pot pies from hades and the Butt Tree

Food Companies Placing the Onus for Safety on Consumers - NYTimes

Afraid of contracting deadly pathogens from your convenient frozen pot pie? Sucks to be you: food producers are deciding that they'd rather place the responsibility for food safety on the consumers then on themselves. As companies scramble to keep down food costs and exploit global resources, the food supply chain is becoming convoluted: meaning many food producers find it essentially impossible to pinpoint where, exactly, their ingredients are coming from. (Almaty? Azer-baijan? A Szechuan whorehouse? Mercury? It could be anywhere.) Food makers such as Con Agra and General Mills are now advising consumers to cook their frozen pizzas and pot pies in a conventional oven rather then in their microwave: terrible news for microwave sellers and cubicle slaves everywhere.

Experts aren't convinced consumers are ready to take on responsibility for frozen food safety: according to Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, “I do not believe that it is fair to put this responsibility on the back of the consumer, when there is substantial confusion about what it means to prepare that product."

In simpler terms: consumers are dumb as spit and will no doubt continue to kill themselves with zap-able pot pies unless the corporations step up. I agree, Mr. Osterholm, I agree.



Did They Have Obese People A Zillion Years Ago? - Slate.com


Computer says, "Eh, probably not". In an era where getting food involved searching for hard to obtain berries or spearing bad-tempered mammoths to death, getting enough calories to develop Orson Welle's-like bodily dimensions was in essence impossible. The recently discovered Venus figurine may look obese to our eyes, but it's suspected she simply had Steatopygia - a large deposit of fat in the heiney regions. This was considered dead sexy in the calorie deprived, pre-Kate Moss millennia, and that's probably why the sculptor created the figure.

When did the miracle of obesity begin? Probably around 12,000 B.C when humanity started settling down and developing farms, complex society, writing, and hissy-fits in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia. Greatly increased food production and a sedentary life style, along with a huge uptick in carbohydrate intake, probably produced history's first obese people.

Speaking of Hottentot Venus's and Steatopygia, I present to you the Butt Tree.

Yes, I am 12 and a half years old and I like potato chips and dogs and television and boys are icky.

But not butts. Butts are endlessly hysterical. Butts are funny today and will be funny tomorrow. I am convinced people began making butt jokes around the same time that we gained command of language. In 10 million years people will be making butt jokes, unless we lose our butts in the process of evolution. And a great and marvelous thing will be forever lost.

And in the category of Trees With Deeply Uncomfortable Anatomical Assocations, I present to you what may only be termed the Dong Tree:


It was commonly believed during Ye Olden Days that witches would steal men's penises and put them in trees, where, presumably, the scorned eunuchs could not climb up and retrieve them. This 13th century Tuscan mural portrays 25 penises complete with testicles, wafting gently in the breeze among an attractive spray of leaves. The mural is thought to be an early political ad: the Guelph faction, campaigning against the Ghibellines, wanted to infer that witches would take over and put penises up trees (metaphorically) if allowed power. I am still mildly shocked that this particular gambit was not used by Sarah Palin in our most recent election.