Whomp Power

I'm sorry, but this is funny.

Jesus Dress-up

I'll try not to blog every time he writes an article (which is once or twice a week), but if you like what you read, you should subscribe. Mark is an S.F. Gate Columnist, and he has taught me that Fiona Apple has a cool unknown album, about god and tsunamis, how to shop blue, painfully reminded me how cool Canada is, made me long for the day that "President Kucinich" would be a real statement, and of course, reminded everyone that Wal-Mart is the root of all evil.

(Off topic - there was an episode of the Simpson's on last week that had Homer working as a greeter at "Sprawl Mart", and there was a sign on the outside of the building that said "If you worked here, you'd be poor by now.")

Today's column - "Is Safeway Sucking Your Soul? Are overlit, heavily toxic supermarkets making you ill and eating your brain? Why, yes - is particularly funny, and serves to remind us how easy it is to fall into "bad" habits, and that every once in a while we should stop and think. Is neon orange food good for us? Probably not.

"And then, when you least expect it, you find yourself in some situation or in some town with no other grocery options and you innocently walk back into Safeway to try to buy some organic hormone-free eggs (ha-ha yeah right good luck) - and WHAM. Sensory overload. Low-vibration overload. You get what in meditation circles they would call whacked, slapped upside the spirit by dank, malicious energy. Supermarket Syndrome.

Pork-like sausage in a can. Cool Whip with enough high-fructose corn syrup to caulk your driveway. Creepy chicken-flavored sauce packets, ten to a box. Precut celery. Precut cookie dough. Precut everything because you're too lazy to handle a knife. Nabisco honey-flavored Teddy Grahams shaped like Dora the Explorer. Dawn Wash & Toss. Crustless white bread of sufficient consistency to plug Hoover Dam.

We are amazing beings, us bipeds. We adapt. We can endure the most unlivable crap and the most unhealthy exposure and think it's completely fine and normal. "

Verdict on the dark chocolate M&M's:
Meh.

For some utterly divine dark chocolate, try Moonstruck. I tried the Chile Variado bar, mmmm spicy.

Secondly, I obviously need to severly overhaul my graphic design pricing. I mean geez, Clackamas County paid $10,000 for a logo. I get $40, maybe $80 if I'm lucky. I can't find a copy of their new logo online yet, but Derek says it looks like a triangle with a fried egg on it.

Finally, help Arrested Development stay on the air. Funniest show on tv. www.getarrested.com

Mark Morford's column, fresh from my inbox: Earth To Humankind: Back Off


"And you read this horrific story about how we are mauling the planet at an unprecedented rate and you ask yourself the obvious question: Our government is doing what about this again? Oh right: nothing. Not one thing. They are, in fact, making it all far, far worse. Worse environmental president in American history, you remind yourself. Whee."

Morford also says "And this heartbreaking study, it comes hot on the heels of one of the most distressing and sobering pieces of journalism I've read in ages, an excerpt from a book by James Howard Kunstler called "The Long Emergency," all about the imminent and staggering oil/natural gas crisis now looming large over the U.S. and the world, a crisis of such dire proportions that it will very soon reshape American life like nothing since the Industrial Revolution. Except in reverse."

Here is the link to Kunstler's book excerpt. His cheery article states things like "The widely touted "hydrogen economy" is a particularly cruel hoax. We are not going to replace the U.S. automobile and truck fleet with vehicles run on fuel cells. For one thing, the current generation of fuel cells is largely designed to run on hydrogen obtained from natural gas. The other way to get hydrogen in the quantities wished for would be electrolysis of water using power from hundreds of nuclear plants. Apart from the dim prospect of our building that many nuclear plants soon enough, there are also numerous severe problems with hydrogen's nature as an element that present forbidding obstacles to its use as a replacement for oil and gas, especially in storage and transport."

And again, from Morford, the funny on the Rapture Index: "In fact, the index now stands at 152, well above the "Oh sweet Jesus take me now" threshold. Which means, of course, that the Second Coming might have already come and gone, and Jesus may have swooped down and taken one look at what we've done to the place and said, you've got to be freakin' kidding me, and said, sorry but no one here deserves much of anything illuminative or enlightened right now. Can't you just hear all those gay-hatin' born-again Christians saying, what the hell?"

Guess I better learn to become a better farmer, stuck out here in the boonies. And maybe I should learn how to make beeswax candles...

What is up with PBS? It is bad enough that our commercial free programming has 5 minutes of "commercials" before each show (including McDonald's). Now PBS is teaming with Comcast for a 24 hour channel aimed at pre-schoolers.

"On Monday, Comcast will announce the details of its new 24-hour digital cable channel for preschoolers, which will feature Elmo, Big Bird, Barney — and commercials. PBS not only approves, but is a partner: The channel's co-owners are PBS, Sesame Workshop and HIT Entertainment, producer of "Barney and Friends" and "Bob the Builder."" A spokesperson states "This is another way of getting PBS' excellent programming to children." Hello! There is already a 24 hour non-commercial channel - PBS Kids. Oh I see, that will be cancelled - " The gap opens in September when the network turns off the PBS Kids channel distributed to stations since 1999 and now retransmitted by 74 stations as well as DirecTV and other satellite providers. The channel and other activities had been subsidized by a licensing deal with DirecTV that is expiring."

Apparently not every PBS station will sign on with this. Many say that PBS is doing this because of lack of federal funding. However, word on the street from mamas I know that have called their local stations about this have found that it isn't due to lack of funding, but is seen as a great "marketing strategy and branding tool". Whatever.

Elmo continues his march to entrance toddlers around the world. In Japan, Elmo has a different take on things.

"In Japan, known for its reserve, Elmo is all about feelings. "We're going for a deeper kind of character with a wider range of emotions," said Yasuo Kameyama, one of the local producers who works on the show with New York-based Sesame Workshop, the non-profit organization behind Sesame Street. The educational show has enjoyed more than 35 years of success in the United States by delivering fun-filled preschool learning. And so Elmo's job was to teach basic learning like the alphabet and counting. But in Japan, where the literacy rate stands at 100 per cent and children are sent regularly to cram schools, the Sesame Street that started last fall is designed to be more emotional. Japan's Elmo cries more easily than the U.S. version. The American Elmo wept only once during the entire Sesame Street history, when a goldfish died, but Elmo has already had one bout of tears in the Japanese production - when a friend left without saying goodbye - and more are planned.

"We want to depict emotional conflict through Elmo," Kameyama said."

In other countries, they do some interesting things with Sesame Street - "In South Africa, there's an HIV-positive Muppet. The Muppets are helping children learn cross-cultural respect in the Middle East through programs in Israel and Palestine. In Norway, a live birth was shown in an episode."

Crap. There goes the diet.

Behold, dark chocolate M&M's.