A World of Cheese, For your Pleasure

McDonald's can McFuck™ itself

There's nothing sadder than out-of-touch adults trying to send a positive message out to kids. But what's worse is out-of-touch ad execs trying to cash in on hip, cool, ethnic language to sell pure shit. Andrew Teman reports that McDonald's wants you to fuck its sandwiches. As Phlegmy said, I wouldn't eat it, let alone have sex with it.

Here's some advice: If you are a minority of some kind, don't fall for the big money big burger big auto big whatever conglomerate trying to market just to you. They don't know you, they definitely don't care, and they probably have their heads up their asses.

Anal sex is fair for women in the industry

Scientifically proven and everything. In fact, it favours women.

Smoker? You're fired!

A Michigan company instituted a policy that would fire workers for smoking.

Article.

I'd sue.

Cancer-fighting beer

In Japan, they think that beer may fight cancer if you don't overdo it.

Speaking of beer, if I came across this mess, I think I would try to salvage as much as I could and make off with it. Yet I don't even like this beer.

Smoking ban in Montreal

A funny quote from this article about Montreal's upcoming ban on smoking in bars and restaurants:

Being a smoker and coming out in favour of smoking in places where I know my excess smoke trails are going to have a detrimental effect on those around me is a little like coming out in favour of farting at the dinner table. It's not an easy position to defend.

I do agree with the person who says that control and common sense should see us through the smoking thing with the law not getting involved. But who is he kidding? Since when have the masses ever had that kind of common sense and control? Further, if the addiction really is as strong as they say it is, he should simply consider himself lucky that he isn't a slave to the cigarette.

Also, having non-smoking bars and restaurants alongside smoking bars and restaurants would be a wonderful idea, except that many smokers and non-smokers would not really want to go to the same places with each other, or the smokers would have to go to the non-smokers places half the time, or they would have to switch in the middle of an evening (not always convenient). Furthermore, bar owners in Montreal at least, appreciate the smopking culture and the people in it. They want smokers. They spend more money in bars, or so they think, anyway. Lastly, even if some enterprising would-be bar owner wanted to create a smokeless bar, would be have the guts to do so? No. The people would simply go next door where they could smoke their hearts out with impunity. I say with impunity because sometimes it feels like you are being punished for wanting to go out and have a beer without smoking.

I'd love to have sex in public, but I understand that the public does not appreciate seeing me do this in the Fantasy section at Chapters. Maybe smoking will have the same effect in terms of sensibilities. Fine if you want to, but do it at home. Or away from me in any case.

Blogging and Journalism

I would like to point you in the direction of a blogging conference called Blogging, Journalism and Credibility: Battleground and Common Ground, which starts today. It is being broadcast via a live feed, and you can even participate in live discussions via IRC. This conference is one that focuses on how blogging is changing journalism, the very Fourth Estate itself. The commentary that follows is rather stimulating. Many different points of view here, and I hope that these points will be brought up in this conference. There are many ways to look at blogging. Do bloggers use social software or content management systems? Are bloggers honest and therefore purer quasi-journalists, or are they simply rumour mongers and liars? And is a possible marriage between the journalists and the bloggers further widening the gap between regular bloggers and readers and the A-list bloggers? Could blogging become the very low-credibility fourth-and-a-half estate that we already dislike?

Money doesn't buy happiness: proven

Experts have shown what they've always told us: money can't buy happiness. Above $40000 US for a family of four, extra income does nothing for how happy you feel day-to-day, or year to year. The article assumes that you are not dirt poor, of course, in which case more money will definitely make you happier.

We live in a rich country, yet we are not happier than people in poorer countries. In fact, I suspect that we are less happy because we have attained our riches at the expense of our happiness and sense of fulfillment. A lowly farmer that tends his fields and sees results from hard work (and isn't owned by Monsanto, for example), is probably happier than the programmer making $75000 a year. I bet that people in peaceful, but poorer countries do not suffer from depression very much, or chronic fatigue syndrome. I'm not suggesting that these aren't real ailments, but rather that the ways in which we live, perhaps our priorities, are chiefly responsible for them.

The sentiment is on the rise among college students. An annual poll by the University of California at Los Angeles and the American Council on Education found that entering freshmen rated becoming "very well off financially" first on a list of 19 goals, ahead of choices such as helping others, raising a family or becoming proficient in an academic pursuit.

I think that this is very telling. But here's something else:

Not having a job when you want one — even if you're well off — ranks at the top, Loewenstein said. Other prescriptions for unhappiness: having a bad relationship with your significant other or having children beset with problems.

Why does not having a job when you want one rank above not being happy in your relationship, or even worse, having children with problems? I think that would be the worst of all among the three. And I never felt particularly upset that I didn't have a job. At least, not this time around. It suggests to me that maybe we no longer know what is important. I wonder when we got off the track.

The greatest thing, and possibly something that could become huge, is Bhutan's ditching of the Gross National Product and adoption of the GNH standard, or Gross National Happiness. This standard is based on four pillars of success: economic self-reliance, a pristine environment, the preservation and promotion of Bhutan’s culture, and good governance in the form of a democracy. Imagine what could happen if more and more of us could influence the powerful and adopt this kind of standard. I wonder how things would change. We wouldn't be in the economic position that we are in, but then again, would we even care?

Cheeseorgy: your source for porn niches

Because of this entry, we ended up listed on this page. It amuses me. We have a cum intensity of 128. No idea what that means, and I haven't bothered to find out.

Hey, whatever moves the traffic.

Monsanto: DNA copyright bastards

Another farmer is being sued by biotech asshole firm Monsanto for piracy issues. His crime was to replant seed, like we have been doing for millenia. Now it's a crime. This is not the first time this has happened. A few years ago a Canadian was ruined when he had the nerve to replant seeds, or rather, when nature had the nerve to distribute seeds by means of wind and so on. They fucking ruined him. And he never even did business with Monsanto.

Percy Schmeiser says he's never used Monsanto's seed. He saves the seeds from his own crops, then replants them in the spring. But Monsanto investigators say they've found Monsanto DNA in Schmeiser's crops. Monsanto says Schmeiser never paid for the rights to use its DNA. Now they're suing Schmeiser for the money.

"We were approached by someone in Monsanto asking if Percy had some seed treated there, we said there was. They asked for a sample. I asked my superior in Saskatoon if it was okay to give a sample, he said it was okay, so we did," Pappenfoot says.

Monsanto says Schmeiser has stolen its DNA.

In fact, Monsanto has accused dozens of farmers of growing the special seed without paying for it.

The problem is, Mother Nature has been moving DNA around for thousands of years. Monsanto's is just the latest.

"It will blow in the wind. you can't control it. you can't just say, put a fence around it and say that's where it stops. It might end up 10 miles, 20 miles," Schmeiser says.

What could stop Monsanto from planting some of this stuff in someone's fields and then saying that they stole DNA if the farmer pisses them off somehow? Or a competitive farmer? Not the law. Nor the courts, apparently. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 allowed for the patenting of genetically engineered life forms and extended the same protections to altered plants in 2001. I know it sounds far-fetched, but if someone alters your DNA so that you no longer get colds or flu, does this mean that you have to pay that company for every child you have? Does this mean that your genetic material is now owned by some biotech firm? Jerking off could be a breach of contract. I'm serious, because it's only a matter of time before we will be doing some real alterations to our own genetic material and paying private companies to do it. They will "own" the rights to genetic material the way music companies "own" music. I don't want to fight for "fair use" rights for my genetic material, or that of what I eat. I don't think I should have to.

I wish that people emphasized things other than money. That way Monsanto's position would be exposed as ridiculous.

Ignorant adults recruit Spider-Man

Do you remember feeling sickeningly insulted by the good intentions of adults? Like when they thought it was a good idea to bring in the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man to talk about sex when you were 15? Try not to let go of that feeling, especially if you have to deal with kids of any age.

Some officials in NY State somehow thought it was a good idea to bring in Spider-Man to help talk kids out of digital harassment. As The Zero Boss put it,
IT'S A DUDE IN A COSTUME - AND YOUR TEENAGE CHARGES KNOW THIS. Sickening, truly.

For a laugh, read this. My ego is definitely too big. I don't want to be any kind of zero boss.

Senator McCain

I thought this was amusing:

"As a POW in Vietnam, I was kept in the dark and fed scraps. Why would I want to do that again?"

--John McCain on why he wouldn't ever accept a VP slot.

The allure of Suicide Girls

Suicide Girls is a softcore porn site featuring young tattoed and pierced women in well-shot, (or is that well-rendered) pictures. Someone at Metafilter asked if anyone had ever been with a Suicide Girl. If you never understood the connection between hot cars and hot women, you might when you read this question and response:

Q: Without uh, pissing anyone off, what's so special about this porn? Am I missing something here? It seems to me just like a bunch of goth/punk chicks going for the amateur angle. Or is it the fact that everyone treats it kind of sacred the only reason it's not considered real porn? I feel as if I'm missing something.

A: It definitely is porn, but it's interesting the form it takes. It's porn with the notion that these girls have some sort of connection with the site's target audience: the girls frequently have indie taste in music and film, they're frequently in or graduated from college, and they have their own blogs. Part of the fantasy for the site's users is that not only can you see their b00bies, but they have cool record collections and could maybe talk to you about Hannah Arendt. Also, having the "hip" ads on places like Pitchfork or the somewhat artsily presented coffee table book for sale in independent bookstores (who'd keep that thing on a coffee table?), in addition to having a running blog with indie rock news and suchlike, helps create this illusion that it's not porn. Or, that if it is porn, it's at least somewhat vaguely cool porn.

It's really a very interesting idea, marketingwise. A very '00s variation on the "chicks in bikinis shooting guns" sort of niche entertainment, or those biker magazines with babes leaning on Harleys - "look! these things you like! AND A SEXY LADY! imagine if both you and the sexy lady were fucking and talking about these things you like!!!!!"

All with the added wrinkle that they're blogging. Why, it's almost as if you're hanging out with them...

(Note: despite my affection for both sexy ladies and indie rock, I'm not into the whole SG thing. I just find it a cannily interesting phenomenon.)
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:03 PM PST on December 28

Smokin' newscaster

I think Mélissa Thériau is the hottest anchorwoman I ever ever seen, or will see for quite some time. I get the feeling that there will be nothing she won't be able to do, at least in France. Not only is she beautiful, but quite talented in her field. I haven't tracked down a bio; maybe she's talented in other ways as well. And she's only 26.

I imagine that her sex video will be out within a couple of years.

Bondage Comics

Ever notice how much bondage is a theme in so many comic books over the decades? It's quite startling. Apparently someone did, and archived a shitload of them, although they are a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands out there, and nowhere near as crazy as that freaky Japanese shit. (VERY disturbing. Click at your own risk.)

The Food Timeline

Did you know that we have been popping popcorn for almost 6000 years? That we've been eating French toast and omelettes since Christ? Or that they are working on tear-free onions (I like the comments on this one)? Well, check out the Food Timeline, which gives us the history of various foods that humans have invented or discovered throughout the millenia.

First the nipple, now the ass

Fox news has decided not to air a spot for Airborne, a natural cold remedy. It features Mickey Rooney and his ass. Rooney is pissed off, saying: "What we're selling here is something I really believe in, which is an awareness of the germs we're all exposed to. There's nothing sensual about the brief exposure of my backside, and it's not gratuitous. ... It's a fun spot, and the public deserves to see it."

What the hell did I do to deserve that? But seriously (I resisted the temptation to add the second "t" there), I think it's cool that he actually showed his 84-year-old ass to the world like that. If only everyone could taken themselves just a little less seriously. I sure as hell am not taking him seriously. His ass, anyway.

Superficial bullshit

So apparently people are saying that Beyoncé Knowles has become fat. In fact, not just fat, but a "really fat hippopotamus", although you can't expect much from a site calling itself The Superficial. I don't understand how people expect others to be airbrushed constantly. They thin(k) it's a scandal that people "suddenly, actually" are "fat". These performers are like bodybuilders. They have the best training regimens for weeks or months to look good for a particular event. The rest of the time, they relax. The difference is that the bodybuilders probably are the trainers, and it's somewhat more likely to be a lifestyle thing for the bodybuilder. In either case, they aren't constantly looking so ridiculously hot all the time. Beyoncé may never have looked like this in real life.

And Jay-Z does need to pull up those pants, for Christ's sakes.