how much poisoned milk do YOU want?

in an oversightless bow to the dairy industry, the fda has set a limit for how much melamine can be present in baby formula.

that's right - the same chemical that has been sending babies in china to join the choir invisible. it's kind of like their ruling regarding how many rat droppings (.06% by volume) can be present in your favorite brand of hot dog.

what the hell is wrong with our country when we allow any amount of any kind of poison in infant formula?

perhaps it's time to take a broom to the fda.

surprise! tv addicts are all depressed

in what we're sure is a surprise to absolutely no one (and despite our come-on to the contrary), it has been discovered that people that watch a lot of television tend to suffer from depression.

well, duh. friends is off the air. who wouldn't be depressed?

(pathetic attempt at humor aside, we hardly ever watch tv: none of the shows seem to be targeted at us, or anyone else with an iq above that of a raisin. plus watching all of you monkey minds has much higher entertainment value than anything the boob tube has, is, or will ever broadcast.)

helena bonham carter

watching sweeney todd, our favorite musical, it occurs to us that helena bonham carter is an extremely gifted actress & singer. so she's married to director tim burton yet lives next door to him - we've all got our little eccentricities. plus she looks like this without clothes on.

emma watson

aside from the danger of being typecast from appearing in a giga-grossing film franchise, we have just one minor bit of advice for uk girl emma watson: when you're best known for children's films & plan to be in a few more, it's probably best not to go out on the town in see-through knickers.

(merry christmas, fanboys.)

another good reason to tax churches

so there's this priest in south carolina, and he's decided that anyone that voted for barak obama can't have communion.

that's it - that's all we've got. proceed at your own risk (of eternal damnation, that is).

how not to run out of fish

ever seen what a bottom trawl net does to the sea floor? imagine one of those old, grainy nuclear weapons test films: it's like that. the problem is, not only does it gather up whatever the fishing crew is looking for - it also kills literally everything else. it's kind of like dropping a neutron bomb on the chicago stockyards because you fancy a bit of barbecue.

the problem is, we assume that the supply of fish is endless, and that they belong to anyone that catches them. that kind of thinking will lead to the end of almost every commercial fishing stock within the next 20 years or so.

solution? award ownership of the fishing stocks to the community, almost like a stock grant. because the value of the stock goes up if the fish actually still exist, the community has a vested interest in making sure that the fish continue to exist.

doh!

quit yer bitchin' #27

lose your job in the current economic shakedown? get a job test-driving playground equipment. just remember not to take it seriously. remember: it's not like it's real life or anything.

a better baptism

hello, babies. welcome to earth. it's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. it's round and wet and crowded. at the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. there's only one rule that i know of, babies — god damn it, you've got to be kind.

kurt vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

prayer

call on god, but row away from the rocks.

dr. hunter s. thompson (1937-2005)

maleva's prayer

the way you walked was thorny through no fault of your own but as the rain enters the soil the river enters the sea so tears run to a predestined end your suffering is over now you will find peace for eternity

petra memcova

ladies & gentlemen, may we present ms. petra memcova, just because we like saying her name.

say it with us: petra memcova.

(no kidding: we don't even know what she does. besides look this good, that is.)

quit yer bitchin #26

there's a reason that freddie is still working at burger king at 46 years of age. see if you can guess what it is.

(too much) power plants

more than 1,000 power plants in the u.s. use water from our lakes & rivers for steam to power their turbines. a single power plant uses millions of gallons of water a minute. with all that water comes fish & fish eggs. so how many die a year as a result?

according to the epa (which only counts fish that have commercial value), somewhere above 1.5 billion a year. let that number sink in for a minute. 1.5 billion. and have you noticed that almost all of the salmon that you see in the market these days is 'atlantic' salmon (ie, farmed, because native salmon actually come from the pacific and from rivers that feed into it - or at least they did).

many parents of autistic children blame innoculations that contain mercury for their childdren's condition, despite federal studies that apparently disprove any link. but coal-fired power plants also produce a large amount of mercury in atmospheric form, and there just happens to be a new study that links autism with rainfall, which captures atmospheric mercury and pushes it into the water supply. combating either issue costs money, which power companies - almost all of them legal monopolies - grease senators to avoid.

fine - that being the case, we think it's only fair that they and all of their employees and stockholders be prevented from ever eating freshwater fish of any kind ever again. and that the only liquid that they be permitted to imbibe be rainwater from the retaining ponds next to their plants.

if it was good enough for solomon, it's good enough for us.

big brother is (still) listening to your calls

dubya got the telecomms off for their part in listening in on our phone calls - including the phone calls of members of our own armed forces to their families back home. but the real muscle behind the operation - the secrecy-shrouded nsa - may never have stopped, despite clear legislation dating back to the 70's meant to protect us from exactly this kind of eavesdropping.

so what makes us think the nsa is still on the other end of the line? how about the fact that they are building a data center in texas that's the size of a football stadium?

think about how much information a jump drive holds these days. and they're smaller than your little finger. how much information would a jump drive that's the size of the astrodome hold, do you think? every phone call made in, to, or from this country? every email message, tweet, and blog post, perhaps?

yeah - that sounds about right.

we thinks it's time again to start watching the watchmen.

the ultimate out

big pharma is pushing for a profound redefinition of the law regarding product liability. namely, they're trying to convince the courts that having an fda warning label exempts them from any liability whatsoever, no matter what happens.

their stance is that - because the fda approved their drugs - any adverse reactions and/or deaths that result are covered under some kind of magic federal umbrella. unfortunately, they've gained the ears of some members of congress by stuffing money in them - their preferred method of persuasion for lo, these many years.

for the music fans

in a spirit of nostalgia and self-aggrandizement brought on by reading both sting's and andy summers' autobiographies in the same week, here are the original songs performed by some of the bands that i played in. all but 'nuclear baby' (written by greg maddox, the founder of lyghthouse) were penned by yours truly:

lyghthouse

nuclear baby

ruby dancer

i won't sleep with you

nobody knows

man o' war

simbora

holdin' out (and holdin' in)

(i need) your love

schoenherr project (with jerry schoenherr)

she's a smile

restless people

chrome bones

speechless

missionary

some of these can still be heard on mog.

are ray guns humane as well as stylish?

ya gotta love the pentagon (we do, anyway), constantly hiring contractors to come up with better, faster, cheaper, or at least more entertaining ways of turning the guy across the street into something that can be poured through a straw.

they do have some sense, though (even if it doesn't apply to budgetary restrictions): after the photos of what was really going on in iraq got out, debuting a ray gun that essentially cooks people in their skins like baked potatoes seemed dicey.

did they abandon the program? heck no! the idea of it is just too darned attractive - kind of like combining the 'i'm crushing your head' guy from kids in the hall with the endless entertainment of a flame thrower. what's not to love? so they put it under wraps.

until now.

love that dirty water

do you drink bottled water? yeah? well, have we got a clip for you:

the environmental working group, a non-profit, sent samples of the 10 most popular bottled water brands to labs at the university of iowa. their findings? it's no better than tap water - just more expensive.

every time you crack a cold one, here's a list of the ingredients that you may be getting:

disinfection products

trihalomethanes

caffeine

tylenol

nitrate

industrial chemicals

arsenic

bacteria

enjoy!

natalie portman

natalie portman has at least two talents that we can see:

first, she is an incredibly gifted actress, not afraid to take on anything from childrens' fantasies and politically incorrect morality tales to ultraviolent age-inappropriate epics...
second, she can look good even when wearing a toilet seat cover...
...a trash bag...
...or stevie nicks' hand-me-downs.

politics

politics is the art of obtaining money from the rich and votes from the poor on the pretext of protecting each from the other.

oscar ameringer (1870 - 1943)

quit yer bitchin' #25

we suppose it was only a matter of time, given the economy.

it certainly explains a lot.

(do you think he'll ask for a government bailout, too?)

quit yer bitchin' #24

this will probably be the last year that we let the elsewhen staff wear halloween costumes to work. they put waaaay too much thought into it.

quit yer bitchin' #23

impact helmet: $35

waterproof bodysuit: $87

lycra life vest: $62

kayak: $840

discovering a waterfall that isn't on the map: priceless

quit yer bitchin' #22

you gotta hand it to those christians, always willing to lend a hand.

(we just wish they'd get the other one out of our pocket.)

quit yer bitchin' #21

the trick, of course, is convincing your significant other.

(or, if you don't have one, the wino and the salaryman sitting next to you on the midnight meat train.)

quit yer bitchin' #20

no matter who wins on tuesday, they've got a lot of cleaning up to do. but what else would you expect when following an elephant?