It's better to talk while eating

That way, you can ignore how disgusting the act
of eating is, especially if you're looking at somebody
famous.

[Hillary, Queen of Chipotle]
I've been developing a theory about how ugly
the act of eating is. I grew up in the post-hippy
era in Canada and we made fun of the older
generation that did everything in public

kissing, petting, f^**king, grooming

and though  we were not prudes, we 

kinda saw that "total freedom" to do what you want

makes for a very ugly scene. 

Italians call it 

bruta figura

That also meant changes in swimwear. Gone

were the budgey-smuggler nutbag Speedos

for guys and back to swim trunks. In this example,

all you have to be is an aware person, with

your eyes open to see how it doesn't help 

guys to have their frozen gonads on display,

in public, cuz you're not getting sex there.

If you were to, you'd be leaving. But it's called

swimming. not leaving.

This rhetorical position has nothing bad to say

about chicks in bikinis. That stuff is quite 

alright.

Anyway, in public life you have to tolerate

lots of things, like idiots that cause you stress.

We also have to deal with doing things amongst

this amorphous mass, like eating.

I think eating is ugly because it harks back to

primordial times when eating was part of survival in the

wild and meant lots of blood and guts and K9
teeth.

The following documentary only scratches
the surface of this primeval drive:

Actually Yankovic represents well our position about
being "cool" and how to puncture egos.

Anyway a famous cook noted this unedifying

habit seen as people follow politicians:

[is that processed rat parts, or humans they're eating?]

checkit: Guardian

Ed Miliband and the infamous bacon sandwich; David Cameron and the notorious hot dog.
Jay Rayner
Sunday 19 April 2015 10.00 BST
There’s one photograph all politicians fear: the one of them eating

Politicians used to be allowed to be distant and dignified. And when it comes to eating in public, it should stay that way. Just ask Ed Miliband or David Cameron

Short of being photographed as one of those curving toilet doors on a Virgin Train slides gently open, revealing a mess of bare knees and shirt tails, there is one photograph that the modern politician fears more than any other: the eating shot. Look at what that image of Ed Miliband eating a bacon sandwich did to him: the way the lips folded back and curled, how the eyes began to roll back in his head like he had reached some private moment of truth. That one image raised a brutal question: could you imagine this man, the one with the expression like the ketamine has just kicked in, running the country?

Now consider all the politicians run ragged by the election campaign so far, and have pity on their souls. For all day every day what they are thinking is this: please God, let nobody take a picture of me eating. It so terrified David Cameron that, apparently haunted by Miliband bacon sandwich gate, he responded to a hot dog encountered on the campaign trail by eating it with a knife and fork. And he still managed to look a bit of a knob.

It’s terribly unfair. In the old days politicians were allowed to be dignified and remote figures, other-worldly emissaries from Planet Leadership. Now, in the age of the selfie and the close-up, we insist they be just like us. We insist they be human. And what could be more human than the act of eating? Eating is genuinely a shared experience. The problem is it’s an ugly, ungainly shared experience. It’s just too human.

Try watching the people you love eating. It’s a mess. As you open your mouth, there’s a flash of wobble and pink of the sort the pathologist will see when they come to conduct the inevitable postmortem on your chilling cadaver. There is the sticky shine of saliva, there’s the way your eyelids flutter, your lips roll outwards. Ever seen a German Shepherd running excitedly towards its owner, its tongue flapping in the wind? That’s you, photographed eating, only without the excitement.
Advertisement

This shouldn’t be regarded as a negative. Eating is messy because it’s meant to be. Show me someone who daintily forks away morsels between tidy, pursed lips and I will show you someone who could never be my friend. Recently I was invited to participate in a wretched “art” project, which involved eating with other people in silence. No surprise that it would be in Berlin. I would rather lick the inside of my composting box than take part in something like that which sucks the life from the dining table. Eating should be noisy and generous, a mess of flailing body parts.

Curiously, moving images of people eating are fine, which is good because television is full of them. Some of them are of me. It’s the freeze frame that doesn’t work. Even Barack Obama, the coolest politician on the planet, looks unelectable when photographed eating. If you really want to put yourself off your lunch Google the image of Barack Obama and David Cameron eating together at a ball game. They look like unloved cats expelling fur balls. Me, I refuse to be photographed eating. It’s a red line. I won’t do it. And do you know who else was never photographed eating? Winston Churchill, a chap who knew a thing or two about maintaining his dignity. That’s who. I rest my case.

update: Scarlett is on the Zed Team

[Superchick: Hey, there's some Palestinian children with rocks]

No, it's not a new action movie
based on a graphic novel. It's not
a goofy comedy, with cleavage.
It's the scariest, most powerful political team
on the planet, that threatens to bring us

to the brink of WW3.

Oh, what a con job.
We all have fallen for the cute girl who can't act.
Except, some think she can:
"Allen has gone on record about Johansson's abilities as an actress:
how she is "sexually overwhelming"; how she has a "zaftig humidity";
and how he believed that she has the "acting ability to be not just a
passing pinup girl but a genuinely meaningful actress"."
But, what does that neurotic wimp know about sex or sexy?
He rolled his own. That's probably affected his judgement on SJ's acting.
In Woody's "Point Whatever" movie, she was horrible.
Anyway, when it comes to acting, she knows how to place her butt.

If you remember, I wrote about the Palestine Blues,
a few stories ago. I was wondering about why
Scarlett Johansen signed up to represent Soda Stream.

Well, now I have the answer. Essentially, she has
some relativist arguments for the employment
the factory provides and then she gets a bit
evasive on details.

When an interviewer mentions that she lost her
post as ambassador for Oxfam, she let's the
bomb drop. She criticises Oxfam for participating
in a BDS campaign against Israel. So, she's upset
that Oxfam is into Boycott Divestment and
Sanctions against the homeland of her mother.

Now, everything makes sense. No discussion
of the righteousness of BDS, the near concensus
in the UK for BDS, or the mess she's got herself
into. It's an issue of blood, and by extension, politics.
The interviewer didn't catch that angle. She's British.
End of story. End of a lot of things.
End of the connection between

SJ's body
[the 2-dimensional image, that is]
& my phallus.

Story and letter clips, below:

checkit: The Observer
Scarlett Johansson interview: 'I would way rather not have middle ground'
The star talks to Carole Cadwalladr about playing an alien in Under the Skin – Jonathan Glazer's low-budget sci-fi film set in Glasgow – and her role in the recent SodaStream controversy

Carole Cadwalladr
Sunday 16 March 2014
...
She's flustered, and since I've been given the wind-up signal by the publicist, I move on to an even more difficult subject. SodaStream. When I Google "Scarlett Johansson" the fizzy-drinks maker is the third predictive search suggestion in the list, after "Scarlett Johansson hot" – before even "Scarlett Johansson bum". A month ago, Johansson found herself caught up in a raging news story when it emerged Oxfam had written to her regarding her decision to become a brand ambassador for SodaStream. The company, it transpired, manufactures its products in a factory in a settlement on the West Bank, and while "Oxfam respects the independence of our ambassadors," it wrote, it also "believes that businesses that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support".

Johansson responded by stepping down from her Oxfam role. From afar, it looked liked she'd received very poor advice; that someone who is paid good money to protect her interests hadn't done the necessary research before she'd accepted the role and that she'd unwittingly inserted herself into the world's most intractable geopolitical conflict. By the time Oxfam raised the issue, she was going to get flak if she did step down, flak if she didn't. Was the whole thing just a bit of a mistake?
But she shakes her head. "No, I stand behind that decision. I was aware of that particular factory before I signed it." Really? "Yes, and… it still doesn't seem like a problem. Until someone has a solution to the closing of that factory to leaving all those people destitute, that doesn't seem like the solution to the problem."

But the international community says that the settlements are illegal and shouldn't be there. "I think that's something that's very easily debatable. In that case, I was literally plunged into a conversation that's way grander and larger than this one particular issue. And there's no right side or wrong side leaning on this issue."

Except, there's a lot of unanimity, actually, I say, about the settlements on the West Bank. "I think in the UK there is," she says. "That's one thing I've realised… I'm coming into this as someone who sees that factory as a model for some sort of movement forward in a seemingly impossible situation."

Well, not just the UK. There's also the small matter of the UN security council, the UN general assembly, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Court of Justice… which all agree that they're in contravention of international law. Half of me admires Johansson for sticking to her guns – her mother is Jewish and she obviously has strong opinions about Israel and its policies. Half of me thinks she's hopelessly naive. Or, most likely, poorly advised. Of all the conflicts in all the world to plant yourself in the middle of…

"When I say a mistake," I say, "I mean partly because people saw you making a choice between Oxfam – a charity that is out to alleviate global poverty – and accepting a lot of money to advertise a product for a commercial company. For a lot of people, that's like making a choice between charity – good – and lots of money – greed."

"Sure I think that's the way you can look at it. But I also think for a non-governmental organisation to be supporting something that's supporting a political cause… there's something that feels not right about that to me. There's plenty of evidence that Oxfam does support and has funded a BDS [boycott, divest, sanctions] movement in the past. It's something that can't really be denied." When I contacted Oxfam, it denied this.
....LETTERS
legaff

16 March 2014 9:15am
Recommended 243
Americans are rather scary when it comes to Israel.
It's like they really couldn't give a f*ck about Palestinians.

EnglishroG

16 March 2014 9:26am
Recommended 272
A very interesting interview.
I too, made excuses for her when the whole SodaStream controversy arose. But it seems that far from being extremely poorly advised, she's actually an ardent Zionist.
Which, sadly, means I'll never see another film of hers again.
[I gotta agree with this person, but with my phallus- Cos67]

New gameshow: Bank or Dare

[Now, testify!]
Reminder of my 'free houses for everybody', and 'death of a thousand cuts' story, where I said that banks should be sued to death. It's all coming true! and I was just bullshitting,er, um, prognosticating.

Follow me into an alternate universe, won't you?

Voiceover guy:

"It's the new gameshow, Bank or Dare, where we challenge bankers to dare....
and act like human beings,
show guilt and let the Public off the hook,
as a gift to humanity.

Fat chance, you say? Just watch."

Contestant number 1: Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan
Prize behind door number 3:

House in suburban Baltimore,
valuation $500 000 (pre-2008)*hint*

Gameshow host: "Alright. We have this home. 85% is owed on it."
Contestant 1: "Foreclose!"
Host: "Just a sec, son. The family with 3 kids haven't paid a penny in 15 months"
Contestant 1: "Foreclose, foreclose, godammit!"
Host: "Hold your horses, my friend" "The parents were both laid off, a teacher and and plant manager."
"Chances of the house selling for $250 000 are..."
Overdub: "15% over the next 5 years."
Contestant 1: "I'm bound by my shareholders to foreclose."
Host: "If you don't listen, you'll be bound and they'll have your hide. Okay?"
"Monthly bill for water, electricity, lawn upkeep, police protection, civic taxes...."
Overdub guy: "$2 000 per month"
Contestant 1: "If I foreclose, I get a commission."
Host: "You'll get committed alright, if you don't shut it."
"Or you could let the family have it free and clear for $80 000, its 1980 value"
Overdub guy: "which is what the price would be if it weren't for the housing bubble."
Contestant 1: "but, we are too big to fail. TBTF!"
Host: "Look, if you crash the economy again, and you will, it will be a sovereign crisis."
"Then you'll get zero, and people will hunt you to put your head on a trophy."
Contestant 1: "enough, enough""what do I get for all this niceness?"
Host: "Life.the mob, that is, the audience, will let you live."
Contestant 1: "I'll take it.""can I go now?"
Host: "we're not done with you yet" SHOUTS:"release the sled"
Host (to an old lady in the audience): "who are you betting on?"
Old Lady: "anybody who will whup that contestant's butt. He tried to foreclose on me!"


or http://youtu.be/7KQVmUTwx2k (the sled part)

Remember those houses with fraudulent mortgages (without papers) that were
cut up into 10 000 pieces?
Well, now! It's come to be that the housing market is so bad, because of banker malfeasance,
that banks see it's not worth their while to break the law, to
get their hands on a house. In the end they will be paying municipalities
for the taxes and upkeep of the properties. So, they'll be losing money.
The houses will not be sold for a good 5 years. So, they're walking away.
Those municipalities are themselves often close to bankruptcy, largely because
of the death of private credit markets, and fraudulent derivatives
that they bought from many of those same banks.
The banks are trying to get their money back by signing a deal with the federal gov.
They want to pay $5 billion for this (borrowed money) when it's worth $30 billion.
Nice try.
and this is just the beginning of their legal problems. They're a "litigation sinkhole", and they
can't cover their losses.

Epilogue:
I was wondering when all this blogging and networking was going to start paying off.
Now the mainstream media gets its reporters to occasionally steal a story
from the new media. Not me, but the sites I cite. I'm just a spinner.

I've been busting my skull wondering how it is that the banks can always win.
Well, Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone just wrote the article that may have
turned the tide. I heard on Keiser today that Goldman's stock lost $6 billion TODAY!
This guy named Bovey in NY has told his clients to sell their Goldman stock!
People seem to think that it will become an embarrassment to the government
if they don't get their fat arses off their banker-funded chairs, and put one of the
big sharks in jail, even for a year. Look, DSK is in Rikers.

checkitout: 1 Dateline Bloomberg
Foreclosures Prompt Four U.S. Cities to Sue Banks for Mowing, Home Repairs
By Thom Weidlich - May 12, 2011 5:00 AM GMT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-12/foreclosures-prompt-four-u-s-cities-to-sue-banks-for-mowing-home-repairs.html
Four major U.S. cities that pay for the upkeep of foreclosed properties are trying to recoup the costs of services including lawn mowing, repairs and security by suing banks they claim contributed to their “urban blight.”
A federal judge in Memphis, Tennessee, on May 4 and another in Baltimore on April 22 denied Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC)’s request to dismiss the predatory-lending lawsuits brought against the bank. A lawsuit by the city of Cleveland against JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Ally Financial Inc. is also pending before an Ohio judge.

In one case, Deutsche Bank AG, described by Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich as one of the city’s “major slumlords,” may be found liable for hundreds of millions of dollars, including restitution for current and former tenants, according to a statement by the city.

“We started out looking to sue as many as 16 lenders,” Webb Brewer, a lawyer who represents Memphis, said in a telephone interview. “It’s a tall order to fight all those banks at once. We never alleged that Wells Fargo was alone in employing these practices.”

The cities’ lawsuits invoke various legal theories, and some have targeted the banks as bundlers of mortgages into securities rather than as lenders. The cases brought by Baltimore and Memphis, which will now shift to pre-trial evidence gathering, are similar. They both accuse San Francisco- based Wells Fargo of violating the Fair Housing Act by so-called reverse redlining -- targeting black neighborhoods for predatory lending.
Buildings in Disrepair

Los Angeles sued Deutsche Bank May 4 as trustee of mortgage-backed securities and is seeking reimbursement for costs of property repair. The city accused the bank of buying more than 2,200 properties through foreclosure and letting vacant buildings fall into disrepair. The day before, the U.S. government alleged in a lawsuit seeking $1 billion that the Frankfurt-based bank lied to qualify thousands of risky mortgages for a government insurance program.
......
[GET THE WHOLE STORY, IT'S GREAT]
2 Reggie Middleton on Zerohedge: [27 April, this year]
I have warned of this event. JP Morgan (as well as Bank of America) is literally a litigation sinkhole. See JP Morgan Purposely Downplayed Litigation Risk That Spiked 5,000% Last Year & Is Still Severely Under Reserved By Over $4 Billion!!! Shareholder Lawyers Should Be Scrambling Now Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011. [I'd put more of the text, but frankly, I don't understand it. Thankfully Reggie, Keiser and some others do.]

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/there%E2%80%99s-something-fishy-house-morgan