Hot enough for you? There’s a good thread going on over at Reddit: Obama needs to do something about this heat!

“I don’t think Obama has shown sufficient outrage over it being hot outside.”

“We did not have heat like this under Bush. There were some warm spells, but we all know that was due to policies established by the Clinton administration.”

“Leave it to Obama to “redistribute” temperatures from the socialist, Islamic third world, forcing all of us to endure terrorist-producing temperatures here in the homeland. Personally, I heard it’s a plot to undermine Christmas this winter - no snow, no Santa. Look it up.”

LMAO ~JoeC

House fire, neighbor dressed as gorilla, nothing to see, move along…

Full story: Two fires hours apart destroy beach house.

Added a new blog in the sidebar: GreenHsv’s Blog:

I am starting this blog because ever since reading TheZeroWasteHome I’ve been thinking about how wasteful I am in my daily life. It really struck a chord with me. So this blog is dedicated to my journey toward a greener lifestyle.

GreenHsv’s Blog promises reviews and the green-related lowdown on area grocery stores, farmer’s markets, and, you know, other green stuff. Although it’s geared toward those living near Huntsville, Al, GreenHsv looks like she’ll be posting plenty of interesting blog content that can be appreciated by all.

To get things cooking, she starts her green journey with a Secret spy trip to Publix, where, among other things, she discovers it is apparently a bold violation of several universal laws to snap pictures in a Publix.

Also worth mentioning: it’s true that GreenHsv is an Alabama blog, but I swear I can’t find anything on there (so far) about Obama’s missing birth certificate or a bunch of Sarah Palin butt-kissin’. Hat’s off for that, GreenHsv!

Note: There’s a great short story link at the bottom of this post; don’t miss it because of my ramblings above the fold. ~Joe C.

So, I finally watched Food, Inc. last night, the Academy Award best documentary nominee I’ve been hearing so much buzz about the past few months. I’d been putting it off because not long ago I’d read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and thought I knew most of what would be on display, mainly that government subsidies make corn cheap, so we grow a lot of cheap corn, and since there’s so much cheap corn a huge percent of the food in your supermarket is a derivative of corn including corn-fed cow, pig, and fish (yep, they’re teaching fish to eat corn now, too.) And, let’s face it, being clued in on the crap I’ve been sticking in my mouth is not the delightful subject I usually want to take in on a feel-good Friday night.

But, for some reason I decided to end the procrastination, maybe because Food, Inc. was available for the “instant play” cue on NetFlix.

Let me tell you, there is a reason you can go to Disney World and book yourself into an Animal Kingdom themed resort, or a Sports or Music themed resort, or the Wilderness Lodge themed resort, but they don’t offer a Beef Slaughterhouse themed resort. My wife updated her Facebook status during the movie: “Watching Food, Inc. and seriously doubting that I’ll ever eat meat again!” I won’t go that far, because I do love an artery-clogging diabetes-inducing Big Mac on occasion, but I will be eating more beans, tofu, and broccoli this week.

Anyway, the essense of the film is not anti-meat, but our vanished lack of respect for meat. The gist of the film is that corporate greed — and more truthfully, the American people’s misplaced thrift that leads them to buy cheaper bad food instead of more expensive good food, organically-grown food that isn’t a subsidized corn-derivative — has caused Henry Ford’s assembly line principles to be applied to the production of the animals that provide meat. Besides causing all sorts of problems, from E. coli outbreaks to a generation where 1 in 3 will develop early onset diabetes, it’s caused us to lose respect for meat. In order to grow meat in the terrible way we do, we must either lose respect for it, let our conscience drive us insane, change, or ignore reality. Ignoring reality and disrespecting meat is a lot easier than the other two options.

No Respect for Meat

So, today while contemplating our lack of respect for meat, I surfed on over to the blog of Indigobusiness, God is Not an Asshole, and his post about Terry Bisson’s short story, They’re Made Out of Meat, slapped me in the face, because among other things, this short sci-fi story is concerned with a large lack of respect for meat:

“No brain?”

“Oh, there’s a brain all right. It’s just that the brain is made out of meat! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“So … what does the thinking?”

“You’re not understanding, are you? You’re refusing to deal with what I’m telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat.”

“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”

This short story, published in OMNI in 1990, was later published in Bisson’s 1993 anthology Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories. It’s short, even for a short story, and best of all, Bisson has posted it in full on his website: They’re Made Out of Meat. It’s a good light-hearted weekend afternoon read, especially after something heavy like watching Food, Inc.

It’s no secret, President Obama’s favorite sport is basketball, perhaps, he says, stemming from a very special Christmas present:

I do remember the one time I met my father he was visiting during Christmas and he gave me a basketball and – the degree to which I came to love basketball – it wasn’t until much later in life that I realized, ‘Actually, he gave me that basketball.’ I think there was some cause and effect there in terms of the degree to which I just ended up taking up the sport as a kid who didn’t know his dad.

As witnessed recently by the CBS cameras and former Ohio State All-American and NBA veteran Clark “Special K” Kellog, Obama still has a pretty sweet shot, especially when coming from behind: President Obama Plays HORSE with CBS’ Clark Kellogg