Harkin blames Shrek for chunky children

Iowa's Senator Tom Harkin has decided that Shrek is to blame for the increase in childhood obesity, since the cartoon ogre and other such characters promote the sales of "junk foods" such as McDonald's happy meals (which, I might add, now offer more healthful versions of the same). He's against lots of other cartoons as well, for as putting their characters' faces on a brand name of cheese curl snacks and countless other nasty, inedible substances children crave...

I hate to break it to the senator, but, as a kid, I liked eating that crap even before I saw television or comic book advertisements for, say, Hostess Ho-Hos. I could have happily existed on a diet of Froot Loops even before I knew there was some annoying big-beaked bird promoting them. They were sugary, and that meant yummy. I still, to this day, enjoy the occasional can of Spaghetti-Os, and I have no clue who promoted it through the years. All I know is it was "the neat new spaghetti you can eat with a spoon," and that I still say, "Uh, Oh!" when I get that craving.

Normal kids have abysmal taste in foods. They could eat fatty and sugary garbage all day long, and be as happy as... well, gee, a kid in a candy store.

But that's not really the primary reason this generation of kids is getting so tubby. Kids of the past few generations have put on increasing weight because... wait for it... nobody really gets physical, any more. As a rich and busy nation, we see children being driven clear across town to school, either in buses or in Mommy's minivan/SUV. Kids expect to be driven even a puny half-mile, out of Mommy's fear mischief may befall the tot, unlike in years past, when kids could pretty much find a bit of fun right outside their doors, regardless of where they lived (anybody else remember playing hockey, stickball or frisbee in the streets, between bursts of automobile traffic?)

Add to that, there is less and less time during school days for kids to become genuinely, spontaneously active. Recess? fuhgeddaboudit. It's programmed and dull as dishwater. Some schools won't even let the kids play tag, for fear of some kid either having his anatomy or his feelings hurt. The lawsuit threat looms heavy, but carrying it around burns no calories. So, kids sit on their collective hindquarters in a desk or car seat for as much as ten hours per day (not including time watching television or playing on the computers at home).

If Senator Harkin really wanted to do something about roly-poly runts, he might start asking a few more questions about physical activities other than the elbow-bends middle-class kids have done for five generations or so. And, for crying out loud, stop blaming fictional characters for causing real, human failings. The advertisements are more likely symptomatic than causal.

And, besides, a responsible set of parents will teach kids better habits, even amid all the garbage going into the kids' heads from advertisers. If the kids are still eating too much sugar and fat, it isn't the fault of the manufacturers -- it's the enabling parents. Mom and Dad could always have packed a sensible, nutritious lunch, if they had cared to. Many of them do.



This is Dan Quayle and the immoral Murphy-Brown-unwed-mother thing all over again, isn't it?

What to do if you go to Virginia

Buy a pie. Or send one to us, out here in flyover country. We don't get many good pee-can or sweet tater pies around here. Don't worry about the fruit pies, though. I have my own cherry, apple, apricot, and (new this year!) peach trees, as well as blueberries, mulberries, currants and raspberries (gooseberries coming soon!) growing in my kitchen garden and south forty (feet), and the Bat makes a darned good crust (when she doesn't cheat and buy pre-fab).

I was searching for something else for somebody interested in visiting some of my old haunts and I stumbled across this website. It seems the Jamestown Pie Company is within reasonable walking distance of (even by my gimpy standards... which means the equivalent of next door to) where my folks used to live, when the Bat and I used to work for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Pop and the Bat moved away from there too soon. Now I lack the good excuse... whimper.

The other hate crime

Scary. Somebody left a ham sandwich at a lunch table.

I think I may have just committed the same crime, myself. Sat there, downing a ham, Swiss cheese, Boetje's mustard & sweet onion on sourdough, right out on my folks' front porch. Take that, you sissies!

Everybody should be afear'd. I didn't have my lactase tablets to counter the effects of the cheese. Does that count as simple hate crime, as terrorism, or as a war crime for gassing the enemy?


Update: Charles Johnson has added a second post on the subject, with further details of the incident and the Orwellian quote du jour:

If people think insulting Muslims with ham is OK, “More degrading acts will follow, until at some point we’ll end up having violence,” [executive director of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence, Stephen] Wessler said.

Oh, no, ham cruelly offered to schoolboys last week is the cause of the bombing of the Beirut barracks, the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the WTC in 1993. Yesterday's bacon caused 9/11/01!

But for me, the kicker isn't that we have 1984 all over again (that's been a given for years), but that people are acting as though this incident were somehow atypical of junior high school. Well, technically, it is atypical, because it's not nearly as cruel as the normal stunts kids that age pull. Every kid in the modern world is traumatized by experiences in middle school/junior high school. Body hair starts to grow, and all of a sudden you're a pack of wolves. It's the rare ones who keep some semblance of civility amid the raging hormones.

Friday Catblog: Holiday Breakfast

Or, why I can't sleep in, even when the calendar says I might.


Aye Aye and his pals can smell the turkey I brought home from Mom's. They seem to think I'm inclined to give them my tasty treats as their breakfast....

Funny thing is, some of the treats included some turkey neck bones.

I don't know how these cats get so spoiled. Certainly, I would never do anything to overindulge a bunch of mostly feral beasts...

If you want to see some more pampered felines, be sure to stop by Friday Ark # 114, at Modulator, (there are other critters, too, but cats rule!) and then, come Sunday evening, swing by the Carnival of the Cats, to be hosted this weekend at Scribblings.

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine...

This Saturday, the Buchanan Center for the Arts will be hosting a fund-raising food-and-drink event, the annual A Taste of the Arts wine-tasting and dinner. The funds the BCA raises at A Taste go not only to visual arts (my preferred medium, when I get manic), but they also help support the Monmouth Civic Orchestra, another artists' group I can't help but enjoy.

I'd love to attend the event, myself, but (a) it's got that wine thing going for it, and I have an allergy to grapes, and (b) I don't have the requisite bucks to toss around.

So here is where you all come in:

Contact the office & make your reservations. If you're a member of the BCA, it will only cost you $30. For anybody else, it's only $35 -- five bucks more, for a fine wining and dining experience. As a bonus, you'll have the pleasure of hanging out for an evening with Monmouth's best people (plus a few of my friends, as well).

And then you'll have bragging rights over me, too.

Flashback!

John also shared an embedded video of the old Wendy's ad, featuring the old "Parts is parts" line. And seeing the ad again (it took a while to load it, with my slow connection) brought back memories of the book, Pigs is Pigs, by E.P. Butler. Mom & Dad probably read it to me at bedtime a few dozen times, when I was little. I had to dig it out of the parents' library, just now, & sit down to re-read it.

The book is a century old, now, and is available for free, in plain text, at Project Gutenberg, as well (so you don't have to borrow my folks' first-edition copy).

The story is of a man who has ordered a pair of guinea pigs, as pets for his kid. The railroad station manager informs him that, since the guinea pigs are pigs, they are livestock, and therefore the handling fee is five cents more per animal than the fee for pets. The man refuses to pay the extra dime for the pair, goes home, and starts writing letters to the various offices, in an attempt to straighten things out. Meanwhile, the fecund guinea pigs are still at the station, together in a single box...

All in all, the happy memories are just another reason I want to go back to Wendy's for supper tonight.

Wendy's obeys law, gets sued for it

Wendy's restaurants are in a pickle. They obeyed the immigration laws, and fired some of their immigrant employees whose status was not legal, and now those employees are suing them for it all.

[Former Cafe Express employee Daniel] Olivares said he was risking deportation to speak up for himself and his former co-workers. He said he has not looked for other work because he's afraid of being caught by the authorities.

"I'm not safe anymore," said Olivares, who has been in the country 14 years.

Well, boo hoo. Did we miss the ESL class where they taught the word "illegal" in the first place? What the hell makes you think that you should have the same rights as those of lawful residents, if you crashed the gate in the first place? Why should you go to the head of the line, why should you get paid extra, when there are others who came here honestly who have been shipped home because the paperwork was slow? (Scroll down to the link.)

Go back home, wait your damned turn, and come back the legal way -- the right way.


To be fair, Olivares had paid $25 per weekly paycheck to pay for legal fees, to further the process so that he might become a legal resident, and the legal firm which screwed up his paperwork owes him all that cash back, but now, let's talk about Wendy's degree of liability... If a company can get sued for actually obeying the law, then there's something seriously wrong, here.

I think Wendy's could use our support. I'm heading out to Galesburg to give them my "Huzzah!" and to get me a Frosty.