Drop the rags already?

How screwed am I?

Blog Jarvis made me want to kill this blog, but I’m holding back. I’m an only child so the concept of accountability baffles me. But today’s class has me questioning this whole meandering exercise…

I’m among the last people you’ll hear advocating self-censorship. Damn it all. But if this blog will prevent me from getting a decent paycheck, I’d rather gut it and start anew.

So I’m asking you to please let me know. Has this blog crossed any line? (Decency, professionalism, objectivity, etc). Can an editor find a reason to chuck my resume and clips out the window after he or she sees this?

Please help.

addendum: Should I care for an organization that refuses to hire me because of my blog? That may be a better question.

Trouble for Popeye

Sometimes there’s this knee-jerk blue-collar aversion to industry and it’s leaders. Whether it be oil, or Wal Mart… or porn. But it seems agribusiness hasn’t gotten the full level of shit it deserves.

See, I have a particular beef with Natural Selection Foods, and especially Earthbound Farm. I was getting mugged by two ninjas on steroids, who really wanted my iPod.

I did what any squinty eyed, robustly fore-armed, iPod loving sailor-man would do… I whipped out a can of spinach. Then one of the ninjas took a break from thrashing me to tell me not to eat it, it could contain E. coli. I ripped the can in half and shoved one down each their throats. Soon they were so concerned with their bloody diahrea that they forgot about my iPod. Amateurs.

Back to the problem at hand… which isn’t so much the deadly leafy greens. I’ve seen them as hazardous since I was a child. The problem is the New York Times’ lackluster info on this dilemma. Yes, I’ve got a beef with the Time’s website.

Here’s what I’d include alongside the article on the website. (Note: this is an assignment for class, so give me a break).

First, you have a video. Not of people with E. coli, but all the spinach that’s going to waste. Get some viral video of Costco dumping all of the spinach and baby greens it has. Have a video of a refrigerated tractor trailer stopping in it’s tracks, turning around and going home. Now that’s got some depth.

Have a diagram of the human body, with lines that branch out and tell you possible symptoms (cramping, bloody stool, etc.)

An audio slide-show tracking the path of the the spinach from the illegal worker’s hands to your supermarket would be nice too. Then can point out possible points of contamination.

And of course, a giant picture of every Exec over at Earthbound Farm, so you know who you’re legally bound to kick in the shins.

Include some delicious cooked-spinach recipes from Emeril Lagasse for delicious E. coli free consumption. Correction: Emeril and delicious do not belong in the same sentence.

BAM!

Finally, a time-line of all the other ways mass-agriculture has almost poisoned us.

I still like spinach. It helped save my iPod.

Unwarranted apologies

Zeyad finally showed up at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism after leaving Baghdad and spending three months in Jordan. I showed him where the offices were. Hey, it fulfilled my one good deed of the day.

In case you’re wondering, Blog Jarvis described Zeyad as:

the amazing blogger behind Healing Iraq, a founding father of the Iraqi blogosphere

A classmate and I had the opportunity to spend some time talking to Zeyad today, and I was overwhelmed by the urge to apologize. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and say, “God dammit man! I can’t imagine what you’ve seen or felt, but I’m sorry we lit the fuse on the firecracker!”

I really wanted to apologize for being the dumb, “Support our troops” and Freedom Fries American. For not being able to point out Baghdad on a map.
Zeyad gave me some peace by telling me the war is beyond America now. He might have said that just to make me feel better. Or he could be right.

In the bombings in Baghdad on Thursday, a roadside bomb that exploded about 7:30 a.m. near the mosque in the Cairo neighborhood killed three people and wounded 16 others, the Interior Ministry official said. About 9:30 a.m., a suicide car bomber detonated a bomb near police vehicles whose tanks were being filled at a gas station in the Karrada district, killing 10 people — some of them police officers — and wounding 17, the official said.

At 10:45 a.m., two more people were killed and 23 wounded when a second suicide car bomber exploded a bomb in the Bab al Sharji district, a mile north of the gas station, near the Interior Ministry’s headquarters. At 3:30 p.m., a third suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle in the Kadisiya neighborhood near a police convoy, wounding seven police commandos, the Interior Ministry official said. At 7:15 p.m., a roadside bomb killed a woman and wounded 13 others in the Amil district.

On Wednesday, Ahmad al-Mashhadani, nephew of Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament, was abducted while driving his car in northwest Baghdad, the Interior Ministry official said. Also on Wednesday, a roadside bomb killed two people at the funeral of a Shiite militia leader.

I wonder if Zeyad’s as upset about news like this being buried as I am. I wonder if he realizes just how embedded we are in a bubble of ignorance.

It’s here that our news media, even the Times, has become impotent. They all need a solid brass set and a double dose of Viagra.

Maybe that’s where Zeyad can help.

I was surprised to find out that no one gave him a New York Salute yet. That would be this: