Who's B.A.D.?

My mind doesn't have the energy, the gumption, the get-up-and-go, the what-for, the needle-to-the-record or the stick-to-it-ness to come up with something high-quality about the environment for Blog Action Day. I'm not a model conservationist. Yeah, I take my own bags to the grocery store (sometimes) and I don't own a car (and love it). And I hate how disposable our culture has gotten, but I still eat out almost every single day. I try, but I'm no example.

And it comes to global warming, where do I stand? Well, I don't think it's as easy as either side tries to make it out to be, but as with so many issues, I'm on the Jon Stewart side. Arguing with a global warming denier (whose argument was really no greater than "nuh uh!"), Stewart gave his common man view of things: that no matter what you think of the whole concept of "global warming", how can you deny that the massive explosion of population that the world has seen in the last century, combined with the massive increase in the cars, industry and products that those extra people require, how can anyone actually think that it hasn't affected the world? Not just the air that we breathe or water that we drink or swim in, but the overall climate? It's just naive.

It's really a shame that the environment is seen as a liberal issue. Do conservatives prefer to breathe dirty air or not care if there's toxic chemicals in the water they swim in? Do you really have to have liberal politics to do the math of how much garbage has been adding up from the hundreds of millions of people in this country alone and how there's only so many times we can sweep the trash under the rug before it starts exploding out? I just don't get it.

Anyway, there's my deposit in the Blog Action Day bank. It's not much, but maybe it'll make a little difference. A little fucking difference.

A creative statement

Normally, I'm content with putting up interesting articles from my RSS reader just over on the right there, letting you choose which you want to read, and which you don't. But this story deserves a little more than the click of the share button:

The eBay auction for 22 Vick football cards, chewed up and slobbered on by two Missouri dogs, ended Wednesday as the winning bidder dished out $7,400 — with the money expected to be donated to the Humane Society. Full story >>

McContent

Who says looks don't matter? This story today is kind of blowing my mind a little bit:

Whether it's french fries or carrots, preschoolers say food tastes better when it comes in a McDonald's wrapper.

It's not the food, it's the brand name. Marketing strongly affects 4-year-olds' food preferences, find Stanford University pediatrics researcher Thomas N. Robinson, M.D., and colleagues.

Robinson and colleagues studied 63 low-income children enrolled in Head Start centers in California. The kids ranged in age from 3 years to 5 years.

Told they were playing a food-tasting game, the kids sat at a table with a screen across the middle. A researcher reached around either side of the screen to put out two identical food samples: slices of a hamburger, french fries, chicken nuggets, milk, or baby carrots.

The only difference between the pairs of food samples was that one came in a plain wrapper, cup, or bag, and the other came in a clean, unused McDonald's wrapper, cup, or bag. The kids were asked whether they liked one of the foods best, or whether they tasted the same.

In all cases, the majority of the kids said the "best" foods were those linked to the McDonald's brand, even though the only differences between the bags were the McDonald's logos (no special advertising materials were used).

Now, somewhere at McDonalds headquarters, the marketing team is leaning back in their chairs, with their feet up on the table, cigars in their mouths and they are laughinggggg! But my brain is still sluggishly trying to process what the rest of us should do with this information. I guess parents will start trying to pass off eggplant and zucchini with McDonalds wrappers (note to McDonalds execs: start selling packages of blank wrappers for this purpose). But how can such a compelling argument for strong brand recognition help out the rest of us?

While I'm still processing the answer to that question, I'm now dedicating myself to strengthening the Are Seven brand, aiming for that ultimate marketing Nirvana: slapping a logo on anything and have people snatch it up like water in a sci-fi movie with a bleak vision of humankind's future. In other words, never really having to work or think again.

I have my new project. Steps one and two: logo and slogan. Suggestions (provided pro bono) welcome.

I KNEW IT!!!

There's so many things that I like about not having a car, but one of them is that car maintenance involves hiking through a minefield of scams, rip-offs and lies, lies, lies, yeah. I hated it. I always swore that I would learn more about the inner workings of cars, read a book on basic car maintenance, but I never did, and I would only find myself in the waiting room of a mechanic, nodding helplessly as he told me a long list of things that would need to be done and how many hundreds of dollars it would cost to fix it. He could be ripping me off, but how the hell would I know?

The worst was a Jiffy Lube. I almost always turned down suggestions to do anything but change my oil, but I never had a good feeling about the place. The bright colors and comfortable waiting rooms never gave me a sense that they were in anything but the ripoff business.

So I actually took the time out the other day to watch a five minute video of investigative reporting that uncovers EXACTLY what I suspected all along. I highly recommend watching it. The part where the district manager (DISTRICT manager!!) flat-out lies about his identity is worth the time spent.

And hands up if you really think Jiffy Lube is going to "clean up its act".

On the fence

I already had crime, drug-dealing and murder on the mind after going to sleep fresh off the end of City Of God, an incredibly violent movie that was also, unfortunately, fantastic (I hate that so many great movies are so violent, adding to the lists of the movie geek boys who can't call something 'one of the best ever' unless it involves at least 200 gunshot wounds). And I went to bed wondering what daily life is often like in parts of DC? Is it that bad? Was it that bad? Hey, maybe even the actual City of God in the 80's wasn't that bad, but we all know that there's places where people grow up and live their daily lives in war zones.

I woke up this morning (painfully early, thankyouverymuch failing body) to find this story in the Post:

Criminals to Face New Hurdle On D.C.-Prince George's Line

With the images from City of God in my head, here's a scene close to home of drug dealers controlling neighborhoods and easily evading cops. I hope that the fence brings that neighborhood some peace, but it's hard not to see a short time between the finish of the fence and the day when someone takes some wire cutters to it.

What I find almost as upsetting as hearing about the good people of these neighborhoods terrorized by crime is that this underscores the problem of DC. Having the political boundries that the cops can't cross is just one more example of how DC is so often paralyzed by its small size and close borders, and how it will continue to have such problems until the size of the city is expanded, something that will never happen.

This fire is out of control...

In all of the unfortunate news today, one unfortunate paragraph in an unfortunate article about all the bans on gay marriage really stuck out:

In a result that could spark anti-immigration proposals in other states, Arizona voters appeared to be backing a measure that would require public officials to turn in illegal immigrants who seek public services, including police or fire calls. Supporters of the proposal said they want to see the idea carried to other states.

FIRE CALLS?!! Wanting tighter immigration is one thing. But how it escapes people that this could potentially be very, very bad is completely beyond me. Those illegal immigrants will run out and leave fires and fights to rage rather than calling the police or the fire department because they're afraid of being sent back home. Is it really worth burning down entire neighborhoods in the hopes of possibly catch a few more illegal immigrants?

Come to think of it, people letting a fire destroy their homes rather than risk calling for help is a pretty great analogy of the election results.

Fire and brimstone and fun!

I can't quite get my head around this article in the Post today about evangelical Christian haunted houses. All at once, I'm disgusted (though not really surprised) and impressed at how, yet again, the far right turns something that it objects to into a recruitment tool. Kids are going to go to haunted houses anyway, so why not make one that has a message that Jesus will save you from what you're scared of? I actually find myself admiring it somewhat.

Roberts, 39, said he spreads a message of God's love most of the year. But he said Hell House and other variations on the theme work -- especially for teenagers raised on violent movies and video games. About 13,000 people have been converted at Hell Houses, he said.

It makes you wonder what's next...a boy who goes to wizard school only to realize that God's power is stronger than any spells? Christian porn? Celebrate Ramadan...with Jesus!

That said, some of the messages carry the sorts of prejudices that you'd expect from the evangelicals:

Perhaps the most extreme incarnation is Hell House, a morality play featuring a gay man dying of AIDS, a lesbian suicide, drunken driving and a botched abortion -- and the reeking, fiery hell that is the consequence of such sins...

I guess I can get behind the drunk driving part of it, but I'm a little confused by the "botched abortion". Does this mean that successful abortions are okay? Maybe this is just poor writing. Or maybe I'm just trying to make a joke. You never can tell.

On a slightly separate note, I almost wanted to laugh when I heard of a play put on by a Baptist Church as part of a "scare house":

The play told the story of a schoolteacher who shares her faith with her students just before being killed in a terrorist attack. Students who mocked her message descend to hell, where demons sit around a table and laugh about "how they've been effective at things like getting prayer out of the schools . . . and terrorism attacks," said Allen Waldrep, the outreach missions pastor at the church.

I would be lying if I said that I didn't feel at least nervous about future terrorist attacks, and I'm sure that one is coming at some point in the future. But it amazes me somewhat to think that, after a single successful coordinated attack in this country (does anyone really include Oklahoma City when they think of what Homeland Security is "protecting" us from?), the fear of being killed in a terrorist attack is so ingrained that it's even a fear of people in rural American and is being presented in this case as something so run-of-the-mill that It Could Happen To Your Teacher!!

I guess you never really know. Which is why we should all make sure that we're going to Heaven by hating homosexuals and people who botch abortions just in case terrorists have their eye on the Wal-Mart. Or did I read that wrong?

Occupational errors

I actually felt kind of relieved this morning when I read this paragraph in the Post about the drama around Wassef Ali Hassoun:

Hassoun, who was born in Lebanon, initially was thought to have deserted his post. Pentagon officials classified him as captured after a videotape surfaced on an Islamic extremist Web site showing Hassoun with a large knife positioned over his head. At one point, there were reports that Hassoun had been beheaded, but an extremist group later said it released Hassoun with the promise that he would not rejoin U.S. forces to fight. Hassoun arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon days later.

You gotta admit that it was beginning to look pretty suspicious. A Muslim in the US Marines in Iraq gets kidnapped and then turns up fine and well in Lebanon.  But this story makes a lot of sense.  He either was kidnapped or was deserting to go back to Lebanon, got kidnapped and...
 
This is where I kind of start to laugh a little bit. I'm just imagining the embarrassed head-slapping that went on in the terrorist camp when they realized that they'd ended up with one of the few Muslims in the American military.
 
It's inspired me to write.  Following is an excerpt from my tasteless and entertainment-free play, Out of All The Americans: 

Terrorist lackey: Look everyone!  Got us an American!  He was just wandering down the road!
 
Terrorist leader: What's your name, American infidel pig?!
 
American: Wassef Ali Hassoun.
 
<awkward pause>
 
Terrorist leader: You IDIOT!  You got a Muslim!  We can't kill him now!  What's wrong with you?!  Christ, this is humiliating.  <to Hassoun> Listen, we couldn't be more embarrassed about this.  Could you do us a quick favor and just run through the whole blindfolded videotape thing for us?  Those Flaming Sword of Allah boys in the next town over have really been hounding us about being all talk and it really would help us out if you could just run through the lines so we can get them off our backs.  You'd be free to go after that.
 
Hassoun: Uh, okay. Hey, if you give me a ride to Lebanon, I can throw in a hollow promise about never serving in the US military again.

Terrorist leader: Would you? That'd be really sweet, thanks. After that, I'm sure we can find someone to behead.  <glares at Terrorist Lackey>
 
Terrorist Lackey: <looks at audience, gulps and pulls comically at collar>

Trust me, it only gets more zany from there.

Closed (minded) captioning

While there's plenty that could be said about the horrific train bombs in Madrid today, I thought I'd leave it to the somewhat lighter side and point out an idiotic caption that accompanied a picture of people gathering in Madrid to public mourn the victims of the bombing:

"Demonstrators in Madrid raise arms to protest deadly bomb attacks on train stations"

Yes, that's what they were doing; taking a bold stand against train station bomb attacks. Whereas most people are in favor of terrorist bomb attacks, these people are finally showing their disgust for them. Or maybe the caption writer just thinks they're against deadly bomb attacks on train stations. Or maybe they just can't think that Spaniards would be doing anything in large groups except protesting.

Were they really protesting? I mean, if you gather after a horrific accident, isn't it more out of a need for companionship in a difficult time and coming together to show that there is good in the world? Maybe I'm just arguing semantics here, but I just don't think that "protesting" is the right word.