I'm Thinking Arby's

I guess I must be an idiot. When I heard the term Market Fresh sandwich, and saw that it contained lean turkey on what looked like multi grain wheat bread, I assumed that it would be a reasonable snack for the middle of the day.

But recently I've become interested in the content of my food, since it is rather hard to escape the fact that so many Americans are so fat. In fact since I've lived in the States I have gained a few pounds myself, and I wondered why.

Apart from the litany of horrific and should be illegal additives that are placed in our food, I've also noticed that most food here in America seems to contain enough sodium to kill a horse.

For the most part I have found I can combat these evil foods with organic products from my local organic supermarket. It is surprising how good organic food tastes, even without a ton of additives or salt.

But real life dictates that sometimes I have to eat 'normal' food. So the other day I took a trip to Arby's for lunch. I ate three items. A small beef and cheddar sandwich, some southwest egg rolls, and a market fresh turkey sandwich.

Now I am not an idiot, I didn't expect this to be particularly healthy, although I thought it would be a lot better than most fast food offerings in the area.

Turns out my meal, was the meal from hell. Upon checking the handy nutritional guide on Arby's web site, it seemed my meal was about as unhealthy as it gets.

This meal contained 2112 calories. 109g of fat, of which 31g was saturated fat, and 5.5g was trans fat. There was 265mg of cholesterol, 179g of carbs, and 163% of my RDI for Iron.

All not good, but the sodium content was what blew me away; 4911mg of sodium. Yep, more than double the recommended daily amount to be healthy.

Now I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting the egg rolls or the beef and cheddar sandwich to be healthy, but amazingly it was the turkey ranch sandwich that was the least healthy item there. Even less healthy than a white bun, stuffed with beef and melted fake processed cheese. This healthy looking market fresh sandwich contained 834 calories and 2258mg of sodium.

Of course silly me, I should have ordered the healthy wrap instead right? Well not really. Taking the wrap merely drops it to 699 calories, yet still a staggering 2215mg of sodium.

I can only assume that Arby's kills turkeys by dropping them into a boiling vat of salty fat.

Again I wasn't expecting food from Arby's to be especially healthy, but for me at least it was hard to believe that a market fresh turkey sandwich had double the sodium of a Big Mac from McDonald's. In fact, if I ate a Big Mac and THREE orders of LARGE fries from McDonald's I would still have consumed less sodium than a single market fresh sandwich from Arby's.

So why the rant? Apart from to announce I will never purchase food from Arby's again. Frankly I feel conned. When a restaurant shows me a 'healthy' wrap and talks about lean turkey meat and fresh ingredients being made to order. I expect that at least to be somewhat true. In all the times I ate at Arby's, I believed, thanks to their marketing, that I was not exactly eating healthy, but at least I wasn't eating those evil cheeseburgers from McDonald's. Lean turkey meat surely had to be so much better than beef dripping with fat right?

But apparently I was an idiot. In an effort to avoid the obviously bad for me, I seemed to have been led astray by a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Well so long Arby's and thanks for all the sodium. In my humble opinion when one single food item contains a day's supply of sodium, there should be a warning label right on the product: Warning, eating this will make you fat, give you high blood pressure, and ultimately kill you. This may look like a fairly reasonable sandwich, but you'd be better off with a cheeseburger and fries.

That's Hot?

It's not that I don't like Paris Hilton. I'm really not a hater, as her fans are calling those who think she should go to jail. But I find myself utterly ambivalent to the thought of her serving time.

With one in ten Americans currently in jail it has to be said that going to jail is pretty commonplace in America. As an American Paris should know that. She should also know that if you are stupid enough to wind up on probation for committing a crime, you need to walk on eggshells until your probation is up.

Paris should know a lot of things, especially with the availability of the finest education that money can buy. But unfortunately for her she does not seem to know very much at all. In fact her entire career has been based on playing the role of a spoiled little whoiress bimbo who values looks, money and fashion above common sense, morals and values. But at this time her ignorance and stupidity have finally caught up with her.

In September of 2006 she is arrested for DUI and pleads no contest. She gets probation and a suspended license. In January of 2007 she was pulled over and warned that she was driving on a suspended license. She signed a document telling her she was not allowed to drive. In February of 2007 she is pulled over for speeding without her lights on, still on a suspended license.

Just how many second chances does this bimbo want?

I really am not the kind of person that believes in adding to the already unnecessarily large jail population in this country. But at some point someone like Paris Hilton needs to be told, enough is enough.

This girl has everything she wants handed to her. She has more money than most people will ever earn in a life time of hard work. All she has to do is not break the law, how hard is that? A woman like Paris could afford a limo to go everywhere. She could demand that other people pay for her to have a limo. If a night club is willing to pay $50,000 for a personal appearance, I'm pretty sure they will spring for a limo too.

It is this fact that annoys me about this case more than anything else. Paris Hilton has choices. She is not some single mom living in a trailer in rural Mississippi. She is a multi-millionaire who gets paid fortunes just to show up and drink free drinks. It would be almost effortless for her to have her agent arrange for drivers to take her where she wants to go. The extra expense is going to be meaningless to someone in her position. But the fact is she simply does not care. She has demonstrated time and again that she believes herself to be above the law. She thinks she is so incredibly important and powerful that she does not have to confine herself to the rules and regulations that govern other 'ordinary' people.

What's even sadder is that vacuous little bimbos often still in high school actually look up to this person as a role model. You only have to watch some girl on My Super Sweet 16 to see that among the spoiled and the ignorant, Paris Hilton is something of an icon.

Well it's now time for Paris to grow up. She needs to start to accept responsibility for her own actions and learn that the things that she does affect other people and her future. You can't go through life in your own little world, ignoring the realities of society and doing whatever you like. If Paris ends up in jail she is going to have a rude awakening to the harsh realities of life. Frankly, maybe this will be a good thing for her. Maybe this wakeup call will result in her being a better person.

I noticed too that her mother was pretty vocal in court, lashing out at the prosecutor and implying that her daughter was being deliberately targeted because of who she is. Well Mrs. Hilton, your daughter is precisely who she is because of the upbringing you and your husband gave her. We are all products of our environment. Before you start casting your allegations, perhaps you should take a long hard look at the serious mistakes you made that resulted in the creation of Paris Hilton.

Are you a Mitchum Man?

If there's one thing I don't like it is some smarmy little marketing expert telling me what to think about who I am and the products I buy. This is probably why I fast forward through commercials and TiVo everything. But I digress.

I've been a bit lazy in my blogging lately, what with having a life, and not living in my parents' basement. But the new ad campaign for Mitchum that has been going on few a little while has been really pissing me off.

"If you're the only one who knows which remote controls what...you're a Mitchum man."

Either that or you married a moron who cannot operate a simple electronic gadget.

How about this one:

"If you've ever dated a yoga instructor...you're a Mitchum man."

Or:

"If hammering stuff is your way of unwinding...you're a Mitchum man."

I mean seriously, just fuck off. I buy a chemical that stops me from producing a foul smelling wetness under my arm. This isn't a lifestyle choice. I didn't pick up this product because I am suffering from the delusion that using a certain kind of deodorant will make me more manly. This isn't 1950. Are you going to tell me next which brand of cigarettes I need to start smoking?

Seiko have already explained that it is my watch that defines who I am, so I don't need a fucking deodorant company to do the same.

The stick I have at home tells me that I am a Mitchum man if I believe that the ratio of lighter fluid to charcoal on a barbecue should be 2:1. But if that were the case, even if I were still alive, I'd need to buy a new barbecue. Not that I own one. You see it is not a prerequisite of being a man that you must enjoy cooking outside.

All in all the Mitchum commercials simply encourage ridiculous stereotypes, sexism, and the believe that behaving like a Neanderthal chauvinist is an attractive male trait. In fact you can even go to their web site where you are encouraged to take a 'man test' to see how manly you are. An actress then pretends to get excited about your answers if you profess to be a thick headed moron.

Seriously, if your deodorant defines you. If you have to take a test to find out if you are a man. If you find sexism and the oppression of women funny, then quite simply you are a jerk. You don't even have to take a test to figure that one out.

The Death of Neteller

As expected for several months now NETeller is officially dead in the United States. A legitimate legal company operating lawfully in the British Isles since 1999, traded on the London Stock Exchange, handling billions of dollars in transactions every year. But the new freedom defined by the Bush administration does not include the freedom for Americans to spend their money as they please.

America recently arrested the two Canadian founders of the company, who now face 20 years in jail if convicted of handling illegal gambling funds. In response to this NETeller immediately halted all American gambling transactions and banned Americans from opening new accounts. The move effectively kills off 65% of their business. They also asked for trading of their shares to be suspended.

I simply cannot believe just how easily Americans hand over their freedoms. For a country that markets itself on being so free, it is amazing how quickly and how easily these freedoms are taken away. And no one seems to care.

The government didn't even research this particular situation. As I've previously discussed, Bill Frist simply slipped a bill into an unrelated anti-terror bill and in the blink of an eye closes the door in the face of millions of Americans, and billions of dollars in tax revenue. Then suddenly America starts arresting foreign entrepreneurs who dared to start legal and legitimate gambling companies abroad.

The saddest thing of all is that this will achieve nothing positive whatsoever. New companies like NETeller will spring up (and have already sprung up) in countries that couldn't care less what Americans think. Americans who wish to continue their hobby of playing poker, sports betting, or otherwise gambling on line will simply set up accounts with new companies and use them. In other words this move does nothing but push everything underground, exactly like prohibition.

The wonderful learned politicians who support this kind of shit believe that gambling transactions support terrorism (doesn't everything these days?) and so use this as an excuse. So instead of regulation, taxation, and monitoring what is going on, they instead decide that the appropriate course of action is to drive it underground where they will have no clue what is going on. Brilliant!

I sincerely hope that the Democrats will have the balls to kill off this legislation (there is still time to water it down). I also hope they will field an impressive candidate who can kick these Republican Nazis out of office. It's about time we cared less about 'spreading freedom' around the world, and cared more about keeping freedom here at home.

Happy New Year

My wife and I try to stay home on New Year's wherever possible. We live in a town where public transportation is severely limited, and drink driving poses a serious problem. So rather than being killed just to go and stand in a shitty smoky bar, we stay home, watch TV, and drink Champagne. Sometimes with friends, other times without.

This year we tuned in to the various New Year countdowns that were on offer, and to our dismay found that they were all total shit. The music was just ghastly. Here is a small sample:

Yo yo yo, know what I'm sayin'
Yo Yo, New Year's Eve 2007
2007, Yo Yo, Nah what I'm sayin'
Yeah New York, 2007 yo.

Now I am not trying to dis rap, but seriously. I only saw one rapper I had heard of. The others seemed to be so fat they had to have their shiny gold coats custom made. I also watched a band identified only by their stupid hair cuts cover the old time classic Song 2, by Blur. After all Blur must be so old now there is no way they could have performed their own song.

Christina Aguilera sung some awful song well, followed by one that people had actually heard of. But for some strange reason she seems to think it is 1926, hence the weird hair cut and makeup.

Another person also thought it was 1926, and that was Dick Clark. He probably quite enjoyed being a young man in 1926, and decided to ignore reality for a while and simply pretend that time was no longer moving forwards.

Clark's performance was a complete joke. I hate to be mean about the elderly and afflicted, but there comes a time when you have to hang up your 1960s headphone set and realize that you are decrepit useless drooling old man with nothing left to contribute to the modern world. It is not brave or special to sit motionless trying to pretend that the last few decades had not happened. His being on TV was an embarrassment to himself, his family, and the hoards of sycophants who work around him telling him he's still got it.

I know that America is so young people sometimes like to cling to 'tradition' such as this. But showing this man stumbling through his lines was just sick. The man has had a stroke, and nearly died so many times. He needs to retire with what is left of his dignity. This should have happened in 1979.

Picking up the slack for the old man was Ryan Toolcrest. It was quite hard to know who to dislike more. A sad delusional old man, or a sad closeted egomaniac with his disingenuous smile. Toolcrest and the other presenters kissed up to Dick like they were looking to score an inheritance. The mediocre talent picked for the show mirrored their own, and 2007 rolled around with the presenters making grandiose claims more in keeping with the discovery of alien life or a cure for cancer, than merely the start of a new year.

Suffice to say I did not enjoy the crap the networks spewed my way this New Years. MTV did not do any better. Neither did the other networks that took a shot at it. Having watched this New Year's sad fest, I may be tempted next year to take my chances with the drunk drivers. Apparently the TV networks have long since given up on quality New Years programming.

So long 2006, hello 2007.

Well, 2006 is all but over and I felt it only fitting to say goodbye. I have been horribly negligent when it comes to my blog and have not bothered to make an entry for several weeks.

I was fully intending to write something about the Bush administration getting their asses handed to them in the midterm elections. But I just never got around to it. Needless to say, I am very please to see the American people finally getting the picture that Bush is retarded.

I was also very pleased to see the demise of that asshole Bill Frist. After trying so hard to appeal to his base by outlawing some forms of gambling, a very clear message was sent to him that he is not presidential material. Despite the horrible job that Bush has done, the public believe that Frist would be even worse.

Britney Spears finally dumped that freeloading loser K-Fed and decided to hang out with America's super bimbo Paris Hilton. My end of year picture could not have been much else. Two trailer trash idiots with money and no class. In true American tradition I censored the image. I'm guessing a shaved beaver would get my blog closed down. The uncensored version is not hard to find. But quite honestly there are plenty of web sites where you can look for cheap classless whores showing their snatch.

Donald Trump nearly fired one of his bitches, I mean beauty queens. Miss USA landed in hot water after allegedly drinking, partying, doing drugs, and having lesbian kisses with Miss Teen USA. Then the ugly fat bitch Rosie O'Donnell decided to lash out at Trump over his 'moral values.' He hit back with a few choice words where he labeled her disgusting, among other things.

Frankly, I thought Trump made the right choice. Miss USA should get a second chance. America is a country of extremes. We are sometimes all too quick to call for retribution and severe punishment for even the most innocuous of 'crimes.' This woman is an adult who got a little carried away with her exciting new lifestyle. Trump should take some responsibility for pulling her out of her Kentucky trailer and putting her in a New York penthouse. As for O'Donnell, the sooner they knock her fat ass off TV, the better.

Saddam Hussein was executed today. He was hung for crimes against humanity. One wonders how many people will die in the wake of these events. Having watched a documentary about his lifestyle I cannot help but question why he decided to provoke America into a war. He had an opulent life and lived like a king. He could have enjoyed the remainder of his life in complete luxury, but instead chose to finish it at the end of a rope. Doesn't make much sense to me.

Well it's time to wrap up. I have some sleep and general laziness to fit in before New Years Eve. Next year I will try to make time for a few more posts. Until then, may all my readers enjoy a Happy New Year.

As they like to say in America, "Celebrate Responsibly." Whatever the fuck that means.

Post 69 - New Rule

I'm a big fan of Bill Maher. I watch his show each week on HBO, and love the 'New Rules' part of his show. But this week he said something that is so incredibly true I had to re-post it. Now many people will see this as America bashing, but I see it as a total patriotism. If anyone believes this is anti-American, they are too stupid for living.

Here's what Bill Maher said:

"America must stop bragging that it's the greatest country on earth and start acting like it. Now, I know — I know this is uncomfortable for the faith-over-facts crowd, but the greatness of a country can, to a large degree, be measured. Here are some numbers: Infant mortality rate, America ranks 48th in the world; overall health, 72nd; freedom of the press, 44; literacy, 55th. Do you realize there are 12-year-old kids in this country who can't spell the name of the teacher they're having sex with?

Now, America, I will admit, has done many great things: making the New World democratic comes to mind, the Marshall Plan, curing polio, beating Hitler, the deep-fried Twinkie. But what have we done for us lately? We're not the freest country. That would be Holland, where you can smoke hash in church, and Janet Jackson's nipple is on their flag.

And, sadly, we're no longer a country that can get things done, either. Not big things, like building a tunnel under Boston or running a war with competence. We had six years to fix the voting machines. Couldn't get that done. The FBI is just now getting email!

Prop 87 out here in California is about lessening our dependence on oil by using alternative fuels, and Bill Clinton comes on at the end of the ad and says, "If Brazil can do it, America can, too." Excuse me, since when did America have to buck itself up by saying we could catch up to Brazil?! We invented the airplane and the lightbulb. They invented the bikini wax, and now they're ahead?!

In most of the industrialized world, nearly everyone has health care. And hardly anyone doubts evolution. And, yes, having to live amid so many superstitious dimwits is also something that affects quality of life. It's why America isn't going to be the country that gets the inevitable patents in stem cell cures, because Jesus thinks it's too close to cloning!

Oh, and did I mention we owe China a trillion dollars? We owe everybody money. America is a debtor nation to Mexico! We're not on a bridge to the 21st century. We're on a bus to Atlantic City with a roll of quarters.

And this is why it bugs me that so many people talk like it's 1955 and we're still number one in everything. We're not. And I take no glee in saying this, because I love my country, and I wish we were. But when you're number 55 in this category and number 92 in that one, you look a little silly waving the big foam "Number One" finger.

As long as we believe being the greatest country in the world is a birthright, we'll keep coasting on the achievements of earlier generations and we'll keep losing the moral high ground. Because we may not be the biggest or the healthiest or the best educated. But we always did have one thing no other place did. We knew soccer was bullshit.

And...and we also had a little thing called the Bill of Rights. A great nation doesn't torture people or make them disappear without a trial. Bush keeps saying the terrorists hate us for our freedom. And he's working damn hard to see that pretty soon that won't be a problem."

Asshole

This is not the first time I have written on the subject of online poker. It's a game I have grown to enjoy tremendously over the past three years and thanks to Bill Frist, steps are being taken to outlaw this wonderful game.

In a typical corrupt politician move he snuck anti-gambling legislation into a completely unrelated bill to secure our nations ports. Now one might ask first of all why it has taken five years since 9/11 to try and secure our ports, but that's probably a different issue.

In an underhanded move he slipped this faulty legislation into the bill and the whole thing got approved. When asked about the bill Frist said, "Gambling is a serious addiction that undermines the family, dashes dreams and frays the fabric of society." One might even start to agree with this wonderful logic until one reads the bill. You see the bill does not seek to outlaw online gambling at all. It actually provides exceptions for horserace betting, fantasy games, and online lotteries. So as they say in the south Dr. Frist is talking out of both sides of his mouth. You can't pretend to be tough on gambling while at the same time legalizing specific forms of it that you happen to like.

America is supposed to be land of the free. Why do we have to put up with assholes like this telling us which specific forms of gambling we are allowed to participate in? It's our money. We earned it, we paid our tax on it, and we want to spend it in a manner of our choosing. Trying to emulate China is not the way forward. We need to fully legalize online gaming, allow American companies to cash in on this massive market, tax it and regulate it. There can be no excuse for this attack on our liberties.

But despite the annoyance of this sleazy politician messing with our liberties, it is not all bad news. According to analysts the bill is deeply flawed. It does not make playing poker online illegal, it really just cracks down on companies operating in the US for the purpose of online gambling. The bill also makes it harder to transfer money from American banks or credit cards to online gambling sites. Of course this does nothing to prevent people from using Neteller or a similar service. So in other words it should change very little for American online poker players. Certain sites may withdraw from the market, but many more will remain.

With any luck these evil politicians will feel that their work on this issue is done, and go back to legalizing torture and plotting world war three. Maybe now they will leave online gaming alone for a while so we can continue to enjoy this all American game of poker.