'every day is apartheid day for chickens'

excuse me for starting off with a tangent, but if you haven't already read tim wise's book 'white like me', do so. ok? prolly the best modern white dissection of american racism.

anyhoo, as much as i love god's lil' creatures the self-righteousness of the more vigilant in the animal rights movement has always kinda annoyed me, even way back when i was a vegan. tim's got a great article up on counterpunch called 'animal whites' that offers a dissection of some of the more offensive rhetoric used in defense of the fuzzy guys.

"To wit, Dawn Carr, PETA's Director of Special Projects, who has admitted that lots of folks are upset about her group "comparing black people to animals," but who, in PETA's defense, doesn't deny that that is what PETA is doing, but rather insists it's OK, because the exhibit also compares factory farming to other injustices, "like denying women the vote or using child labor." In other words, don't worry black people: you're not the only ones we're comparing to animals!"

kinda reminds me of people like this.

4:45 p.m.-6:00 p.m. Confrontation with Jennifer over birth control. She says pills are "synthetic" hormones. I say the only thing synthetic are my shoes—no leather here! I refuse to have intercourse until a non-latex-based, nonhormonal birth-control method is established. Jennifer rummages through vegetable crisper, retires to bedroom. I believe she is beginning to see the light.

7:45 p.m. Leaf through PETA catalog (new hemp shoes!), eat tofu stir-fry. Decide not to brush teeth after eating as I usually do to accommodate Jennifer's soy sensitivity. Give her sloppy kiss when she emerges from bedroom. Swear that resulting hives are from a built-up Midwestern resistance to healthful, nonmeat alternatives. She begins to cry. Finally, a breakthrough.

special sauce!

stumbled across a satirical commentary on old mickey deez adverts on the website of StayFree! magazine... what really caught my attention was this piece of prophecy, foretelling the story of the 2004 election in an 80' burger ad:

EXT. MCDONALDLAND--DAY

MAYOR MCCHEESE arrives at the McDonaldland restaurant via a miniature train. A cheering crowd of children welcome him.
ANNOUNCER: Well, well! Election time in McDonaldland! Mayor McCheese is making speeches! MCCHEESE: Greetings, friends! What this place needs is more, uh . . . um . . .
RONALD: Uh, cheeseburgers!
MCCHEESE: Cheeseburgers, yeah! They're delicious, honest! Uh, self-winding, you know!
RONALD feeds MCCHEESE another line.
RONALD: Trustworthy!
MCCHEESE: Trustworthy!
HAMBURGLAR shoves a stack of ballots into the ballot box, then puts two hamburgers in a sack before escaping, pursued by BIG MAC.
ANNOUNCER: Meanwhile, the Hamburglar is stuffing the ballot box... and his pockets!
MCCHEESE: Uhhh, uhhh, how's about a Cheeseburger with every apple pie! (Children cheer this proposal.) Or maybe with every bag of french fries! In every glove compartment!
RONALD: No! No, no, no, no!
MCCHEESE: Every meal! In everybody, y'know!
RONALD counts ballots.
ANNOUNCER: Well, McCheese has been re-elected!
MCCHEESE: Thank you! Thank you, thank you!
RONALD: But nobody can beat a McDonald's cheeseburger!

ASSIGNMENT:
Write a short paragraph comparing the events of the commercial to the 2004 U.S. Presidential election.
Hints:
1. Notice the twitchy, disoriented candidate running for re-election who has to be fed lines. You may wish to pick a substance that the fictional candidate's head is made from and construct an epithet applying to his real-life counterpart.
2. Notice the campaign promises that sound appealing, but in the end will be bad for all of us.
3. In the ad, the only enemy of McDonaldland who manages to penetrate the nation's borders escapes unpunished. Could this observation serve your allegorical piece?
4. Note that the clear instance of electoral fraud is never rectified, and in fact the ballots are counted by a member of McCheese's own staff.
5. For a real slam-bang ending, express doubt as to which election is more obviously a farcical fiction designed to promote corporate interests.

tracking the iraq war dead.

check out this map tracking coalition fatalities in iraq from the beginning of the war in 2003 to present. its a powerful visual representation of the human cost of war.

as some commie folk-singer once said, "how many dead will it take 'til we know that too many people have died?"


maybe we need a few more cindy sheehan's blowing in the wind.

feeling the space.

ok, im back with a vengance and ive figured out how to upload images.

anyhow, my new cartoon love is www.mikhaela.net

full blown ninnies in a pod

cartoon by mr. fish, courtesy of www.harpers.org

read bruce shapiro's commenatry on roberts in the nation:

"Perhaps most telling is Roberts's brief track record on the federal bench on individual rights, a threshold issue not just for the left but conservative libertarians. A few years back, Washington, DC, police arrested a child for eating a single french fry on the Metro, during a zero-tolerance crackdown on subway-rule violators: arrrested her, handcuffed her, fingerprinted her, threw her in the back of a squad car and held that 12-year-old in lockup for three hours. The child's mother sensibly pointed out in a lawsuit that an adult committing the same offense would have been issued a ticket, not treated like a dangerous felon. Judge Roberts rejected the mother's plea for sanity: Arresting a 12-year-old like a suspect on Cops for eating on the subway, Roberts wrote, advanced "the legitimate goal of promoting parental awareness and involvement with children who commit delinquent acts." Even in red states, parents may not spare much enthusiasm for a judge who would lock up their 12-year-old for public consumption of McDonald's fries.
The french-fry case suggests that behind Judge Roberts's famous amiablity--which has won him influential friends in both parties--lies a far more doctrinaire personality. Whiffs of that ideological rigidity leak out of his careful opinions and briefs. Hostility to environmental regulation? Yes, at least in his ruling in a California land-development case in which he sought to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Hostility to reproductive rights? As a deputy to solicitor general Ken Starr in the Reagan years, he curried favor with the antiabortion right by adding an irrelevant footnote to his briefs in a family-planning-funding case, arguing that Roe v. Wade was "wrongly decided and should be overturned." In his appeals-court confirmation hearings, Roberts said this footnote simply reflected Administration policy, adding that he regards Roe as settled law; but his willingness to go beyond the call of duty and politicize his briefs suggests, at a minimum, enthusiasm for revisiting the issue. "

wave that flag!

the focus seems to be shifting from 'one nation' to 'under god' - for the radical sectarians, there is now an official Christian Flag of the United States of America:
http://www.uschristianflag.com/
heres a 'customer comment' from a fella named 'hillbillybob':
"every one says god bless america But when is america going to bless god He has done more than his share its about time we did ours this flag is a great start on doing our part god bless and love to all."
whatever happened to the good ol' blood of the lamb on the doorway thing?

the internet flat-earth theory...

i seem to have dropped off the edge for a while.