Big Mother

8/29/06

It’s quickly becoming apparent to me that parenting is a real hit ‘n miss situation. I suppose, like all children, I thought my generation would do a better job at parenting than the previous model, but now I see that every generation is remarkably clueless at the task. Not that I can blame them; I’m not a parent but when thinking about it I’m struck terrified at the prospect of finding my teenage daughter has been knocked-up by the Kwik-E-Mart clerk, or that my son has decided to join the Republican party. How would I be an effective parental role model and disciplinarian? I haven’t the foggiest. But I bet it wouldn’t be like this:

Where the Boomer generation thought they could best parent by hoarding material goods as if they could take it with them in death, and instilling a simultaneously stringent and vapid moral code in their children, Generation X has decided to go one of two ways. Either we befriend our children in a sort of sick “partnership” devoid of any clear authoritarianism, or we step directly off the deep end and micro-manage every single aspect of our offspring’s life. Companies like Alltrack USA are right on board with that idea, brother! Better living through psychotic technological spying has produced the DriveRight Car Chip, a GPS “black box” that goes into your kid’s car which records every second or so of the trip, letting you know exactly where the car has been and at what speed it was traveling while getting there by email, like some kind of parental LoJack.

One such frighteningly obsessive parent, Mark Pawlick, was on NPR today expounding on the miracle that is constant omnipresent lording over your children. Without getting into the fact that somehow his now teenage daughter was drinking and smoking at the age of 10, Pawlick says that when she got her driver’s license "There was no way I was gonna let her in the car without some way to track where she was and where she was going."

I understand, Mark. I mean, parenting is just so hard. You have to like, pay attention to your children and shit, almost the whole time they’re growing up! Fuck that! Who has the time? It’s much easier to give the illusion of parental guidance by constant Orwellian control over every aspect of your teenager’s life. I mean, hey, we can’t be releasing one inch of those taught reins of dictatorship when her upbringing has been so terminally incompetent up to this point.

If hunching over your glowing computer screen in a dark room, rubbing your calloused hands together in murderous glee at the upcoming punishment you’ll be meting out upon your little DNA copy of yourself because they stopped by Jimmy’s house instead of coming straight home isn’t enough for you, don’t despair! We can do more! No, we can’t implant a chip into Junior’s brain which will control his actions (not yet! Look for that around Christmas!) but the DriveRight chip can be programmed to remotely flash the car’s lights or honk the horn when your little precious darling goes over the speed limit. Yeah! There you go, you freakish goblins! It’s kinda like having a shock collar attached to them all the time, only totally legal in the most ass-way possible.

Hell, never you mind the fact that teenagers are by nature going to test boundaries in a search for their identity, or that the tighter that leash gets on their throat the more they will yank and kind of want to stab you in your sleep. Never mind that certain experts such as Massachusetts General Hospital child psychiatrist Steve Shlozman says as a father, he understands parents' temptation. But, he says keeping too close an eye on kids, often backfires.

"When kids feel crowded, they tend to do things that they otherwise would not do," Shlozman says. "They take even greater risk because they have a desire to prove their independence and their individuality. There is something they need to get away with."

And hey! Let’s just forget the fact that if they see their cars, a long-standing symbol of teenage freedom, as weapons of the oppressor, they’ll act out in other ways such as, oh, I dunno, banging someone in a dumpster behind the school or playing around with drugs to get back at possessive mommy and daddy. There’s a time and a place for those things, and it’s called college.

Just fuck all that; as long as you have the illusion of control everything should turn out fine.

“DriveRight; allowing you to pretend to be a parent now and on into the future!”


Sources: NPR
Alltrack USA

How I Cut Off My Thumb

8/25/06

My fiancé will undoubtedly not read this post. I say that because any sort of injury to fingertips, whether to her, someone nearby or merely expressed anecdotally sends her into fits of quaking accompanied by quickly clamping her hands over her ears and singing gibberish at unreasonable volumes in an attempt to shut out the unfolding story. Especially if the story involves fingernails. You know that movie Stir of Echoes where the girl’s fingernail snaps off on a hardwood floor? She still has nightmares. If you’ve seen the movie you undoubtedly know which scene I’m talking about. Just Googling “stir of echoes” and “fingernail” returns a staggering 14,000 hits.

So it was no surprise when Hanni roundly refused to look at what I’d done to my left thumb last night while cooking dinner. Even in my attempt to describe it she got this sort of pale, horrified look on her face as if I were relating a story about the time I raped a baby. I suppose at this point I should say I didn’t literally cut off my thumb. Only a little part of it.

I’ve been really rather seriously cooking for three or four years now, so I suppose I was due for a supremely nasty knife wound. I have two standard utility chef’s knives which I keep pretty honed. I still remember with hilarity the time I was inexplicably cooking very late one night and Hanni came out of the bedroom with a very worried expression on her face. To be fair, there is something unsettling about waking up to the sound of your boyfriend briskly sharpening knives at 3 in the morning.

But back to the matter at hand. (Please excuse the pun.) I was nigh finished preparing dinner last night and only chopping up some parsley to render the finishing touches when, I dunno, the knife slipped or something and plunged deep into the tip of my left thumb, slicing nearly all the way through the very end before I’d even realized what had happened; like I said, sharp knives. Oh, by the way, some of this is kinda graphic. Long story short, I almost completely severed the last quarter-inch of my thumb. It remained attached by a thin margin. But the weirdest part of the whole accident was the fact that some of that fingertip included fingernail, which the knife had cleanly severed without much issue.

Now, if you can imagine, I’m standing there with chopped, bloody parsley, attempting to remove the severed fingernail from the ruin that has become my thumb. I had to (and here’s where it gets pretty gross) hold onto the part of my finger dangling by a thread, and peel the still-attached nail from the skin before I could fold the flap back over and attempt to hold it in place, staunching the blood flow with paper towels. Sadly, there wasn’t as much blood as I would have liked. All told maybe only a tablespoon came out.

After trying in vain to get Hanni to look at my thumb (“c’mon, honey, it’s really cool!”) I retrieved a bottle of superglue and managed to stem the tide long enough to douse the wound with a liberal amount, sealing off the tumult and keeping my wandering flesh in place. Yes, you can use superglue to close shallow cuts; it’s perfectly safe and works like gangbusters, as long as you still have skin to close and aren’t, you know, just drizzling the stuff into open wounds.

I felt very cool after all of this, like some kind of soldier out there in the jungle suturing up a bullet wound in between shots of rotgut whiskey and lobbing grenades back at the enemy position. In reality, I was just some douche bag who was pouring glue on his tiny knife wound while sipping on a bloody mary and watching reruns of The Office.

Thank the gods I don’t use my left thumb for hardly anything vital. I did find, however, that there is at least one case where this is not true. When I got to work today I went to unbuckle my seatbelt and realized that this task is normally the sole responsibility of the injured digit. Now, my car is kind of old and has many, many things wrong with it. One of which is that the driver’s seat belt release needs seemingly thousands of foot-pounds of pressure to unhook the strap. Apparently my left thumb provides the perfect balance of force and leverage, because it took me three full minutes of fumbling to actually depress the button by other means.

I was ecstatic when I finally succeeded, because I did not relish having the following conversation with my boss:

“Why were you late, Ryan?”

“Oh, you know, I was trapped underneath my seatbelt because clearly I’m a very tiny girl.”

In the News

8/23/06

Masked Marauders

The Pacific Northwest, long known as a main exporter of odd music, coffee and serial killers, has a new trauma on its hands. Olympia, Washington is being terrorized. By raccoons. The casualty count so far is 10 dead cats, one wounded dog and at least one bitten human who had to get rabies shots.

How pussified are the residents of Olympia? Not only are they now carrying pepper spray and iron pipes around to defend against the terrier-sized mammals, they not only had a town meeting about it, but started a raccoon watch. In my new favorite quote of all time, resident Tamara Keeton said,

“It’s a new breed. They’re urban raccoons, and they’re not afraid.”

Lock your doors! They’re urban raccoons raised on the streets with nothing to lose and a devil-may-care attitude! Holy shit that’s awesome.

In a run for longest job title, the residents have hired “nuisance wildlife control operator” Tom Brown to quell the raccoon gang problem. So far Brown has been defeated at every turn by the varmints, who I can only assume wear leather jackets, Uzis, and drop all the “g’s” off the ends of their words. In six weeks Brown has managed to trap a grand total of one raccoon. In possibly the saddest self-defense for failure, Brown says that raccoons teach each other to avoid traps.

Well what the fuck do you expect? They’re urban raccoons.

Source: A shout-out goes to Kaci for bringing this to my attention.
Psycho killer raccoons terrorize Olympia

Osama Keen on Houston

Sudanese poet and novelist Kola Boof’s new book Diary of a Lost Girl chronicles her time spent as an unwilling mistress to the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. What devilish information does it uncover? Apparently Osama was obsessed with Whitney Houston. But before we go judging the terrorist too harshly, let’s remember this takes place in 1996. You know, before Whitney went all crack-out insane on our asses.

Boof’s autobiography claims that star-struck bin Laden wanted to marry Whitney, but wasn’t so swift about her husband Bobby. Hey, that’s his prerogative. Boof says Osama droned on at great length about "how beautiful she [Houston] is, what a nice smile she has, how truly Islamic she is but is just brainwashed by American culture and by her husband - Bobby Brown, whom Osama talked about having killed, as if it were normal to have women's husbands killed."

What else fuels his engine? In between being an unaccountably psychotic murder-mastermind, Osama apparently found time to enjoy some of my favourite TV shows such as The Wonder Years, Miami Vice and MacGyver. Holy shit! I have a man-crush on Richard Dean Anderson, too! I wonder if Osama gets Stargate SG-1 in that cave of his. In retrospect, they probably shouldn’t have produced that episode where MacGyver flies an airplane into a building with a remote control made out of a pocket watch and some chicken bones.

But his true love would always be reserved for Whitney. In a bizarrely hilarious crush worthy of a masturbating teenager, Osama built his own personal shrine to the “star” of the fantastically shitty The Bodyguard.

"In his briefcase, I would come across photographs of the star, as well as copies of Playboy,” said Boof. “It would soon come to the point where I was sick of hearing Whitney Houston's name."

Personally I’ve always enjoyed Bobby’s (old) music more than his wife’s, but that’s like saying I enjoy Seagram’s 7 more than being stabbed in the throat.

Those two are a friggin’ train wreck.

Source: bin Laden ‘fantasized over’ Whitney Houston

Women Equal to Men…Except in God’s Service

Proving the unfailingly fair and righteousness of a book written by men attempting to control society, The First Baptist Church of Watertown, NY, fired Sunday School teacher Mary Lambert on August 9th because the bible said so.

Lambert (pictured left) had taught at the church for a staggering 54 years of dutiful service and was dismissed like a bag of moldy tangerines by informing her that the church had taken a more literal interpretation of scripture. Her pink slip quoted the first epistle to Timothy:

“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”

Wow. The church’s minister, Rev. Timothy “douche-bag” LaBouf must have brass ones. I mean, that’s fucking ballsy even in loony Christian proselytizing circles, and those include Oral Roberts! The Roman Catholic Church gets around Timothy 2:12 by a kind of uncomfortable wriggling of possibly the most black-and-white command in a terminally subjective tome.

Rev. LaBouf seems to be very progressive in saying "I believe that a woman can perform any job and fulfill any responsibility that she desires to" as long as it’s not inside the walls of a big building where people go once a week just in case hell exists.

Mayor Jeffrey Graham stated "If what's said in that letter reflects the councilman's views, those are disturbing remarks in this day and age. Maybe they wouldn't have been disturbing 500 years ago, but they are now."

In what I think to be an underhanded, cowardly way of getting someone fired on a shitty technicality, the church board said there were “other issues” behind Lambert being fired, but disinclined to specify. She probably said the earth revolves around the sun or that gay people had souls or some other such blasphemy.

What a bunch of dodgy assholes.


Source: Washington Post

Heretofore Unknown Clone

8/22/06

Just a quick note here, ladies and gentlemen; I’ve been reading this guy’s blog for some time now and can’t believe I haven’t mentioned it before. It’s known as Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog.

If you like comic books this is right up your alley. If you don’t, well, I dunno since I have a hard time even imagining that frame of mind. The lion’s share of his blog is made up of him poking fun at Silver Age comics. For those of you not in the know, that’s from the late ‘50s through the early ‘70s and, brother, there are some doozies in that category.

In reading some of his stuff I find myself wondering if some evil genius didn’t steal some of my DNA and create a clone out there, because he goes off on some rants about things that annoy him which leave me nodding in frantic agreement and clapping my nicotine-stained hands together in glee. Like this one, for example, where Chris unloads his distain for “new country” (which I view as the auditory equivalent of rancid butter-cream icing) especially that god-awful piece of crap “God’s Will.” For those of you brave enough to click that link, the video is about halfway down the page and it is…well sweet Jesus it’s just awful.

I highly recommend checking it out.

I’m sure I’ll post something original later, true believers.

From Russia With Love

8/21/06


Proving there’s nothing the Bush Administration hates more than public information, they have inexplicably begun classifying old documents. “But Ryan,” you may be saying, “didn’t they do that like six months ago?”

“Oh,” I say, “you must be referring to 55,000 pages of documents previously free and open to the public that were suddenly yanked from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and reclassified as secret. Those included terribly secret and sensitive information like: the 1948 State Department’s map and foreign periodicals procurement programs.”

No, these are new ones! The agency which is doing all this is shrouded in a cloak of secrecy so retarded that it doesn’t even have a name, but you can bet the CIA is on board. What information is now so hush-hush that nobody should have access to it? The number of weapons in the US nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. Just to remind you, that ended about fifteen years ago. And even President Reagan’s administration, which held the previous record for secret paranoia, routinely released this information to our enemy the Soviet Union. But now, nearly two decades after that regime ceased to exist, we need to “keep it on the D.L.,” apparently.

William Burr, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, said

"It would be difficult to find more dramatic examples of unjustifiable secrecy than these decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons... The Pentagon is now trying to keep secret numbers of strategic weapons that have never been classified before."

I fail to see how this info, if it didn’t help the über-powerful Soviet machine, could be of any damage now that the Cold War is over and the reports are wildly out-of-date.

I’ll grant you that the sheer ridiculousness and outright hilarity of reclassifying documents that have already been public anywhere from 10 years to forever seems like innocuous government idiocy, especially when you consider that most of the information is totally boring and completely unreadable, but it doesn’t speak well of intentions. Why doesn’t the Bush administration just get it over with and go ahead and don black cloaks and have secret police goose-stepping around the country? If not an ominous sign of the hatred of our evil overlords for an informed public, than it is at the very least a massively wasteful government program from the party that supposedly wants smaller government. Ohhhh man. What a bunch of schmucks.



Sources: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4129838.html
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB179/

I’m Gonna Harding My Heart

8/17/06

I’ve been reading a great deal lately about scandals in America’s past and was struck by how much presidential doormat Warren G. Harding, 29th President of these United States 1921-1923, reminded me of our current Commander in Chief. Well, there are a few notable exceptions. Harding knew he was completely unqualified and incompetent for the job and he had an almost pathological need to be liked. Clearly President Bush suffers neither of these qualities. Harding noted once that “I am completely unfit for this office,” whereas Dubya believes God Himself wanted him to become president. However, they do resemble each other in many fascinating ways.


Personality

Hard as I find it to believe, what with that smarmy attitude and cartoon villain chuckle of his, President Bush is widely regarded by those who’ve met him as a pretty swell, likable guy. So was Harding, who used to routinely personally answer letters sent to him by ordinary citizens and chat and shake hands with people out on the White House lawn. This really isn’t possible for Bush, though, as he’s as like to get a grenade in the face as a handshake.

Cronyism

It’s only natural for a president to employ and reward those who have stuck with him and aided in his election to the office. Most presidents, however, take the view that getting hammered with a dude or sheer length of friendship is no grounds for important office. Harding, like President Bush, disagreed.

Warren’s terminal need to be liked led him to also cram his administration with friends and hangers-on, some of which were his poker buddies who regularly gamed with prohibition-era liquor supplied by Harding. In some cases the poor president was simply out-maneuvered or manipulated into these appointments. Most notable was Harry M. Daugherty, the Republican Party boss and member of the Ohio Gang who engineered Harding’s nomination and was instrumental in his subsequent (unwanted) election. Upon taking the reigns of leadership and despite protests, Harding appointed Daugherty Attorney General of the United States saying that Daugherty has been his best friend. Find out why this, among other appointments, was maybe kind of a bad idea:

Scandals

If there’s one thing that dominated Harding’s administration, it was scandal, boy. Bush’s have come more in the form of appointing inept circus monkeys to high government positions (Brownie, I’m looking in your direction) and being unlucky enough to have a republican Congress who views ethics and laws as more of a quaint suggestion.

Sometimes the actions of Harding’s appointments were downright criminal. Kinda like tapping American citizens’ phones without a warrant or indefinitely imprisoning “enemy combatants” and wiping your ass with the Geneva Convention. But we know all about Bush’s greatest hits; what about Warren?

The only thing most of us know, if anything, about Warren G. Harding’s presidency is The Teapot Dome Scandal, and I’d bet dollars to doughnuts you only remember the name as some vague file in your memory folder marked “8th Grade History”. What actually happened is most likely edged out by images of Marcy Perkins in her cheerleading uniform. Fear not; I’m here to help.

Harry M. Daugherty convinced the out-of-his-depth Harding to appoint the walrus-mustachioed Senator Albert B. Fall (R) from New Mexico as Secretary of the Interior. In 1922 there was this oil field in Wyoming, its reserves under the jurisdiction of Secretary of the Navy, Edwin C. Denby. (Why people all felt the need to use middle initials back then I don’t know.) Fall, perhaps by threatening Denby with poo on the end of a pointed stick, convinced the latter to transfer control of the oil reserves over to Fall’s Office of the Interior. Fall then promptly turned around and leased out the oil rights to Sinclair Oil without bothering with all that pesky, public competitive bidding. He also leased Californian oil reserves to Pan American Petroleum in exchange for personal, interest-free loans. After all was said and done, Fall had received over $400,000 from the debacle.

Sort of reminds one of certain modern Congressmen taking bribes from lobbyists and Indian casinos, not to mention certain other companies (Halliburton!) getting preferential government contracts. Hmm…

Incidentally, why was it called “The Teapot Dome Scandal?” One of they Wyoming oil fields kinda looked like a domed teapot.

Trumping even Teapot Dome in pure monetary value was Charles Forbes, appointed by Harding to head of the Veteran’s Administration. Forbes actually met Harding in Hawaii, and had a close relationship with Warren’s sister Caroline and her husband Heber Votaw. During his trial it came out that Forbes had pumped millions of dollars out of the fund set up to give care and aid to ailing veterans. What a gem.


In summation, ladies and gentlemen, Bush, unlike Harding, desperately aspired to and wields his office. It’s still up in the air as to whether he is the genesis of his controversial and aggressive policies or more of a puppet, manipulated by those around him like Rumsfeld and Cheney. I rather think it’s more of the former than the latter, and in that he’s also unlike the much beset-upon Harding. I also think Bush’s administration will be better remembered that Harding’s, but perhaps not for terribly different reasons. Where Harding’s legacy is purely the scandals of his administration, Bush’s administration will be eclipsed by his actions in Iraq. I just bet’cha.

Alright enough for now, dear readers. Maybe tomorrow we can make a return to dick and poop jokes. Tah-tah.

Don't Bogart That Grouper

8/16/06

The next time you go into a swanky, upscale joint high on cocaine and escorting a hooker on each arm, you might think twice about ordering the grouper. Or the red snapper. Or any other high-test fish ticket item on the menu because, half the time, you're getting screwed, partner.

According to a survey done by Florida's St. Petersburg Times, 6 of 11 restaurants are serving fish that isn't what it claims to be. One eatery was serving a "Champagne-braised black grouper" for $23. Only problem was it wasn't glorious grouper. After DNA testing a sample of the fish, it turned out to be common tilapia, a completely unrelated and much cheaper fish. According to Bob Jones, executive director for the Southeastern Fisheries Association, that's not all that uncommon.

Jones says that across the country anytime there's a test of restaurant fish, about half of them turn out to be a much cheaper species than what's claimed on the menu. Grouper is the biggest offender. Whose testicles do we squeeze over this gouging fiasco? It's tough to tell. It could be the suppliers, it could be the dealers and it could be the restaurants or any combination thereof. Jones though, says it's most often foreign suppliers providing Vietnamese or Chinese pond catfish labeled as grouper. The same advice for those of you cluttering up your houses with Flowbees and Nordic Tracks goes for restaurants purchasing fish; if it seems like too good a deal it probably is.

Domestic grouper goes for about $8-$9 per pound, imports about a dollar less. "Any cheaper should be a dead giveaway," says Tampa seafood distributor Will Ward. With such a hefty price for The Real McCoy it's little wonder catfish or tilapia finds its way into distribution, at anywhere from $1-$3 per pound.

The much blander, less sexy Tilapia fish.

Does anyone ever pay the price, so to speak, for this deception? As difficult as it is to assign blame, it does occur. According to Bob Jones offenders are "caught and fined in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of them may even be prison sentences involved. It makes the news and it gets some headlines and then it disappears and then nothing happens."

You still have just as good a chance to get the good stuff when ordering seafood, and Jones says "Florida is probably the most aggressive," about testing, but unless restaurants are going to set up a CSI lab with libraries of fish DNA on hand there doesn't seem to be much hope in sight. I suppose one way to fix the problem would be to go to someplace that lets you, I dunno, strangle the fish yourself or something. Of course even then there's no guarantee that Smitty in the kitchen there isn't swapping your succulent grouper out for bottom-barrel tilapia or scum-sucking catfish.


I suggest the beef.





St. Petersburg Times link to the original story with
a chart for the surveyed restaurants
NPR: Something Fishy interview with Bob Jones

Warehouse of Mystery

8/15/06

The building next door to my office is somewhat of a mystery. It appears to be a warehouse, though I haven't the slightest idea what they store or ship or...whatever there. It's of mild curiosity to me for several reasons, but said reasons fall just short of enough motivation for me to get together with a bunch of kids led by an Arian in a neckerchief and take our van out to investigate.

First of all, whoever designed the layout of the place was one sadistic S.O.B. Perhaps he/she (I'm assuming one or the other, not a transsexual) failed to take into account the fact that other buildings would be fashioned alongside in the future, or perhaps he/she had a serious drug habit impairing their judgment, or maybe they were just some lunatic asshole who cackles themselves to sleep thinking about all the asinine architectural designs they've passed off. It's specifically the loading bay I'm thinking of here.

In the most ass way possible, the loading bay is located in the back of the warehouse, scooched back in a recessed corner right next to their parking lot. In order for an 18-wheeler to get back there they have to either back-in around 3 corners of the building, or perform this crazy 37-point turn around maneuver, backing up 3 feet at a time to get into position for unloading their wares. I have, on several occasions, been out on break and witnessed a driver attempting this hedge-maze of a task while teetering on the brink of madness. One fellow, after a solid 10 minutes of inching back and forth and realizing he'd have to start the procedure all over, got out of his truck and actually jumped up and down, waving his arms like a thwarted cartoon villain. I half-expected him to actually tear off his hat and stomp on it. The hilarity of the situation was mitigated only by my empathy for the dude who at that moment must have been seriously questioning his career decisions.

The other curious thing about this warehouse of oddity is that it employs a seemingly disproportionate number of really hot chicks. I see them come out the back door for their own smoke breaks and whenever they leave to go home and I have counted no less than 10 really rather smoking women coming and going. Point of fact, I haven't seen even one female employee who isn't attractive. Amplifying this is the fact that I've only witnessed 3 or 4 male employees. I don't know if you've ever worked in a warehouse, but the number of attractive females populating such places is pretty thin on the ground. Maybe it's a lipstick lesbian storage facility, I dunno.

I haven't the slightest idea why this building of mystery should so fiercely fascinate yours truly, other than the fact that it's directly in my line of sight when I'm outside on break and it's something to ponder while I'm studiously avoiding eye contact with my fellow employees on the off-chance that they'll take it as an invitation to speak to me. I suppose I should just wander around to the front of the building and see if they have a sign cluing me in to the business they conduct. It'll probably just be a big, white rectangle with a blazing red question mark inside.

In Space, No One Can Hear You "BAM!"

8/11/06

Sometimes I think cynics give Emeril too hard a time. Yeah, he’s goofy and has silly catch-phrases, and his audience kisses his ass as if it had the cure for cancer inside it, but he’s also a premier chef whose celebrity is backed up by an enormous amount of skill. I must admit that I cringe whenever I watch his show and his audience seems awestruck by the fact that he just added cream to something, reacting as if he’d just turned back a sheet to reveal the Ark of the Covenant, but Emeril’s obvious love for cooking and ridiculously jubilant attitude just sort of makes you feel fun and goofy too. But to quote Jennifer Jason Leigh, “that’s just potatoes, Smitty, here comes the gravy.”

Yesterday the crew of The International Space Station chatted with Emeril via video link after enjoying dishes prepared by the chef and delivered to the station last month by the space shuttle Discovery. The meals had to be processed a bit differently; they didn’t want Essence floating all over the damn place, but 5 of Chef Lagasse’s dishes were selected to go orbital: Mardi Gras jambalaya, mashed potatoes with bacon, green beans with garlic, rice pudding and mixed fruit.

Emeril said he’s always been a fan of the space program and that “it’s an absolute honor to share my food with you on such a journey.” Currently The ISS is home to NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter. The crews typically work up there for six months at a time, and “quality, appetizing food is important for the heath and morale of astronauts during space missions,” states Vickie Kloeris who manages the development of food for the station.

I don’t know about you, but ever since I was a kid and had “freeze-dried ice cream,” I sort of felt space food must have been like eating packing peanuts, but apparently the menu for The ISS has over 200 items, including some Russian and Klingon cuisine. Okay I made up the Klingon thing. But I guess they were happy for the Emeril variations, because “our perception of taste is a little bit decreased,” said NASA’s Reiter. “We have a longing for a little bit spicier food.”

Good for them, I say, because when trapped in the deadly vacuum of space, urinating into a tube and conducting science which the general public basically just ignores and doesn’t understand, you should at least have appetizing food. I wonder if they get booze up there?



Sources: NASA, NPR Morning Edition

Waiting for Trudeau

7/20/06

I'd seen this one before, but in flipping channels last night I came by one of the freakiest breed of infomercial, in that it's not only openly psychotic, but also the purest example of an outright scam perpetrated on national television. By a show of hands, who has seen Kevin Trudeau hawking his demonic farce "Natural Cures They Dont Want You to Know About"?

The "they" to which our dear lunatic friend Kevin is alluding is the FDA and the big pharmaceutical companies. While I might agree that the former does not necessarily have our best interests at heart, and the latter might be comprised of soulless cash registers, I also think that Kevin could be the most insidious con-artist to grace the airwaves since Uri Gellar. Kevin would qualify as a bonafide, slathering head-case with bumper cars for brains if not for the fact that I don't think he believes one simpering word that falls from his perpetually running mouth. He knows what he's selling is b.s. and that takes him from hilarious lunatic straight into the realm of evil avarice-sprite preying upon peoples' hopes and fears and galloping desire to live forever. In short, he's a total, annoying dick.

His book claims that simply by using herbal or common, accessible treatments, one can treat or even cure ailments such as arthritis, acid reflux, PMS and even herpes and infertility. Incidentally, the cures for the above are, in order, crocodile protein peptide, apple cider vinegar, enemas, hydrogen peroxide and (this is my favorite) removing oneself from "electromagnetic chaos." In his words, Kevin has "been able to cure men of infertility by having them stop using laptop computers." Pretty much every disease you can get is caused by "nutritional deficiency," and by rendering the bodys pH level more alkaline, you can become nigh invulnerable to disease. Kevin also claims he sweats pure refined ambrosia, and his poo is made of candied apples. Okay, I made those last two up.

Kevin seems to have a disturbing preoccupation with the anus, falling back on the old favorite of colonics to bolster one's health. Wanna lose weight? Easy! Just let somebody shoot soapy water into your butthole once every two days for a month. Delightful!

Now for the fun part; what Kevin did before he found the cure to every motherfucking thing that ails the human race. He was a busy boy, it seems, and apparently it took awhile for our dear, helpful friend to find his curative niche in society. From Wikipedia, here's his rap sheet:

1990: Larceny & prison

Trudeau's legal problems are long-standing. In 1990, he posed as a doctor in
order to deposit $80,000 in false checks, and in 1991 he pled guilty to larceny
after he had provided false information to obtain credit cards which he used for his own purposes. He spent two years in prison because of this conviction.
(Choi, 2005) Most people in opposition to Trudeau's claims point to this felony
conviction as a good reason not to trust him.

1996: SEC

Trudeau rebounded, making a small fortune working for Nutrition
For Life, a multi-level marketing program. However, in 1996, his recruitment
practices ran afoul of the states of Illinois and Michigan, as well as the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission. Michigan went so far as to forbid him from
operating in the state.

1998: FTC fine

Then, in 1998, he was forced to pay $500,000 in consumer redress to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), relating to six infomercials he had produced and in which the FTC determined he had made false or misleading claims. Fun!
The best part about Kevin's new scheme is that it's virtually impossible to refute his cracker-jack ideas, as he provides no proof of scientific study
and no basis for checking up on the validity of his testimonials. (Uh,
yeah...this one guy in New Jersey got better. What? Oh...you, uhm, you don't know him...)

I suppose I can understand what appeal this snake oil artist has for Americans who are constantly bombarded with drug commercials infecting your mind with imaginary ailments and a pharmaceutical community which treats its customers rather like a pusher extracting every last dollar from a crack addict, not to mention a health care system thats been terminally fucked to the point where shes hemorrhaging through her womb, but c'mon...hydrogen peroxide for herpes? Say it with me, people; "Puh-LEEEEASE!"

Kevin Trudeau, douche bag extraordinaire though he may be, is not the only one. I saw an infomercial with some other jerk claiming that something in the diet of people in Nigeria and China (a diet of poverty?) leads to them getting virtually no cases of Alzheimer's. Striking me as odd, I did some research and found that not only is the reporting of such things dodgy at best in those countries, the average life expectancy of Nigeria is 57 and 71 for China. Symptoms for the disease almost never show up until you're in your 60's, and the average age for a positive diagnosis is 80. We've found a foolproof way to avoid Alzheimer's! Croak before you get it! Buy my book!

Kevin Trudeau's best claim ever is that he's not now, nor has he ever been a doctor or medical expert which is what makes him the perfect candidate to explain all this since he's not "in the system." Wow. I've never performed a liposuction, but I've got this vacuum and some radical ideas...





Sources: Wikipedia, Kevin Trudeau
Infomercial Watch; this is a great site with a transcript of an infomercial, and examples of why he's full of shit and knows it.

Hardee's: Terminally Self-Conscious

I don't know if Hardee's got molested as a child or was, perhaps a chronic bed-wetter, or is just scarred from not losing its virginity until it was thirty, but something deeply disturbing is going on inside its corporate psyche.

A few years ago I began to notice that Hardee's initiated a deeply aggressive ad campaign which was the marketing equivalent of a steroid-saturated redneck screaming that he wasn't gay. Loaded with over-compensation, they showed supposed customers of Hardee's in a bizarre documentary-style confession that "I never thought to eat at Hardee's, I mean, everyone knows their food is laced with botulism..." That's an exaggeration, but it's close.

They slowly morphed into ads dripping with testosterone, routinely featuring a male doing manly things like fixing cars or welding or raping someone up real nice, and finish with harshly-worded demands that imply to not eat their enormous burgers was akin to waving an estrogen flag with your limp wrist.

Just when I thought the strangeness had hit a crescendo the braying psychos heading up the marketing department trot out commercials with midgets playing construction worker elves or something, building "Stackers" burgers with cranes and bulldozers. Watching a cameo by Tattoo from Fantasy Island shouting "De meat, boss, de meat," was surreal enough, but then they throw all sanity out the window when the foreman screams like a drill sergeant at a subordinate not only for daring to make only a single-patty burger, but having the gall to put veggies on it.


"We only do meat and cheese!" he bellows. "We don't do singles!" I fail to see how leaving the only healthy part (vitamin C? Who needs vitamin C?! And fiber?! bah!) of a pound of cow flesh and death translates into good eatin'. It all just strikes me like the guy with a mullet who beats the crap out of a twink blowing him in the parking lot. They're just odd. Odd and terrified of being un-manly. I hate it.

Havana Nights

8/4/06



By now, dear readers, I'm sure you've all heard that Fidel Castro (80) is in a delicate condition. Or dead. Nobody seems to really know for sure. On July 31st of this year it was announced that Castro had "an acute intestinal crisis, with sustained bleeding" and had to be hospitalized, with provisional power turned over to his little brother Raul, a mere sapling at 75 years old. The Communist juggernaut Fidel, who has thwarted even the most stalwart attempts at assassination, has ruled over Cuba for a staggering 47 years and caused no end of grief and embarrassment to 10 US presidents. And his country makes some kick-ass cigars. In light of the current situation in that island nation, I thought it might be nice to look back on some of Fidel's greatest hits to the American leaders which have just kinda wished he would kick-off already and go to that big hand-rolling cigar factory in the sky. Enjoy.



Eisenhower: (1953-61)



March '58: US suspends arm shipments to Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, pretty much writing him off and laying down a golden path for Castro to take over. Ike welcomes Castro at first, but soon starts thinking "Oh crap," whenever it looks like the guy really is Communist, despite his claims to the contrary

May '60: Cuba and the USSR resume a diplomatic tête-à-tête, with Cuba importing Soviet oil, which leads Ike to throw down a little economic embargo for that Havana ass. The US congratulates itself on what will surely be a quick end to Communist Cuba.

Autumn, '60: Cubans flee the country in droves, heading for US coasts and requesting the US "do something" about Fidel. In an election debate, Kennedy says he'll help; Nixon says "F-that," claiming we would lose all our friends in Latin America, be chastised in the UN, totally fail to succeed, and create an "open invitation for Mr. Khrushchev to come in," despite the fact that he was planning an invasion of Cuba anyway.

'61: We stop talking to Cuba. See how you like the silent treatment, Smell-del!


Kennedy: (1961-63)



Being more attractive and flush with bootlegging capital, Kennedy wins the presidency over the flabbier, paler and possibly baby-eating Richard Nixon. Female panties moisten around the country and Kennedy puts the Bay of Pigs invasion (planned under the Ike administration) into action.

April '61: Okay...so the Bay of Pigs invasion might not have been the best idea. The Cuban civilians dont rise up against Castro and the attack is quickly quashed. We look like assholes. Everything Nixon said would happen does.

'62: US spy planes photograph Soviet missile silos being assembled in Cuba. American government breaths a collective "oh piss!" Cuban Missile Crisis causes 12 days of international pants-wetting while the US blockades Soviet ships bound for Cuba and everyone waits to become glow-in-the-dark from atomic fallout.

October 28, '62: Khrushchev agrees to pull nukes out of Cuba; Kennedy promises not to invade Cuba again. Everyone goes back to pretending that "duck-and-cover" is of any value whatever in case of nuclear attack.


Johnson: (1963-69)



Retains Kennedy's promises not to invade, but sends hoards of CIA agents swarming into Cuba to attempt to foster civil unrest and counterrevolution.

November '66: Under the powerfully unimaginatively-named Cuban Adjustment Act, the US grants permanent residence to 123,000 refugee Cubans fleeing Fidel's beard.

Nixon: (1969-74)



Okay, so he pretty much ignores Cuba in favor of a much more sparkly and promising war in Vietnam. People grow long hair and shout a lot despite all the really excellent drugs going around.

Ford: (1974-77)



The US attempts to get a little friendlier with Castro, opening back up for a nice little chat.

November '75: Castro, being the somewhat spiky and incorrigible cuss that he is, thumbs his nose at Ford and diplomacy is cut off when Fidel sends support to the Marxist regime in Angola.


Carter: (1977-81)



In dramatic carbon-copy fashion, the genteel peanut farmer also tries to resume diplomatic relations with Cuba, only to shut them back down again when Castro sends troops to support the Soviet-backed government in Ethiopia.

April '80: Laughing all the way to the bank, Castro announces that Cuban citizens can leave for the US if they want, creating a mass-exodus of 125,000 Cubans from the port of Muriel before Carter says "Holy bejeezus, whoa there!" and sends out the Coast Guard to stem the flow. Most Cubans settle in Florida, importing Salsa dancing and crazy Spanish disco.


Reagan: (1981-89)



The Gipper, Communist-crusher extraordinaire, views Cuba as an arm of the evil "Soviet Empire."

October '83: After learning that Castro is building an airstrip in Grenada, Reagan sends US troops into the island nation. It is the first and last time American and Cuban troops tangle in a firefight.


Bush I: (1989-93)



December '91: Christmas comes early to Bush, as Soviet subsidies of $6 billion annually to Cuba dry up like a menopausal vagina.

Bush tightens the economic embargo on Castro, hoping to choke the regime to death.

October '92: Congress prohibits foreign subsidies of US companies to Cuba, along with travel to the island of the Robusto, and family remittances to Cuba. Basically, we make a valiant effort to bankrupt the country.


Clinton: (1993-2001)



August '94: Once again Castro shrugs and says "You wanna go? Dont let the door hit you on the ass on the way out," to Cuban citizens. At least 30,000 take him up on it.

February '96: Clinton, now the 3rd POTUS to try improving relations with Cuba, gets a presidential bitch-slap when crazy-ass Cuba shoots down 2 civilian planes in international airspace. 3 Americans and 1 Cuban legal resident are killed.

Clinton, calling the act "total B.S., man," again tightens the Cuban embargo with the Helms-Burton Act, cementing it into law. Castro has a nap.

November '99: In something that would get way, way too much coverage by the media and politicians, 6 year old Elian Gonzalez from Cuba is found in a raft.

June '00: We finally send the damn kid back to his dad in Cuba.


Bush II: Electric Boogaloo:(2001-current)



We ratchet-down the embargo again. Nobody believes it matters piss-all anymore, and resign themselves to the "biologic solution" which involves waiting for an old man to die.

'05: The Mojito becomes savagely popular in the states, though I would like to point out I was drinking them back in '03, thank you very effing much.

July '06: Fidel goes into the hospital and Bush (benevolent nation-builder that he is!) promises to assist in the transition to a democratic Cuba once Fidel and Raul are out of the picture, kinda coming off like that psychotic cousin waiting for grandpa to die so he can blow the inheritance on cocaine and hookers.




Thus ends our history lesson for today, ladies and gentlemen! Have a nice day; I've got some drinking to do.

Story Has Been Edited for In-content

8/8/06



Listen, I know we only live in a city of some 160,000 people, but a staggering number of those in Springfield and the surrounding area get their news from the News-Leader paper, and so I'm just asking for a little attention to detail here. For those of you who may have missed it, The New-Leader ran a column off the AP wire yesterday entitled Study: Sex Lyrics Influence Teens concerning the supposed correlation between the amount of music with sexually explicit lyrics and the level of sexual activity in said kids.

Seeing as how I had nothing else to read in the lunchroom, and with the dangerous possibility that someone may talk to me without a printed buffer to deter them, I perused the article. I'm always wary of reports directly connecting influence in child behavior to any specific activity, be it music, TV, video games, religion, etc. So it was with some skepticism that I read the following:

Chicago--Teens whose iPods are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study found.

Whether it's hip-hop, rap, pop or rock, much of popular music aimed at teens contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behavior appears to depend on how the sex is portrayed, researchers found.

Songs depicting men as "sex-driven studs," women as sex objects and with explicit references to sex acts are more likely to trigger early sexual behavior than those where sexual references are more veiled and relationships appear more committed, the study found.

Teens who said they listened to lots of music with degrading sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse or other sexual activities within the following two years as were teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

Among heavy listeners, 51 percent started having sex within two years, versus 29 percent of those who said they listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

Exposure to lots of sexually degrading music "gives them a specific message about sex," said lead author Steven Martino, a researcher for Rand Corp. in Pittsburgh. Boys learn they should be relentless in pursuit of women and girls learn to view themselves as sex objects, he said.

"We think that really lowers kids' inhibitions and makes them less thoughtful" about sexual decisions and may influence them to make decisions they regret, he said.

The study, based on telephone interviews with 1,461 participants aged 12 to 17, appears in the August issue of Pediatrics, being released today.

This raised my ire more than a little bit, since according to what I gleaned from the article, there was no address of the fact that its almost impossible to prove this music had a causal relationship to the teens' behavior. You could, for example, say that the hot, pulsing lyrics caused the teens to want to engage in the horizontal mambo, but you could also say that these teens were already predisposed to a sexual frame of mind, and therefore chose music which reflected that. (I burp. There are no tigers around. Therefore my burps repel tigers.) But no; nary a word of the flipside argument was spoken.

So you can imagine my irritation when, upon researching the study on the internet, I ran across the same story in The Washington Post with one tiny little difference. The Post, unlike our illustrious News-Leader, ran the full story.

It seems that the News-Leader had left out over half the article from their printing in the most ass way possible; they just removed everything from the end that wouldn't fit. I can understand trundicating a story for space the same way TV stations edit movies to run in the allotted time frame, but how irresponsibly lazy do you have to be to just hack-off the tail end of the article which, I might add, contains the dissenting viewpoint? I mean sure, it would have taken upwards of fifteen minutes to actually read the AP story and edit down bits and pieces out of the entire article, but why practice responsible reporting when we can just tear off the bottom of the page? I've reprinted the entire article from the Post at the bottom, in case you, you know, want to get a complete picture of the issue.

The rest of the story still comes out heavily for music influencing teens, but they do at least present the other side of the coin for your consideration, which is all I'm asking. This isn't even a hugely important story or anything, but with so many people content to get their news in tiny, out-of-context or purposefully skewed sound bites, we don't need the printed media to help us in our willful ignorance. Now if you'll excuse me, I think there's a child around here that probably doesn't know Santa Clause isn't real; we'll fix that!








Entire contents of Study article:

The last sentence included in the News-Leader version is highlighted in red.



Sexual Lyrics Prompt Teens to Have Sex

By LINDSEY TANNER
The Associated Press
Monday, August 7, 2006; 12:51 AM

CHICAGO -- Teens whose iPods are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study found.

Whether it's hip-hop, rap, pop or rock, much of popular music aimed at teens contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behavior appears to depend on how the sex is portrayed, researchers found.

Songs depicting men as "sex-driven studs," women as sex objects and with explicit references to sex acts are more likely to trigger early sexual behavior than those where sexual references are more veiled and relationships appear more committed, the study found.

Teens who said they listened to lots of music with degrading sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse or other sexual activities within the following two years as were teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

Among heavy listeners, 51 percent started having sex within two years, versus 29 percent of those who said they listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

Exposure to lots of sexually degrading music "gives them a specific message about sex," said lead author Steven Martino, a researcher for Rand Corp. in Pittsburgh. Boys learn they should be relentless in pursuit of women and girls learn to view themselves as sex objects, he said.

"We think that really lowers kids' inhibitions and makes them less thoughtful" about sexual decisions and may influence them to make decisions they regret, he said.

The study, based on telephone interviews with 1,461 participants aged 12 to 17, appears in the August issue of Pediatrics, being released Monday.

Most participants were virgins when they were first questioned in 2001. Follow-up interviews were done in 2002 and 2004 to see if music choice had influenced subsequent behavior.

Natasha Ramsey, a 17-year-old from New Brunswick, N.J., said she and other teens sometimes listen to sexually explicit songs because they like the beat.

"I won't really realize that the person is talking about having sex or raping a girl," she said. Even so, the message "is being beaten into the teens' heads," she said. "We don't even really realize how much."

"A lot of teens think that's the way they're supposed to be, they think that's the cool thing to do. Because it's so common, it's accepted," said Ramsey, a teen editor for Sexetc.org, a teen sexual health Web site produced at Rutgers University.

"Teens will try to deny it, they'll say 'No, it's not the music,' but it IS the music. That has one of the biggest impacts on our lives," Ramsey said.

The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the U.S. recording industry, declined to comment on the findings.

Benjamin Chavis, chief executive officer of the Hip-Hip Summit Action Network, a coalition of hip-hop musicians and recording industry executives, said explicit music lyrics are a cultural expression that reflect "social and economic realities."

"We caution rushing to judgment that music more than any other factor is a causative factor" for teens initiating sex, Chavis said.

Martino said the researchers tried to account for other factors that could affect teens' sexual behavior, including parental permissiveness, and still found explicit lyrics had a strong influence.

However, Yvonne K. Fulbright, a New York-based sex researcher and author, said factors including peer pressure, self-esteem and home environment are probably more influential than the research suggests.

"It's a little dangerous to just pinpoint one thing. You have to look at everything that's going on in a young person's life," she said. "When somebody has a healthy sense of themselves, they don't take these lyrics too seriously."

David Walsh, a psychologist who heads the National Institute on Media and the Family, said the results make sense, and echo research on the influence of videos and other visual media.

The brain's impulse-control center undergoes "major construction" during the teen years at the same time that an interest in sex starts to blossom, he said.

Add sexually arousing lyrics and "it's not that surprising that a kid with a heavier diet of that ... would be at greater risk for sexual behavior," Walsh said.

Martino said parents, educators and teens themselves need to think more critically about messages in music lyrics.

Fulbright agreed.

"A healthy home atmosphere is one that allows a child to investigate what pop culture has to offer and at the same time say 'I know this is a fun song but you know that it's not right to treat women this way or this isn't a good person to have as a role model,'" she said.

___

On the Net:

_Pediatrics: http://www.aap.org/

_National Institute on Media and Family: http://www.mediaandthefamily.org/

_Teen sexual health: http://www.sexetc.org/