yummy turkey staph

And people ask why I'm a vegetarian (from a Wired article):

There are two new studies out that confirm, once again, that drug-resistant staph or MRSA — normally thought of as a problem in hospitals and out in everyday life, in schoolkids, sports teams, jails and gyms — is showing up in animals and in the meat those animals become.

full article

MRSA is the strain of staph that is resistant to multiple antibiotics, but which normally responds to tetracycline. If you don't know what an  MRSA staph infection implies, then by all means click this link. Not if you're eating though.

But when the researchers looked at the strain they found in factory farms they found something disturbing in factory turkey samples:

In this paper, all of the staph found in pork and turkey was tetracycline-resistant even when it was not MRSA (which, definitionally, is resistant to methicillin or its close analog oxacillin). Six of the seven staph-containing turkey samples were t034, and one was t337, which is associated with another MRSA strain that has emerged in pigs in China. “This suggests that turkeys, in addition to pigs, are a possible reservoir for both the ST398 and ST9 strains in the United States,” the authors say.

(ST398 and ST9 are the tetracycline-resistant strains of staph.)

Could we, through our mindless addiction to cheap meat, be producing the very diseases which will eventually kill us off? Far-off and far-fetched though this might seem, it is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.

Yeah, that's shit all over them. Delicious.

And really, if the conditions in meat-producing facilities aren't enough to gross you out on factory meat (which is statistically all the meat you will ever consume in modern America) then maybe the thought of the uber-diseases these corporations are creating in their petri dish facilities by pumping these animals full of massive doses of hormones and antibiotics might do it.

(warning: very disturbing images of animal abuse)



Do any parents ever consider what they are training their kids to consume for life? Do they ever wonder if they might be making their kids sick or at least priming to become sick later in life by feeding them things like chicken nuggets or even store-bought meat?

Think about that when you line up for another plate of turkey.

via

black friday

This is absolutely sick. A worker at a Long Island Wal-Mart was literally trampled to death this morning when he tried to hold back the crowd as they stormed the store for Black Friday deals. via C&L.

"Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him."

Wow. In order to save a few bucks on a PS3 people are willing to run around and OVER a fellow human being? There's something deeply wrong with this society when shopping trumps simple human decency. It gets worse and worse every year, and every year people keep falling for the stores' bullshit, that they're going to get some crazy special deal if they wake up at 3:30 am and get to the store.

They're just things. They're just items that you will grow tired of, as you tire of everything. These things will not change your life. They will not make you happy. Your unhappiness lies in a deeper place than that. Yet we get fooled all the time by

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

as Bob Dylan said. This just makes me sad.

thanksgiving conversation

from the guys at 23/6.

my favorite line:

"Oh, my father-in-law will be there. Do NOT talk politics with him. If he finds out you voted for McCain he'll stab you with a turkey baster."

"Please. I voted for Palin."

happy thanksgiving everybody. :)

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

a thanksgiving prayer

i reference this every thanksgiving, because it gives us a little different perspective on what we have, and how we came to acquire it.

RIP Mr. Burroughs.

A Thanksgiving Prayer
William S. Burroughs

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome
American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.
Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.
Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen,
feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for
Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody's allowed to mind the
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories-- all right let's see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

a thanksgiving prayer

happy thanksgiving, everybody. i'm planning to hang out with friends, eat lots of food, and maybe have a drink or two and a laugh or three. but sometimes it's good to be reminded of just what has been sacrificed by others so that we can enjoy our largess.

this is william s. burroughs' famous "Thanksgiving Prayer," a stark, moving, verbal slash at what our ancestors have done to make this country what it is.