Attack of the long-winded book review!
Hello! My name is Théa, and I will be your guest blogger today. Becky did me the tremendous honor of asking me to guest post here at Deep Muck Big Rake, which prompted me to perform an awkward happy dance in our living room. I say “awkward” because my living room is presently full of empty boxes and piles of stuff waiting to be sorted and stored in those boxes.
My husband and I are the sort of fools who consent to move to a new apartment one week after Christmas.
Becky compiled a list of topics to get us guest bloggers thinking, and, while all of them were interesting and several of them downright intriguing, I opted to go with what I know: books. For you, I will review a book that has been out for several years and has already been made into a movie (that I haven’t seen). I give you a book you’ve heard about, discussed and possibly even read, one whose statistics are horrifying when taken out of context and even more horrifying when given in context, but whose statistics demand to be quoted, one way or the other.
I present to you, dear faithful readers of Deep Muck Big Rake, a review of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation.
When Fast Food Nation was first released, I was in my first year of college. Friends who had recently turned vegetarian lobbed passages from Schlosser at me in misguided attempts to scandalize me into quitting meat completely; several of my classes featured excerpts from Nation on the recommended reading list; in one nonfiction writing workshop, we examined the opening paragraph to chapter 6, “On the Range,” stripped it down to its bare bones and used Schlosser’s sentence structure and scene-building techniques to write opening paragraphs of our own.
Perhaps it was the sudden abundance of Fast Food Nation quotes at a point in my life when I was immersed in books of all shapes and persuasions that allowed me to think that I had, somehow, read the book in its entirety. Whatever my reasoning, five years passed before I caught on to the fact that I was boasting (as I often am) half-formed opinions based on half-earned knowledge. I finally picked up a copy of my own and dug in.
What I presumed to be a rant against the American diet turned out to be a study of the vast damage done by the fast food industry to nearly every aspect of American culture. From what I had read, I assumed that Schlosser’s book focused primarily on the effects of the fast food industry on the American diet, but I was startled to learn that Schlosser aims for a much higher mark: in illustrating not merely how fast food companies have changed our diet but also our lifestyle, Schlosser examines the roll of fast food in today’s car culture, marketing strategies, food production industries, corporations and attitude toward the rest of the world.
Schlosser is thorough in his research and approach, if not entirely unbiased. At points it became clear to me how the reader ought to feel about the information presented and certain people, when interviewed, were painted in shades that seem intended to sway the reader’s opinion. These brief moments where Schlosser’s opinions broke through made me slightly wary, but otherwise I couldn’t complain – the man puts up a solid argument and closes with a few chapters that sound (considering the context) downright optimistic.
If corporations can do this much damage in less than a century, Schlosser theorizes, surely we – the consumers, the ones with the true power – can go a long way in another, better direction, can’t we?
But of course, he says it better than I do. You really ought to hear it from him.
Posted by Thea @
9:47 am |
I’m #1 (or first if you prefer that)
Hi. My name is Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah. You may know me from here or here or here or… whatever. You probably either know me already or could care less about my over exposure on the interweb.
Anyway, I have been selected (randomly or otherwise, I have no idea how she did it) as Becky’s first guest blogger while she freezes her butt off in Scandinavia.
Right. So the guest post. I wasn’t exactly sure what to write about. I could tell you about how yesterday was my birthday and it was also Becky’s birthday and how we share a birthday with Bob Guccione of Hustler magazine fame.
(Heh. You are welcome for all of the hits you will get for people searching for Bob, or Hustler.)
I could delve into my Political Science background and the fact that I live outside of Washington D.C. seeing as how this is a pretty political blog, but then I realized I would have to admit what a slacker I have been in actually following current events.
I could tell you about how Becky and I met while we were both still pregnant with twins.
I could talk about how Becky and I got into a drunken argument about insurance companies and universal health care last time she came to visit me.
But instead of any of those relevant things, I will tell you my very favorite joke:
A penguin is driving through the desert when his car breaks down. He gets his car towed and the mechanic says it is going to take him about an hour to get the car fixed so the penguin goes next door to get some ice cream.
Penguins love ice cream.
The penguin orders a double scoop of vanilla in a bowl. It is delicious ice cream but the penguin makes a terrible mess trying to eat it.
(Penguins don’t have thumbs. They can’t use spoons.)
Then penguin goes back to the mechanic to see what is going on with his car.
“Well,” says the mechanic, “It looks like you blew a seal.”
“Nah,” says the penguin, “It’s just ice cream.”
__
For more inane ramblings, feel free to come over and visit my place.
Posted by Sarah @
4:15 pm |
Pull up a chair and set a spell
I’m going out of town for a while.
As long as the weather doesn’t delay or cancel everything or — worse — kick our butts to a hotel we can’t afford near the airport or — even worse — force us to sleep on the plastic chairs at the airport and lick goldfish-cracker crumbs from the bottom of plastic bags for breakfast, lunch and dinner … we should be good.
A wonderful group of guest-bloggers will keep the blogfires burning while I’m away.
Stay tuned … see you next year!
Posted by Becky @
2:38 pm |
Sometimes I’m just a jerk*
So I read this.
MONTICELLO, IA.– As the sun was rising over the snow covered Iowa farmland, dotted with rolled bales of hay or straw (Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times kindly briefed me on the difference), the bus carrying reporters covering presidential candidate Barack Obama was headed towards Friday’s first campaign stop.
Oh, right. They don’t have hay and straw (or Wikipedia, for that matter) in Chicago. Or, gee, anywhere else in the state. And isn’t it amusing that someone at The New York Times is not from New York City?!? [guffaw, slap knees] Besides, it wouldn’t have the same ring to it to drop Freddy Farmer’s name from the Podunk County Weekly News. Now would it?
*asshole
Posted by Becky @
4:46 pm |
I can’t help it … schwing!
I can’t see this:
Without thinking about this.
Posted by Becky @
2:55 pm |
Mother dies after having triplets
A 40-year-old woman, Debra Smith, died two days after giving birth to triplets in Tucson, Ariz. The story about her husband, Andrue, first ran on KVOA News 4 with its story and video. CNN picked up the video. Now the Tucson Citizen has an article.
Posted by Becky @
12:00 pm |
Icelandair might want to watch the news
A 33-year-old woman from Iceland, Erla Ósk Arnardóttir, blogged about being detained by U.S. security when arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York recently. Alda at The Iceland Weather Report tells the story. The gist is that the woman overstayed her welcome in the United States in 1995. Even though she had traveled to the United States since then with no problems, this time, she was detained, shackled and driven to a prison cell in New Jersey, interrogated and finally — after 14 23 hours — put on a flight back home.
Update: Thanks to a link from Iceland Review in my comments, here is an article in English. Iceland Review also has an update to the story, saying that Iceland’s Foreign Minister Ingibjörg Sólrún GÃsladóttir met with U.S. Ambassador to Iceland Carol van Voorst and demanded an apology from U.S. authorities.
Other coverage
About the only thing about Iceland in the news here is the story of a teen-ager who posed as Iceland’s president and almost got put through to a telephone meeting with President George W. Bush. Police in Iceland intervened, though, and took him in for questioning. It makes me wonder if the two stories are related. Was U.S. security on “high alert” for anything out of Iceland because of the teen-ager’s prank? That doesn’t explain or justify anything … I just wonder.
Anyway. Morgunblaðið has a video with interviews from a government official and the woman who was detained. Go watch it. Maybe you won’t understand the news report, but keep an eye on the advertisements before and after the clip.
Memo to Icelandair PR department: Dude. Drop everything and check your online ads. Travel to New York? Really?
Update: The Wall Street Journal published an article, Land of the Spree, Dec. 15, 2007.
How do you say ‘Victoria’s Secret’ in Icelandic? With the dollar having hit new lows against currencies around the globe, America is becoming the world’s discount store.
The reporter spoke with two women from Iceland.
Josefina and Carolina Hallström flew to New York for a few days of shopping on Icelandair from Stockholm. The pair, ages 21 and 25, were on the lookout for a Victoria’s Secret store. “We go for the lotions and perfumes,” said Carolina, as she lugged a shopping bag with eight pairs of shoes in it (she’d already pitched the boxes). The underwear retailer’s annual fashion show airs in Sweden, even though there aren’t any stores there, she says. Plus, “shampoo is also much cheaper here.”
The article even mentioned Iceland again with shoppers arriving at the Mall of America in Minnesota on direct flights from Iceland.
But not a word about anyone from Iceland getting detained in New York. Hmm.
Posted by Becky @
3:11 pm |
It’s the most won-der-ful time of the year
Get a load of Santa and triplets at Amazing Trips. Santa deserves an Oscar. And a margarita.
Posted by Becky @
2:02 pm |
Blogger: Why Hillary Clinton matters
I’ve never looked at it quite like this before, but Bitch Ph.D. has a thought-provoking post about why Hillary Clinton matters in this presidential race.
The reason Obama has to court women — in particular, feminist women — isn’t just because women are 54% of the electorate, as the NYT explains. It’s because for the first time in American history there’s a candidate whose presence in the race makes women’s issues and feminist issues a primary focus of the campaign. Women voters don’t have to choose between two men who may (or may not) give a shit about women’s issues based on their positions on everything else; we get a real choice between a candidate who, not coincidentally, is herself a woman and for whom women’s issues are central, rather than peripheral, and male candidates who have not, to date, made women’s issues central to their political careers.
Posted by Becky @
11:40 am |
And the winner is …
Rhonda Van Diest!
One signed copy of The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children, and Struggling with Depression by Tracy Thompson is on the way. Thanks, Rhonda, and thanks to everyone who played along. Big thanks to Tracy, too.
Posted by Becky @
9:51 pm |
