Category: Uncategorized

It all comes back together. It’s a bit of a read, but Power Steer by Michael Pollan is a good piece of journalism on where beef comes from. He moralizes only a little bit. He purchased a steer in order to follow it through the industrial farming process. Most of the time the facts speak for themselves. Among those facts is a calculation that I found familiar:

It might be possible to calculate precisely how much oil it will take to grow my steer to slaughter weight. Assuming No. 534 continues to eat 25 pounds of corn a day and reaches a weight of 1,250 pounds, he will have consumed in his lifetime roughly 284 gallons of oil. We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf, transforming what was once a solar-powered ruminant into the very last thing we need: another fossil-fuel machine.

Anyway, I dug it. Maybe you will too, though if you’re planning to eat at the Outback, you might put off the article until tomorrow.

”They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today,” Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, with a note of envy, of grazing cattle, ”fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy or bored.” Nietzsche clearly had never seen a feedlot.

Good times hangin’ in Boston today with other LJ-ers. Woot. Still a long drive.

On to the meat of the matter. You may or may not have heard of the “contract of wifely expectations” that some deviant tried to make his ex-wife sign during the course of their brief and abusive relationship. For those who are curious about where relationships go to die, the Smoking Gun has obtained images of the actual document. Note to all humans: This is not cool. To all guys: This doesn’t help. Please don’t do crap like this. Even if you’re kidding, which they guy apparently wasn’t. “You will be naked within 20 minutes of the kids being in bed.” Yeesh. A little window into the wide, wide world of sick.

In very much better news, the first robin of Spring visited our birdfeeder today. Even better, he brought a girlfriend. Here she is:

Earthquake Weather
Beck

Spaceships can’t tame the jungle
And I feel like I’m giving in
We’ve been driving through a desert
Looking for a life to call our own

Something’s coming, sky is purple
Dogs are hounding to themselves
Days are changing with the weather
Like a riptide come rip us away

I spent my day watching the Daytona 500 and consuming Bud Select with a raucous bunch of men wearing mostly red clothing.

It was a good time.

Really pleasant day yesterday. Did a bit of cleaning around the house, and then some errands. While we were out, picked up some funky cheese at The Farmstead, which is an awesome little shop. Chatting with the guy behind the counter, we discovered that they’re expanding to become a little cafe as well. He mentioned that they were planning a cheese / beer tasting with the brewers from Dogfish Head at which point I was overcome with geeky joy. Dinner was a wine and cheese assortment, with some fresh bread. Light, and perfect. Yay.

Then we watched “I heart Huckabees”, which is a truly odd and funny film. I won’t try to describe it, but it’s an intellectual comedy. Well worth the time.

Back on track. Here’s the essay for this week; Two Party Politics. A little short, but very focused.

To be added to the list of amazing, incredible, mind-numbings good food:

A very thin crust cheese pizza. Super hot. Right out of the oven. Sold by the slice for about $1, they look at you funny if you ask for a whole pie. You eat it gloopy in your hand, creasing the slice to hold it vaguely stiff. Today’s edition came from “Cheddar’s” next to the Alewife T station.

It has not escaped my attention that this shares the following properties with the grilled cheese sandwich:

• cheese
• bread
• Tomato
• Hot

I’m falling behind. I must produce two of these essays this weekend to be back on track. To that end, here’s the product of a train ride. A little piece titled Corporations.

I should be working.

Questions for all people who read my journal: What are the compelling features of a social networking (Orkut, MySpace, SixDegrees) / blogging (LiveJournal, SixApart, Blogspot) / picture (flikr) / dating web site? If I was going to create one that would kick the ass of all of the above, what would it look like?

Might it:

* Incorporate mobile technology, explicitly using location information available from crackberries and playstation-punys?
* Form the information nexus, combining all of your various blogs into one mighty whole?
* Just offer more disk space?
* Just not crash as much?
* Some better idea?

Think! Think for me, my auxiliary strap-on brains!