The Cheap Crap Chronicles, Part 2

My God, those Wal-Mart ads are depressing.

You know the ones, where some slightly overweight, self-described "stay-at-home mom" with a hick accent throws into a shopping cart lots of cheap crap made by indentured slaves in China while stating that she'd rather star in a Muslim fundamentalist decapitation video than live without Wal-Mart?

Shopping--the minivan-enhanced corollary to stay-at-home mommery--is performed exclusively by women in real life. In Wal-Mart commercials these women shoppers are represented by vapid middle-class hillbilly broodmares, selflessly budgeting away the best years of their lives for their redneck husbands and unruly spawn, their worth as human beings measured by their ability to sniff out a bargain. They teach the girl children to shop (they take the boy children "to the lake"). Their frantic stay-at-home lives are crammed with good-natured sacrifice, and they couldn't be happier than when they're shopping for cheap crap in Wal-Mart.

The Wal-Mart dogma: a woman 's value is only as great as her ability to sustain her husband and kids with a steady supply of cheap crap. Shopping = Love.

In real life Wal-Mart smells like deep-fried polyester and should make any normal woman forced to shop there weep in abject misery over the fact that it's come to this.

Turkey Goosing

Turkey goosers engaging in fetish behavior. Photo: Cody Pruitt

Part III in our series "Weekending in the Flyover States"

Some people have asked who yesterday's turkey chick is, as it appears that I slothfully neglected to identify the photo in the original post. She is not, as some have speculated, me, nor is she the friend Leslie.

She is in fact veteran turkey hunter Julie Johnson, of Washington State, and a total stranger. I got her picture from an article called "Falling In Love With Turkey Hunting." Julie refers to the wild turkey as "one of the most challenging big game animals on the continent." She is in awe of its extreme guile and cunning. I get the impression that she feels honored to pit her feeble wits against this mighty bird in the ancient struggle between man and beast.

[They must have super-genius mutant ninja turkeys in Julie Johnson's neck of the woods. In Central Texas a wild turkey is a big, black, noisy object moving slowly against a pale green backdrop within 25 yards of wherever you happen to be standing. Half the time they come running up to you, asking if you're hungry.]

However, I wonder if it's turkey hunting Julie's really in love with. It's a curious thing. I've noticed that people who love to shoot wild turkeys really love to pose for pictures with their hands up the carcass' butts. Goosing the turkeys, if you will. Fisting the feathers. They pose in pairs or groups. They pose with kids. Some guys take on two turkeys at a time, one with each hand. This is called a "Double Gobble Grapple."

I reveal no secrets when I say that these people are extremely likely to be from Missouri.

Missouri needs no introduction. It's the state where gay marriage is viewed as some kind of pox, yet nothing makes them happier than when cults of gun-toting fetishists dress up like trees, feel up a bunch of bleeding dead birds, and post the pictures on the internet.

God Bless America.

This is a test

of the Twisty Broadcast System. This is only a test.

The Un-Agrarian

My friend Leslie used to live in downtown Chicago. Now she embodies the Jeffersonian Ideal, living off the grid in some hillbilly holler in remotest Kentucky. There, at the very edge of civilization, she raises endangered farm animals. She makes her own soap, spins her own wool, and plows things with horses instead of machines. She has befriended Canada geese, shot possums, and raised calves named "Freezer."

So when she sent me an invitation to attend a conference of the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, I was not surprised. I wasted no time in writing her back, telling her there was no way in hell.

I'm all for sustaining Southern agriculture, I said, and I find the subject of pastured poultry particularly riveting, but I've got an appointment to get my blood changed that weekend. Sorry.

Pastured poultry. Yeah, I'll check that out right after the gripping seminar on Forage Yield and Nutrient Uptake as Influenced by Secondary Treated Wastewater.

I could be wrong, but I think maybe Leslie detected a slight mocking tone in my response. I can't imagine why. It's not like I've ever made fun of her for dropping out of society to dine on roadkill with Cletus and Brandine.

To shut up my foie-gras-hole, she sent me this article from the NY Times about the virtues of pastured poultry, and how practically nothing Americans eat has anything to do with our cozy agrarian fantasies, not even the wholesome, homely Thanksgiving spread.

The guy makes an excellent case. Anybody who has ever listened to 10 minutes of NPR knows that their Thanksgiving turkey never even vaguely resembled the splendid specimen pictured above. Commercial turkeys are, in fact, little more than masses of tortured, pulsating mutant tissue bred in squalid petrie dishes by chemical-oozing sociopaths. Most people find this truth (*) so repellent they refuse to think about it. But were you aware that these birds are also nutritionally inferior to free-roaming fowl? And I'm not just talking about hormones and antibiotics.



So theorizes Dan Barber, the author of the aforementioned article, citing some USDA study: "Pastured chickens have 21 percent less fat, 30 percent less saturated fat, 50 percent more vitamin A and 400 percent more omega-3 fatty acids than factory-raised birds. They also have 34 percent less cholesterol." The Butterball is not only reprehensibly inhumane, it's a carcinoma waiting to happen.

I read these remarks with interest.

Because you know what I've got? Pastured poultry, that's what. Namely, turkeys galore. There are vast herds of'em out at the remote Hill Country acreage upon which I propose to relocate the Twisty HQ. They're wild turkeys, the kind they make bourbon out of. And they're enormous. Teeming with health, they thunder robustly about countryside all the livelong day, eating coyotes. My dog Zippy, mistaking them for teenagers, enjoys flushing them out of the underbrush. They chortle a bit, flap with great effort up to some low-hanging oak limb, and light up cigars.

The other day it dawned on me, as I observed the picturesque unfolding of this ancient dog vs. game-bird tableau, that if I only had a gun, I could thunk down a magnificent 20-pounder on the Thanksgiving table. "Ugg," I would say, swinging the irridescent carcass by its feet in a practiced, manly arc. "She's a beut!" the cook would exclaim, raising a cleaver. We would all be dressed like Brueghel characters.

I recalled with a pang that I don't have a gun, much less a cook or a 16th century peasant outfit. My thoughts turned to plucking and gutting and all those other rustic skills that have been bred out of me by the Urban Presbyterian Eugenics Program, and I decided to let the turkeys alone for another year.

That's right. I'm too chicken to shoot a turkey.

Talking Soap Blob Patronizes Homicidal Teen

Droppy shows Mom how to levitate food

Part 2 In Our Series Women and Filth: How Advertising Keeps Their Love Alive

Last night I saw another commercial where a happy homemaker accepts sexual overtures from a cleaning product spokes-toon. The spokes-toon was "Droppy," a talking drip of dish detergent. Like any red-blooded American sperm-shaped lemon-scented Lothario, Droppy wants "moms everywhere to have more fun in the kitchen." If you believe the website , the product's ability to induce unbelievable dishwashing pleasure appears to be pretty much the next best thing to a weekend in Vegas with Jude Law, eight gallons of Cool Whip, and an Amex Platinum card.

Droppy, a misogynist, also has this brilliant advice for Mom:

Divvy up the after-dinner chores so no one gets stuck with all the work. You can even set up a post-meal assembly line where Billy clears the table, then hands the dishes off to Susie, who washes the dishes in Joy® dishwashing liquid and water, and hands the clean tableware off to Dad for drying. Not only is cleanup quick and easy, but by getting everyone involved, you can turn this after-dinner chore into quality family time!

Quality time for Dad and Billy, maybe. Billy's job is over in two minutes, and Dad is kept well insulated from direct contact with scullery filth. But poor Susie, who has had the misfortune to be born female into this backward, dishwasherless family, is the one stuck with the grunt work. She gazes beseechingly at Mom, but is ultimately betrayed by the inability of the American homemaker and her ooze-shaped lover to picture Billy with dishpan hands.

Later that night, Susie will lie awake, plotting her bloody vengeance against these misogynist fucktards.

Speaking Of The Dear Old Yuletide Spirit

It's a cliché to complain that Christmas gets earlier every year, but this time it's a whole month earlier than last year, when it was already too early. I don't know if I'm gonna make it, mang.

I'm no Christian, but even if I were--maybe even especially if I were--I would fold my arms and turn my back to Christmas. "Christmas," I would say, "You are dead to me!" I would probably say it in some kind of accent.

I dread it all year--the tacky plastic santas and particleboard reindeer, the sudden, freakish obsession with nutmeg, the forced marches to some overheated mall, the bloody fucking bells jingling unnaturally on things that for the lovagod ought to be silent, the cruel, suffocating plague of red and green that makes the optic nerve cry out in agony for relief, any relief: "Give me the quiet civility of burnt umber! Assuage me with the azure of the infinite skies! Let me frolic in the frothy equatorial pinkness of a rare orchid!"

Maybe all those retards who believe Jesus has personally selected them to whup fag ass will go bankrupt trying to comply with that passage in the New Testament where Jesus says "It is commanded thee. And thou shalt rise up in the morning early, and hie thee to Wal-Mart. And thou shalt lift up thine eyes, and seest the sun and the moon and the stars, though they art plastic and made in China. And there shalt thou buyest much cheap crap. Omit not the 'Support Our Troops' car magnets. Go USA!"

This year I'm taking action. I scorn to participate in consumer madness. To anyone who's expecting a gift from me, here it is: I'm making a big-ass donation to the Human Rights Campaign. You're welcome.

See also BuyNothingChristmas.org a site giving Christians permission to act Christlike at Christmas. Those poor fucks haven't got a chance.

The Erosion of Taste, Part 46

John Constable A Mill at Gillingham in Dorset (Parham's Mill). 1826. Oil on canvas
Thomas Kinkade The Miller's Cottage, Thomashire (undated). Printer's ink on greeting card

In Which The Author Takes On Mayonnaise

Where does taste come from?

The issue may seem overly frouffy at a moment in history when, as the dissonant preamble to World War III, we are forced to witness the wholesale destruction of the Republic by greedy ingnernt fucktards. Taste, however, is actually a matter of vital importance. Of the few perceptible traits that distinguish humans from chimpanzees, taste--the ability to discern whether or not a thing is crummy--is the only one that's worth a damn. Let's face it: if a species can't tell a Kinkade from a Constable or a Cheez-Whiz from a Camembert, it can hardly be expected, come election day, to differentiate between a lying, illiterate, dry-drunk corporate monkey and an actual statesman.

So, is taste created by money? Does it exist as a sovereign universal force, like gravity, or porn? Does it erupt, a geyser of subjective whim, from within? Or are these questions less urgent than asking "where the heck has all the taste gone?"

I revisit the notion of the erosion of taste whenever pop culture makes Truth and Beauty its bitch. I do not speak simply of fashion (although would it kill people to quit wearing capri pants?), or of politics (even Cheez-Whiz does not present a more vulgar affront than W) but of an overall cultural capitulation to ugliness.*

That's right. Today I address the role of condiments in commercial advertising.

Over the past months I have stared, mouth agape, as commercial after commercial depicts consumers so passionate about fast food that they'll lick mayo globs off the faces of total strangers. I have seen this questionable gesture reenacted with alarming frequency in burger commercials, mustard commercials, and mayonnaise commercials.

Exactly when did it become OK to lick, scoop, or otherwise gobble dripped condiments from other people's faces? I will tell you when. Never. It is never OK to lick food off a person with whom you are not engaged in hot sex. It is never OK to lick anything off a person with whom you are not engaged in hot sex.

Yet I am anxious lest our nation's proletariat--a group who, as we now know from the episode of the prevaricating swift boat veterans, is ridiculously open to commercial persuasion--takes its cue from these ads and decides it is the height of fashion to eat the remains of a meal from a third-party's greasy chin. If we become a nation of face-lickers, what's next? Butt-sniffing?

Fortunately, I detect a glimmer of hope. Last night on TV I saw a guy scoop a fingerful of secret sauce off a woman's pink sweater set and eat it like a booger. Normally this would have caused my head to complete several 360-degree rotations on my neck, except that it was a McRib commercial. Once a meme filters down to a cultural bottom-feeder like McDonald's--a corporation that has perpetrated some of the worst aesthetic offenses in the history of civilization--it is likely played out, and will die on some corny T-shirt in the 1/2 price bin at Walgreens.

But the fight isn't over. Though it may disappear from TV, the practice may well be subsumed into American culture's repertoire of vulgarity, taking its rightful place alongside the Macarena and Yelling Into Cell Phones. I urge one and all to resist facial-condiment-licking. And while you're at it, boycott corporate food, tell your congressmen that women's rights is not a city in China, get rid of those capri pants, and quit forwarding me email petitions. Thank-you.

_______________________
* Ugliness is not found in nature. It must be manufactured, usually out of greedy ingnernt fucktardiness.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!

We're Here And We're Severe: It's American Hate's Time To Shine

We've always sort of known they were there, but, kind of like the microscopic bugs in our eyelashes or the gooey, pulsating things that live in sewers, we've never given them much thought. Except for the isolated cases of weird behavior in places nobody cares about, like Mississippi, it was possible to just ignore them. Until now. I allude to the shitload of Americans who have formally announced their loving embrace of blind hatred. Their motto? "We're Here and We're Severe!" They worship the ghost of a Jew from the Roman Empire who tells them what to hate.

Some of the objects of their blind hatred include: France, gays, free speech, Hispanics, women, education, foie gras, intellectuals, Muslims, civil liberties, Negroes, gainful employment, trees, the "blue" states, clean air, and the Constitution.

Oh, and terrorists.

I realize you aren't so big on terrorists yourself, but believe me, you've got nothing on these hate-loving Americans. They really hate terrorists. To prove it, they cant wait to turn the United States into a police state. They are totally down with the government spying on its own citizens, and to strip-searches at airports they sound a resounding "yea!" They're happy as clams to let the Justice Department read their email. Practically nothing gives them so hearty a laugh as when libraries spy on them for the FBI. They cheer when swarthy Americans are thrown in prison indefinitely without being charged and without access to counsel. These things make them so giddy with joy, they don't notice that not a single terrorist--not one--has been successfully prosecuted.

And they put ribbon-shaped magnets on their cars. That'll show'em.

They buy the magnets at Wal-Mart, which only sells products that have been manufactured abroad by slave labor. Ironically, this screws the hate-loving Wal-Mart customers out of jobs. This matters little to the hate-loving Americans, though. Their love for hate is so strong, they could give a hang if they have a job. As for perpetuating a global culture of oppression, they've never heard of that.

But perhaps nothing makes them happier than when the President bombs the fuck out of anything that moves. Anything swarthy, that is. The ghost of the Jew from the Roman Empire has a special fondness for the President, and has imbued him with superpowers. One of these superpowers is his ability to see right through those swarthy people, down to their evil, terrorist cores. This is why the hate-loving Americans don't bat an eye when the President decides to torture and kill those swarthy people. The ghost tells him to.

Which is funny, because before he became a ghost, that same guy used to go around saying "love your enemy." Of course, that kind of hippie fag talk is what got him killed in the first place.

But look, I wouldn't feel too superior if I were you. The New Hatred does not stop with the "red" states.* The "blue" states want in on the action, too, saying "Shove it up your ass, South! Suck my entire black dick, Midwest! You're all fucking morons!"** It's true, too. Somebody published a list of average IQs proving that the red states are indeed full of fucking morons. What it does not prove, however, is that the blue states are not also full of fucking morons. The highest national average IQ is only 113, which, I hate to break it to you, Connecticut, is unlikely to qualify you for membership in Mensa.

The hate marches on. 25% of gays hate themselves. This 25% helped vote in a regime that wants them to get married, but not to other gays. That this regime weasled its way into power by pandering to people who believe that gays are aberrant subhumans matters not a fig to them. In fact, it makes them feel good about hating themselves!

Lots of women hate themselves, too, but duh, that's no newsflash.

So, while our hate-everybody country demonstrates to the world its surpassing capacity to endure the suffering of others, I suggest the rest of us get down to our fighting weight. It's ON.

__________________________________

*Observe the findings of these guys from U of MI who give a more accurate view of the country's supposed redness.

**In fairness, California has thus far kept a civil tongue in its head, but there's no telling what it might do when the drugs wear off.

Blue Backlash

Uh-oh. Now the blue states are starting to give in to the Dark Side. They are beginning to exhibit sanctimonious hubris. Don't forget, Blue States: plenty of sane people live out here! And quit calling it "Jesusland"!

Apologia

photo: sorryeverybody.com

Dear World: We're Sorry You're Screwed

After the initial shock of the Tuesday's election results coalesced into a generalized sensation of dread, nausea, and self-pity, and this in turn formed a substrate that produced the lump in the back of my throat that I expect to be there for the next four years at least, I began to feel pretty awful about the rest of the world. Because let's face it, as crappy as all this makes us feel, they're the ones who are really gonna suffer.

It turns out I'm not alone. Thanks to Tony Renner for this link to sorryeverybody.com, a site dedicated to spreading the word, through slipshod digital photography, that half of the American electorate still gives a fig about humanity.

UPDATE: As befits a proper web meme, it looks like the site might be down. You go, girls!

Today's Dumb Question

"Freedom of speech," quoth Americablogger John Aravosis on the subject of the murder of that Dutch filmmaker, "does not always mean that you still won't get killed by some nutjob."

So what DOES it mean, then?

Worth 1000 Words

Golden Moments in Election History

Candidate Debs in prison

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong."

--Eugene Debs, socialist and 5-time presidential candidate who won a million votes in 1918 while in prison for "seditiously" opposing WW I.

Visualize Whirled Peas

Bummed About The Election? Blame The Queers! Everyone Else Is!

So today it's official: Kerry lost the election, not because of his crap campaign or his unsettling use of the word "giddy," but because Middle America is deathly afraid of homosexuals. This would explain the gay-bashing I've seen even on some of the bleeding-heart blogs ("if it weren't for the gays, we would've won!"), where, it seems, casting anti-queer aspersions is now the purview of the straight white male Democrat as much as it the gun-toting evangelical's.

Eleven states passed blatantly discriminatory anti-gay initiatives, and Democrats who lost seats are on record as having voted against the Constitutional Gay Disenfranchisement Amendment last July. The few Dems who remain in office will have to distance themselves or come out in favor of discrimination, and once again the queers will have to take one for the gipper. Even if the press are blowing the Homo Fear Factor out of proportion--and why should they break with tradition now?-- this is the blackest moment for gay America since Ronald Reagan decided to blow off AIDS. It practically throws us back to pre-Stonewall days. And, it's not such a sunshiny day for the rest of the country, either, if the popular bumper sticker is to be believed.

Women Take Back The Rack!

If Power Is A Simple Matter Of Flaunting It, How Come The Strippers Aren't In Charge?

To promote a new album that by now everyone has forgotten about, or possibly just because she was stoned, last March Courtney Love flashed her breasts at David Letterman. This prompted Richard Goldstein of the Village Voice to offer some remarks about the power of female exhibitionism.

I've heard this bare-your-boobs-for-empowerment theory many times, and I wish this guy were right. But he is not.

I say this because the girls-gone-wild who comply with the global show-us-your-tits mandate have ruined breast empowerment for everybody. Their feckless acquiescence merely puts them one down, where they become sad casualties of vulgar invective. The breast narrative of the collective consciousness turns exclusively on themes of obscenity and salacity, and thus ensures difficulty amongst the proletariat in distinguishing between garden-variety drunk chicks who theorize that boobal deployment will further their social agendas and intellectual drunk chicks who theorize that boobal deployment will further their political agendas.

It lifts the spirits considerably to encounter the rare Courtney-friendly sentence written by a male dude, but I have some trouble putting her, as Goldstein does, in the same league as Sojourner Truth. Still, Goldstein is right about this: we've got it rigged so there is no correct response to the spectacle of a bare pair. It's either prudery, or prurience, or "sit back and enjoy the show," but no matter what, the woman exposed is a sleaze.

Goldstein's also getting close when he says that the divulged boob strikes terror in the hearts of men. He says gals who let it all hang out get the dickens because they are intruding into sacrosanct phallic territory (he supports this assertion by pointing out that in psych textbooks, exhibitionism--a behavior society regards as a kind of violence, however muffled--lies pretty exclusively within the male purview). So if the flasher is by custom and tradition male, a female flasher flies in the face of all social covenants? She that most fascinating of aberrations, a violent woman?

Maybe, but recall that between breasts and penises, there is no parallel beyond their being naughty bits; it is not subliminally acknowledged that women actually have legal custody of their own breasts, whereas the opposite is true for fellers and their weeners. The penis is a man's sword, the breast is his pillow. This gender-based disparity in bodily sovereignty explains why it is so outrageous when a girl takes the alarming liberty of using her breasts for her own purposes. It is so outrageous, in fact, that a personal political motive is not believed. The behavior resonates as slutty, disturbed, hysterical, and nothing more.

But man, I wish everyone would just get over boobs already. Having boobs is exhausting. The idea that you have to coopt your own body parts just to make it through the day is wack. It's wack not just because they're your own body parts, for crissake, but also because it's a completely futile enterprise. Breasts have been totally purloined. Valiant activist cabals can chant "Women Take Back The Rack" until they expire, but boobs, like everything personal about women, are in public domain, where they look to be pretty firmly ensconced. The erstwhile Riot Grrls pluckily tried to reclaim their own sexuality by embracing skank as a noble ethos, and failed. Now they huddle, marginalized by infamy, in the subumbra of their Uber-Slut escutcheon. If I had more coffee in me, I would probably refrain from suggesting that the flashing of gazongas is to power grab as picking extra cotton is to abolition.