Entries from October 2009 ↓

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Zekedms@gamecurmudgeons.com gets you a coupon code, I have two to give out. Mail me with the funniest word you can think of, and the two that make me laugh hardest get the codes, which expire on November 1st.

A bill amendment in the senate was voted on to remove funding from Haliburton, Blackwater, and other companies contracting overseas if they require mandatory binding arbitration for absolutely  anything that goes wrong. No chance of litigation, trial, anything, just arbitration. Arbitration is already known to go very much in favor of the company, seeing as they pay the bills. It’s bad enough on civil suits, but this is applying it to criminal issues.

Like rape.

In fact that is, specifically, what brought this vote up.

Three years ago, because that”s how long getting past the arbitration clause has taken, Jamie Leigh Jones was, allegedly, I still have to say allegedly legally but it’s kinda “fucking duh”, gang-raped by her co-workers at KBR/Haliburton, in Baghdad. Her contract declared this to be “personal injury arising in the workplace.” That includes the part where she was stuffed into a shipping crate afterwards.

Now that alone is pretty outrageous, and the fact they tried to say it was contractually bound to arbitration moreso. Not like Haliburton is considered a company of good guys, right? But it goes on from there.

Senator Al Franken (I love saying that) put in a bill to withdraw funding from companies with those clauses. The vote passed 70-28-2. Two abstentions, 70 yay, 28 nay.

28 people voted that what happened should never go to trial, effectively. That companies with mandatory arbitration clauses deserve government contracts, regardless of the truly serious crimes happening.

They voted that hey, if you’re raped, that’s too bad, and a company representative will decide what happens to you and the assailants. If anything. They can just fire the victim for false claims against the company without seeing any evidence either way, and they’re completely free of accountability. Isn’t that wonderful?

So, 28 senators, all men, all Republican, have voted that rape is just fine with them, because the free market said so. Notorious assholes John Ensign, Mitch McConnel, Jon Kyl, and David Vitter all are included on the list of nays.

How crazy is that? Michele Bachmann supported the amendment in the house. So out of touch, this is a real quote of hers. “I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours. We have people that are working two jobs.” Yet she realizes that mandatory arbitration is a bad idea.

But not these guys:

In the interest of fairness, ten Republican senators voted against rape:

All the rest of you, however, deserve a lifetime of being skullfucked by a kakapo.

Yes, already. I had a friend point out one of the many bad MS paint renditions on Wikipedia. Normally I find bad charts and graphs, sometimes piss-poor renditions of classical literary figures or mythological figures.

This time, it’s a rendering of elastomers.

I didn’t know dots and scribbles counted as schematics.

And now, a new segment for the obvious things found on everyone’s favorite free encyclopedia, found on the page about hipsters.

Thanks, Wikipedia!

“The fun way to start your day.”

“The fun spread.”

“The fun spray.”

“Made for fun.”

“The fun breakfast.”

All of these are from food ads, as the last indicated blatantly.

When did food become something other than nutritious or at least delicious, if terrible for you? Don’t parents say not to play with your food? Yet food ads never seem to display their value as food, they’re advertised as…fun?

Because, you know, Pop-Tarts are highly entertaining. I love watching them curl up in the toaster so I can’t actually get them out of there. That’s fun! And so is that whipped cream. I press the nozzle, and stuff comes out. Whee!

I can’t help but be reminded of old cigarette ads, where you couldn’t show a cigarette. So you show people in the pool, having a good time. At the beach, having a good time. At a dinner party, having a good time. Except now the drug is food, which isn’t a surprise. We throw in addictive additives, certainly. High fructose corn syrup is in damn near everything. Even things that shouldn’t be sweetened. McDonald’s, for example, adds that sugar to the hamburgers even. A friend of mine, in fact, is allergic to corn. There’s almost nothing he can buy at a grocery store because of it, he has to buy everything from a farmer’s market.

But, the drug is in the ad now. Sometimes. The Pop Tart commercial features people dancing a lot more than eating. “The fun whipped cream!” just had a can of the whipped cream, sitting there. No food, no people. I guess I’m taking it on its word.

Of course, that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. What kind of measure of a food’s quality is FUN? Am I fencing with these churros? Because they won’t taste good when they’re all hand-sweaty. Am I throwing these Pop-Tarts like ninja stars? Cleaning up the mess won’t be fun. In fact, unless the act of eating is the fun…

Oh, wait, there it is. That’s why we’re fat. Because eating itself is the fun. And that’s taken over for healthy food. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a fatass. I don’t eat a lot of fruit, but I also don’t eat a lot of junk. Sometimes I’ll have a little ice cream, a few chips, more often than that I’ll just eat an actual, reasonably sized meal. Because I’m not eating for the fun factor, I’m eating because my body requires nutrition.

It’s not healthy foods, quality foods, which advertise this way. Hell, even junk foods. I don’t see Ben and Jerry’s doesn’t say “We’re fun!” They just declare that the ice cream tastes really good, and hey, don’t eat too much at once. Oh, and nuclear proliferation is bad.

I guess apple growers need to get together. “Apples-A party in every bunch!” Or we take food for what it is, food. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your food, the French sure do, but they’re also much healthier than we are because they don’t sit at a giant plate and chow down. Same with a lot of the world, at least those parts that HAVE food. We grab something cheap and calorie laden on the way home, our unhealthy snacks are cheaper than real, quality food, the damn opposite of the rest of the first world. Only here can Weet-bix and Corn Flakes cost more than Lucky Charms and Froot Loops, only here can McDonald’s instant garbage be cheaper than buying ground beef and fries at the store.

But hey, McDonald’s is more fun than cooking and health, right?