So I was driving to work today and I ran into a truck. No, I didn't hit the truck, I just ran smack dab into a enormous wall of rusty steel filled with something that was tossing small bits of crap onto my windshield.
It's times like those that I'm happy I'm an aggressive driver. If I hadn't been, I would have spend an extra FIVE MINUTES waiting behind this big hulking load of slow.
And it made me wonder...wait, wonder isn't the right word...it made me scream and curse about how it's illegal for a truck to bumble along in the left lane. I didn't actually know whether that was true or not, but that wasn't going to stop me from asserting it as ultimate moral truth with liberal use of the f-word, the a-word and the b-word.
So. How about those left lanes? What's their deal? Are they just for passing or are they for people like me who like to roar down the road without regard to my own or others' safety.
Let's find out.
Where do we start when dealing with a simple, straightforward question like this? I know! Let's go a hundred years back in history and figure out the origins of automobiles!
In 1885, a giant named Karl Benz grabbed a sheet of steel and, with his bare hands, twisted it into the Otto gasoline engine, obviously named after this guy. The beast that was Karl Benz wasn't satisfied. He went on a wild bender in which half of Germany was reduced to ruins (which wouldn't be the last time that would happen, ha ha ha ha) and when he awoke amidst the chaos and very satisfied women, in his mighty mind arose the design of a machine. Not just any machine. A machine that would eventually result in the deaths of many thousands a year.
He called it "The Killzerstein".
It was later renamed the car.
Such a wild beast needed to be tamed. Ergo, the birth of TRAFFIC LAWS!
In 1860, before motor vehicles, Broadway was a killing block. Horse-drawn carts would dash this way and that and drivers were instructed that if they did not kill at least a brace of pedestrians each trip, they would be fired. Broadway's police put a stop to that with their elite troop of extremely tall officers. Each one was over six feet tall, so they could be seen over the piles of dead pedestrians.
In 1922, Texas, always at the forefront of innovation, developed a system of electronically connected traffic signals to replace clunky and unreliable steam-powered ones.
And so on and so forth. Take a look at that link, the description of the Los Angeles electronic traffic surveillance and its less important feedback:
8:05AM—1144 CAT IN THE ROAD
8:05AM—KIDS ARE IN THE ROAD TO LOOK AT THE CAT
I know that shouldn't be funny.
Anyway, what was the question? Oh yehhh. The left lane.
The first keep-right law was actually enacted in Pennsylvania, also the forefront of innovation, in 1792, but that was more of a "We're not England" thing.
From what I understand, by which I mean what Wikipedia tells me,the leftmost lane on a highway IS the passing lane, but no one really cares. However, it is illegal in New Jersey to travel in the left lane or make yourself an "obstruction".
You can and WILL be ticketed for it...if the officer is an asshole. And it IS New Jersey. I had this happen to me once, I didn't move over so the cop could blaze past me in a firey ball of entirely unsafe speeds (cause, what, is he gonna get pulled over?)
So be careful, Jersey drivers. Not everyone appreciates our lead feet, our aggressive speeds and our majestic middle fingers.
Sources:
Wikipedia
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_021b.html
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/17/blocking.php
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
A Naked Post
Tah-dah!
Brand new layout. Entirely coded by yours truly. Yep. No other. I didn't just browse through the blogger templates and pick the most tasteful one. Nope. Never happened. I'm an html whiz.
Anyway, let's test the old adage "All that glitters is not gold" by seeing if this new, shiny, glittery blog will now have posts of solid gold (not bloody likely).
Speaking of Au, today's extremely solvable mystery comes from the very elemental core of our human being-ness. What is it about our wild psyche, assaulted, as it is, by a constant barrage of odd quirks of society, internet fads and ugly, ugly people, what is it that makes us find the concept of a naked man in a cowboy hat playing a guitar so goddamn appealing?
I'm talking, of course, about the one-and-only Naked Cowboy of New York City.
For those of you who have never heard of him, which would require that you have never been to New York City, and therefore are probably reading this on Windows 2.1 on Mosaic Netscape with a tractor motor powering your CPU, and therefore you're probably still stuck on the word "psyche", thus making it pointless to give you background. However, let it not be said that I discriminate...especially since I have no readers...
The Naked Cowboy is an icon in Times Square and has appeared in New Orleans during Mardi Gras as well. But he is mainly a fixture of Times Square. What he does is go out in a hat and underwear playing a guitar and taking pictures with frisky old women. It's a neat gimmick and has brought him pseudo-fame.
Pseudo-fame being defined by the following conversation:
A: I went to Times Square the other day.
B: Oh? Did you see the Naked Cowboy?
A: No.
B: Oh. Did you spend your week's pay on dinner?
A: Of course. It's Times Square.
Now, I don't know about you, but I feel his outfit doesn't make sense. I mean, wrangling cattle in your undies just doesn't seem practical. What cowboys nowadays are cowboy jeans or other stiff pants with a smooth inside seam to prevent blisters. Over that they wear chaps, which are kind of like leather armor, they just cover the legs to protect from brush that might scratch a lonely cowboy up. Just wearing underwear? There's no way I'd hire him for my ranch.
The singing cowboy is another of those Hollywood-brand skewings of real life. John Wayne was at the forefront of this, with the 1933 film Riders of Destiny. But, and this is kinda funny, he had a crappy voice, so all his singing had to be dubbed over.
However, if Hollywood is good at one thing, it's finding the cheapest way to achieve the desired result. This took the form of finding a guy who could not only be a big, rough-and-tumble cowboy, but also sing like a sweet little angel.
Enter (through swinging tavern doors, of course) Gene Autry. Gene Autry is usually the one referred to with the name "the singing cowboy". Of course, as popular as he was, when he walked out of his contract in 1937 temporarily, he returned to find that his chaps were being filled by another man. This man was Leonard Slye. You might know him better as Roy Rogers, the KING of Cowboys.
They glared at eachother across the wasteland of key grips and makeup artists, while tumbleweeds of mediocrity rolled quietly across the studio plains.
Roy Rogers obviously won. Cause his burgers are just so damn delicious.
So the Naked Cowboy, seeing this tradition, stripped it of its dignity (AND CLOTHES) and now sings for nickels, whoring his tan, smooth body with its rippling muscles and....
I'm sorry, I forgot what I was saying.
So the Naked Cowboy pays tribute to this tradition and would never claim that he was the progenitor of it...
Oh.
Wait.
(Side note: The title of that article is "Candy Man Can't". I'm torn between fits of laughter and fits of anger that the person who came up with THAT title is a professional journalist and I'm just a lowly shmoe writing a blog for chimps...I mean...an intelligent, discerning audience)
Apparently, Mars Inc. decided to take the Naked Cowboy's impractical approach to cattle ranching one step further. It made a candy coated piece of chocolate responsible for the welfare of hundreds of cattle. It's just irresponsible.
A blue M&M appears on a screen in Times Square along with a series of other M&Ms with other city icons. The Naked Cowboy was at first appreciative of this tip-of-the-hat, but soon realized that he could be making lots of money by suing...I mean, soon realized that his brilliant (and original) idea of running around singing like a drunken cowboy in his underwear was being made to look silly.
The Cowboy is indignant, "I'm huge now, but I represent the little guy!" He exclaimed, right before demanding 6 million dollars from the candy giant.
We need more naked cowboys representing the little people of the world.
So, in conclusion...
I forgot what point I was trying to make.
Oh well.
Till next time!
Brand new layout. Entirely coded by yours truly. Yep. No other. I didn't just browse through the blogger templates and pick the most tasteful one. Nope. Never happened. I'm an html whiz.
Anyway, let's test the old adage "All that glitters is not gold" by seeing if this new, shiny, glittery blog will now have posts of solid gold (not bloody likely).
Speaking of Au, today's extremely solvable mystery comes from the very elemental core of our human being-ness. What is it about our wild psyche, assaulted, as it is, by a constant barrage of odd quirks of society, internet fads and ugly, ugly people, what is it that makes us find the concept of a naked man in a cowboy hat playing a guitar so goddamn appealing?
I'm talking, of course, about the one-and-only Naked Cowboy of New York City.
For those of you who have never heard of him, which would require that you have never been to New York City, and therefore are probably reading this on Windows 2.1 on Mosaic Netscape with a tractor motor powering your CPU, and therefore you're probably still stuck on the word "psyche", thus making it pointless to give you background. However, let it not be said that I discriminate...especially since I have no readers...
The Naked Cowboy is an icon in Times Square and has appeared in New Orleans during Mardi Gras as well. But he is mainly a fixture of Times Square. What he does is go out in a hat and underwear playing a guitar and taking pictures with frisky old women. It's a neat gimmick and has brought him pseudo-fame.
Pseudo-fame being defined by the following conversation:
A: I went to Times Square the other day.
B: Oh? Did you see the Naked Cowboy?
A: No.
B: Oh. Did you spend your week's pay on dinner?
A: Of course. It's Times Square.
Now, I don't know about you, but I feel his outfit doesn't make sense. I mean, wrangling cattle in your undies just doesn't seem practical. What cowboys nowadays are cowboy jeans or other stiff pants with a smooth inside seam to prevent blisters. Over that they wear chaps, which are kind of like leather armor, they just cover the legs to protect from brush that might scratch a lonely cowboy up. Just wearing underwear? There's no way I'd hire him for my ranch.
The singing cowboy is another of those Hollywood-brand skewings of real life. John Wayne was at the forefront of this, with the 1933 film Riders of Destiny. But, and this is kinda funny, he had a crappy voice, so all his singing had to be dubbed over.
However, if Hollywood is good at one thing, it's finding the cheapest way to achieve the desired result. This took the form of finding a guy who could not only be a big, rough-and-tumble cowboy, but also sing like a sweet little angel.
Enter (through swinging tavern doors, of course) Gene Autry. Gene Autry is usually the one referred to with the name "the singing cowboy". Of course, as popular as he was, when he walked out of his contract in 1937 temporarily, he returned to find that his chaps were being filled by another man. This man was Leonard Slye. You might know him better as Roy Rogers, the KING of Cowboys.
They glared at eachother across the wasteland of key grips and makeup artists, while tumbleweeds of mediocrity rolled quietly across the studio plains.
Roy Rogers obviously won. Cause his burgers are just so damn delicious.
So the Naked Cowboy, seeing this tradition, stripped it of its dignity (AND CLOTHES) and now sings for nickels, whoring his tan, smooth body with its rippling muscles and....
I'm sorry, I forgot what I was saying.
So the Naked Cowboy pays tribute to this tradition and would never claim that he was the progenitor of it...
Oh.
Wait.
(Side note: The title of that article is "Candy Man Can't". I'm torn between fits of laughter and fits of anger that the person who came up with THAT title is a professional journalist and I'm just a lowly shmoe writing a blog for chimps...I mean...an intelligent, discerning audience)
Apparently, Mars Inc. decided to take the Naked Cowboy's impractical approach to cattle ranching one step further. It made a candy coated piece of chocolate responsible for the welfare of hundreds of cattle. It's just irresponsible.
A blue M&M appears on a screen in Times Square along with a series of other M&Ms with other city icons. The Naked Cowboy was at first appreciative of this tip-of-the-hat, but soon realized that he could be making lots of money by suing...I mean, soon realized that his brilliant (and original) idea of running around singing like a drunken cowboy in his underwear was being made to look silly.
The Cowboy is indignant, "I'm huge now, but I represent the little guy!" He exclaimed, right before demanding 6 million dollars from the candy giant.
We need more naked cowboys representing the little people of the world.
So, in conclusion...
I forgot what point I was trying to make.
Oh well.
Till next time!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
An ENTERTAINING war or The War of the World...wide entertainment industry
Well, hello.
It's good to see you again.
I guess that inaccurate.
It's good to have you seeing me again.
Better?
Speaking of eyesight, let's talk about the limits of it. Your eyes are neat little machines. They're fun, they're exciting, and they're full of a thick, syrupy goo. They also have a maximum resolution (looking at a TV screen) of 324 megapixels.
Exciting.
The most the top HD formats can manage is a resolution of about 2 megapixels. And regular, humble DVD? About .3 of a megapixel.
What's my point? None, really. I was attempting to prove that HD and regular DVD really don't make much of a difference, but I'm wrong. It does. But fact is, it's still TV. If seeing the hairs on the buttcrack of the pornstar you WON'T be seeing on Blu-Ray really makes that much of a difference to you, then shell out the 400 dollars out of your fancy Gucci crocodile skin wallet.
I'm happy with my DVDs.
But. This blog is only SORT OF my personal soap box.
So. Today's thing of interest is the final defeat in the epic format war of the robust HD DVD versus the slick 'n shiny Blu-Ray. Ooooh. Ahhh.
What's the history here?
For those of you who haven't heard, the entertainment market wasn't always the peaceful, joyous world of expensive gadgets and TV refrigerators. (Which I realize is also an expensive gadget, but is so incredibly ridiculous it deserves a specific mention). No, there was once a plucky young format known as Betamax.
Betamax wasn't proud. It only wanted to dominate the entertainment format countryside, waving it's cute little pocket-sized arms. Unfortunately, like Joan Benet Ramsey, Betamax soon found there were disadvantages to being cute. Betamax had a maximum record time of one hour.
"Outrageous!" Cried RCA heads. They swore that they could produce a format that was longer than the cute little Betamax.
Sony brashly ignored the firey young RCA execs and went on touting the superiority of their cute little competitor. RCA, abashed but not defeated, went into negotiations with Matsushita Corporation and eventually produced a 4-hour recorder.
Sony scrambled to beat the VHS format, but found their baby Betamax ending up too expensive and with too low a recording time to beat the mighty VHS.
But Sony, like the great Phoenix (we can argue forever about how that's spelled, shut up) rose from the ashes of the fallen Betamax and....about thirty years later popped out the sleek, shiny Blu-Ray.
The secret to the Blu-Ray is that it uses a shorter wavelength laser to write to the discs, thus allowing more data to be stored on it, thus blah blah blah blah...
Sony chuckled at its own ingenuity. It would not repeat the mistake of the Betamax. Blu-Ray would rule the entertainment countryside!
But the dark lords of the DVD Forum were not satisfied. They remained split, due to the fragility of the Blu-Ray discs, which had to be packaged with a special protective cover that was both expensive and hard to deal with. They began toying with the dark art of dual-layer DVD9 discs to encode HD media.
Still worse, the forum itself was headed by none other than the Toshiba Kings. Together with their lackeys from NEC, they began toiling over a format that would come to be called Advanced Optical Disc. They soon realized that was a way lame name for a shiny gadget, so they called it HD DVD. Which wasn't much better, but these are people from a council called the "DVD Forum", do you really think they're the best minds in the world?
This new unveiling caused a deep split in the Jedi Council...I mean, DVD Forum. And in the end resulted in a media war that would scar the fertile, silicone fields of the entertainment industry.
And after a long and hard-fought battle, we finally have a victor.
On February 19th, Toshiba lay battered upon the corporate battlefield. Studios, video companies, all its allies had abandoned it. The Blu-Ray stood triumphant over its thwarted foe.
"But why? I only wanted to introduce the usage of new, slicker encoding mechanisms into the HD media format?!" Toshiba lamented its loss. Its dearest friends, Wal-Mart and Netflix, had discarded the rugged young HD DVD. Toshiba reluctantly announced that it would no longer be producing HD DVD players and recorders.
Peace is restored.
BUT AT WHAT COST!?
I guess the better question is...
Who the hell cares?!
It's good to see you again.
I guess that inaccurate.
It's good to have you seeing me again.
Better?
Speaking of eyesight, let's talk about the limits of it. Your eyes are neat little machines. They're fun, they're exciting, and they're full of a thick, syrupy goo. They also have a maximum resolution (looking at a TV screen) of 324 megapixels.
Exciting.
The most the top HD formats can manage is a resolution of about 2 megapixels. And regular, humble DVD? About .3 of a megapixel.
What's my point? None, really. I was attempting to prove that HD and regular DVD really don't make much of a difference, but I'm wrong. It does. But fact is, it's still TV. If seeing the hairs on the buttcrack of the pornstar you WON'T be seeing on Blu-Ray really makes that much of a difference to you, then shell out the 400 dollars out of your fancy Gucci crocodile skin wallet.
I'm happy with my DVDs.
But. This blog is only SORT OF my personal soap box.
So. Today's thing of interest is the final defeat in the epic format war of the robust HD DVD versus the slick 'n shiny Blu-Ray. Ooooh. Ahhh.
What's the history here?
For those of you who haven't heard, the entertainment market wasn't always the peaceful, joyous world of expensive gadgets and TV refrigerators. (Which I realize is also an expensive gadget, but is so incredibly ridiculous it deserves a specific mention). No, there was once a plucky young format known as Betamax.
Betamax wasn't proud. It only wanted to dominate the entertainment format countryside, waving it's cute little pocket-sized arms. Unfortunately, like Joan Benet Ramsey, Betamax soon found there were disadvantages to being cute. Betamax had a maximum record time of one hour.
"Outrageous!" Cried RCA heads. They swore that they could produce a format that was longer than the cute little Betamax.
Sony brashly ignored the firey young RCA execs and went on touting the superiority of their cute little competitor. RCA, abashed but not defeated, went into negotiations with Matsushita Corporation and eventually produced a 4-hour recorder.
Sony scrambled to beat the VHS format, but found their baby Betamax ending up too expensive and with too low a recording time to beat the mighty VHS.
But Sony, like the great Phoenix (we can argue forever about how that's spelled, shut up) rose from the ashes of the fallen Betamax and....about thirty years later popped out the sleek, shiny Blu-Ray.
The secret to the Blu-Ray is that it uses a shorter wavelength laser to write to the discs, thus allowing more data to be stored on it, thus blah blah blah blah...
Sony chuckled at its own ingenuity. It would not repeat the mistake of the Betamax. Blu-Ray would rule the entertainment countryside!
But the dark lords of the DVD Forum were not satisfied. They remained split, due to the fragility of the Blu-Ray discs, which had to be packaged with a special protective cover that was both expensive and hard to deal with. They began toying with the dark art of dual-layer DVD9 discs to encode HD media.
Still worse, the forum itself was headed by none other than the Toshiba Kings. Together with their lackeys from NEC, they began toiling over a format that would come to be called Advanced Optical Disc. They soon realized that was a way lame name for a shiny gadget, so they called it HD DVD. Which wasn't much better, but these are people from a council called the "DVD Forum", do you really think they're the best minds in the world?
This new unveiling caused a deep split in the Jedi Council...I mean, DVD Forum. And in the end resulted in a media war that would scar the fertile, silicone fields of the entertainment industry.
And after a long and hard-fought battle, we finally have a victor.
On February 19th, Toshiba lay battered upon the corporate battlefield. Studios, video companies, all its allies had abandoned it. The Blu-Ray stood triumphant over its thwarted foe.
"But why? I only wanted to introduce the usage of new, slicker encoding mechanisms into the HD media format?!" Toshiba lamented its loss. Its dearest friends, Wal-Mart and Netflix, had discarded the rugged young HD DVD. Toshiba reluctantly announced that it would no longer be producing HD DVD players and recorders.
Peace is restored.
BUT AT WHAT COST!?
I guess the better question is...
Who the hell cares?!
Friday, February 15, 2008
Peanut Butter and HOAX?!
Hello again.
Don't get used to this, I'm not going to be posting everyday.
We'll see.
Don't get your hopes up, invisible readers who absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, exist. You know you're out there....somewhere...
Anyway. Today's quandary comes from a site called The PB&J Campaign.
According to this cultist, uber-green website, eating PB&J is the perfect way to save the world and prevent all atrocities ever. Skippy wants you to give peace a chance. With a name like Smuckers, it has to be about saving the world.
THE TRUTH IS that Smuckers is a vicious family dynasty that has monopolized the peanut butter AND jelly industry since 1897, when King James Monroe Smucker terrorized the countryside with his apple butter sold at exorbitant prices out of mecha-horse-drawn carts with gatling guns mounted on each side. Also, they're all Communists.
I may be exaggerating about the gatling guns and mecha-horses. And the Communism.
HOWEVER. Smuckers has been making a fortune off of those disgusting Uncrustables, which go under the patent name of Sealed Crustless Sandwiches. Not so appetizing now, is it, kiddies?
And how about the nutrition facts. What's in the peanut butter? Peanuts, dextrose (a sugar), monoglycerides from palm oil (which happens to be a vegetable oil with the third highest saturated fat content) and salt.
I know I like my peanut butter with extra dextrose.
And Smuckers isn't the only criminal here! Let's try Skippy, which ConsumerSearch claims is the top rated peanut butter, har de har har.
Again! Sugar and hydrogenated vegetable oil! What has this world come to!
Natural peanut butter tends to be just flat out peanuts in, what else, PEANUT oil, which has much less saturated fat than PALM oil. (Although, admittedly, skippy uses cottonseed and soybean oil, which has less fat than peanut oil but, gosh darnnit, peanut oil is just TASTY!)
Now. Where was I...oh yeah!
So. According to this shadowy PB&J Campaign, by eating PB&J for lunch, you save resources spent on raising and slaughtering animals to make delicious delicious meats that are almost never processed with sugar, salt and water to make the Oscar Meyer lunchmeat we know, love and are getting chronic high cholesterol from. (I'm not going to cite that, it's off-topic, so there)
Oh, sure, save a few ugly little grass-chewers. AT THE EXPENSE OF YOUR OWN HEALTH!
Let's do a little comparison!
The PB&J Communist Sandwich Du Jour versus the homely American classic, the Ham Sandwich. I'm excluding bread because let's just assume that these reds can deal with using wholesome all-american enriched, processed Wonderbread.
Average PB&J sandwich (Made from a chimeric coupling of the two collossi of the PB&J empire, Smuckers and Skippy)
2 tbsp of Smuckers Grape Jelly + 2 tbsp of Skippy Creamy Peanut butter =
27g of sugar, 290 calories, 16g of fat, 3g of saturated fat, and only 7g of protein!
Average American Ham Sandwich (Made with Oscar Meyer and Kraft AMERICAN cheese, like the good lord intended! Also, discounting lettuce and tomato, because anyone who questions the nutritional value of lettuce and tomato is probably too fat to pay attention to.)
Two servings of ham (120g) + 1 serving of cheese (21g)=
1g of sugar, 90 calories, 7g fat, 22g of protein!
So, sure, go chow down on a PB&J sandwich if you want to DIE by the age of 30 from coronary heart disease. But before that, the lack of protein will leave your muscles weak to fight off the impending Communist invasion. And while you're working slave labor churning apple butter all day long, you'll wonder why you ever forsook the taste of juicy, delicious animal fresh, made from All-American animals, willingly sacrificing their lives for your lunch.
Remember, every bite of PB&J is a victory for Mao.
Disclaimer:
I feel I should mention that I adore PB&J. It's simple to make and as impossible to outgrow as Nickelodeon Guts. Replacing the J with banana creates a sandwich that makes life worth living. I also DESPISE Oscar Meyer and think that American Cheese is an adequate example of why I hate most things with the word "American" attached to it.
I also like Communists. A little.
With that...(I'm sure you were all waiting for this)...it's peanut butter jelly time.
Sources:
Wikipedia and various dietary sites
http://www.calorie-count.com/
http://www.smuckers.com/ (They're right. It is good.)
http://itotd.com/articles/642/the-pb&j-campaign/ (This gave me the idea for today)
Don't get used to this, I'm not going to be posting everyday.
We'll see.
Don't get your hopes up, invisible readers who absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, exist. You know you're out there....somewhere...
Anyway. Today's quandary comes from a site called The PB&J Campaign.
According to this cultist, uber-green website, eating PB&J is the perfect way to save the world and prevent all atrocities ever. Skippy wants you to give peace a chance. With a name like Smuckers, it has to be about saving the world.
THE TRUTH IS that Smuckers is a vicious family dynasty that has monopolized the peanut butter AND jelly industry since 1897, when King James Monroe Smucker terrorized the countryside with his apple butter sold at exorbitant prices out of mecha-horse-drawn carts with gatling guns mounted on each side. Also, they're all Communists.
I may be exaggerating about the gatling guns and mecha-horses. And the Communism.
HOWEVER. Smuckers has been making a fortune off of those disgusting Uncrustables, which go under the patent name of Sealed Crustless Sandwiches. Not so appetizing now, is it, kiddies?
And how about the nutrition facts. What's in the peanut butter? Peanuts, dextrose (a sugar), monoglycerides from palm oil (which happens to be a vegetable oil with the third highest saturated fat content) and salt.
I know I like my peanut butter with extra dextrose.
And Smuckers isn't the only criminal here! Let's try Skippy, which ConsumerSearch claims is the top rated peanut butter, har de har har.
Again! Sugar and hydrogenated vegetable oil! What has this world come to!
Natural peanut butter tends to be just flat out peanuts in, what else, PEANUT oil, which has much less saturated fat than PALM oil. (Although, admittedly, skippy uses cottonseed and soybean oil, which has less fat than peanut oil but, gosh darnnit, peanut oil is just TASTY!)
Now. Where was I...oh yeah!
So. According to this shadowy PB&J Campaign, by eating PB&J for lunch, you save resources spent on raising and slaughtering animals to make delicious delicious meats that are almost never processed with sugar, salt and water to make the Oscar Meyer lunchmeat we know, love and are getting chronic high cholesterol from. (I'm not going to cite that, it's off-topic, so there)
Oh, sure, save a few ugly little grass-chewers. AT THE EXPENSE OF YOUR OWN HEALTH!
Let's do a little comparison!
The PB&J Communist Sandwich Du Jour versus the homely American classic, the Ham Sandwich. I'm excluding bread because let's just assume that these reds can deal with using wholesome all-american enriched, processed Wonderbread.
Average PB&J sandwich (Made from a chimeric coupling of the two collossi of the PB&J empire, Smuckers and Skippy)
2 tbsp of Smuckers Grape Jelly + 2 tbsp of Skippy Creamy Peanut butter =
27g of sugar, 290 calories, 16g of fat, 3g of saturated fat, and only 7g of protein!
Average American Ham Sandwich (Made with Oscar Meyer and Kraft AMERICAN cheese, like the good lord intended! Also, discounting lettuce and tomato, because anyone who questions the nutritional value of lettuce and tomato is probably too fat to pay attention to.)
Two servings of ham (120g) + 1 serving of cheese (21g)=
1g of sugar, 90 calories, 7g fat, 22g of protein!
So, sure, go chow down on a PB&J sandwich if you want to DIE by the age of 30 from coronary heart disease. But before that, the lack of protein will leave your muscles weak to fight off the impending Communist invasion. And while you're working slave labor churning apple butter all day long, you'll wonder why you ever forsook the taste of juicy, delicious animal fresh, made from All-American animals, willingly sacrificing their lives for your lunch.
Remember, every bite of PB&J is a victory for Mao.
Disclaimer:
I feel I should mention that I adore PB&J. It's simple to make and as impossible to outgrow as Nickelodeon Guts. Replacing the J with banana creates a sandwich that makes life worth living. I also DESPISE Oscar Meyer and think that American Cheese is an adequate example of why I hate most things with the word "American" attached to it.
I also like Communists. A little.
With that...(I'm sure you were all waiting for this)...it's peanut butter jelly time.
Sources:
Wikipedia and various dietary sites
http://www.calorie-count.com/
http://www.smuckers.com/ (They're right. It is good.)
http://itotd.com/articles/642/the-pb&j-campaign/ (This gave me the idea for today)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Starting off sexy
Oh, the first post.
New beginnings.
I can never think what to say for these posts.
I just...I'm so emotional right now.
Speaking of emotions, it seems like it's that time of the month...in that time of the year.
Valentine's Day.
That's right, the one day a year where all the nice restaurants are booked, roses suddenly become about as expensive per ounce as saffron and being single becomes utterly intolerable...except in "South Korea.
Yes, yes, extraordinary. Saint Valentine was just a uber-Christian superman who died for Jesus, which probaby means he wasn't getting any, so he really didn't have much to lose.
What a shock. It was all converted by the end of the 1800s into a pile of mass-produced drivel and is now the biggest card-selling raging load of piddle next to the ultimate card-selling raging load of piddle, Christmas.
So. Instead of going through all that, I'm going to focus on something a little more exciting.
Sweethearts.
You know, those cute little lumps of sugar and dye that convey muddled messages that run the gamut from "Dream Girl" to "Wise Up". INCLUDING, I kid you not, "Book Club" and "Let's Read".
Golly, Suzy, I really fancy you, you want to...you know...hold hands and whilst perusing a copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?
That's so HOT.
What they are is little lumps of sugar and gelatin produced mainly by the New England Confectionary Corporation, or NECCO. Anyone who's spent their time on the supermarket checkout line staring longingly at candy knows of NECCO wafers, probably the most unappealing chalky pieces of garbage on the market today. What you may not know is that they make about $100 million a year in sales.
Impressive.
What you ALSO may not know is that in WWII, the military commissioned a huge amount of these wafers, as they were practically indestructible and did not spoil. If only good-tasting food were so convenient.
NECCO originally was called Chase and Company, after the founder, Oliver Chase, invented a lozenge cutter and a pulverizer for sugar in 1850. This man must have been some sort of genius. But he was entirely outdone by his brother who, in 1860, invented the lozenge printing machine and came out with the little Conversation Hearts we know and feel entirely ambivalent about today.
Well, I can't really criticize them. I mean, you can't really do much with a lozenge printing machine.
This year, according to the National Confectioner's Association, "About 8 billion hearts will be produced this year; that’s enough candy to stretch from Rome, Italy to Valentine, Arizona and back twenty times!" You know, in case you wanted to make a small, sugary bridge between the two entirely unrelated cities.
Incidently, this is the webpage for Valentine, Arizona.
Wow. Elevation: 3,802 feet? That's the elevation of ROMANCE.
Another little aside...National Confectioner's Association?!?!
"Hey, Bill, what do you do for a living?"
"Oh, I'm the chairman of the National Confectioner's Association!"
"Oh...yeah? Uh...what do you do?"
"Well...we...uh...figure out how much candy it would take to reach from one place to another."
Takes all kinds.
Well, I don't know about you, but I'm craving some printed candy. I'm gonna go scribble on a hershey bar.
Happy V-Day!
Remember, if you spend over 40 dollars on a meal, sex is not a gift, it's an obligation.
Sources:
Wikipedia, of course.
http://cockeyed.com/inside/hearts/hearts.html
http://www.candyfavorites.com/shop/conversation-hearts-origin.php
New beginnings.
I can never think what to say for these posts.
I just...I'm so emotional right now.
Speaking of emotions, it seems like it's that time of the month...in that time of the year.
Valentine's Day.
That's right, the one day a year where all the nice restaurants are booked, roses suddenly become about as expensive per ounce as saffron and being single becomes utterly intolerable...except in "South Korea.
Yes, yes, extraordinary. Saint Valentine was just a uber-Christian superman who died for Jesus, which probaby means he wasn't getting any, so he really didn't have much to lose.
What a shock. It was all converted by the end of the 1800s into a pile of mass-produced drivel and is now the biggest card-selling raging load of piddle next to the ultimate card-selling raging load of piddle, Christmas.
So. Instead of going through all that, I'm going to focus on something a little more exciting.
Sweethearts.
You know, those cute little lumps of sugar and dye that convey muddled messages that run the gamut from "Dream Girl" to "Wise Up". INCLUDING, I kid you not, "Book Club" and "Let's Read".
Golly, Suzy, I really fancy you, you want to...you know...hold hands and whilst perusing a copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?
That's so HOT.
What they are is little lumps of sugar and gelatin produced mainly by the New England Confectionary Corporation, or NECCO. Anyone who's spent their time on the supermarket checkout line staring longingly at candy knows of NECCO wafers, probably the most unappealing chalky pieces of garbage on the market today. What you may not know is that they make about $100 million a year in sales.
Impressive.
What you ALSO may not know is that in WWII, the military commissioned a huge amount of these wafers, as they were practically indestructible and did not spoil. If only good-tasting food were so convenient.
NECCO originally was called Chase and Company, after the founder, Oliver Chase, invented a lozenge cutter and a pulverizer for sugar in 1850. This man must have been some sort of genius. But he was entirely outdone by his brother who, in 1860, invented the lozenge printing machine and came out with the little Conversation Hearts we know and feel entirely ambivalent about today.
Well, I can't really criticize them. I mean, you can't really do much with a lozenge printing machine.
This year, according to the National Confectioner's Association, "About 8 billion hearts will be produced this year; that’s enough candy to stretch from Rome, Italy to Valentine, Arizona and back twenty times!" You know, in case you wanted to make a small, sugary bridge between the two entirely unrelated cities.
Incidently, this is the webpage for Valentine, Arizona.
Wow. Elevation: 3,802 feet? That's the elevation of ROMANCE.
Another little aside...National Confectioner's Association?!?!
"Hey, Bill, what do you do for a living?"
"Oh, I'm the chairman of the National Confectioner's Association!"
"Oh...yeah? Uh...what do you do?"
"Well...we...uh...figure out how much candy it would take to reach from one place to another."
Takes all kinds.
Well, I don't know about you, but I'm craving some printed candy. I'm gonna go scribble on a hershey bar.
Happy V-Day!
Remember, if you spend over 40 dollars on a meal, sex is not a gift, it's an obligation.
Sources:
Wikipedia, of course.
http://cockeyed.com/inside/hearts/hearts.html
http://www.candyfavorites.com/shop/conversation-hearts-origin.php
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