Conditions in Factory Farms are universally deplorable and a lot of people are starting to figure it out. You can tell this is true by the recent spike in references to Food Inc. in your Facebook newsfeed and the number of Colbert Report appearances by Michael Pollan and Jonathan Safran Foer.

Luckily scientists are hot on the trend and may have a solution, one ingeniously dependent on genetic modification of animal brains:

Recently, scientists have learned to genetically engineer animals so that they lack certain proteins that are important to the [sensation of pain.] When these mice encounter a painful stimulus, they withdraw their paws normally, but they do not become hypersensitive to a subsequent painful stimulus, as ordinary mice do.

I love science so much but this is one of those fundamentally flawed, fundamentally American approaches to problem solving:

AMERICANS: Man, I feel really bad about the horrible conditions for animals in factory farms.
COMMON SENSE: Yeah man, I feel you. Maybe we should stop eating them.
AMERICANS: Ehhhhhhh, I dunno. What if we spend millions of dollars genetically modifying their brains such that they’re physically incapable of sensing pain?
COMMON SENSE: Dude, seriously?
AMERICANS: SCIENCE!

Why solve problems elegantly with simple and responsible changes to our own behavior when we can use well funded science and comic book dreams to dramatically refashion sentient brains?

Its Public Enemy? Its Basquiat?

It’s a well-told story: On January 11th 1992, Nirvana Nevermind replaced Michael Jackson’s Dangerous as the number one album on the Billboard 200. In the previous year, that top spot had been held by the likes of Vanilla Ice, Michael Bolton, Paula Abdul and Van Halen. Kurt Cobain stomped that mess, albeit temporarily, with his cut jeans, dingy flannel and lady’s deodorant.

Men’s figure skating is in need of a similar figure. I love the sport, the athleticism, the artistry. But it’s been stuck in a stale sequined glamrocked routine for as long as I’ve known it. That same rote footwork, musty jazz hands, predictably unpredictable Vera Wang trimmed decadent on-ice outfits.

Maybe it’ll never break out of its mold; it’s a sport driven by tradition and elderly judges. There’s margins in playing it safe. But times should evolve. I’m waiting for a Brooklyn skater in high tops and a hoodie to throw down triple axels to DJ Logic. Less Vera Wang, more DIY Dapper Dan.

Alpine skiing has its Bode Miller. Snowboarding has its Shaun White (a guy so counter counter culture he’s made loving your country and respecting your parents cool again.) I love me some Evan Lysacek. But what’s next?

We are men! And so we value our tires more than our wives. We will put up with the pain of listening to their opinions so long as we can still drive our Dodge Chargers.

We will reveal them naked in the shower after finally developing the confidence to use soap to clean ourselves.

Yes, we are men. We will steal our wives’ beer and hijack their bookclubs with harassing sex jokes that make light of our illiteracy. We will pray they do not catch us cheating on them with our milkaholic baby mistresses.

We’ll take off our skirts! Which is to say, we’ll no longer attempt to spend time with our wives without ready access to a handheld television named after their periods.

We are men! We will rock blocking shots on guys with dreadlocks.

(That last one isn’t misogynistic, just amazing.)

Relevant section at 3:32:

Like a Thelonious Monk, I travel in peace
Left on right on black man from the east

We don’t quit
We don’t quit, uh uh
We don’t quit
Nah we don’t quit

Life for nothing but beats and cheese

Last line might be a stretch. Nevertheless, full text of actual speech right here.

UPDATE: Wikipedia’s concise history of the actual May 4th Movement anti-imperialist uprising is well worth a read. Thrice times for the Brooklyn dimes.

                    Black spider spins 140 character thoughts
over the slacked mouth of a broken t-shirt cannon

announcing lo calorie diets,
and proto-apocalyptic mortgage gate refinancing.

Don’t plagiarize the hype, young spider;
yours is an office delicate, bent off spin, threadbare
          in a Chinese factory,
          wrapped in the finest silks quite known
                    to the round fat bottoms
                    of popular Pundits.

New web stretched wonders over wide to the world,
          patient hasty lies forging continuous
clock time coverage of new spider time narratives;

                    Barack Obama’s rented Kenyan childhood,
proto-Nazaiian sprinkler head, broken, bent, ripped into soil
scraping up dead bunnies and cat hair wrapped in spit and dust,
     minor clumps of skunked pew research cross-tabs
     and the Politico, printed.

*(
We are heading to be, now,
     only too too honey for the morning;

Dotted mt. dew forming frosty over steamed mourning rose petals,
               on: there: been: that: done.

You’ve lost me, Spider.
     Casting caffeine AmEx dreams over teabagged boats,
like a sack of pet pickles to the forehead.

Early last week, Quentin Tarrantino graced the internet with his list of the Best 20 Movies Since 1992, the year he himself first began making movies:

I wanted to do something similar, but I don’t really make movies. In fact, since this past June, I’ve ostensibly been predominantly unemployed. Meaning: I don’t make much of anything.

I do, however, watch a lot of episodes of Gilmore Girls on DVD.

In the spirit of Tarantino, here is my list of the Top 20 Gilmore Girls Episodes I Have Watched Since Becoming Unemployed.

Like Tarantino, the list is unordered, with one exception: Keg! Max! is clearly the best episode of Gilmore Girls I have seen since June, standing high above anything else. The rest are ordered chronologically by air date.

• Keg! Max! Season 3 Episode 19
  Lane drunk dials her mom. High comedy, intense Korean Christian drama.
• Kiss and Tell Season 1 Episode 7
  Rory’s first kiss! The whole town is buzzing but she doesn’t tell Lorelai!
• Christopher Returns Season 1 Episode 15
• Nick and Nora/Sid and Nancy Season 2 Episode 5
  Paris craziness and the introduction of Jess. Swoon.
• The Bracebridge Dinner Season 2 Episode 10
• A-Tisket, A-Tasket Season 2 Episode 13
  The essence of Stars Hollow distilled to a fine 22 minutes, charming small town rituals and picnic basket zany mania.
• I Can’t Get Started Season 2 Episode 22
• Haunted Leg Season 3 Episode 2
• Eight O’clock at the Oasis Season 3 Episode 5
  A special appearance by a young Jon Hamm!
• Ballrooms and Biscotti Season 4 Episode 1
• Raincoats and Recipes Season 4 Episode 22
  The Season 4 finale, in which Dean and Rory doooooo it. Double swoon!
• Written in the Stars Season 5 Episode 3
• But Not As Cute As Pushkin Season 5 Episode 10
• So…Good Talk Season 5 Episode 16
• Fight Face Season 6 Episode 2
  The first appearance of Paul Anka. Marvelous.
• The Prodigal Daughter Returns Season 6 Episode 9
• Friday Night’s Alright for Fighting Season 6 Episode 13
  Wonderul Gilmore fight montage.
• Merry Fisticuffs Season 7 Episode 10
• I’d Rather Be In Philadelphia Season 7 Episode 13
• Unto The Breach Season 7 Episode 24
  Logan proposes!! Anti-swoon!

There it is.

Up next: Top 20 Jelly Donuts I Have Purchased Since They Finished Remodeling Our Local DuDos.

Food Inc. is a movie I have seen. And it was good!: a heroic tale of Joe The Humble Organic Lima Bean Farmer fighting the noble fight against Goliath The Earth Raping Multinational Cattle Rancher Food Conglomerate Inc.

And you know Goliath is bad, because he’s…multinational.

DUH DUH DUHNNNN!!!!!

Corporations have operated in multiple nations for a long time. Which is apparently self-evidently horrifying.

FOR EXAMPLE:

District 9 is a movie I will go see this week:

The evil corporation at the heart of the film is MNU, or, Multi-National United. Corporate terror distilled to its essence.

It’s Multinational! That’s scary! There are evil things in multiple nations! Evil multination satanic corporate multiple nations corporations!

ANOTHER GOOD ONE:

The International is a movie I have not seen. The big evil multinational (pants: shitted) corporation Clive Owen is up against there? The International Bank of Business and Credit. Not bad, though it lacks the clear narrative punch of something more simplistically terrifying. Maybe: International Bank of Banking.

That’s suspense!

Mad Menify yourself with the latest Mad Menerizer. Here’s Mad Menned Me:

For those unable to view photographic images, I am about to feed champagne to my donut before we read the newspaper and heavily pet/neck on Cinderella’s hotel bed.

WOA WOA WAIT: A real-paper newspaper? This show is vintage.

* Congressmen Game Cards Do Not Actually Talk

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is like one of those dudes who says “Guess what?” and then makes you actually guess a whole bunch of times.

It’s all…

A: In. My. Pants.

I was going to draw-up a bloggy Top 10 list of these strangely inspirational “Where Will Amazing Happen?” NBA ads (scope out all 17 here). But then I quickly realized the clear number one would be this ad of LeBron James completely schooling Paul Pierce and dunking KG’s brains out, like some sort of divinely chosen basketball grizzly bear hustling his way through a Man vs. Beast trout fishing event at Yellowstone.

As a diehard Cs fan, whose blood flows thick in green like the leprechaun’s gravy, that wouldn’t fly. But these ads are incredible, and LeBron James is a trout smashing beast:

Also notable: while both Celtics editions of this series are spectacular showcases of KG and Pierce’s championship-caliber dominance, Rondo pops out just as impressively, collecting the steal from Rodney Stuckey to start off the fast break for KG, and doing a little jibby jab to get Cleveland dancing enough to set up Pierce’s drive.

Where will Rondo’s “Where Will Amazing Happen” happen?

A lot of people seem to get a big kick out of the word “shat,” even though “shitted” is a much more eloquent variant.

I certainly see the appeal. Shat would seem to be the standard and historic preterite/past participle of everyone’s favorite smelly verb, and so its presence in a sentence inevitably invokes a nice bit of tension between the strict gramatic traditionalism and the inevitable vulgarity. (It even works when constructing haughty blog posts!)

But shitted is poetry; much more expressive, funnier, a surprising and livley addition to any BM-related anecdote.

BRIAN: And then who walks into the Bratskellar? BAM! Wayne Brady!
FRANCIS: What did you do?
BRIAN: I totally shitted myself.

or

GRANDMA: I just shitted that entire bag of Sugar Free LifeSavers.

As with anything, much depends on the rythm of the sentence, the relationship between fellow nearby words, adjacent phonemes, etc.. But pounds for donuts, shitted is a far more engaging option. Try it with friends.

BONUS!
In Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses “shitten.” Not bad!

In the Creator’s brand new, classic coastal town,
     lesbian children buy each other ice cream sandwiches,
     play hopscotch upon a patch of slippery eels;
             Old stump mother’s wear pizzicato aprons
        wash large spoons with their beautiful tongues
        and live inside the bellies of gigantic washing machines.

My own mother weaves marionette
     strings on an old broken loom,
          has found honey in rusted oil canisters.
  She broke her flower’s arm in a trip
               with falling, and a man named Josephine
            Appleseed, has bet me to differ.

    I am complacent enough as bubblegum
         is on subway tracks, with fields
         of almost melting popsicles attached
      by veins to my wife in Oregon.

Bella opens the bathroom door
   to wash goofy figurines.
She sits in a purple-plaid fizzled white tub
            soft grey, the tiles, with plastic pet people
            some floating, others sunk to the bottom.

Outside her window, an unhappy ocean is on fire
   and when it all burns up, which is all it will,
   there will only then be left the salt, and Mr.
            Gandhi will be happy, but he will be hungry.

(
Far off and long ago in a rural distance
   a plum light hangs large over dirt roads,
   as tow trucks towing other tow trucks
  drive past a young woman’s future grandfather

            Who takes a large bite of asparagus
                            and smiles despite his teeth.
                                                                                )