DAnnisms

Tomato Conspiracy

Of course, we’re all paranoid about this tomato situation. No sandwich is quite the same, every salsa is suspect. First they said it was tomatoes grown in certain states, and now they’re thinking it might have to do with a warehouse instead.

Whenever something like this happens, I start to wonder about corporate espionage and sabotage. Who would benefit from ruining our tomatoes? There’s no real competition for tomatoes, though. I mean you’re not going to see apple or orange or cucumber sales rising to compensate for a lack of tomatoes.

The only competition for tomatoes is other types of tomatoes.  You know, like cherry tomatoes and hot house tomatoes, which have been on the safe list. Yeah, yeah. It was them, right? The hot house tomato industry is striking a new blow at their farm tomato competition.  They’ve been cutting into farmers’ profits more and more over the past decade, and they’ve taken new measures to put themselves right over the top.

Yes, the hothouse industry is booming in the US and Mexico, but we all know who really benefits here.  Canada.

Yes, We Have No Bananas

Even though bananas come from an asexual plant, it doesn’t mean they’re not sexy.  I mean, look at them.  Peel back the skin and taste the sweetness with your tongue.

I started hearing all these rumblings about how we’ve been cloning bananas for so many years that one day they were just going to run out, and then we’d all be screwed.  I’d hate to be my sister, who can’t even stand the smell of a banana, because my comfort and satisfaction seems to revolve around whether we have this sweet and slender fruit in the house. 

Anyway, I had to find out what it was all about. A 2001 article from the National Geographic talks about this wretched fungus attacking banana crops and how scientists were working on this five-year banana genome project so they could create fungus resistant bananas. Well, since then they succeeded with the first plague and are busy working on the next big fungus.

Meanwhile, you’ve got debates about the evils of genetic manipulation, big business, politics, world hunger, murder and espionage, all around this sexy little fruit.  All I have to say, is that if bananas can’t have sex the natural way and take advantage of all that Darwin’s natural selection process has to offer, then what’s wrong with a little manual manipulation?

The Spiritual Battle For Your Decayed Corpse

I was reading on About.com’s Genealogy blog on how the Vatican has ordered dioceses worldwide to stop Mormons from photographing genealogy records held by the Catholic church.

Kimberly writes:

“One of the core tenets of Mormon faith is that the dead can be baptized into the Church to offer them the opportunity to accept the faith in an afterlife and achieve salvation. Many Jews and Christians have been upset by this practice, and see it as usurping the memory of their departed relatives.”

It makes me wonder what sort of religion I might be inducted into in a couple of hundred years. Perhaps Scientology? I wonder if I can go up in level in Scientology after I’ve passed away? Can a corpse become Clear?

Maybe I’ll be the first.

Get Ready to Rock

Whatcha Gunna Buy With The Phat Government Cash?

Normally, I’m not one for advocating consumerism.  In fact, as religions go, I think consumerism is right up there with technology as one of the fastest growing religions in modern times.

But, I’m going to make an exception this time around and say something I thought I would never say:  It’s time to go shopping.

Americans showed last time around that they would rather put the rebate checks in their savings account than go out and spend them, which makes offering another rebate pretty stupid.  But, that’s government for you.

So, this time around, I am going to do my part and go buy a new monitor or something.  I suggest everyone does the same else I want to hear no complaining about the recession that would have been caused by all you peeps that didn’t go buy stuff.

Hypocrisy Much?

So, crazy former president Carter goes down and meets with those Hamas peeps. Specifically, he met with the big chief, Khaled Mashaal. Now, we all know that Jimmy Carter has wild ideas that include things like “peace” and other crazy notions. That’s why he won one of them there Nobel prizes for it.

Not only does he meet with the Hamas leader, but he pretty much does what no one else has been able to do and no one else probably thought would ever happen: he got the leader to agree to recognize Isreal’s right to be in the Middle East so long as they went back to their original borders.

Now, here’s a group that has previously sworn to never recognize Isreal and profess a deep interest in seeing them purged from the region completely. Carter goes down there, and he’s got them actually thinking about recognizing Isreal. Hey, maybe their demands are too much for Isreal to swallow, maybe not, but it’s a little thing that most of us sane people would call “progress”.

So, how does Israel’s UN ambassador react to it? He calls Jimmy Carter a bigot. Specifically, he didn’t much care for Carter shaking Khaled Mashaal’s hand.

Hey, if calling someone a bigot for hearing what another person has to say and shaking hand isn’t hypocrisy, I don’t know what is. If there was a hypocrisy award, I think he’d be a front runner.

Anyway, congrats to him. Most of us try to at least hide our hypocrisy a little bit. He’s wearing his on his chest.

Dio? For President?

These days, when someone has a bumper sticker on his car, you notice, at least if you’re driving in Dallas where it’s extraordinarily uncouth to have a bumper sticker or drive a car older than ten years.  And if Dio was a car, he’d be way too embarrassing for most Dallas Texans to drive, that’s all I’m saying. 

So, I’m jamming to Tenacious D, and I stop at a red light, a lo and behold, there shines a shiny car with a black and white bumper sticker with three big bold letters: DIO.  I look closely, and I can’t believe what I see. Someone is actually advocating that we vote for Ronnie James Dio as President of the United States of America.  And then I thought, why not?  Dude, he was awesome in The Pick of Destiny.

Then I thought, he’s German, right? How could he be President? But I looked it up, and he’s actually from New Hampshire, man, he could totally run.

So I looked further, but all I found was a truly lame YouTube video and a Web site with nothing on it. Ah well, one can dream.

American Idol is Feature News

It seems just about every day that I go to Yahoo I see some article about what’s happening on American Idol as feature news.   Either its talking about how old whats-her-name saying dingbatty things, or that Randy-fellow actually being mean for a change, or something that the mean guy says being ‘cruel.”   The “mean guy” being “cruel”?  OMG, let’s report it in feature news!

I guess its a good thing, though.  If all there is to report is stuff about American Idol, we must be doing pretty good as a people.  I mean, nothing going on with China, right?

Cinnamon Freedom Fighters

One of my recent addictions is cinnamon gum.  Now, because I’m trying to be semi-responsible to my teeth and my big belly, I go for the sugarless variety of gum.  But here recently it seems increasingly difficult to find sugar-free cinnamon gum.

Oh, I can find Big Red for days.  But Extra Cinnamon?  Pretty hard to find.  I usually end up with Dentine Fire or whatever it is called.

It makes me wonder if perhaps there’s some type of revolution going on where people are trying to free cinnamon from the bondage of being such a great flavor.

Buddy’s Thoughts on Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday