The Girl Who Ate Everything

If you play The Kingdom of Loathing, you know what a meat stack is. If you don't, don't you want to now, knowing it involves MEAT STACKS?

But this isn't about meat stacks. I just wanted to say "meat stacks" a lot, and force you to read the words "meat" and "stack" together a lot. It feels good, yes?

My Year of Meats

I'm not much of a reader, so if I spend an entire day (well, not the whole day, but a good part of it, thus keeping me off the Internet) reading a book, you know I must like it.

My Year of Meats: half novel, half meat industry expose? The story (or many little related stories) are funny, loving, and disturbing. The meat industry parts are mainly things I already knew, but it hits me harder every time I read about slaughterhouses and drugs and such, especially since my mum keeps insisting that the drug cocktail I received as a baby (moments out of the womb, I guess) have resulted in the health problems I have today. It's ironic since I don't have that many health problems, but I do get asthma almost ever day (I think it's because I don't like NJ; it doesn't happen in NYC, but that may be due to the fact that I usually exercise more in NYC).

The health problems this novel deals mainly deal with the female reproductive system. The main character has a deformed uterus from drugs her mother took (DES given to her by her doctor, before the drug was banned) when she was pregnant. The most shocking part of the book has to do with a 5 year old girl who is already going through puberty due to being raised on a cattle processing plant and being exposed to a cornucopia of unsafe chemicals.

Anyhoo...um. Good book, unlike any I've ever read before in that it's like a regular novel with lots of information about the meat industry (which could be distracting, but I didn't think it was). If you read the reviews, someone says it's too "preachy"...um, yes, it's an expose? About MEAT. And "Propaganda with stereotype characters", well. It's a novel. It's PC and has stereotypes (semi-submissive Japanese wife with abusive husband). If it didn't, people would complain anyway; you can't win either way. The book could've been better, could've been worse. I'd still recommend it.

I read about this book from another food website or blog, but I can't remember which one! Doh.

Yesterday I saw The Island". Yes, this is a bit of a topic change, but it's still related to health. Kind of. Figuring you're not going to see the movie (it made about zilch, sadly; I thought it was pretty good), I can talk about it freely. WEOOEHEOEOEOHE FWOOP anyhoo.

The story is that in the future, super rich people get clones made as a way to live longer, aka, harvest their organs. The rich people think that the clones are vegetables with no souls or emotions, but it just ain't true. Damn, that complicates things The clones are told that they're the survivors of some mass contamination of Earth and if they're lucky, they'll get to go to The Island, the last uncontaminated place on Earth. Of course, there is no island; when someone is needed for organs, they're picked in the "lottery" and happily trot off, until they realize their liver is being taken.

...hopefully, I'm not making this movie sound worse than it is (I wasn't very into the MASSIVE ACTION SCENES and PRODUCT PLACEMENT). The overall idea is that people will do anything to live and pay any price (I was in disbelief at a low 5 million dollar price tag for a clone). It's a disturbing concept and I guess with the clones, entails a crapload of ethics questions, but the idea that people are so obsessed with staying alive isn't unbelievable. Dying as a result of an accident is one thing but if you're dying because of an illness you brought upon yourself or something that you could help with a lifestyle change, then...do something.

I'm annoyed by people who take craploads of drugs to fend off illnesses instead of figuring out the real cause, or who partake in recreational things that contribute greatly to ill health. I don't mean eating a bacon cheeseburger, but if you ate 5 bacon cheeseburgers in a row, that'd be kind of...not good.

I'm not sure what my point is. It's around 4:30 AM so I should probably be sleeping. Uh. Well. I'm annoyed that many people think that if they get sick, they can go to the doctor and get some drugs/surgery to patch things up and then go back to their old ways, knowing that if their life were to go in jeopardy, they can just run back to the doctor. I'm not talking about people who need constant medical attention, but you know...people.

FOR SOMETHING FUN, here are food links!

• Fruitscake Factory? Like the Cheesecake Factory? DUDE, I totally want a Fruitscake Factory! I'd rather have that than cheesecake. WHY CAN'T I BE JAPANESE?
• Japanese Pizza Hut commercial. [via nihaokatie] Look at the Japanese Pizza Hut menu. IT ACTUALLY LOOKS GOOD! US menu? Um, the SUCK? A lot of chains are better outside America, even in Canada. I'd actually go to Pizza Hut in Japan, maybe (at least try it) while I never want to go in the US. I used to get Dominos in Taiwan sparingly and I remember trying tuna pizza...actually, that wasn't very good, but I did have the choice.
• Fat pie thief gets stuck in a window: HAHAHAHAHA! [via Lia...oo, that rhymes!]
• Lori eats taho: how come this taho sounds so much better than the kind I've eaten? I see it as a rather boring thing but her's sounds more exciting. AHH GIMMEH.
• Taiwanese toilet-shaped cups! More photos at boing boing with the ice cream/poop inside. I LOVE YOU, TAIWAN!

Okay, I think that's it. Phew.