Tag Archives: Organic

No more reporting on the beef recall?

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Suspect beef product ON HOLD on school shelvesThe largest beef recall in history has taught us what, so far? That 37 million pounds went to the USDA school lunch program, which was distributed to schools unknown. We quietly presume the USDA had been pawning off the questionable product to the poor and dismissible among our population. But why won’t they release the names of the schools? In whispered tones with food program insiders, you learn why. Because the USDA product goes to ALL schools. (NOTE: Corpus Christi School found the recalled meat on their shelves and made the switch to a safer supplier, shouldn’t your school do the same?)

While all or any of the Colorado schools may have taken delivery of the Hallmark suspect product, the USDA school food program in Colorado gets the bulk of its meat from Advanced Meatpacking out of Oklahoma. Advanced is regarded by industry watchers as likely worse than Hallmark. We’re not talking about the tip of an iceberg, we’re [not] talking about the as yet largely unexposed large underbelly of American factory farming.

What’s so bad about US meat that foreign markets won’t buy it? Our government regulators won’t test it adequately. Individual meatpackers who want to submit their product for voluntary testing are prevented by the USDA, for fear of creating a stigma around non-tested meat.

Other countries test their 100% of their herd animals for BSE. They also prohibit the feeding of rendered animals to other animals. This is the process by which BSE spreads. The US does not prohibit the use of rendered feed. US calves are raised on a diet of milk and blood: milk fortified with the blood of their predecessors. It redefines “adulterated” I think.

US methods to prevent mad cow disease resemble more the measures necessary not to see it. The official word is that the USA doesn’t have mad cow disease. Cattle which display the traits resembling mad cow disease in Europe, here are called “downer cows.” Our safety guidelines are thus: keep those cows from reaching the meat packers. Easy enough, unless you run across slaughterhouse workers with the initiate to use forklifts and chains to harvest downed cows like any other. Then you need video cameras to catch them.

But video cameras cannot catch the biggest flaw in this screening process. Most cattle infected with BSE do not begin to show symptoms until after they are two years old. Most cattle in the US reach the slaughterhouse before they are two.

Even with a breach of our paltry preventive procedures, the USDA is still unwilling to say their prescribed screening is insufficient.

Perhaps the USDA fears that implementing European testing standards would reveal a huge chunk of US beef to be tainted with mad cow. This would profoundly impact the food industry and our economy as a whole. Perhaps a few thousand CJD fatalities five years from now is a small price to pay for stability now. Besides, those in the know have money to buy organic beef from verifiable sources. The prosperity of the market has always been borne on the backs and at the expense of the common mortal. CJD means fewer to reach retirement.

Newspapers don’t want to touch this subject, many of their advertisers are restaurants which can’t afford to deal in the more expensive meats. Alternative news-weeklies rely on supermarkets for their distribution sites.

(NOTE: Except Ralph Routon and the Independent, March 6)

No one wants to shake consumer confidence in the food supply. The problem extends beyond beef, beyond poultry, beyond farmed fish, beyond ocean fisheries, beyond imported produce, beyond domestic agribusiness, beyond pesticides, irradiation and biogenetics. So the media is not going to start with any of it. As it is with the American health care system, your health is up to you.

By the way, most of the meat being recalled has already been consumed. Of what’s left, the USDA is only asking schools to set it aside for the time being. It is being neither recalled, nor destroyed. Probably it would be too alarming to ask cafeteria workers to destroy what only a day before they had been serving up for their kids for years.

This is good news for you, if you want to find out which schools were serving the bad meat. You still have a chance to call those responsible for the food service at your child’s school. Public or private, I assure you the probability is similar. Ask them if they’ve got the recalled Hallmark stock on hold.

Consumers to the very end

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Garish funeral casketIf you’ve ever watched Six Feet Under, you have a sense of what happens to the body prior to a conventional funeral and burial. If this is an indignity that you are willing to suffer, and a price tag that you are willing to bear, so be it.

But consider for a moment the environmental impact of the typical funerary send-off.

After the funeral service, the body is sealed inside a metal casket or lacquered wooden coffin lined with plush satin and adorned with gleaming brass accessories. This is then lowered into a concrete vault and buried. The reinforced concrete tomb is covered with a ton of dirt, and planted with non-native grass which is kept artificially green with pesticide and weed killer.

A ten-acre tract of cemetery ground hides enough coffin wood to construct more than 40 homes, and contains nearly a thousand tons of casket steel and another twenty thousand tons of concrete.

Formaldehyde, the primary ingredient in embalming fluids and a known carcinogen, is another concern. Nearly a million gallons of embalming fluid are buried every year in North America, some of which eventually leaches out and runs into surrounding soil and groundwater.

Above ground, the local cemetery looks peaceful and pastoral. But below the surface it serves, to all intents and purposes, as a landfill of hazardous wastes and non-biodegradable materials. An affront to nature, to be sure.

Natural burial groundA modern natural burial, wherein the body is returned to the earth to decompose naturally and be recycled into new life, is an environmentally sustainable alternative to existing funeral practices. The body is prepared for burial without chemical preservatives and is buried in a simple shroud or biodegradable casket that might be made from locally harvested wood, wicker or even recycled paper.

A completed natural burial preserve is a green place with trees, grasses, and wildflowers, which in turn bring birds and other wildlife to the area. It is a living memorial and leaves a legacy of care for those of us who respect the earth and understand our connection to it.

What could be more organic than to become a part of nature? Death does, after all, complete the circle of life. I would find it comforting to know that my body will someday enrich the soil and allow living things to flourish. Maybe a molecule of mine will end up in a berry eaten by a bird. More likely, I’ll be a nut eaten by a manic squirrel.

Lighting the fire within

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Mother Nature Orange Nipple
Most Americans exist completely apart from the natural order. We live in artificial dwellings, are transported by artificial means and “nourished” by artificial foods. We wear high heels, mask all body odors, prepare meals in toxic cookware, wrap our bodies in synthetic materials. We pop pills to feel better and lose ourselves in electronic black holes to assuage boredom. Many of us live lives of isolation, like lone wolves, instead of in community with our fellow human beings.

Some of the more visionary among us provide suggestions for improvement. No more plastic bags! Wear hemp clothing! Eat organic! Bike to work! Use crystals to deodorize! Give free hugs! Such solutions are mere band-aids on a gaping wound. They are unable to stem the flow of blood, but they somehow make us feel better.

My children are learning about the benefits of recycling. Period. The conversation should be expanded. Instead of taking our cans to the curb, why not vow never again to drink anything that comes in a can? Or, even better, any beverage besides water. Let’s teach our kids that canned and bottled beverages are inherently unhealthy for the body, as well as detrimental to the environment. With a more holistic approach, the need to recycle would become less urgent, and the children would be better educated and healthier.

A holistic solution to energy conservation and national obesity can be found in the home thermostat. Many of us have turned down the heat to conserve energy. Good for the planet, no question. From a more holistic perspective, is it natural for man to live in a tightly climate-controlled environment? It isn’t. But our bodies have adapted to this artificial reality over time and we feel impelled to preserve it. So while we may turn down the thermostat, we bundle ourselves up to maintain the status quo.

I like to keep my house cool, about 60 degrees. I wear t-shirts and drink ice water and my little kids, with barely an ounce of body fat amongst them, play in their underwear, completely impervious to the cold. Remember that human beings are not dependent on the environment to determine body temperature. It is set biologically and will be maintained naturally in nearly all situations. If the outside temperature is hot, we sweat and our metabolism slows down so our bodies don’t overheat. This makes us feel sluggish; hence, the lazy summer day and dog days of summer weather characterizations. If the outer temperature is cooler, the body maintains heat by increasing the rate of metabolism and converting fat to energy. We build a fire within. Not only do we get warmer, we get thinner and more energetic to boot! Over time our metabolic rates are reset at a higher level, and we no longer feel the cold. We are warmed by our own energy source, not by a polyester sweatshirt.

Think about what it means to live naturally, like cave men. Get familiar with the workings of the body. Ponder what the planet was before man imposed his artificial intelligence upon it. Then attempt to conform to that which is natural wherever you can. What is good for the body will be good for the mind and the spirit, and is bound to be good for the environment.

I’ve cured AIDS !!!

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The Cure for AIDS
1. If you are gay/str8/lesbian/trans/bi and have tested for HIv and been told you are positive for the antibodies to HIv, (using Western Blot type test which register as much as 70% false positives) or been told due to a low T-cell count or high viral load count with PCR test, you are at risk for AIDS, and that HIv is the cause … you need to first thing, look your doctor or AIDS org. counselor in the eye and say: I’m not taking the AZT, HAART, Protease Inhibitors, chemo poison drugs that are the main regimen for treatment and that will destroy my immune system and internal organs (depending on dosage and length of time on the meds). Nor will I be a guinea pig for any new untested drugs or vaccines. Nor will I take any drugs for HIv because HIv is not cytotoxic nor can it destroy my T-cells. Over 60 known diseases cross react with the unreliable Elisa or Western Blot type HIv tests giving false positives. Don’t believe the HIv=AIDS “death sentence”. Sources: Help For HIV and Living Without HIV Drugs.

2. If you are pregnant and test “positive” for the HIv antibodies (meaning your immune system has destroyed it and you’re actually HIv negative) or the PCR viral count/low T-cell farse, refuse the drugs vehemently. HIv in infants passes in 90% of cases. In the remaining cases it really doesn’t matter as HIv can do nothing being a non-cytotoxic retrovirus and will likely soon be passed by healthy immune system. AZT drugs cause many different birth/developmental defects! Retroviruses cannot destroy the cells they infect. Long known in virology. See African Treatment Information Group (a PDF)

3. If you are a gay male, stop having unprotected sex especially if promiscuous because multiple std’s and then resistance to antibiotics cause immune suppression. And possible immune destruction if in combination with this you are doing poppers, I.V. drugs, meth, heroin etc……heavily. And not getting sleep. Foreign proteins from sperm that may enter through torn anal lining are more serious as this may be a causation of autoimmunity where the immune system attacks itself.

4. If you are a hemophiliac getting blood transfusions, know that HIv is a retrovirus, cannot cause anything and that you are more at risk of foreign proteins or other real viruses in donor blood reacting in your body and overwhelming your immune system. You need to be extra ambitious in taking care of your immune system. Don’t buy into HIv.

5. For all; Stop all heavy drug use as in I.V.drugs like heroin, meth, cocaine. Limit marijuana and also alcohol, and take care of your immune system with regular exercise, laughter, lots of water, avoiding stress, avoiding refined sugars, flour, cut down or quit dairy, and get as close to vegetarian diet (i.e. raw foods, organic) as possible. Stop worrying about HIv. Personally I will never worry about HIv testing again. In 1st world nations supposed HIv infecteds live long healthy lives without AZT or any HIv drugs.

That’s it. I’ve just cured American, European and other 1st world nation “AIDS!” You’re welcome.

AIDS in Africa, Distinguishing Fact from Fiction (a PDF)
African and other similar circumstance countries with many poor living in squalid, unsanitary, overcrowded slum conditions with rampant malnutrition, unsanitary water, parasitical disease and lack of access to health care …well we all know their fate. Because no one cares about them. UNAIDS, WHO and CDC can however count their deaths and diseases as AIDS by their own permission and rules, without HIv.

No wonder we’re fooled into believing that they are dying of AIDS. It is indifference they are really dying of. And all the old diseases and conditions of developing poor countries, now categorized as AIDS cases or deaths. All of UNAIDS, CDC and WHO HIv/AIDS case numbers are projections that never develop into real numbers. Or outright lies. Death by HIv caused AIDS is a lie.

What Killed Makgatho Mandela?
Did Nelson Mandela’s son really die of AIDS?

AZT -Shouldn’t we ask, why give a drug that mimics the symptoms of a “probable” causation HIv, that you’re trying to cure with same drug? I know the answer:

Glaxo Wellcome puts the following warning in large, bold-faced, capital letters at the start of the section in the 1999 Physician’s Desk Reference that describes AZT (referred to under the name Retrovir or Zidovudine).

“RETROVIR (ZIDOVUDINE) MAY BE ASSOCIATED WITH SEVERE HEMATOLOGIC TOXICITY INCLUDING GRANULOCYTOPENIA AND SEVERE ANEMIA PARTICULARLY IN PATIENTS WITH ADVANCED HIV DISEASE (SEE WARNINGS). PROLONGED USE OF RETROVIR HAS ALSO BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH WITH SYMPTOMATIC MYOPATHY SIMILAR TO THAT PRODUCED BY HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS.”

An earlier version of the Physician’s Desk Reference, published in 1992 made the connection even clearer:

“It is often difficult to distinguish adverse events possibly associated with Zidovudine administration from underlying signs of HIV disease or intercurrent illness.”

Happy World AID$ Day !!

Brand name taste is an abstraction

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A friend of mine is a restauranteur who by his own admission doesn’t know much about wine. Never the less his wine rep was bringing over a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem for some occasion. I asked my friend if he’d read up on Sauterne vintages, the better to appreciate it. He looked at me quizzically. I persisted, thinking something along the lines of Tom Wolfe’s Painted Word, that you had to know about the theory of abstract art to appreciate what you saw. I didn’t get far because my friend was attuned to the un-abstract measure of his customer’s palate. Did they taste a distinctive quality? That was enough. You don’t need a text to appreciate pre-abstract art. Epicure likewise is not abstract.

Many aspects of our lives have become experiences of abstract quality. We may not prefer a fashion, but are happy enough with it so long as we believe others like it. A designer label says what we want about us, regardless whether we have a say about it. Marketing goes a long way to produce our appreciation. When we use the product we feel ourselves in the commercial. For some beverages, I’m certain the commercial has become the product. We begin enjoying the Coke from the first cold beads of condensation on the can, through the Shtffk of cracking the pop tab, until it’s down our throat. Right then we all know Coke doesn’t satisfy our thirst, because we already want more. It satisfies our craving to inhabit the Coke world.

Sugar is not an acquired taste, but wanting to be a Pepper is. Breakfast cereal feeds a pathetic sweet tooth. Cheap beer and the new soft-liquors feed conditioned desires.

Not only is the processed food industry relying on its talent to taylor our appetite, it undermines our reliance on our own senses. If something is not advertised, can it be of value? Ice cream flavored of cookies ‘n cream isn’t good enough unless they are Oreo brand cookies. Toffee must be Heath Bars, peanut butter must be Reeses. Except for regional salsas or steak marinades, products fade from the supermarket shelves if nt cross branded with a national identity. This has become an easier feat for the big guys because they’ve conglomerated so many diverse products, from babies diapers to tobacco.

The brand name is now the critical ingredient which we all taste with our imagination, crafted by ceaseless ad campaigns. A product’s advertising is itself a stipend paid to the media companies to ensure a brand stays on the public palate. Remember Oh Henry? Somebody lapsed in their payment.

Now the powerhouse food corps are using the same manipulative method to plant doubt in the consumer’s mind about their own ability to judge taste. (I remember an subscription tag line for GQ magazine to this effect: You don’t know fashion, let GQ tell you.) How could what you think tastes good, have any bearing on what they tell you tastes good?

With health food the fearful conglomerates caution, how do you know it’s really organic? But isn’t that the same assumption I threw at my friend? It’s true with processed food, we can’t taste BGH or Mad Cow spinal matter, or protein additives necessarily. But other factors like refined sugars, fats, or chemical pesticides we can detect. In the produce department, it’s not just a matter of stickers that say “organic” or higher prices or more easily blemished fruit, it’s the taste. Organic produce tastes fuller, richer, more pleasing, more satisfying.

Our own natural sense of taste tells us whether we are enjoying it or not. No textbook, afficionado’s article, or 30 second commercial need tell us what we think of that apple. Or what we think of the non-stickered apple which tastes like the floor cleaner we thought they used in the supermarket. That isn’t the floor we were smelling, it was the apples. If it weren’t for the antiseptic packaging, the inert food content and the slick marketing directing our taste buds, we’d realize the whole supermarket smelled of Union Carbide and Monsanto.

Peaceful vacation in New Mexico, Anybody?

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Half a million can buy some PEACE for you in Albuquerque next week. You get Rigoberta Menchu, the Dalai Lama, and some Gandhi, too…. all for just $65/person, price of hotel room and organic vegetarian nourishment not included. I feel like flying there in a hot air balloon! New Mexico Peace Conference

The ecology of America’s rotting food

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A lot has been written about the ecology of America’s rotten food. The book and movie, Food Nation, for example centers in on this American phenomena of bad factory food, leading to bad American taste, leading to bad American health. Fat city. If we keep gaining weight at the present rate our country’s population is doing, one perhaps can figure that the per capita weight per American will be about 10,000 tons apiece in the year 10,000. Holy hippopotamus! But what about the ecology of America’s rotting food? Just how much food does get thrown out? Here is what the food industry itself has to say. Half of US food never gets eaten.

If one looks closely at these statistics, we can see that the majority of the food waste does not come at the family table. According to this study, only 14% of what is bought gets wasted here. A family of 4 spends over $4,000 a year, and could save almost $600 in food costs, if only none of it went to waste. But since the supermarket actually passes much of its waste to the family home, really 14% is not that bad to throw out. Don’t blame the consumer then.

So how does the supermarket force waste on the consumer? Answer; by its constant promotions. For example, why buy 3 lbs of potatos at $0.59/ lb, if the grocer is pushing for you to buy 10 lbs for $1.29? What often happens, is that the consumer buys 10 lbs, then overeats to keep from throwing the food out. So he eats 5 lbs, and then tosses the other half of the then rotting remainder of potatos into the trash. Do we call all this efficiency of the capitalist system, liberty ,and democracy? Or do we call it a big rotten, rotting shame?

So where is all the other waste happening? When I lived in Oregon, I was amazed at how much rotten fruit was hanging in so many trees. At one time, the small family farm had produced orchads all over the state. But all those farmers got driven bankrupt, so their trees still produced fruit, but nobody was around still to pick it. Even the highways had both sides filled with ripe blackberries when in season. The bears were all bankrupt, too, so these delicious berries everywhere just rotted in the sun. All throughout the countryside, food is left to rot.

And look at our public schools. The kids get served about 3 times they could possibly consume, so that food gets thrown out in bushels. All under the guise of making sure nobody goes hungry. Yeah, but then again, all the kids grow fat. And they grow wasteful and slovenly, too.

Have you ever looked at the grocers themselves. High prices everywhere, but is it because what you consume is expensive? It’s more like what they throw away is what costs. You pay for the grocers’ inability to manage the transport of decent food at a decent price. Ever gone into Whole Foods on Academy Blvd.? Look at how many shopping carts are mostly empty. Why? Simply because the prices are too damn high. What do you think happens to all that unsold, high priced ‘organic’ food then? It just gets tossed into the garbage can. You pay for that with their higher prices. It’s all organic, though.

What a disaster all this is ecologically. The liberal sites were all carrying an article last week about the problems that high tech waste was causing ecologically. Computers, cell phones, compact discs, sex toys, tvs, etc. True enough. But to not eat half of the food produced in America is quite an ecological tragedy, too. The soils get worn down, blown away, and the rivers fill up with pig poop. And as grandma used to say,

“Eat all the food on your plate. There is a kid in India that is starving.”

I care, but I don’t think your average American business man gives a damn. He’s proud thinking about how efficient ‘free enterprise’ is in America, for making all of us grow so fat and growing mountains of food in double quantities we don’t really need.

They Don’t Care and the jumping mouse

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Rodent member of endangered ecosystemMighty Mouse or Mighty Myth? asks The Gazette of their readership today and yesterday in quarter page announcements in their paper. “Does the Preble’s Meadow Mouse really exist?” (Or did that evil environmental movement make it all up?)
 
The editorial board over at our loony local rag really is brain dead when it comes to environmental affairs. Just weeks ago they were also running an editorial expressing doubts about whether global warming was real. (Or did the evil environmental movement make the whole thing up?)

The announcement suggesting that it was all “mighty myth” that another wild animal was endangered, was part of the announcement to invite people to a Right Wing think tank presentation at the U. of Colorado-Colorado Springs campus, all designed to push for the virtual annulment of the Endangered Species Act. So I headed over there at noon to show my support for the jumping mouse and Yogi the Bear vs the real estate and construction magnates. Nature vs more crappy development was my message. It’s not just about the jumping mouse. It’s about whether we destroy all nature’s natural habitats or not.

Well, it turns out that my sign saying,
—They don’t care
—Developers just want to pave over nature and
—DAMN THE WILDLIFE!
provoked some interest as I parked myself inside next to some buffet items as the developers broke for lunch.

First, I was berated by some of the overly dressed crowd for having missed the morning presentations by the all Right Wing panel. Actually, they had one lonely environmentalist who had not made it yet from Denver. But how dare I have an opinion about the mouse without hearing all their important commentary?!!! My response was to just shuck it off. I told them I thought the whole thing was about the spotted owl, and I had heard enough about that rare bird already while living in Washington. Jesus, you tell me I came all this way about a mouse?

It turns out that some of the developers took my sign personally. So I had to discuss whether they were evil people or not. And then the two campus cops showed up, and I thought I might get scanned to see if I was a threat to Homeland Security. But Professor Null, jefe of the Right Wing think tank sponsor, said that he would vouch for me, and even offered me lunch. I thanked him, but told him I wasn’t sure whether their food was organic or not. But that I might come in and listen to their accumulation of proof that nature’s wetlands really were no longer necessary to preserve. Full speed ahead!

I only stayed 2 hours. I did get to hear the last panelist, the liberal who could make it from Denver. I also got to shake hands with Craig Manson, Bush’s creep who had formerly been put in charge over “our nation’s critters” to dismantle the Endangered Species Act. He was still working on it as I could see. Nobody quite like him since James Watt had been in charge. He was definitely the big wig invite for sure. I told him that I was sorry I had missed his work in the morning, but that I had read some interviews he had done online, and that “they were quite interesting,” as I politely and sarcastically put it.

One of our CS city councilman recognized me from the city council picnics we sometimes do together. We had a nice cheerful talk about torture, in which he told me that he believed that it did not exist. Then, ala Cheney, he told me that he was for it, except it did not exist! lol…. These White Men speak with forked tongue. He told me that he had family in the military, so that was why he had forked tongue. I will withhold his identity in order to protect the guilty.

I did have a few who came up and whispered that they were in agreement with my sign. But they kind of looked worried that they might get fired for fraternizing if done too openly. So was I too hard on the hard working real estate developers, as some of them had told me? “We’re not all bad.” Well, look at this list of the folk on the board of the Right Wing think tank co-sponsor of this event with The Gazette. Scroll down and check out the many developer folk at The Center for the Study of Government and the Individual

Our prison system

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Returning home from Aspen recently, I drove by the state correctional facility in Buena Vista. My blood sugar was a bit low at the time and I had an epiphany of epic proportions. The individuals incarcerated in those ugly buildings aren’t criminals. No, not at all. They are simply victims of POOR NUTRITION! Show me a man who ate lots of Wonder Bread as a kid and I’ll show you a serial killer. Too much soda pop and Mike and Ike’s? A bank robber. Not enough cruciferous vegetables? Most likely a white collar criminal. Show me a young girl who doesn’t get her full complement of leafy greens and I’ll show you a young girl who has a lot of speeding tickets. And cake eaters? Well, I haven’t been able to discover a direct crime link but I think we all agree that they are, by and large, angry and annoying people.

WHAT? Yes! Trust me on this. It’s all about brain chemistry. It’s about neurotransmitters, chemical substances that cause our brains and our bodies to feel good and function normally. It’s about serotonin and epinephrine and dopamine and adrenaline. They regulate our moods, our thoughts, our sleep, our impulses. When certain substances are in short supply or are overabundant, it is IMPOSSIBLE to be a decent human being. Frequently, those that we lock up are drug addicts and alcoholics. Why? They are self-medicating! They know that they don’t feel quite right, and they are trying to fix the problem. But it’s not the right solution.

So how DO we stay healthy and happy? PROPER NUTRITION AND EXERCISE! This leads me to my proposal. Instead of incarcerating individuals who perpetuate wrongs on the American public, let’s send them to nutritional camps. They can eat the proper foods, get moderate cardiovascular exercise, lots of quality sleep. . .maybe we’ll even throw in a couple days of weight training. As a special treat, probably on Sundays, we’ll bring in a cute Pilates instructor so they can work on their core strength and develop flexibility.

Of course, the retards at the FDA can’t be in charge of my revolutionary program. They, after all, are the douche bags that gave us the food pyramid. Nor can any nutritionist who graduated from the General Mills College of Bullshit (it’s everyone’s alma mater. . .ask ’em). No. I’m going to call my friends, Dr. Julian Whitaker and Dr. David Williams, the most awesome health gurus in the country. They can come up with a diet that includes freshly-milled whole grain products, raw organic produce, hormone-free lean proteins, and lots of distilled water. I’ll call Kathy Smith to put together an exercise program. THE FIRM can be in charge of the weight training. We’ll get these “criminals” put back together in no time flat! We’ll educate the heck out of them and when they’ve completed the program we’ll drop them off at the local Whole Foods market with a couple of crisp $20s. The 400 employees of the prison (a career choice, by the way, which is also closely related to a paucity of necessary neurotransmitters) can run the program, under close supervision.

If you really think about it, you know I’m right. You know that certain foods make you feel great, others not so much. You know that a lack of sleep can leave you unable to cope with the stresses of the day. A nice hike on a beautiful afternoon is a fantastic tension buster. Shouldn’t we give these people a chance to experience all that life has to offer? Is it really their fault that no one taught them how to stay sane and healthy? I think not. I think they are victims.

Most days I’m just one Hostess HoHo away from committing an unthinkable act. There, but by the grace of God, and the power of sensible nutrition and moderate exercise, go I.

Organic food judged by the label

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You can judge a book by its cover if the book’s edible and the judgement has to do with how it tastes.

Detractors of organic products like to criticise the label as if it’s some sort of scam. And they’re right, organic labels are hard to enforce. And getting harder. Big agra wants a piece of the organic produce market, and they’re fighting to dumb down the regulations so that they can label their usual crap organic.

But the argument that you cannot trust the organic appelation only flies with a dumbed down public. An organic apple tastes organic. That’s really a lot of the point. It’s healthier, yes, and it tastes quite a bit better.

The general public needs to be told it seems what a food is, because food no longer tastes much like it used to. You have to look at what it says on the bag for example to identify a red delicious.

It occurs to me that Koolaid presented an early challenge like this. You could only taste that it was red. You had to look at the package to see if it was cherry, strawberry, rasberry or none of the above.

Mob rule

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Not mob rule as in democracy gone awry. Not lynch mob. The mob mob. To borrow what Serbs used to say about their country:
 

Many countries have their own mobsters. America is the only place where mobsters have their own country.

While the television public is fascinated by the stereotype Italian Mafioso, the real mob is comprised of corporate dons who enforce their capitalist tyranny on anyone worth squeezing, turnups included.

The poor are starving, falling victim to plagues, genocide, war and catastrophe. The middle classes are falling into debt, soon to be poor, meanwhile the rich are hording more and more. Instead of caring for their indentured subjects, the rich build their castle walls ever higher.

Organic, range-fed, non-toxic food? Not for us. Reserved for their progeny. Instead of ameliorating the plight of the serf by sharing the bounty of the land, we get mad-cow infested gruel.

King’s missing dong, episode 1

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Time Magazine characterizes King Kong’s enthousiasmOkay, I admit that’s my own headline. There was indeed no trace of a King dong, but neither was there lust, nor anything more than a communication barrier overcome by physical clowning. A young white lass with Vaudeville chops was able to cajole the mighty Kong where scores of unfortunate black maidens had failed.
 
But really the special effects in the latest King Kong were amazing.

With special effects the filmmakers were able to create a giant gorilla who went ape at the sound of tom-toms summoning him to dine on a mouse-sized snack.

Special effects recreated superstitious black peoples who subsisted on the craggy coast of Skull Island, separating themselves from the island’s vegetation to live behind great fortifications and beneath countless pointy sticks on which were impaled human sacrificees.

Special effects produced dinosaurs also very keen to fight over what would be a tiny human morsel, willing to discard bigger kill for the smaller bird in the bush, even gnash away at a rocky surface trying to snatch said bony morsel.

To another extreme, special effects created bats which prey on animals larger than insects, and they stalk their target, hanging upside down each time a bit closer.

Convenient for the slow shutter rate of film projectors, these bats fly with the awkwardness of pterodactyls, the beating of their wings visible to human eyes. Lucky for our heroes who escape by holding on to the wing of a bat, while he flies with the other. A feat clearly accomplished only through special effects.

Special effects depict a world plainly ignorant of what some know as the food chain. The filmmakers can adhere to the laws of gravity, sort of, and whichever laws of physics can be illustrated, but they can’t grasp the food chain or that animals kill to eat, they do not maraud mercilessly.

By depicting nature as malevolent, we are expressing the highest disrespect for what really have become our wards. Like depicting Jesus with a machine gun for example. It might be funny, but it would be pretty undeserved.

But there’s more. Special effects produced stampedes both human and Jurassic, from which few casualties are seen. Men are able to keep pace beneath Brontosaurus legs to make the Spaniards who run with the bulls every year in Pamplona look like wusses.

And in the end you have Kong flinging blond lasses left and right, you have an entire opera house audience stampede to the exits with nary a body left behind.

In fact, given Peter Jackson’s fondness for gross-out scenes like the close-up of the carnivorous worm devouring a man head first, it seems strange that they cranked back the special effects for Kong’s final splat unto street level from the Empire State building. Kong’s body at rest on the street is shown not one bit like a sack empty of its potatoes, the usual sudden end to a 100 story fall.

David Letterman fans might have hoped to see Kong burst like a watermelon fallen from a great height, but special effects intervened.

And so the special effects try to approximate mechanical consequences, but ignore the organic, what used to be the common knowledge of life.

While this might suit the lower educated of today’s movie audience, Peter Jackson certainly does not limit himself to that denominator. In an early scene he risks boring that crowd with three interminable inside jokes: the actress they had wanted to cast for this adventure, “Fay,” was already doing an “RKO” picture for that damned “Cooper.” Rocky Horror Picture Show fans would get those references, but so what? Why not throw some bones to zoology majors and enlighten everyone.

The special effects in King Kong trade not merely in the currency of the implausible or improbable or impossible, they perpetuate the currency of ignorance with which people do great evil to nature and the environment and other cultures, particularly indigenous ones.

This film plays with lots of movie land conventions, but to an audience that is less privy to the inside references and more prone to base human reactions to the demonized stereotypes.