![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
You know what's fcked up? I just went to create a google news alert with my grandmother's name and the Mississippi town where she lives, so I can find out when the obituary is published, because I don't trust my family to notify me until after the funeral. Except, I had already created one. There was no recent news that prompted this -- she hasn't been doing to well healthwise for a couple years now, and it's always on a steady decline, so it's sort of just a matter of time. But damm.
You know what else is fcked up? This morning I drove up to Evanston and listened to WLUW which plays Amy Goodman's Democracy Now in the morning. It's not my favorite show, I can't hear it every day (she's no Rachel Maddow), but it's way more interesting than anything on NPR or other news. So today was this guy who'd written a book on Donald Rumsfeld, and they're talking about his history, and how after working with the Ford administration (um, dude is old), he became head of Searle Pharmaceuticals. See, the Searle family were buddies of his, as fellow privileged rich north shore Chicago folks, and the company was starting to sink and go under, but they had created (accidentally) this artificial sweetener that they were calling aspartame and were trying to get the FDA to approve it. Except, studies showed it caused brain cancer so the FDA was saying no way. So they hired Rumsfeld as CEO with his politico connections to help get approval because they knew it would make them buckets of money. Except, see, Rumsfeld wasn't able to make it happen. He's no business man, he was a lobbyist, and apparently not even a good one of those. Well, not until Reagan got elected, and he booted out the head of the FDA and the new head of the FDA said, wait, it doesn't cause brain cancer, let's approve it.
Searle went on to sell its empire to Monsanto. And now we drink Diet Coke.
Well, not 'we'. I hate diet sodas. Because I don't like how they taste and I'm a paranoid freak about certain health things, like brain cancer, and the possible link to aspartame (this started in high school when my high school bio teacher taught us about the controversy). But I know lots of people who rely on it for caffeine intake or because they're diabetic, and that's just fcked up to have it peddled on us like it is.
Which reminds me of last night, and how I reached my own personal tipping point of these attorneys at work constantly making sarcastic comments about how 'healthy' the dinner is here. Now, don't get me wrong -- they aren't always the most balanced meals, but if you have moderate portions of the fried meat and large portions of salad and then maybe add a banana or apple that's usually lying around, you're doing okay, plus, really, they probably are eating out all the time at places that are no 'healthier'. It's really just anti-fat bullisht bias. Last night though, I just cracked. I had a half a plate of salad, half of plate of baked ziti, with a piece of garlic bread on top, and one of the attorneys walked by and said, "that looks healthy" (their sarcasm isn't even especially clever), and I'm like, mtherfcker, you go through two cans of diet coke in the last hour I see you, so you probably drink 5-6 cans a day, which is half a gallon daily of toxic aritificial chemicals. I am eating a plate of a food that a country in southern europe has been eating for centuries and they are alive and well and doing just fine.
Wow, I didn't realize how ranty I was feeling until I started typing.
You know what else is fcked up? This morning I drove up to Evanston and listened to WLUW which plays Amy Goodman's Democracy Now in the morning. It's not my favorite show, I can't hear it every day (she's no Rachel Maddow), but it's way more interesting than anything on NPR or other news. So today was this guy who'd written a book on Donald Rumsfeld, and they're talking about his history, and how after working with the Ford administration (um, dude is old), he became head of Searle Pharmaceuticals. See, the Searle family were buddies of his, as fellow privileged rich north shore Chicago folks, and the company was starting to sink and go under, but they had created (accidentally) this artificial sweetener that they were calling aspartame and were trying to get the FDA to approve it. Except, studies showed it caused brain cancer so the FDA was saying no way. So they hired Rumsfeld as CEO with his politico connections to help get approval because they knew it would make them buckets of money. Except, see, Rumsfeld wasn't able to make it happen. He's no business man, he was a lobbyist, and apparently not even a good one of those. Well, not until Reagan got elected, and he booted out the head of the FDA and the new head of the FDA said, wait, it doesn't cause brain cancer, let's approve it.
Searle went on to sell its empire to Monsanto. And now we drink Diet Coke.
Well, not 'we'. I hate diet sodas. Because I don't like how they taste and I'm a paranoid freak about certain health things, like brain cancer, and the possible link to aspartame (this started in high school when my high school bio teacher taught us about the controversy). But I know lots of people who rely on it for caffeine intake or because they're diabetic, and that's just fcked up to have it peddled on us like it is.
Which reminds me of last night, and how I reached my own personal tipping point of these attorneys at work constantly making sarcastic comments about how 'healthy' the dinner is here. Now, don't get me wrong -- they aren't always the most balanced meals, but if you have moderate portions of the fried meat and large portions of salad and then maybe add a banana or apple that's usually lying around, you're doing okay, plus, really, they probably are eating out all the time at places that are no 'healthier'. It's really just anti-fat bullisht bias. Last night though, I just cracked. I had a half a plate of salad, half of plate of baked ziti, with a piece of garlic bread on top, and one of the attorneys walked by and said, "that looks healthy" (their sarcasm isn't even especially clever), and I'm like, mtherfcker, you go through two cans of diet coke in the last hour I see you, so you probably drink 5-6 cans a day, which is half a gallon daily of toxic aritificial chemicals. I am eating a plate of a food that a country in southern europe has been eating for centuries and they are alive and well and doing just fine.
Wow, I didn't realize how ranty I was feeling until I started typing.
