Both Colleen and PonderingWillow sent links to the latest McNonsense, which involves a woman trying to order Chicken McNuggets, but in the morning, when apparently you can’t get Chicken McNuggets, but don’t try to tell this lady that, or she’ll, well, she’ll go nuts, is what she’ll do, as captured on ye olde security footage.
After almost standing up for a McDonald’s campaign earlier this week (I maintain I was standing up for the Fantastic Four, and McD’s just got lucky,) I’m almost afraid to say this: I feel a little badly for the workers.
The workers, mind you, and not the corporation that sets things up in a way that this continues to happen (see our earlier survey of violence at McDonald’s.) Fast food workers are overall having a better go of it than slaughterhouse workers are, but cheap meat ain’t cheap, if you get my meaning. And before someone else says it, no, fruits and vegetables don’t have the best labour record either, but I’ll maintain that it’s a less violent form of oppression overall, which isn’t to say it’s OK, but, but, hey! I’m talking about McDonald’s here.
But besides the workers, you know who else I feel a little badly for? America. The links I received are from the BBC and a major Canadian newspaper, and unlike stuff that actually affects our lives, this is the kind of thing that gets sent around the office, and sadly, this is how other countries think everyone in the USA acts. I’m not even kidding – take the weirdest set of stereotypes about veganism you’ve heard from non-vegans, and then think about how people can categorize other large groups of people. Yeah.
Update Aug 12: Matty sent me the YouTube version so we can embed it. Mostly I just like saying embed:
Anyway, I still worry that I’m getting soft on McDonald’s, so here’s something else in my “use this image someday” folder that seems like a good way to show my colours:
I think we’re getting to the point where we need a category for “non-vegan anal insertions.” It’s not the milestone that I’d hoped and dreamed of reaching when I was a young boy, but we’ve all got to take what victories we can from life. This is one of them, and it’s mine.
The category milestone, that is. The anal insertion was someone else’s, and it involved a live eel. A 59 year old man was admitted to hospital with complaints of the type one would expect from an anal eel insertion, but apparently nobody ever expects an anal eel insertion, so there’s a pesky troubleshooting phase, followed by speculation on just how the eel got there (“I must have eaten it” never gets old,) and unfortunately in this case, the man died.
And it was a murder.
It turns out he passed out drunk at a bar and his so-called buddies thought an anal eel insertion would be just the thing to liven up the evening. Police are getting involved, but I don’t know if animal cruelty is on the list of things to push for. This is one of those cases where animal rights people can look like douches by going on about animal cruelty when someone’s been anally raped and killed, but it’s kind of the job, and frankly, it’s an important one: if this kind of thing could be recognized as an act of cruelty and if such acts of cruelty could be made into a social taboo instead of “great fun at parties,” then nobody would have had to die from anal eel insertion.
Anyway, since there seems to be a lot of confusion in the medical community, I want it put in my will that if my death involved abdominal pain, dehydration, and severe anal bleeding, could someone please look into that eel thing and avenge both me and the eel?
A Cleveland man was arrested in Athens, Tennessee for selling meat door to door without a permit.
Well, almost.
Rather than risk discovery of his real mission, Robert Sherk swallowed a half-burnt marijuana joint in front of the police officers who were talking to him about the permit. Marijuana, as we know, has incredible mind-altering properties that cause law enforcement officials to forget all other issues and focus on the damned reefer they learned about in basic training. Oh, and then Sherk resisted arrest.
So what was “Robert Sherk of Cleveland,” if that is his real name, trying to hide? What’s going on with Cleveland meat that they need to take it to Tennessee to sell it, door to door, without so much as a permit? It’s got to be something big for Them (yes, capital ‘T’ Them) to equip Sherk with the modern equivalent of a cyanide capsule?
Soon to be a major motion picture, no doubt – if Cleveland doesn’t get to me first.
There is a segment of you whose instant response to this piece will be something about my having too much time on my hands. Let me assure you, I have nowhere near enough to wreak that which I would have wrought (yes, I somehow found time to use the dictionary there. Spiffy, no?)
Symantec, makers of fine computer security products, I assume, has come out with a list of the top ten riskiest US cities for Cybercrime. Cybercrime is a form of terrorism to some (as are unpaid parking tickets if it serves the right agenda to say to, but I digress,) so I immediately sprang to action, for I am spry, and set out to ensure that nobody would be able to link cybercrime to veganism. After all, if you’re vegan and reading this, then you use computers, therefore you too could be a cybercriminal. Such damage to the movement cannot be tolerated! To action!
Using data from HappyCow, I opted to see if there was a relationship between the number of vegetarian restaurants and cybercrime rankings. It’s hard to hide a vegan diner, after all, though I fantasize about one day being invited to a soyeasy for some illicit mung beans.
Without further ado (and as you can tell, I’m in an ado-ing mood,) here are the results. The less-than-helpful headings in columns 3 through 5 refer to the types of restaurants that can be found:
Isn’t that a relief? I have no idea where NYC is in the crime list; that’s just for comparison.
But wait! Could it be that vegan cybercriminals have infiltrated HappyCow to hide their presence? Hmmmm…
Also of note: the FBI’s ten most wanted list of fugitives, as of this writing, doesn’t contain anyone with obvious ties to veganism OR cybercrime. Of course, this too is on the internet.
Still, for now I’m going to go with what I hope would be the obvious conclusion: veganism and cybercrime are unrelated. And while you may think this is tongue in cheek at best, that’s just because you haven’t spent 9 years reading the stuff that spews out of animal agriculture PR agencies. Some day I fear this post will be more relevant than it appears today.
The internet grows faster than I can read it. There’s a new site where people can build lists, and their community manager just sent me a link to one he thought you’d all like. Was it the list of top 10 reasons to go vegan?
No. It was the 13 most violent things that’ve happened at a McDonald’s. I’ve never been happier to process a “hey, here’s a link on our site you might like” email. OK, I wasn’t happy about the violence, but for someone to pick a relevant link? Gold.
The list is pretty epic, but what blows me away is that there’s video of every incident. Allow me to hike my pants up to my armpits for a moment and discuss the old days of vegan newsgathering, where one could easily spend 3 hours in the search for one good story to talk about. In the year 2010, it appears you could run a VP-like site entirely off of what’s on YouTube.
Now, please note that one item of violence is missing from the list, and that’s the bazillion animals that have become McNuggets or Big Macs. Oddly, it’s hard to find video of that still (though that too might be changing…)
I can’t quite figure out if the level of violence inside the McDonald’s chain is a factor of the sheer number of outlets they have (which could also mean that they’ve got an increased chance of being the site of the Second Coming, which would be something, all right!), or if it’s the kind of place that simply draws this kind of thing, in which case I think we’re moving beyond the “it’s a sucky place to work, but what’cha gonna do” phase to “oh wow, all of your workers need to be placed in a protection program while we close things down” kind of space.
And let’s assume this is the progression we’re seeing. Eric Schlosser made a good case in Fast Food Nation that slaughterhouse workers are stuck in perhaps the worst job in the food industry, second only to the animals themselves, and neither group can escape. Perhaps this chain of misery is extending to the front line service workers now, and I fear that it’s going to continue, virus-like, through the remainder of the food delivery chain.
I mean, really, when you’re in the business of marketing murder at low low everyday prices, is this kind of thing that unexpected?
Magic Stones sends news of snakes on a plane. You know, despite all the hooplah around the movie, I never saw it, but I gather that there were a lot of snakes in the film, and they were on a plane. Moving over to real life, someone tried to bring 700 snakes onto a plane recently, only to be stopped by customs officers, who really don’t appreciate movie fanboys enough, ya know? In this case, the objective was smuggling. We reported on another snake/plane smuggling event awhile back involving 8 snakes in pants, but apparently Mr. 700 snakes wasn’t hardcore enough and opted for a carry-on bag instead. Wimp.
OK everyone, gather round, we’ve got an important update – apparently hunting is done. No more hunters anymore. Well, in Idaho, anyway. They’re called “sport shooters” now, if the article sent in by Sardonicus is anything to go by. Idaho has a massive federal preserve where guns are supposedly off limits, but with only 2 agents to patrol the area and relatively low fines for those who get caught, hunters, er, I mean sport shooters are regularly flaunting the laws. So what’s the difference between hunting and sport shooting? When I was younger I would have guessed that it would have involved skeet or a row of tin cans or something, but it turns out that the next generation of hunting takes aim at anything that moves, from ground squirrels to cattle to – wait for it – National Guard troops on training exercises. That’s right, the troops are reporting slugs bouncing off of their tanks on a regular basis. So there you have it. In other news, the guy beating up his wife is a sport pugilist, that glutton at the buffet is actually a sport eater and as for me, well, you can just call me a sport dumbass-pointer-outer.
AimeeLeigh79 reports that an Alabama woman has been charged with driving under the influence. This isn’t a huge news item by itself, but again, it’s all about the details. She was “driving” a horse at the time. While most coverage of these kinds of stories focus on the quirks of traffic law, it’s important to note that the horse had a lousy time of it (at one point he or she was made to “ram” a police car, and I have no idea how this would work, but it doesn’t sound good), and even more importantly, authorities did lay cruelty to animals charges against the meth-head, among a zillion other charges. There’s no word on where the horse is now, but hopefully someone had the sense to take him or her into some form of protective custody.
It’s a weird, weird news day, I tell you, starting with Magic Stones‘ tale of prison cannibalism. Nicolas Cocaigne was serving a four year sentence in France for sexual assault when he decided to kill his cellmate and, according to early reports, eat his heart. Further investigation showed that the heart was still intact, but some chest muscle and part of a lung are missing, so Cocaigne is being charged with cannibalism as well as with murder. While our heart goes out sympathies are with the family of the deceased, this serves as a warning that if you’re going to prison and want to encourage veganism on the inside, you might want to strap some gluten to your chest as a precaution. Link.
Isn’t that a relief? I have no idea where NYC is in the crime list; that’s just for comparison.
