Dog Zen

You might just walk around with a big smile all day after you see this morning's Rule of Dog

Dog Zen

Not as awesome as an elephant but way less itchy than Mr. Itchy: Rule of Dog.

You, Too, Can Become An Addict Just Like Me



Indulge at your own risk but be forewarned it's a major time suck: National Geographic's wildcam at the Mashatu Game Reserve, Botswana.



So far today I've seen 2 zebras, 7 boars (featuring repeated appearances by Mr. Itchy), 5 antelopes, a bunch of baboons, and an elephant.





Operation Rescue's "Negro Project"

Shorter Operation Rescue: If only black pregnant women and their loved ones weren't black they, too, would be endowed with the awareness to make their own medical decisions.

Mayor Bloomberg, Still a Loser

Some time ago Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in his never-ending quest to show us that he's a big man who's in charge of us, came up with yet another one of his idiotic schemes--divert traffic from Times and Herald squares (two of the cities busiest intersections) and plop pedestrian plazas in the middle of the road.

The results are now in and, of course, it's a mess:

The promised 17 percent increase in traffic flow on Seventh Avenue was only 4 percent. The promised 35 percent increase on Sixth Avenue was just 15 percent.

But the price of those gains was more congestion on other avenues and on Midtown cross streets. Going west on Central Park South was 94 percent slower. Going east on 50th Street was 53 percent slower.


So what is Bloomberg's response to the evidence of his failed experiment? Behold:

"Today I'm pleased to announce I've decided to make this ground breaking project permanent," Bloomberg said.

...

"Some people benefit; some people lose, that's always going to be the case," Bloomberg said.

Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan was also unmoved by the new congestion created by the project.

"In a lot of instances it may be an additional minute or so," Sadik-Khan said.


Politicians, what are they good for?

Our Beloved Senators at Work




I tend to think people deserve the politicians they elect. And then I read about our dysfunctional local politicians. Nobody deserves these unprofessional incompetents:

Parker [a Brooklyn Democrat] dropped several "f-bombs" and called Savino "a b----" as she tried to explain why Monserrate could be immediately expelled with Republican votes, the sources said.

An enraged Parker, who opposed Monserrate's ouster, "went a little ballistic, swearing and screaming that the Republicans have no right to dictate what goes on in our house," one senator said.

Three Monserrate supporters - Sens. Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn), Ruben Diaz Sr. (D-Bronx) and Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) - started yelling and egging Parker on, several sources said.

When Savino told Parker to stop interrupting her, Parker is said to have yelled, "F--k you!"
Savino responded in kind and Parker stormed at her, the source said.

Senate Deputy Majority Leader Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx) jumped up and told Parker not to scream at Savino that way, the sources said.

Parker then swore at Klein and asked, "Do you want a piece of me?"

Dog Zen

Monday morning, time for Rule of Dog.

Bellevue Hospital and Patient Abuse



A woman kills her 8 yo son and attempts suicide in a room at the Peninsula (a Midtown hotel). The Daily News reports the story and assorted people offer more or less appropriate comments. Nothing out of the ordinary so far.

And then you notice the picture accompanying the story and you have to wonder: what is wrong with the Daily News and, more importantly, with Bellevue Hospital?

Nothing in this story justifies publishing a picture of an inpatient. And nothing, ever justifies a hospital allowing--knowingly or due to incompetence--its patients to be abused in this manner.

Identify the Body Part



Can you guess what part of the body this is and how it relates to reproduction? [Yes, of course this is a trick question!]


(Answer here and here.)

Double Standard? [NSFW]



The picture above is of a Calvin Klein store on Madison. Had the ad featured a nude female model the first thing I would've probably noticed was the use of yet another depiction of a woman in a vulnerable position. But since the ad features a male model all I managed to notice was its, um, aesthetic qualities with nary a thought about the implication of public displays of nudity.

A CHEAP PROSTITUTE MEANS AN EXPENSIVE STD

The other day when I was walking around Tesco’s I did a little experiment. (Yes, I love walking around grocery stores, grocery shopping with me takes hours, and sometime when I don’t really need anything, I just like to go and sit by the aisle where the pickled stuff is and just smell people that walk by and poke their coats.) But anyway.

This experience which I am going to tell you about now is not so much based on facts as it is based on visually biased perceptions. Okay, people, let’s be honest about Tesco; something tells me that people with a lot of money do not really make their whole essential shopping there. I am not a classicist; I am intellectually a left-wing (VIVA CHE) and emotionally a materialist (VIVA GUCCI), my friend and I like to call ourselves champagne socialists. But me looking down on anyone for a reason as petty as money, is completely and utterly preposterous.
There.

Saying that, I have noticed something since coming to this beautiful warm country (…) - the class differences here, are huge. Unfortunately, it is not so difficult to tell apart peoples financial status here. This of course does not apply to everyone but I live in a town where the class differences are quite visible and there is always one thing that strikes me about one particular thing that indicates a certain financial status; the body weight.

In the olden days, a big belly and a double chin used to mean wealth. In today’s modern world, it means the opposite. A high weight is no longer associated with rich dinner parties, a flow of money and a nonexistent necessity of labour. Obesity is (unfortunately) associated with a lack of education, a lack of money and a lack of time.
The unofficial experiment I carried out in Tesco’s was to determine if people with a low income (not factual) were buying certain products and if they were overweight.

Obviously you cannot see if a person has a high or a low income merely by looking at them but I drew the conclusions anyways, not because I am heartless and biased but because I am stupid and silly and I love glitter.

And how did my experiment go? I found out that in most cases obesity goes hand in hand with a low income. And let me make it clear that it is NOT because people with a low income are stupid and buy 3 bags of crisps for 99 p or 3 bags of cookies for a pound. No, a lot of these people were buying food…”normal” food; Food covered in potassium, preservatives and flavour enhancers sprinkled with sugar and saturated fat for that extra za-za-zoom. And why do they but this?

Uhmm, I don’t know,
maybe because meals like that for 4 people are very cheap instead of the organic environmentally friendly meal which doesn’t have all of those extra additives and STILL costs like three times the price.
The same thing applies to fast food and cheap meals out.

This is not a critique of the people. This is a critique of the food companies and the government. To the food companies, I suggest that you start making normal natural food for affordable prices so that people in any financial state can at least get food which hasn’t been messed around with. It’s sad to think that we live in a time era, where people with the lack of money are dying from obesity.

To the government: Educate people. I am sure that a majority of the people would reconsider their food choices if you actually told them what their food contains and what it can do to them in the long run.

This phenomenon where poor people are getting bigger and bigger can be seen in many places around the world today, just look at the US and Latin America, the same thing is happening over there.

Seriously people,
HELP THEM. FOR EVERY POUND YOU DONATE TO ME I WILL MAKE SURE THAT AT LEAST ON HAPPY MEAL GET'S BLOWN UP. ZAPATISTA STYLE.

LIGHT BRAINS DON'T THINK

You know the feeling of witnessing a car crash? It’s horrendous but you just can’t look away? Well, that’s the same feeling I get when I see people buy light products.These are probably nice yet desperate people trying to lose weight, shoving down fat free mayo, butter (that actually isn’t butter!) and low fat ice cream in their baskets.

I am imagining that the inner dialogue that goes on in their minds (and probably yours too) goes as following:



- I reeeeally want something fattening and/or sweet!

-
You can’t have it you fat cow - think of all the calories. You disgust me.

-
I know. But if I take the light option which only has half the calories and then go to the gym tomorrow, can I please buy it?? Pleeease?

- *sigh* Fine.

- YAY, thank you, thank you!

- You know you won’t go to the gym.

- ...I know.

-
You disgust me.

And so on and so on. My point is that a lot of people will choose the lighter option because they think it’s healthier and better for them. And why would they not think that? The commercials for light products all loudly proclaim the miraculous option of enjoying something sinfully fattening – without fat! To be perfectly honest – it does sound a lot more logical to choose the low fat and the low sugar option. I mean if you are eating something unhealthy you might as well take the healthiest option right?

WRONG.

What most people don’t understand is that, when you taking something out – you have to replace it. You see, most fatty foods are actually dependant on the fat; the oil, the butter, the lard (ew I know). The fat is the base, the most essential cornerstone. So when you remove the fat, you lose all kind of things; the flavor, the thickness, the smoothness, and the substance of the particular food mysteriously disappears. What the panicking food companies will do in a sticky situation like this, is that they will replace this poor fat with all kinds of goo. The song goes like this: Take one main ingredient out – put twenty other in!

If you like mayonnaise then you’ll probably know that it’s very fattening. One table spoon contains around 100 calories (somewhere in the world a size 0 celebrity just fainted) and it consists of egg, oil and vinegar. Yeah, it’s fattening but at least you can pronounce the names of the ingredients.

Well, a famous company that makes a very popular mayo decided some years ago to give in to the pressure of fat free society. They reduced the calories of their mayo by 50%, named it light and called it a day!

Oh yeah…and the ingredients went from the around 5 natural ones to :
WATER, SOYBEAN OIL, VINEGAR, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, WHOLE EGGS AND EGG YOLKS, SUGAR, SALT, XANTHAN GUM, LEMON AND LIME PEEL FIBERS (THICKENERS), (SORBIC ACID, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA) USED TO PROTECT QUALITY, LEMON JUICE CONCENTRATE, PHOSPHORIC ACID, DL ALPHA TOCOPHERYL ACETATE (VITAMIN E), NATURAL FLAVORS, BETA CAROTENE.


Yaaaay, it's like my mayo jar is hosting a partaaay!

And that butter which is like soooo not butter has gone from originally being made by...well just milk really, to a fake impersonator which consists of Vegetable Oil Blend (liquid soybean oil, liquid canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, liquid canola oil), Water, Sweet cream, Salt, Soylecithin, Vegetable mono- and diglycerides, Potassium sorbate and calcium disodium EDTA (used to protect quality), Citric acid, Natural and artificial flavors, Vitamin A (palmitate) and Beta carotene (for color).


I know, it’s like a bad replacement lover. You had the real deal, you cheated, and know you’re stuck with a less attractive look-a-like who snores in bed and gives you fake orgasms.

So the lesson to learn from this exquisite post my friends is: If it’s light it just ain’t right!

IF YOU GIVE YOUR BABY A SAUSAGE ROLL YOU MIGHT AS WELL SLAP HIM

Good afternoon my lovely friends,
I want to share something with you all today. Something important that I feel deserves your attention. Something I know is going to annoy and upset you but HEY, even Galileo Galilei stepped on some toes.

Let me start off by saying that I live in a really small town in England by mere default. I don’t really know how I got here, one day I just woke up and POW: I was stuck in a town where Primark is the main meeting point and where 13-year old moms light the cigarettes for their 7-year old daughters while knitting tracksuit bottoms for their 3-year old grandsons. No, really.

Moving on. While I’ve been living here I have experienced the exciting and diverse culture that a small town in the east midlands can offer (okay you figure that one out people). However, in the mist of this cultural joy, I have seen a worrying trend flooding the streets: public child abuse.
No, I’m not talking about the teenage mom shouting explicit words to her 2-month old baby while she’s lighting a fag or the 13-year old father who does not understand the meaning of financial stability.

I’m talking about toddlers walking around the streets unwittingly eating sausage rolls, pizza slices and neon-coloured candy provided by their caring parents. Now before I move on, let's get one thing straight: I do not give a flying fudge about how many calories this or that has, how many carbohydrates, sugar or fat something contains of - as long as it is natural and not tampered with. Sugar, fat and carbohydrates comes in essential raw food such as fruits, nuts and vegetables and I, who mainly live on these foods do not count calories, grams of fat or carbs since I know that I am providing my body with nutritious and natural food.

Having said that, there are not a lot of things that makes me angrier than seeing an innocent child trustfully eating what their ignorant parents are providing them with. In my little town, I stumble across this socially accepted child abusing phenomena on a daily basis - I see these growing children who are in need of vital minerals and vitamins, ironically being stuffed with chemicals and cancer provoking trans fats.

The other day while I was walking around town I saw a young mom with her little cute daughter. The daughter, who couldn’t have been more than 3 years old, was holding a sausage roll from one of these cheap chain-"bakeries" (you wish, why not also call it the Louvre while we’re at it) and a can of fizzy drink in her tiny little hands. I was two seconds away from slapping the mom over the head with the sausage roll but I was so scared that she was going to burn me with her cigarette so I chickened out. I could not believe the ignorance of this mom. Instead of providing good healthy actual food for her little daughter who’s completely dependent on her mom, the mother showed her love by giving her modified starch (which consist of E 1404, E 1410, E 1412, E 1413, E 1414, E 1420, E 1422, E 1440, E 1442, E 1450 and E 1451), preservatives (which have caused recent debates for its health risks) and aspartame (the famous and controversial sweetener that has raised several concerned voices about its long termed affects on the human body).

Though I’m sure that those thing are super yummie and covered in all kinds of cool artificial flavours and funkyness, I’m quite certain it lacks those boring things such as...hmm I don’t know, maybe essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals which are majorly important for a growing body? It actually sounds like what the little girl’s mother is providing her daughter with are more likely do break down the body instead of building it up.

The sad thing is that I actually don’t think that the mom is aware of what she is feeding her daughter with, or what it will do to her in the long run – heck, mummy is probably eating those things herself!

However, when a little growing life is dependent on you, you should do anything in your power to provide and care for it - even if it requires a further education in certain areas.

Yet, something tells me that this particular mom and probably another couple of million British people are quite comfortable in their eating habits and do not want to spend “so much bloody time” on cooking from scratch or simply have no interest in “expensive fancy food”.

Okay then mums of England. I’m sure the hospital bills for obesity and heart disease treatment which your children will for receive in the future, won’t be so expensive or fancy either.
Oh no wait – they will!

By the way, they’re having a sale on canned beef and cream soda in town. Go get ‘em tiger!

Dear fit friends,

You know when you walk into a grocery store and you smell the scent of some nice grilled chicken or when you smell the heart-warming scent of freshly baked bread calling you from the bakery section?

Now, wouldn't it be weird if you one day would find out that the smell you are sensing is not actually chicken or bread – it’s completely falsified and fabricated, constructed in a laboratory.

Well, that day is today people.

Did you know that there are over hundreds of companies and businesses in the world which solemnly focus on providing aromas for the food we eat? If you don't know what aromas are for I can tell you that the purpose of aromas is to enhance or to completely provide certain foods flavours. Basically, the aromas which are synthetically produced are here to give us the realistic sensation of something that is not real.

That juicy chicken you smell from the hot counter is not as juicy as it is pumped with salt and water (in order to make it look bigger so that it makes you feel that you get a lot for your money but we'll bring that up in a later post) as it is jammed with artificial aromas. Oh, and that mouth watering bread you’re smelling from the bakery section which makes you think of old nana and sweet childhood memories… well it is not as much sweet and mouth-watering as it is mass-produced with poor quality ingredients, and therefore obviously in desperate need for added aroma and taste.

I was recently surfing on one of these lovely company’s websites and I came across their “Savoury flavours” section. AND MY OH MY, did they have some good stuff or what!? They had all kinds of flavours and aromas! They had the fake chicken smell, the seafood one and even some simulated beef and sausage ones! But it doesn’t stop there folks! No, the best part of their “fake meat-smell section” was that within the categories of beef and chicken, you could choose from a multiple varieties of smells such as “freshly grilled”, “charcoal” and “Smokey taste”. Yaaay, I mean why eat and smell the real deal when we can eat and smell aromas instead? It’s like going to Paris without actually having to go to Paris! Life is getting easier people and I love it.

On another page I found this statement: “Our expert flavour chemists specialize in designing custom made flavours to meet the continuously changing demands of our customer's market.” Yeah, I mean instead of actually coming up with new recipes for bread and meat or instead of actually changing the natural seasonings, why not let the flavour chemists inject all kinds of synthetic and cute chemicals inside our bodies?

Well, if you excuse me now, I am going to go and have some:

Geranial
ethyl metholphenyl glycidate
vanillin
ethyl pelargonate
isoamyl acetate
ethyl butyrate
2-methyl-2-pentenoic acid
1-(prop-1-enyl)-3, 4,5-trimethoxybenzene.

Oh you didn’t get that? Well, that’s what the strawberry aroma is made of and yeah baby, it’s the exact same thing that’s in the strawberry flapjack you’re holding in your left hand. Run along now and play. Bye.



" I'm so fake I should be in Hollywood"