TV Commercials

OK, I get that TV commercials are a required evil that "pay" for most of the programing we receive.

But really, is it THAT necessary for THE FUCKING VOLUME of ads to be SO FUCKING LOUD when we break from the show we were enjoying?

The current Beijing Olympics is highlighting this eardrum-damaging craziness and it is gripping my shit!

Stop it!

(Please)

Whole Foods Market

Back in June Kroger supermarkets started recalling potentially-contaminated meat supplied to them by Nebraska Beef Ltd

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) stated that Nebraska Beef production practices were “insufficient to effectively control E. coli 0157:H7 in their beef products” The agency added that the products subject to recall may have been produced under unsanitary conditions.

At least 41 people in Michigan and Ohio were stricken with E. coli food poisoning that the FSIS linked (through epidemiological investigation and genetic testing) to Nebraska Beef’s ground beef products. 19 people or more had to seek treatment for related food poisoning in hospitals, including one Michigander who was hospitalized for kidney failure.

Following the announcement by the FSIS, Kroger seemed to respond rapidly and admirably.

Did the people at Whole Foods - whose motto is "Quality Foods from sources you can trust" not get the memo? Maybe no-one in the company is intellectual enough to watch the news or even read a newspaper?

Whole Foods failed to recall any of the meat they sourced from Nebraksa Beef until last Friday, August 8th.

Meaning they had been happily selling it for over a month since the problems were first acknowledged.

Whole Foods market themselves as a 'better than the rest' chain with a nod to 'cleaner, healthier living'. This is what their website states ... our business is to sell the highest quality foods we can find at the most competitive prices possible. We evaluate quality in terms of nutrition, freshness, appearance, and taste. Our search for quality is a never-ending process involving the careful judgment of buyers throughout the company.

However, it would appear this statement is mere lip service. Their search for quality must have ended, and their failure to quickly recall contaminated beef may have done a lot more than just grip some people's shit?!

One VERY poor management decision at Whole Foods Markets should have customers seriously considering if the chain's higher-than-average prices (for "quality" remember) are justified.

American Family Association

According to their website, the American Family Association (AFA) "exists to motivate and equip citizens to change the culture to reflect Biblical truth and traditional family values"

By biblical truth they must mean that hoary old fictional tale that some cosmic Jewish zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

Indeed, a fine truth to live by.

The AFA is a VERY right wing conservative "pressure group" which attempts to police the entertainment industry (and "social culture" in general) over the things they believe attacks the association's own religious concept of "traditional family values".

The AFA is very scared of gay people.

In the past it has boycotted companies for offering same-sex partner employee benefits (including the family friendly Disney Corporation) and condemned others (Sears) for running commercials on TV channels such as the LGBT-friendly Logo.

More recently it has announced a boycott of McDonalds because not only did the corporation have a director on the boards of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, but also because the fast food giant had sponsored a gay pride parade.

Apparently this boycott is "just about" McDonalds, as a corporation, refusing to remain neutral in the culture wars.

With hypocrisy already rampant here - why should McDonalds remain neutral when the AFA continually broadcasts its own lack of neutrality? - let us comment on something else that appeared on its website.

Remember me saying the AFA is scared of gay people?

Indeed, the association is so scared of gay people it even refuses to acknowledge their apparent appropriation of the very word "gay".

True to their word, the AFA website has a policy of always replacing the word "gay" with the word "homosexual"

So the website's auto-correct function blew a fuse when it wrote a piece about the Beijing Olympics, more specifically 100m track star Tyson Gay.

"Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has... "It means a lot to me," the 25-year-old Homosexual said. "I'm glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me."

You just know that for all their remarks, extreme hypocrisy exists inside this holier-than-thou association - so I eagerly wait for the time when, for example, a senior member gets done for pedophilia or an executive is unceremoniously outed.



Peddling this type of hate-filled agenda - and persecuting a whole sector of society - smacks of more than just a hint of Hitler - and it most certainly grips my shit.

Indeed, in my head, I have already started to auto-correct what the "F" in AFA actually stands for!

Precious NYC Mommies

New York City spent MILLIONS of dollars upgrading all its children's playgrounds, installing rubber safety matting to protect the little tots from falling off equipment and hurting themselves.

Seems as if New York City has no way of protecting those same children from stupid parents?

The city is now being sued by a number of parents - with the claims for "damages" being anything from $750,000 to $1m - because their kids burnt their bare feet on the rubber playground surface on what were extremely hot summer days.

This act of "nanny state" litigation brings up so many questions, including

1• What are parents doing taking their kids out to an unshaded playground in the heat of the summer?
2 • Why would ANY parent let their children go barefoot in ANY NYC park given the potential dangers of used syringes, broken bottles etc.?
3 • Ever heard of an invention called "shoes"?

Don't get me wrong. I feel sorry for the kids if their feet got burned and they suffered some pain.

But the parents/nannies pucker me right up and grip my shit because, as grown-ups, they should certainly know better than to let their kids play barefoot in that type of heat & environment.

It's the parents who have been irresponsible here, NOT New York City. Why should the city pay for your ignorance and stupidity?

Chevron

It's rare that I am open-mouthed at something I read - the inhumane actions of people rarely surprising me, quite frankly - but this past weekend I happened across something that gripped every conceivable dollop of shit in my system.

Mainly because it gripped it in so many varied ways.

Firstly, lets have a show of hands from all those readers who were even aware that petroleum giant Texaco (now owned by even larger petroleum giant Chevron) had been accused of dumping 18½ BILLION gallons of toxic oil waste into Ecuador's rivers and streams between 1964 and 1990.

I cannot recall ANY major news report or article on this scandal. Why is that? Has the story been somehow suppressed? It wouldn't surprise me if Texaco/Chevron had somehow managed to keep a lid on this, but you would think that in the ever-growing 'ecological climate' someone somewhere would have blown the whistle on this disgraceful corporate act?

Maybe there's just too much money and influence floating around?

Borne out by the details of an even more disgusting second act to this tale of corporate indifference.

For the past five years a lawsuit has been tried in Ecuador, which has accused Chevron of trying to squirm out of the responsibilities to clean up the rainforest and pay compensation to the many indigenous Indian peasants who have suffered physical deformities and cancer as a direct result of the disaster. A disaster, by the way, which has been described by some as an "Amazon Chernobyl".

Chevron, whose net profit for the past quarter totalled $5.98 billion ("crisis, what gas crisis?") have been resisting the charges, denouncing the Ecuadorian claim as nothing more than a "shakedown".

However, this spring a court-appointed expert recommended that Chevron pay between $7.2 billion and $16.3 billion to clean up the rain forest.

This somewhat moved the goalposts for the oil giant, suddenly forcing them to announce the decision to their shareholders and spawning the next - and quite incredible - piece of shit-gripping.

Chevron have rounded up a veritable army of lawyers and lobbyists and set them free in Washington.

That's maybe not surprising given the influence lobbyists currently enjoy. But what they are lobbying FOR most certainly is.

They are lobbying the Bush administration (an administration run by a bunch of 'oil men' remember) to.... get this.... pull all US trade preferences for Ecuador if that little country's "leftist government" doesn't quash the lawsuit

It's quite incredible isn't it?

But I'm not quite done yet. With my rectal muscles already at bursting point in the ol' shit gripping department, I can report that a spokesman for US Trade Representative Susan Schwabb has confirmed her office is "considering the request"

How can it even be considered? Why is it not immediately laughed out of the room?

The government is actually"considering" imposing trade sanctions on an entire country to punish the people of that country because they had the temerity to file suit against an oil company for creating a major ecological disaster in their rivers and streams.

After all that, I definitely need some fruit'n'fibre.