fantastic salad

The bar exam is dumb. I want to put my face in a meat slicer.

So I just realized the Winston Smith (the artist, not the John Hurt/Orwell guy) art for the Dead Kennedy's Bedtime for Democracy Album looks remarkably similar to an 1885 drawing predicting the future of advertising.

See for yourself (click for biggens)


This has to be homage rather than coincidence.

I also never noticed that Winston Smith got the torch hand wrong. But really, what do you expect from someone who hates America?

The only city I've every lived in where the banks all close at 4:00.

Running a bank from 9-5 is dumb enough since everyone who might be interested in giving a bank their money is working during precisely those hours, but why 4:00? That forecloses even the option of leaving work early.

Banks could take this trend to its logical conclusion and only open during lunch hour, since that's the only time 9-5 workers can possibly make it, but then that raises the issue of when bank tellers are supposed to eat. 11:00 is way too early, and waiting until 1:00 could induce money-counting-impairing hypoglycemia.

It's kind of embarrassing how much I was looking forward to the release of firefox 3. After 10 seconds of using it I switched back to firefox 2. How can anyone stand the new location bar? If I type in "gm" it's because I want to go to "gmail.com" not because I want to revisit some AP article about general motors I glanced at for a moment 4 weeks ago. It's too bad, because the memory usage of 3 is better and page rendering noticeably faster.

Normally I'm willing to give "progress" a chance, but the new location bar is so contrary to my internet-browsin habits that I can't imagine ever making the upgrade. Switching to IE would be awful enough, but if they take their location bar the same route then what will I do? Spend time outside?

It's not that I can't see how an autocomplete-type search of your browser history is useful, but that's a completely separte function than URL autocomplete, not a replacement for it. The ideal fix would be an addon allowing you to toggle between the two.

If you're reading this, are you using firefox 3? If yes, why doesn't this bother you?

I don't have a paid account, so I can't embed an LJ poll, but I want some internet-people advice. It's just 3 multiple choice questions. Click that link or the photo above. Not that I'm procreating or anything...

And no, this isn't for an college journalism project.

Dr. Allan Friedman, "the top neurosurgeon at Duke [University Medical Center] and an internationally known tumor and vascular surgeon," just removed Ted Kennedy's brain tumor. After surgery, the doctor released the following statement:

"I am pleased to report that Senator Kennedy's surgery was successful and accomplished our goals. Senator Kennedy was awake during the resection, and should therefore experience no permanent neurological affects from the surgery."

Ordinarily, I'd let this kind of nitpicky grammar thing slide, but I'd like to see more attention to detail from my brain surgeon.

I've come to realize that I, unlike all you internet dolts, have my finger planted firmly on the throbbing pulse of the bleeding edge of the humor zeitgeist. So let me take a moment to remind everyone of some things that, despite their reputation to the contrary, aren't actually funny.

1. zombies-stopped being funny at least 3 years ago, probably around the same time the guy who wrote the "zombie survival guide" purchased a private island and a malaysian child slave with the proceeds of his book sales. Definitely stopped being funny as soon as the globe ran a positive story about a zombie march. Zombie movies are still inoffensive, but zombie pop culture references have lost all humor value and can now best be described as "kooky in a tedious, predictable kind of way." It should be noted that referring to something as "kooky"--even a joke--is not particularly complimentary to begin with.
   
2. pirates-stopped being funny in 1999. Around this time there was a "pirate punk" subculture, complete with joke punk bands with names like "Scurvy," pirate imagery incorporated into critical mass flyers, and masses of dirty kids telling jokes like "where do pirates go to study? The librARRRy." It was funny for a minute, then everyone got tired of it. Tragically, the rest of the world was never informed. This is also "kooky in a tedious, predictable kind of way."
   
3. robots-see items 1 and 2 above
   
4. this one will make me no friends, but cat macros, are no longer funny. Sorry, it's true.
   
5. hair question- Don't get me wrong, I think the mooninite guys did absolutely nothing wrong and were the victims of a massive overreaction on the part of a city run by clueless, small-minded, paranoid demagogues who were too proud to admit a mistake and instead decided their best course of action was to emperor-has-no-clothes a couple guys into a wholly unnecessary legal hassle, but the hair question press conference wasn't particularly funny. Admittedly, I'd be tempted to pull off something similar if I was in their position, and it would probably be just as awkward and poorly executed as their own performance was. And I admire their pluck. But none of this changes the fact that the press conference did not actually elicit "EPIC LULZ" and neither did the repeated "hair question" references on boston-related message boards. It really really really isn't funny when people are still doing it a year and a half later.
   
6. irony- it's just exhausting. I would gladly exchange my ironic detachment and the dissolute-hipster-chic that drives all the girls wild for the ability to occasionally react to the world with genuine concern or emotion. Sure, I'm emotionally stunted and consider the world devoid of meaning, but at least I'm compelled against my will to respond to absolutely anything I experience with a reflexive, superficial sarcastic comment. Surely, that's worth something, right?
   
7. the concept of snark itself- it used to be, in the old days, snark was the domain of jaded, bitter, losers who were smarter than everyone else and thought there were even smarter than that. No matter how much netizens refer to what they're doing as snarking, if they aren't angry, marginalized, and capable of at least occassionally being clever, it doesn't count as snark. Snark from the naively optimistic is as snarky as the song "Cop Killer" as performed by Betty White would be threatening

That is all.

even if you hate the music, it's worth it for the retro cheese and the commercials.

Osama Bin Laden has officially jumped the shark.

He "railed against" the Mohammed cartoons and the pope. Is anyone else just bored? Like Lost, they should have canceled this show a couple seasons ago.

I was a bit on the fence about this band "The Bird and the Bee."

Amazing how one little malapropism can make my decision for me. Listen closely around 20-27 seconds into this track:

This wasn't a slip of the tongue, because she repeats it in a later verse. I also refuse to believe it was an intentional, tongue and cheek, thing--especially since they've since cut that lyric from their live version.

I think my judgment was impaired because the lead singer is a real looker.

Leave Secret comments here. They'll be screened and never be revealed. Honest injun!

1. I'm not a fanatical Obama person, but this is hardly plagiarism.

2. Thanks Chris Hitchens

3. While I'm sure the "National Cattlemen's Beef Association" has absolutely no economic incentive to lie, the meat recall is genuinely scary. If you're too lazy to read the article, for the past 2 years, a CA meat-packing plant has been violating USDA safety regulations by processing cows that are unable to stand or walk on their own.

Here's a reassuring line

USDA officials underscored their belief that the meat, distributed by Westland Meat, poses little or no hazard to consumers, and that most of it was eaten long ago.

USDA is correct that human cases of bacterial infections like E. Coli from the meat would have presented themselves by now, but no one wants to talk about Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. CJD is a fatal, incurable, human form of mad cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy). There is strong circumstantial evidence linking the consumption of BSE-tainted meat to the development of CJD in humans.

Think I'm a crazy conspiracy theorist? Well, this page from USDA's own web site expresses precisely the same concerns–at least it did until USDA killed it around the end of 2006. (thanks archive.org!) However, unlike say, E. Coli, CJD has a potentially decades long incubation period. Cows suffering from advanced BSE infection present with movement problems or a complete inability to walk, which is a spectacular reason for humans not to eat them.

I wish some powerful citizens group would develop to force USDA to actually enforce existing slaughterhouse food safety regulations, or better yet, follow Japan's lead and test all cows destined for human consumption for BSE. But instead, in another example of media stupidity and cowardice (see #2 above), major media outlets barely mention this. The NPR broadcast I heard about this today and the washington post article both took an entirely reassuring tone, and mostly presented it as an animal cruelty issue. Both stories rely heavily on PR hacks from the aforementioned, completely unbiased National Cattlemen's Beef Association, who tells us that cows must pass "multiple safety hurdles." In the NPR story the industry spokesperson goes on to tell us that "as a mother of two young kids" (ugh) she is confident the food supply is completely safe. Yeah? Well, only the tiniest bit of digging on the USDA web page tells me otherwise:

Current tests are useful only on grossly infected animals, and only after slaughter.

In the US, BSE testing is only required on cows exhibiting BSE-symptoms, but the cow form of the disease has an incubation period of 4-5 years, and even symptomatic cows are not always spotted (indeed, these symptoms were completely ignored at the CA meatpacking plant that is the source of the latest round of headlines).

One more thing, mad cow disease probably be vanishingly rare if we simply prohibited the use of animal parts in cattle feed.

So what's my point? These reassurances of safety are complete bullshit. The first outbreak of BSE in the UK in the late 1980s came right before an otherwise inexplicable spike in UK CJD deaths in the late 90s-early 2000s. I'm not being hysterical or to trying scare people, I eat beef all the time, and just looking at the incidence of CJD (assuming there's no dramatic spike 10 or 20 years from now) chances are I'll die from some other unpleasant malady. All I'm saying is that concerns about mad cow disease, and the consequent concern we should have about CJD (but don't because of industry-agency-media misfeasance) are rational. The beef industry is lying and the USDA and FDA aren't doing their jobs. Simple, relatively inexpensive safeguards could virtually eliminate mad cow disease, and prevent countless people from what Oliver Sacks has described as the most unpleasant way for a person to die.

"cybersquatters" beat me to this one.

Scientists Grow Human Skin In France

I guess they have to grow it somewhere.

also this.

this needs to be a screensaver

So people are always asking me, "Hey, fantastic_salad, what's your favorite Italian psychedelic/prog rock band?"

I can only name one band in that category,* but they're very good in an "I'm deeply ashamed of myself" kind of way: Osanna.


In case that video wasn't psychedelic enough for you, here's one where they wear dresses and face paint and rock out in the desert.

Finally, the obligatory movie soundtrack. Does an Italian band exist that hasn't done a movie soundtrack?

* Edit: wait, I'm dumb, I forgot about Goblin.