I have no idea as to the secret ingredient. I think it’s cheese. I felt like a loser not knowing which delicacies to request for the toppings, but I followed the youngsters’ request for plain cheese pizza. Now there’s no turning back, it’s plain cheese for me, and from nobody but the Borriello Brothers.
Now if they could use only non-BGH dairy products and whole grain ground wheat, I could feel good about my new diet.
I just love this new Bush plan to militarize green cheese! It’s all very Ray Bradbury even. Let’s put the Pentagon on the moon!
The way this is announced is to try to convince people that all their tax payer money is not going for warfare from way up high, but will just be an innocent little moon rock expedition. Of course, none of this will actually go as scheduled. By the time 2020 Space Odyssey roles around, the US will have a national debt of about a google’s google of dollars.
A Meal-Ready-to-Eat is what we feed to our soldiers in the field. It’s a self contained meal, descendent of the C-ration. An MRE features a meat, vegetable, bread, dessert, choice of drinks, and plenty of packaging. Here’s what’s left after you consume the edible bits:
Heavy plastic MRE bag
cardboard box enclosing meat
plastic/foil heatable bag for contents
cardboard box enclosing side dish
plastic/foil heatable bag for contents
plastic bag enclosing heat pouch
cloth/chemical heat pouch
plastic bag for spoon
plastic spoon
plastic/foil bag for crackers
plastic/foil bag for cheese
plastic/foil bag for dessert
plastic Fresh Pax pouch
plastic/foil bag for drink mix
clear plastic bag for condiments
clear plastic bag for mint gum
brown paper wrapper for napkin
paper napkin
clear plastic Tobasco bottle
red plastic bottle top
cardboard matchbook
paper/foil bag for tea
tea bag
paper/foil bag for coffee sweetner
paper/foil bag for moist toilette
cloth/paper toilette
3 paper bags for sugar, salt and pepper
29 items total. 10 are biodegradable, 4 are partially biodegradable, and 15 are of non-biodegradable plastic.