Stalking Monsanto’s Dr. Mengele

In the late 1980′s, I moved to the flatlandstate of Indiana!

In spite of common logic, and (as shown below) maps, this state is somehow said to be in what’s called the “Mid-West”. Looking back, I think that this move was an attempt to kill my career, which almost worked and was almost worth it.

Look closely, I’m the pixel who’s waving to you!

In retrospect, I guess that other than the fact that I didn’t speak the local language known as “sports” that all of the natives seem to speak like, well, natives, nor did I have any knowledge of that method of ripping off investors called farm futures. In retrospect, I suppose that I could have lived there with a greatly reduced life style enabled by my greatly reduced income, that’s if you can call spending your time in Indiana living.

The Twilight Zone aspect of Indiana living can be best described in one word, “Hoops”. I don’t recall ever seeing a gas station that didn’t have a basketball hoop outside the repair bay, nor a market that didn’t have one on the loading dock out back of the store. Eerie, Indiana indeed.

A heaping helping of Hoosier hospitality?

So the question at the time was, should I stay or should I go? A weak spot in any thought of staying with that scenario is that unless I could find a way to make it look like an accident, the predictable, inevitable and likely eventual demise of she who is now my ex-wife (# 2, should you be counting) might have caused me to spend my days residing in the Hoosier Hospitality Suite of the Graybar Hotel. Husband or wife? Don’t make me choose.

Hoosier Daddy Now, Bitch?

For the record (and for any law enforcement type officer who might reading this), as far as I know she’s still alive. I did come up with a, eh… let’s just call it a real killer idea of how to commit a perfect crime without leaving an evidence trail that could be tracked back to me the perp, but I’m saving that idea for a script that I’m working on. Or perhaps my next ex-wife?

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the writer.

Ah, but I’ve digressed from my reason for mentioning Indiana in the first place.

And by the way, fuck the Pacers, the Colts, and anyone named or related to Bobby Knight…

While driving around central Indiana in my spare time, which was all that I had as there wasn’t much work to speak of for me, I noticed that many of the farms along any given road had little signs indicating what sort of corn seeds that they had planted there, identified with a serial number. I thought this to be a bit odd since the signs were far too small and way too low to the ground to be of much use as an advertising campaign.

During this time, I also learned that there were different kinds of corn; sweet corn, feed corn (also known as “cow corn”), canning corn, get the picture?

Well, it turns out that the fun loving folks at Monsanto had a hand or two in this mystery, as they have patented several varieties of corn that are resistant to their own inhouse weed killer that’s available in a lesser form as “Roundup” for home use, note the “Roundup Ready” sticker on the sign above. Just for kicks, google these words: monsanto + Roundup Ready + glyphosate and then think about the foods you eat that are down the, eh… food chain from that growth crop, only a cow stands between you and modified corn seed, unless some Hoosier idiot tips the cow over.

So what does all that simply mean? They have created a weedkiller that kills basically all other living vegetative matter except those that have been genetically modified (as in the corn mentioned above) so the grower doesn’t have to pick away weeds, they just use “Roundup Ready” and then everything on the field other than that special GMO corn will meet a quick and tidy death.

(UPDATED 3-13-2010 –> Monsanto and Soybeans!)

And about the genetically modified stuff that remains inside the food eaten by the food (i.e. cattle) that we eat? I suppose it should be considered a good thing that we’re thought to be at the end of the food chain.

Of course, all of the above is merely my opinion and should be protected by my right to free speech as described in what was, and may still be called the “Constitution”, perhaps you’ve heard of it?

The ownership of any and all photos, opinions, and quotes above (including my own) belong to the material’s creators, credit is given when known.

There’ve been some changes recently, so at least that’s true until some corporation, much like, for example, Monsanto donates big bucks to some political campaign and the politician who is the beneficiary of that donation decides “Well, enough of this liberal nonsense” and then closes down that loophole.

CES La(s) Ve(gas), Baby!

I had a dream job literally dropped into my hands, I got a call for employment that would pay me to work in Las Vegas. More specifically, it paid me to go to the Consumer Electronics Show!

That’s CES to you, plebes….

Then the reality hit me up, I had to stay at the, in my humble and law suit preventing opinion, worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at in when in Las Vegas, the “Monte Carlo”. That is to say, an over hyped very tall Motel-6 located on that always charming Flamingo Blvd.

The joy started on check in, where I was informed that yes, the company I was working for had pre-paid the room rate, but I had to kick in another $9.50 (actually $10.64 for the tax on a tax) for a “resort tax” that wasn’t mentioned to the uber efficient staff at the company I was working for. Note, this is a company that won’t be named here as I’d like to go on working for them. After all, they paid my way into CES.

Soon after arriving at my tight little 16th floor aerie, I found that my always wonderful powerbook wouldn’t log into the wi-fi choices that showed up. Calling room service, I found that they don’t offer wi-fi above the 14th floor, and further, they couldn’t promise that a move to a lower floor would get me the wireless I craved. I could, however, use the built in pull out CAT cable, except I’d have to pay them $14.95 a day for the honor.

So, I turned on their small, previous century vintage CRT tv, only to find that it boots directly into their directory for the porn channels selection. Considering that otherwise there were only a few crappy, local non-porn channels that I could choose from, it almost became a viable choice.

Remember my Motel-6 comparison shown above? Well, they give  you  internet access for free. And often, HBO or some other (+/-) non-porn channels as well.

It got worse after that, so I’m forced to fess up and say that I toughed it out, left my quarters, and hit the casino to rid myself of a surplus of my supply of pocket style quarters.

Oh yeah, CES was… eh…, interesting, and I scored some major league sort of bling. More on that to be added soon.

I Finally Set My T.V. Free

I made an interesting discovery this past holiday weekend, driven by the news of an impending shut down on Time Warner Cable of the Fox (which I never watch anyway) Network, and the idea that a similar action by most of the other channels is looming on the horizon.

Here’s an update to this post

I went to that proud bastion of Chinese capitalism we know as “Wal-Mart”, and bought a $14.00 dollar rabbit ear antenna set which easily hooked up to my recently purchased flat screen digital tv, and I found that with only that inferior interior antenna I could receive about 60 channels.

The image on my screen is very sharp on many of them, with no broken up mosaic patterns or stuttering sound track that have been so often a large part of my cable viewing experience.

And, by the way, after that initial $14 spent on the antenna, it’s all free……

So, sometime soon I’ll get up on the roof and install the $40.00 antenna that I soon after bought at a local electronics outlet after this test, and then I’ll tell Time Warner what they can do with their $125.00 (+/-) a month system with so many unwatched channels and so few changing movie choices. I guess with a well lit screen it won’t matter if the sun doesn’t shine there.

It’s always been disturbing to me that I’ve been paying for so many channels that I would never watch, i.e. sports, spanish and asian language shows, and most of the rest they feature, on a cable system that could easily offer consumers ala-carte ordering so a customer could fine tune (no pun intended) those tv options to match their preferences.

Hey, let’s keep this our dirty little secret, lest crowds of people across the country find out that they can dump cable and put those Time Warner, Comcast, Dish, Direct, ATT, ETC, ETC bait and switch thieves out on the street.