"Let me tell you about hard work"

Shev sent me this video of Pink singing "Dear Mr. President" live. I've never listened much to her before, but this song kicks some Bush ass. And therefore I love it, and her.

The Meatrix II: Revolting is here!

I had seen The Meatrix last year when it first made its Internet rounds and quite enjoyed Moophius and Leo the Pig, but the second installment is even better. (Chickity's cleavage helps.)

Amazingly, one can spoof a factory farm in a cartoon and still do an excellent job of covering the facts.

Note to Uncle Ron in Seattle? Put down that soy burger and wheatgrass smoothie. Come for a visit and Bart and I will cook you a thick, juicy burger of grassfed beef -- nice and rare, which you can do with pasture-raised beef since you don't have to worry nearly as much about E. coli. (Why? Because the cows aren't standing and lying in their own manure for their entire lives, which complicates the slaughter process. Enjoy your Whopper!)

The NY Times called me a journalist!

I have absolutely no idea why Dan Mitchell decided to quote a line from my Pollan story -- as I was just paraphrasing from his book -- but as you can imagine, I am so puffed up with pride that my head is about to pop off like a champagne cork.

The Times called me a journalist! Take that, you snotty investigative reporters who treat me like a PR flak....not that there is anything wrong with PR professionals, uh, some of my very best friends like Lyrical Robot make much more money than me doing a great job at it.

[Sound of air draining out of balloon-size head]

We are what we eat

...and what we eat eats. Which, by the way, is mostly corn, stripped of its nutrients and transformed into things like icing and chicken McNuggets. My epic article about Michael Pollan's new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, went up Tuesday. Reading his book, which is currently #1 on Amazon, was so eye-opening and depressing that it caused me to sob all the way through the last hour of King Kong. I mean, Naomi Watts was good and all, but what I was really weeping for was humankind's rape and subjugation of nature. I think this stuff has really gotten to me. Once you open your eyes to what industrial agriculture is doing to the land, our health, and the animals it treats like widgets of protein, you can't close them again.

We have to look. We have to ask questions. The FDA and the USDA are not looking out for us, and neither is Whole Foods or Trader Joe's (whose chickens contain traces of arsenic, by the way). It's hard, but it's not that hard: Pollan persuaded me that even when there's not a best choice, there's still a better choice one can make. Is it expensive? Americans spend the smallest percentage of their incomes on food than any industrial nation. We spend half as much as we did in the 1950s, but twice as much on health care proportionately. Where's it all going? Is cable more important than good food? Than our health?

So, I'm thinking of starting a new blog with which to channel all my frustration and curiosity about what I should eat. My friend Sarah may join me. We'll write reviews of Bay Area restaurants that serve organic produce, and we'll hunt down studies like this one that reveal whose organic milk actually has "happy cows" making it.

Laugh until you sprain your spleen

Let it be known that I have seen the future of funny-ness, and it is The Comedians of Comedy: The Movie. We watched it last night and I don't think I have ever laughed so hard at a movie in my life. I knew Patton Oswalt was hilarious (fun fact: he was in the same fraternity as my college boyfriend, and I once vomited in the stall next to him -- good times!) but the other three comedians in this documentary were new to me: Brian Posehn (the weird looking guy from "Just Shoot Me"), Maria Bamford, and Zach Galifinakis.

From Netflix description: "Along with clips of performances, the film offers a behind-the-scenes look at the comedians and the challenges of presenting material that's not necessarily "masses-friendly" and of playing rock clubs and indie venues rather than the usual comedy clubs."

Warning: It's not quite as nasty as The Aristocrats, but it does explore even more taboo subjects. It's not for watching around the kiddies or your churchgoing granny.