This is my new happy place

The inspiration for E.T.

No wonder Steven Spielberg is so fascinated by aliens.  He looked like one.

Reminds me of a one night stand I had once

Kelly Preston wants you to know John Travolta is not gay

 Awhile back, I read a blind item about an A-list actor who is in a long-time marriage that was arranged by his church.  The actor was ready to come out of the closet but his beard/wife and his church leaders didn't want him to.  His people were afraid of what it would do to his career.

The blind item said that the actor had been taking more and more risks, including having sex at gyms and making sexual advances to all kinds of men he didn't know.

Flash forward to all the recent stories of John Travolta getting sued by men who claimed he made unwanted advances toward them.

And now, all of a sudden he and Kelly start making out on the red carpet.  Subtle much?  Not very convincing.

Meanwhile, John is wearing Pee Wee Herman's hair.

Self-fulfilling prophecy?

Terry Richardson is a very famous fashion photographer who likes to be edgy.  He's been accused of sexually exploiting young models by taking risque pictures and pressuring them into performing sexual favors for him. 

This is Lindsay Lohan, recently photographed by Richardson.  He tweeted several shots (no pun intended) of her with a gun, some sexual, some suicidal like these.  He must've caught hell (rightfully so) because he took them down.

There are so many vulnerable and depressed kids who might see a picture like this and think, "That's the answer."  And Lindsay herself is mentally and emotionally messed up.  I could see her blowing her brains out someday.

Quote of the day

  

We don't have a revenue problem. We have a Republicans-want-to-make-the-poor-pay-for-the-deficit problem.

- tweet from lolgop

What did you think hamburger was made of?

When I was a kid, my grandfather worked in a packing plant.  He refused to eat hamburger because he saw what went into it.  He did eat hot dogs because they made really good hot dogs.  Now that I'm tripping down memory lane, I miss those dogs.  I've never tasted another one that was half as good.

Anyway, Grandpa didn't mind eating his employer's hot dogs (that sounds dirty) because they were precooked and thoroughly processed - plus he made sure Grandma boiled the crap out of those suckers.

Hamburger, on the other hand, was sold raw.  It was made up from the scraps the workers chopped off the steaks and ribs and roasts, mostly fat and gristle, plus some of the innards.  He saw these scraps fall off the bins where the workers tossed them - and he saw how they picked them up off the floor and tossed them back in. 

He drove mules.  Those were  fork lifts that lifted the bins and dumped them into a bigger bin.  Then another guy shoveled the parts that missed the target and dumped them into Grandpa's bin.  Grandpa then took the scraps to another room where workers sorted them into different bins for hamburgers, hot dogs or sausage.  And they picked up the ones that fell on the floor and tossed them into a bin.

Grandpa drove all over that plant, moving crates from the grinding room to the store room, then loading them onto trucks and trains to be shipped to grocery stores near you.  He knew how the sausage was made.  He didn't eat that either.

So the first time I saw ABC News reporting about - oh the horror! - PINK SLIME! - oh my god, it's SLIME! - I thought, "What the hell did you think they put in hamburger?"

You can thank Ronald Reagan (and his disciples past and present) for the fact that packing plants today are probably even more unsanitary than they were in the 1960s and 1970s, when Grandpa worked there.  The health and safety regulations are stricter than they were back then, but Republicans cut the funding for inspectors.  There's no one to enforce the regulations.  My friends and relatives who work in packing plants today tell me the same things still go on, plus you can find human meat and blood in your hamburger now because the assembly line workers are driven so hard, and they get paid so little that when they chop the tips off their fingers or tear their rubber gloves, they keep working.  Especially now when there aren't other jobs out there.

Companies like Tyson have cornered the market and busted the unions.  When the inspectors were eliminated and there were no unions left to protect workers, packing plant jobs became too dangerous.  Most Americans were able to find better jobs because the economy was good.

So the corporate weasels sent buses down to the border to recruit new workers.  Nowadays, a significant portion of packing plant workers are illegal immigrants.  The companies know that because they bring them here. These folks are so desperate for jobs, they'll cut off their own fingers and keep right on working.

(Once in awhile, someone takes off a hand or half an arm.  Then the assembly line has to shut down.) 

Did I mention that illegal immigrants are also more likely to carry infectious diseases like TB?  They didn't have access to health care back home and they barely get access here.

If Grandpa was still alive, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't even eat hot dogs now.

All in all, the system works great for  the corporations.   When business slows down and lay offs become necessary, the companies call ICE then pass the word that "La migra's" coming.  Overnight, the illegals disappear.  None of that pesky unemployment compensation for the company to pay.  When business picks up, they send the recruiters and buses to bring back some more.

The corporations' Congressional puppets avert their eyes when all the bad shit's going down the assembly line to the stores to your frying pan.  Every so often there's an ebola outbreak and everybody gets all concerned and say they'll fix it.  They trace the outbreak to one particular packing plant, slap them on the wrists and say naughty, naughty.  They paste warning labels on meat to tell you to cook the pink out of it, then it's back to business as usual.

So I was already thinking, "Good god, ABC, why are you so worried about a little slime?"

Then I found out the leading manufacturer of pink slime is BPI, which is based in Dakota Dunes, adjacent to Sioux City.  A company where some of my friends work.  BPI is one of the best corporate citizens around.  They donate a lot of time and money to good causes in our community.  The family who owns it and the people who run it serve on local boards and lead charity events.  Their workers turn out whenever someone needs help, like filling sandbags and building walls during last year's Missouri River flood.

The craziest thing is that Lean Finally Textured Beef is actually better for you than most of the crap that gets put in hamburger.  BPI processes the leanest scraps so that your 95% lean ground beef holds together and tastes better than the fatty 80% stuff.  Now because the mainstream media found a new issue to exploit, there's less lean ground beef available.  The price has already gone up a dollar a pound where I shop. 

Nowadays, if you utter the words "pink slime" in Sioux City, you'll get run out of town.  All the local media refer to it as LFTB. 

Soon after the "scandal' started, BPI was been forced to close three of their four plants (in Amarillo, TX, Garden City, KS, and Waterloo, IA) and lay off employees here in Siouxland.  Six hundred and fifty good, hard-working people who contribute to their communities lost good-paying jobs. Along with their health insurance. 

In May, BPI cut 86 more employees at the corporate level here.  Co-founder Regina Roth said, "We are deeply saddened by today's events.  This causes very personal heartache for us. We are not some big conglomerate, but a small family owned business. We personally know and have worked side by side with these people and our family business will never be the same with this loss."

Right now, there aren't a lot of other jobs out there. The government will pick up the slack with food stamps, unemployment insurance, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, housing assistance and Medicaid.  That'll sure help the deficit.

So thank you, ABC and all you other irresponsible assholes who blared all those dire warnings before you got the facts straight.  I have to ask again:  What did you think hamburger was made of?

(picture source)