Posts filed under ‘rant time’
Turkey Time with Sarah Palin
Yesterday I was out with friends and happened to overhear some new Sarah Palin gossip. Having assumed that all Sarah Palin gossip was rendered moot on November 4th, I became intrigued by my peers’ enthusiasm over the Palin buzz. It seems that the Alaska Governor was interviewed by an Anchorage NBC Affiliate the other day, and in the spirit of Thanksgiving the informal press event was held at a local turkey farm. During a slaughter.
While Palin cooly waxes political and shares her restrospctive thoughts on the presidential race, we are distracted by a busy farmer, who picks up turkeys one by one, turns them upside-down into a large cone, severs their necks, and waits patiently while they bleed out a bit. Palin’s hair and makeup are terrific as always, the farmer is wearing a moustache and a baseball cap, and the turkeys are nice and plump. What’s the big deal?
Well, it seems that this Palin interview/turkey massacre has provided many Americans with their very first opportunity to witness a livestock slaughter, and several people – if not millions – are finding the whole scene shocking and distasteful. These are the same millions, no doubt, who are licking their chops at the thought of ritualistically sinking their teeth into some juicy turkey meat this coming Thursday. Just another wonderful example of our penchant for hypocrisy, and a vivid illustration of the enormous gap between our collective alimentary delusion and the true nature of our food system. (more…)
Bling Goes the Hybrid
This is the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid, a vehicle that Cadillac is calling, “The Future of Luxury”. At 22 mpg (up from 18) and $70+ thousand, this monstrosity would really be better referred to as “an awkward but perhaps inevitable consequnce of America’s transition to true green transportation.” Even when you ignore the yards of leather, numerous flat-screens and other shiny, non-recycled decorations lining the interior of this “car”, the fact that this eight-seater only gets 22 mpg (highway!) is a real shame.
Cadillac boasts that the Hybrid Escalade is the “world’s first full-size luxury hybrid SUV”. Maybe it’s just me, but the phrase “luxury hybrid SUV” is a bit of a brain-bender. It seems like the Cadillac people have maintained the illusion that they can have their luxury SUVs and be green too. But they’re wrong. My 1995 Volvo 850 sedan gets 28 mpg. It’s 13 years old, not a hybrid, and it’s still better for the environment than the new Escalade. Granted, my car does not seat 8, but you can buy a Toyota Sienna mini van for 1/3 of the price, seat the same number of passengers, and get a whole extra mile to the gallon – and the Sienna isn’t even a Hybrid. It’s just Japanese.
The moral of this story: it’s officially time for the American Car Manufacturer to wake up. WAKE UP! Just because you might sell a few of these luxury hybrid SUV’s to trend-setting Rappers and other LA types doesn’t mean that they’re worth making. It’s time to make some compromises and develop some really nice cars for real Americans. You can keep the shininess, but you might want to consider dropping some of the extra tonnage and make a nice, efficient hybrid (or even an electric car! why not?) that gets over 40 miles to the gallon. The true bling is in the MPG.
A Plea to Matt Damon
Ok, for starters, if you’re not Matt Damon, you need not read this post. This is a personal discussion between him and I, and I’d appreciate it if you keep your fat nose out of this. (more…)
Super Repentance
Yesterday was perhaps the most American of days (excluding Xmas, 4th of July, and this coming Thursday, which I’m sure I don’t have to remind you is the first day of Chinese New Year). My friends and I gathered around the TV and put on the game, and treated ourselves to a feast fit for about 300 sumo wrestlers. There were ten of us.
Now, it’s not like I eat this way every day. The Superbowl is a special day, where we’re all given a free pass to binge on salty, fatty, orange-colored foods. It’s part of what makes America great. Right?
No, not right. Aside from the crippling stomach situation that resulted from my 8-course meal (consisting mainly of chips, cream, cheese, cream cheese, salt and beer), the feast left me with a soul-ache. This had a lot to do with the fact that most of the food I procured for the event wasn’t seasonal or organic (except for the salsa and some of the chips). And it had a whole lot to do with the sheer amount of food that my cohorts and I stuffed so willingly into our faces. (more…)
Obsolescence vs Reuse
This is a 2003 iPod. Maybe I got it in 2004 – I honestly can’t remember. Regardless, I know when it stopped working: approximately 2 years ago. And it’s still in my desk drawer. Yup, still there. Why? Because I have no idea what to do with it. Apple has completely shirked the responsibility of disposing of these gadgets which it has successfully managed to distribute worldwide. The company has also successfully managed to design these music machines so that they pretty much self-destruct after about two years, and then are essentially unrepairable.
This is why I no longer own an iPod, and why I also use a PC (hear that, Steve Jobs? Of course you do). (more…)
The Power Cooking Challenge
I love to cook, and I love having good tools to cook with. Sharp knives, big shiney mixing bowls, wisks – these all make me very happy for some reason. Over the past couple of years I’ve managed to collect a few nice gadgets for my kitchen that have brought my cooking to a whole new, more delicious level, and I really don’t want to live without them. The problem? They’re electronic, meaning they’re diabolical and highly guilt-worthy.
Anyone who has ever whipped egg whites or heavy cream into frothy white peaks by hand can relate to my love for the electronic hand mixer. Hand mixers and cuisinarts and coffee grinders are the tools that separate the modern cook from the cave man (who I believe is known to have bought his coffee pre-ground). These tools hold places of honor in my kitchen, and although I certainly do not have to plug-in every time I make a meal, I am sure to bust them out at least once a week. And every time I weep the tears of a thousand lost kilowatt hours.
So, should I abandon power-cooking altogether? Fat chance. You’ll have to pry that cuisinart out of my cold, dead hands to get me to give it up. But I’m also not willing to live with the guilt.
The challenge: get a small generator that I can power myself – using solar, wind or human energy – and run my small electronics off of it. I found this online – Human Power Generator – and it looks pretty sweet, but it requires making it myself and I’m not very confident in my skills as an electrician. In fact, all I can find online, are more sites like this that instruct you in making your own generator. Why doesn’t anyone manufacture small human-powered generators for running home electronics? WHYYYY!!???
This is frustrating. Please write to me if you’ve got any leads. I’m going to keep working on this, and I’ll definitely let you know if I find anything.
A Genetically-Engineered Empire
Businessweek ran a really interesting article about Monsanto this week, and I wanted to recommend it and also say a few words about the company, which has had an enormous but largely unrecognized effect on our food.
Monsanto’s a century-old company that most of us have probably heard of. As a kid, I often passed a large Monsanto plant that stretched along the Massachusetts Turnpike near where I grew up. The place reminded me of an city on Mars, a big tangle of shiny metal ducts and smokestacks and lights with steam rising off of everything. We always had to roll up the car windows as we drove by to keep the sulfurous rotten-egg stench of the place from entering the car and asphyxiating us. (more…)
Corny Mistake
Oh, NYC Department of Sanitation. You’ve got such good intentions. You sweep our streets, you pick up our recycling, and you magically keep our city of 8 million sparkling clean. I really can’t say enough good things about the sanitation department.
But the other day I saw this and it kind of gave me heartburn:
Bad, Bad Bar.
The other night I went to a bar called Rosemary’s Greenpoint Tavern on trendy Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, expecting a good time becuase I heard they had the best Halloween decorations around. The bar gave me a good fright, indeed, but it wasn’t because of the skeletons and witches hanging from the ceiling. It was because of this: (more…)
Greenercise
It kind of astounds me when I see people using machines that suck energy out of the wall to work out. Why would you need electricity to get exercise? Why use a stairmaster when there are stairs all over the place? Why run on a treadmill when you can dance?
After work I often run into these drummers on the subway platform:
I know this isn’t the best picture, but can you see their arms? The guy’s got biceps bigger around than my thigh, and the chick’s arms are like pythons. Big, swamp-dwelling, small-child-swallowing pythons. You can’t get this kind of muscle on a treadmill, people. Plus, they’re making music (and money).
There are lots of good reasons for getting a gym membership – climate-control, profressional assistance, high-tech machinery, etc – and I don’t intend to make light of them. But it just seems to me that electric gym equipment is a big waste of energy.
