So I ask you, WHAT down-turn in the economy?  How has it affected you personally?  Has it emptied your wallet or decimated your portfolio?  Has it ruined your chances of getting that promotion, or has it canceled your vacation plans to Switzerland?  I bet it's scared you, and I bet that somebody you know is having a tough time finding a job.  But what else has it done?

Well, consider that what it has done already might be insignificant to what it WILL do, but then consider that what it WILL might just be for the best.  I've been warned by friends and family not to wax too poetic about the recent credit crunch, seeing as I've done so rather smugly of late (and I'll leave my smugness at this: I saw it coming).  But the down-turn's impact is pressing, and worth addressing, and worth, frankly, exploring until we find a silver lining.

Did you, by chance, read Michael Pollan's article in the New York Times Magazine of 2 weeks ago?  As usual, he and I don't see eye-to-eye when it comes to local food production, but his article really stresses how ignored "Food" has been over the last 30 some odd years, and how important it now needs to become again.  He lists several break-downs in how food is treated, and comes up with many ideas about what needs to be done to re-prioritize.

Also, as usual, he writes aboubt programs probably too ambitious for a mere mortal (in the case of this article, mere mortal president) to achieve in one lifetime.  Dismantle industrial food production?  Land reform?  Setting diet as an educational priority?  All LOW on the totem pole.  But the overall thrust of the article really underscores that, like it or not, Food is soon to magnify in PERTINENCE to other issues, even if it's importance remains undervalued.

To whit, I'll take this moment to remind you that currently Americans spend about 8% of their income on food, where as recently as 1975 they spent 16%.  That other 8% has mostly gone into housing, and we now know where that has gotten us, no?  The credit crunch, courtesy of banking margins flimsily built on grossly over-valued mortgages and a housing surplus, means money is not moving, and won't move anywhere anytime soon.

But people still need to eat.

I propose that FOOD is the next economy, whether the next President sees it to be or not.  Energy will come, for sure, but Food ain't ever going away as part of the economy, and has the potential to be the greatest food suplier in the world.  There's a silver lining for you- Peeled Snacks and like companies may be the next Next Big Thing.  And don't we all really deserve it?

More to come on this issue- with so much news reeling off about to much money NOT moving, more discussion is needed.  But I just wanted to start with this one though- FOOD is BACK.  And it sure tastes good....

Peeled Skinny

Posted by iankusc at 01:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What is the plural of the word "Doofus?"  Doofuses?  Doofi?  Is it like "Fish", and just "Doofus?"  Dictionary.com says "Doofuses", but I'm going with "Doofi"- sounds better. 

I bring this word up because of THIS news in this morning's New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/washington/23farm.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Farm+bill&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Too tired to read it?  After reading it, i'm certainly too tired to THINK about it, but here it is in a nut-shell: Congress (both the Senate and House) passed the Farm Bill by an overwhelming margin, offering a proxy middle-finger to the President, who vetoed the bill on Wednesday.  However, Congress being who they are (insert the plural form of "Doofus"), still managed to screw it up....

They passed the WRONG BILL!!!!

Or, rather, passed the wrong VERSION- what they signed wasn't the right copy- it lacked several portions that were in the Vetoed Bill, thus sending the whole process back to square 1.  Consider....

1: Congress takes an additional 8 months beyond what they were alotted to build this bill...

2: The bill, as it stands, is LOADED with Pork...

3: The bill, as it stands, is likewise chock full of corn-fuel energy padding, just when Corn prices have managed to turn ethanol from a kind-of-funny pipe dream into an un-funny waste of billions of dollars worth in research....

4: After all that, the DOOFI of Congress can't even get straight just what they're supposed to sign!!!!

With the House minority crying foul, and the President laughing his lame-duck butt off, and the Democrats looking like they can't even alphabetize the first names of the American Idol judges, I have a stinking suspiscion that the Farm Bill Is CURSED!  A murky cloud of DOOM hangs over it, and as Americans and non-Americans starve and grumble, nothing, Nothing, NOTHING gets done.  It's enough to make a Foodie cry.... 

Posted by iankusc at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Remember when, back in 1981, the USDA decided that Ketchup was a vegetable?  They did it because Farm Bill guidlines demanded that all school lunches include 2 vegetables.  Apparently, real vegetables are just too expensive a thing to serve our youth.  That little scandle perhaps should have insured that Walter Mondale follow Reagan into the White House in 1985, but the American Politics being what it is, people generally don't care what is or isn't a vegetable.

For the record, a tomato, being the chief ingredient in Ketchup, is technically a fruit, but fruit, technically, are kinds of vegetables, but were I to take on the taxonomy of our what we eat, I'd quickly either bore you to tears or, more likely, suffer a cerebral hemorrhage and just fill this blog with "all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy".  And that wouldn't be right at all.

So the Ketchup debate rears its ugly head in congress right now as congress tries to pad the Farm Bill with healthy food options in school lunches.  New literature in the Bill seeks to ban softdrinks, candy, and transfats, all of which are good, right?  Can't we all agree that Mountain Dew should NOT be served to 8 year olds?

But the literature is full of STUPID exceptions, like "juice" (which has no technical definition, and may include no "juice" at all), flavored milk (because kids NEED Strawberry flavored milk, for sure), and diet sodas (aspartame, apparently, helps kids with math).

Legislation like that tells me that it's put into the bill to be one day taken out- put in a half baked, expendable bit of regulation that will act as a bargaining chip for something that some congressman thinks is REALLY important.  Kids, obviously, are not really important.

It just reminds me how low a priority the Farm Bill is to our government, yet how impacting it is to our governments constituencies (or, in the case of school kids, FUTURE constituencies).  As a former teacher, I can tell you EXACTLY what "juice" in schools does- it hops kids up for 30 minutes, and then sends them crashing into crabby, un-productive fits.  High sugar foods are the teacher's ENEMIES, and the have a hugely deliterious effect on the kids.

But just as hardly any of our congressmen have sons or daughters fighting in Iraq, even fewer have elementary school kids that eat in publich schools.  Did I say "fewer"?  I meant NONE.  I'd love to hold out hope for real progress in the bill.  But most likely, it'll all be just as Pete Townsend predicted in The Who's seminal song, "Won't Get Fooled Again"....

 
"Meet the new boss.  Same as the old boss."

Happy Eating,

Ian K, Peeled Skinny

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

all nomenclature and no play makes Ian a dull boy

Posted by iankusc at 05:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As I type, our senators are debating the fate of the next generation of Americans- they're debating how healthy they'll be, they're debating from where they'll get their energy, and they're debating just what form they'll take- the form of human beings, or the form of giant, swollen, fat-filled grapes.  The consequences of what are happening right now can be jokingly conveyed via extreme imagery.  But have no doubts- next to war funding, NOTHING in congress in the next 5 years will be more impacting.

At stake right now- subsidies for farmers producing cash crops; land zoning and usage practices; sponsorship of (thus far) frightfully inefficient ethanol factories; issuance of food stamps; and import/export policies.  But none of this, NONE of this, is as important as the COMMODITY TITLE!  The Commodity Title, in short, determines how commodities are measured in the marketplace, and therefore what makes for the best deals.

It's impact in the commodities market- sugar and corn subsidies get paid out per bushel without a cap.  A bushel is a LOT of corn, and it enters the marketplace at an unnaturally low price.  Were the subsidy to be capped, or the portions for the subsidy measured in smaller amounts, then worthless sugar wouldn't be the cheapest thing on the market.

It's impact in your home- the Commodity title determines FDA standards for measuring ingredients.  The FDA used to measure a "portion" as 250 calories, but 5 years ago the Food Bill, thanks to corporate meddling, made it so that every corporation could calculate it's own portion.  What's more, it established that the calculation of any ingredient in a portion less than .5 grams isn't a portion at all.

Let's take an Oreo cookie as an example.  I used my trusty right-hand-website, "The Daily Plate", which has all the nutritional info from, well, all the food in America, and lets you calculate the dietary impact of what you're eating.  It even factors in structured diets like the Atkins plan, and helps you make dietary decisions.  And it helps bloggers do research on why American food sucks. 

Okay, so I put in "Oreo Cookie" and get the nutritional info from the label, where a portion is listed as 1 cookie, 130 calories.  It also lists the saturated fat content as 0 grams.  Were the portion size to be the old standard of 250 calories (2 cookies), 0 grams of saturated fat would suddenly, magically transform into 1 gram of artery cloggin gunk.  And the Commodity Title allows for this mis-information.

The Daily Plate is in no way to blame for this tragedy- they're offering a free service that lets those of us concerned with what we put in our bodies make really informed decisions; they're trying to provide the best information possible to consumers that deserve the facts.  But the Farm Bill right now makes the best information available totally corruptable to meet the demands of big business, and most consumers are none the wiser.

And aren't likely to be any more the wiser anytime soon.  The Farm bill, which might have had some hope of opening up in the Senate, is basically dead thanks to failed leadership.  So we're all going to continue eating cheap, crappy sugar and thinking it's good for us, probably for another 5 years.  It makes me sick, it makes you sick, it makes EVERYBODY sick.  This is the worst think being ignored in America right now....

Besides, perhaps, the price of oil.  But that's another topic.... 

Posted by iankusc at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today's subject might seem a tad gory or macabre, and for that I apollogize thoroughly half-heartedly.  As the head marketing agent for an international snack food manufacturer, this topic sure does keep ME up at night, and if it keeps me up in a sweaty panic, it surely should keep you up too.  That topic is, obviously, the death of manufacturing officials across China. 

Meet Zheng Xiaoyu, the former (definitely former) head of the Chinese version of the Food and Drug Administration.  Over his 30 some odd years serving China's Communist party, he distinguished himself as an exemplory bureaucrat, moving up the ranks of the State Food and Drug Administration from worker drone to pencil pusher to brow beater to sycophant to the chief, to, in 2003, the role of Chief Director and Kick-back Taker for the governmental body that monitors the quality of the food and drugs of the most populous country on Earth.

While director, he really shined by taking about $8 million in bribes for the important service of signing off on thousands of gallons of engine coolant to be used as a a food-thickening ingredient in export products as diverse as candy bars and children's cough syrup.  That only 40 Panamanian children died means that each one of those kids was worth $200,00 in kick backs!  What a STEAL!

By some miracle of modern forensics, Mr. Zheng was busted, tried for corruption charges, and, well, executed by lethal injection.  By a complete co-incidence, lethal injections in the united States use the same lethal chemical he signed off on as a thickening agent.  How's that for twisted justice!?!?  Without a hint of irony, however, Mr. Zhang appealed his sentence, deeming it "too extreme"... Hmmm, 1 life for 40?  I wonder what Hammurabi would say?

So that all happened last month, but just this past Monday, August 13th, yet ANOTHER Chinese Manufacturing magnate met a bitter end courtesy of corruption, only this time he took matters into his own hands, perhaps hearing about just how awful that thickening agent stuff is.  It seems that several million Mattel toys, everything from SpongBob action figures to Baby Wet-My-Pants were all designed using healthy, lustrous, brain damage inducing lead paint.  No wonder SpongBob's so "Zany".

Meet Zhang Shuhong,  the former (definitely former) owner of Hong kong based toy maker Lee Der
Manufacturing, a plant which for years has made Match-Box cars, Barbi Dolls, and dolls that pee when squeezed.  Most boys have traditionally thought that Match-Box cars looked brawny, and most girls found Baby Soiled-Groin cute, and EVERYbody finds Barbi to be quite a minx.

But wait, maybe that was all just toxic fumes from all that lead paint, maybe Match-Box cars are actually shameless attemps to promote shoddy American car manucaturing, maybe Baby Tinkle-Sprinkle's just a way to insure that the masses keep up that supply of cheap labor, and maybe Barbi's actually some twisted nut's sick, perverted fantasy run amok through our culture, turning our nation's little girls into warped gargoyle-imitations of grosely unhealthy pedophile fetishes...

Well, when the fumes cleared and Mr. Zhang (no relation, that I know of, to the OTHER Mr. Zhang) and his abuse of IQ dropping chemicals got outed by journalists much more rigorous than me, he opted to take the most honorable approach he could: he took his dog for a walk, payed his employees, took out the garbage, and slashed his wrists.... 

I'm somehow reminded in these days of plummeting stock market tickers of October 29th, 1929, AKA Black Tuesday, after which dozens of Wall Street brokers, faced with bankruptcy, opted instead to jump out of sky-scraper windows.  Boom times sometimes end in a crash, especially for the most unscrupulous members of our society, or now, it seems, the Chinese society as well...

Needless to say, here at Peeled Snacks we're committed to a completely Lead-and-or-engine-collant-free product.  But more than that, we guarantee that should we ever make some sort of gaff or guffaw or grossly negligent goof-up, we will NOT commit sepuku, nor will we balk should we be sentenced to death for killilng 40 children.

Thank heavens, though, that we live in America, and here at least, we only execute those too poor to afford competent lawyers....

Happy August,

Posted by iankusc at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My dear friend (alluded to in my recent GUNK! blog) and I started grappling the other day with my perspectives on poverty.  You see, I'm a bit of a conspiracy nut, in that I truly believe that America's economic engine benefits from cheap labor, and so we have numerous systems designed to keep the poor, poor.  His argument lies in the spirit of self-determinism versus "misery loves company", and while he expressed it well, I'll leave it to him to tell you all about HIS conspiracy theories.  [Ed. Note: My friend has no real conspiracy theories]

But let's get back to mine- America LOVES its poor, and makes sure that they're never in short supply.  There are all sorts of ways that we guarantee the supply (shoddy inner-city education, anyone?  How about limited access to capitol for minorities?  Would you prefer institutionalized racism?), but one of the perhaps accidental yet undeniable guarantees comes from FOOD.

Michael Pollan published another indictment of the food industry in this past week's New York Times, which he started with this strange puzzle: if you're a fat American, you're probably a poor American.  Hold it, WHAT?  The term "Fat Cat" assumes the opposite: the richer you are, the fatter (and, apparently, more feline) you become.  Well, that phrase no longer works, it seems.

And neither does our country's "Farm Bill."  Pollan, in his article, takes to task the current $25 billion "Farm Bill" (which has impact far beyond farms) for encouraging the growth and consumption of corn, wheat, and soy, and basically nothing else.  This pathetically structured, forgotten bit of legislation encourages industrial agriculture, and nothing's easier on the machinery than corn.  Hence, the cheapest thing out there is cookies full of useless high-fructose corn syrup calories.

I highly recommend that you read the Pollan article- there are MANY points in there worth toying with and mulling over.  But my take-away from it is that our government has sanctioned (nay, INSTITUTIONALIZED) the fattening of the poor by insuring that the worst food for you is the only food that most Americans can afford.  In short, we're paying taxes (about $100 per person per year) to keep poor America fat.

Right now it takes about 2 farmers to work every 1000 acres of American farmland, courtesy of industrialized farming.  The impact, on our poor, on foreign markets, on the environment, is tremendous and frightening.  But if we re-organized our agricultural systems so that more people would work less land, well we sure would have a lot more jobs for people, no?  For POOR people....

No, as Pollan points out, there's no easy solution to this problem, but the current situation helps NOBODY....

Except (back to my conspiracy theory) the corporation owning Americans who benefit from a cheap labor market.  This should make us all sick.  Frankly, all that High Fructose Corn Syrup DOES make me sick....

I wrote a poem about this earlier, and here is its encore presentation. That's right, returning to our pages from Mars are your favorite green skinned, people eating Martians, Zergplek and Metzelfark.  Thanks for making the trip back to our pages, guys.  Now please stop chewing on the intern's arm....

It's about time, Zergplek.

Yes, Metzelfark, it's almost harvest season.

Olympus Mons' Southern Face is turning

from amber rust to crimson fire,

and the Valles Marinaris runs full with squabe.

Zergplek, get your plucking gloves on-

It's time to reap the fattened terran crop.

Yes, all the fat little morsels

on yon planet so blue

will taste so deliciously like Cheetohs...

...and sweet, corn-syrup filled Pepsi...

..oh yes, and pepsi, 

at this October's harvest barn dance.

My moorsaphate has knitted me a snazzy bib,

lest I spill saturated transfats

all over my brand new vyxerpus vest.

Fire up the interplanetary drive,

and let's go harvest some fatsos!

Posted by iankusc at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

California's suffered an odd winter this year, as Los Angeles received, gasp, snowfall, yet San Francisco has its driest January EVER.  Somehow, the Bush regime BS tact of renaming Global Warming "Global Climate Change" seems oddly apt as all those Angelinos huddle by their car engines (the city's only source of heat, I think).  The Bay area just got  its first blast of rain, though that hardly corrects the "change".

If anyone reading this wonders what on Earth the weather has to do with snacks,  then said person hasn't been paying attention.  To anything.  Two Fridays ago, an announcement by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change basically amounted to an attempt to say "the discussion is over.  This is happening, and it's our fault.  Now, what do we do about it." 

The White House's reaction? "We agree with it, and the science behind it is something that our country has played a very important role in," or so says U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.  Of course, this is the same Samuel Bodeman who, after Katrina hit, stated...

"We are committed to doing everything in our power to meet the immediate needs of those directly affected by Hurricane Katrina." Of course, he was speaking about oil company executives, but if words were deeds, he'd really seem like just the sweetest guy.

Anyway, all this chatting about weather and the environment and vulgar lies reminds me of the great state of California's tradition of pushing the cultural envelope.  Before dumping into the sea, this nation of ours (sometimes yours) takes some daring strides towards re-invention.  For 150 years,  the vangaurds of social change have used California as a testbed, sometimes progressing (John Muir, anyone?), sometimes impressing (HOLLYWOOD!), sometimes depressing (Nixon comes from here).

But the legacy's a dubious one.  After all, this is where "Car Culture" truly found its footing, and thanks to the highway system, you can no find ample parking in the rush-hour traffic all over the state.  In spite of whatever claims to environmentalism Cali might have, the Military Industial Complex has hooks deep into the state.  And for all the parks put up here, soil erosion and habitat destruction receive no reprieve.

Furthermore, most impacting on California, at least as far as we're concerned, are the labor policies.  I suppose that's a way of saying "most impacting one Peeled Snacks", but whatever.  All the people here don't amount to enough people to pick all the pears off the trees come harvest season, so the crop spoils, and "Shock-olate" suffers, as the farmers proved last November when they dumped several tons of wasted crops on the Whitehouse lawn.
 
A former part of Mexico, California now protects itself as best it can from "illegals", yet the whole day worker culture runs on them.  And while California is often considered the great socialist experiment, the homeless problem here is out of control, and most of its citizenry suffer from the same Health Insurance mess as the rest of the country.  The ideals and intents just don't match the reality.  Though, in all fairness, at least here they're trying.  Texas can't brag as much.

California's put a couple of presidents up there, but they were both Republicans.  Yet somehow the state is perceived as a liberal home.  Hippy culture started here (though surely its roots run to New York soil), yet so did porn culture.  Is this place liberal, or libertarian, agrarian conservative, or inclusively socialist, or just the dystopian urban landscape run amok as predicted by "Blade Runner"....?

Well I'll tell you one thing- it's a great place to sell Peeled Snacks, and an even greater place to avoid the snow storms of the East Coast.... 

Posted by iankusc at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How do you like your snacks?  Do you like them salty, or sweet?  Do you like them healthy, or sinful?  Do you snack for flavor, or to fill the belly?  What's your favorite snack, and what's your least favorite? Everyone'll have a different answer, as everybody (and every BODY) has his/her/its own tastes and needs.  But lately, this crazy health-food trend has taken on conventional ideas about snacks and snacking, and those of us trying to help the hungry masses survive from 4pm till the end of work are scrambling to keep up.

Thus I submit to you a noble attempt by our friends at Frito Lay to make a buck off this crazy health stuff.  Please be warned that the following article contains vulgar language...

Frito-Lay Angrily Introduces Line Of Healthy Snacks

Snacking trends are tough to keep up with, so hats off to Frito-Lay for getting on the bland/healthy bandwagon.  For the record, though, this article raises a doozy of a conundrum faced by all of us snack manufacturers- how do you deal with social or cultural trends that contradict basic biology? We are (all of us that might read this blog, anyway) basically overgrown monkeys (or divine creations, if you prefer), and we all somehow are programmed at a very deep level to savor salt, crave fat, and slurp up sugar whenever possible.  And NONE of those cravings are met by particle-board-like parsnip crisps.

In a strange way, I feel for the beleaguered and bitter Frito-Lay CEO Carey as he rails against health nuts and their unwanted impact upon his products.  We struggle right now against the Whole Foods mandate that none of the food they sell (except their red wine) contain sulfites.  Please don't get me started on sulfites.  I'll simply say that 90% of what I hear about sulfites is just wrong, and unless you have asthma, you have nothing to fear from the SMIDGE of sulfites in our products.

And yet, here we are, preparing to roll out a sulfite-free product come January or February, solely to cater to unfounded food trends.  Sigh.

Here at Peeled Snacks World Headquarters we regularly scrutinize our competition (as ought every good corporation).  We comb through snack racks and bins at the check-out counters, looking for trends, new products, and updates to classic snacks (like last January's  "Doritos Bag" update.  Frankly, we're all still in shock).  Everyone here had their own sort of "snack specialty"- there's the trail mix chick, the everything-with-seeds lady, the candy girl; I count as the chips and crisps dude.  Lucky me.

Any irony you might find in a bunch of healthy-snack peddlers eating blatantly awful snacks, please keep to yourself.  It's important to know what the kids are noshing on these days, and insights gained from seeing the bright colors behind the glass at a vending machine simply DO NOT COMPARE to actually tasting the lurid staleness within.  Most of the snacks we buy to try go uneaten, either because we have other snacks to try, or because they're just gross.

One final note- congrats to the Democratic Party, who (thanks to the endless campaigning and leadership of George W. Bush) have just taken over 1/3 of our government.  I recommend that, whatever happens in the next two years, you all DON'T SCREW IT UP!!!!

An Ode to Frito-Lay

I'm pretty sure that they put that salty powder on there

on purpose.

They coat their chips and curls with grains of flavor

and salt,

and after every cheetoh moves from oranged fingers

to mouth,

I must wash my cheetoh grabbing digits clean with my lips

and tongue.

Should perhaps I worry about my saliva-coated fingers

and thumb,

when sharing my Doritos, Cheetohs, or lime-drenched Tostitos,

so addictive?

Or does that orange and yellow dust somehow cauderize

all hands?

I think I'd rather not know, and just finish

my bag. 

Posted by iankusc at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It's a big day here at Peeled Snacks headquarters as we all try to get our work done amidst the promise of an election day (and more importantly, the promise of the day AFTER).  We have a somewhat unwritten policy here that on election day, you either vote, or you recently got run over by a semi and are hanging by a thread at death's door.  You could, if you wish, see it as our version of bigotry or racism, except that we're prejudiced against non-voters.

Technically speaking, you don't HAVE to vote.  According to the constitution, voting is a RIGHT, as opposed to a privelage or a responsiblity.  It's something that every couple of years or so, you can feel free to partake in, much like the Olympics or James Bond movies.  You don't HAVE to go do it, though it certainly has its fans, and, oddly enough, its haters.

I certainly know plenty of people here in New York that insist that voting doesn't matter. One friend of mine insists that since New York is so overwhelmingly democratic, there's no need to vote (to him I say, Pataki?  Guiliani?).  Another says that since New York doesn't matter in the presidential races, it's not worth the time (to her I say, all politics is local; that, and move to Florida).  Today, one buddy of mine offered an interesting arguement that I found difficult to challenge- he gets nothing of value out of voting, so his time is better spent working.  Hmmm....

I wonder most of America feels about the time it wasted voting for Republicans in 2002 and 2004.  Given the costs of those votes (cost of waging two wars, cost of indulging the rich, cost of a bloated government, cost of the reputatution of the U.S., cost of the LIVES of our troops), I wonder if Ohio thinks that was all "time well spent."  Apparently, George Bush has a special mission for democrats today, and I'm sure for him that'll be time VERY well spent...

Traditionally, when it comes to fixing elections, Democrats seem to be the party guilty of fraud, whilest the Repulicans are guilty of extortion.  4,000 dead Chicagoans notoriously voted for Kennedy, while 40,000 Ohioans just didn't get to vote against Bush in 2004.  Somehow we preach the virtues of democracy abroad, but fail to implement them at home.  Our nation is actually led by a guy who didn't win, and who got his job by bullying millions out of their right to vote.  And we're trying to export this democracy stuff?

Actually, though here at Peeled Snacks you'd BETTER vote, we don't really care who you vote for.  That's  the glory of our silly little system- providing nobody cheats, eventually the kinks will work out. The pendulum goes to far that way, people will vote it back.  If it comes too far this way, WATCH OUT- it swings back the other way.  So vote, Vote, VOTE.  The system only works if you do.

But I sure do hope that the current government goes down.  Anyone still assuming that this government is doing its job hasn't been paying attention.  This congress only worked 93 days this year, an all-time low, and they spent more than any government, anywhere, EVER.  They loaded the budgets with pork, stole money when they could, and blocked any dissenters out of the political process.  Worst of all, they rubber stamped this disaster of a war, that has put some of my best friends into completely insane, life-threatening situations.  This all needs to STOP!

But whether or not that'll happen with a new government, I can't say.  I assume, though, that it's be a good start.

Posted by iankusc at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 

America used to be a great labor pool.  Our nation was founded not on but via cheap labor- look in an original draft of the Constitution and you'll see that slaves were, if not fully American, at least worth two thirds of one.  As citizens slowly woke up to that terrible math, we opened our doors (or, er, ports) to Germans, Jews, Italians, Irish (begrudgingly), Chinese (till 1882), and so on.  We constantly refilled our labor coffers and bred prosperity, if not in the most recent arrivals, at least in the 2nd or third most recent newbies.

Check out this article about labor in agriculture right now, courtesy of the NYT.  It's a fascinating dissection of the breakdown in the US when it comes to dealing with labor woes.  Just how is it that orchard owners in California's Central Valley have come to be so nervous about China's Jiangxi province?  And why should this have SO much to do with kooks like the Minutemen?

By stopping the flow of "illegal" immigration from Mexico, we are indeed upholding the letter of the law.  But by not dealing with the real issue of what those immigrants offer to our workforce, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.  Would you like to pick pears for $100 a day?  If you said yes, then why don't you?  Would you be upset if someone that said "yes" really got an opportunity to do so?

China's might right now lies not in its military or its scientific infrastructure, but rather in its labor force.  They've 4 times the number of citizens that we do, and their political/economic systems allows them to do what they will with said workforce.  It's sad and frustrating to me that we're willing to outsource everything to China, rather than actually compete with it.  But that sure seems to be what's going down...

Posted by iankusc at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This past weekend, in honor of a good friend of mine's impending nuptials, I and several other chums jumped on planes from verious corners of the lower 48 and shuttled ourselves, sans carryon hygenic products, to the strange, fantastic, rococo playland that is Las Vegas, Nevada.  I had never before found my way into Sin City's city limits, thanks mostly to the fact that the last time I extensively travelled the Southwest I was under 21 years old.  That, and I'm cheap.

Well, certainly Vegas has many, ahem, virtues which ought to be extoled- the design is outlandish, the entertainment is suitably over-the-top, the air is (artificially) oxygen rich, and the drinks, thankfully, are free.  Clearly there's something for everyone in Las Vegas, since there's a sign on the way into town that tells you so- "Las Vegas: Something 4 Everyone".

Indeed , there's certainly something for me in Las Vegas, or at least the Las Vegas vicinity- in celebration of my buddy's waning bachelordom, some of us jumped in a minivan and headed West, OUT of the city, towards the surrounding desert.  Our goal was the Red Rocks state park, a beautiful stretch of rusted-iron infused canyons and cliffs that blew our minds, and NOT our wallets.

But what, you ask, does this have to do with Peeled Snacks?  Gambling, debauchery, and free drinks are a regular part of the Peeled Snacks business model, but my interest today doesn't pertain to such crucial fundamental aspects of business.  Furthermore, canyon walls, however beautiful, simply do not apply.  How, then, am I to turn this travel blog into a snack blog, you wonder?

Granted, this is slightly eliptical, but imagine, if you will, a desert.  Not the Sahara style desert of endless dunes, mind you- the American Southwest version, with its rock and dust and heartbreaking, empty vistas.  Through such a landscape we drove while making our way to the literally named Red Rocks Park, and I imagine that throughout most of history, such a landscape remained basically empty, barring the occasional lizard, tumbleweed, or compulsive gambler.  But you know what I found hiding in yon desert, lurking alien in an alien landscape, trying to blend in like a chameleon yet sticking out like the middle-finger buttes of Monument Valley?

 Tract Housing.

Driving out of Vegas, we passed mile after mile of last that should belong to an empty, barren desert basin, but which was filled with little, sand colored houses.  I was shocked to see how many houses there were in a land that spent, oh, 18,000 years devoid of human inhabitants besides a smattering of Paiute indians.  Even freakier to me was that for miles, all the houses were basically the exact same design, as if the urban planners had deemed the outskirts of Vegas to be "tan box country".

What a terrible idea.  What a miserable, awful, foolish, dangerous, disasterous approach to urban planning, for which the city council of Vegas should be vigorously flogged.  Though the name Las Vegas means "the Meadow," it's a DESERT.  The Colorado River, running so close to Las Vegas, would be able to support a population of close to a million people, but the river is now diverted far away- as far as phoenix and California's Imperial Valley.  Between agricultural needs and splitting the Southwestern regional water bill, Vegas has little to no room to grow.

All that housing out there in the desert speaks of the radical growth that Vegas has seen in the last 10 years.  It's the fastest growing large city in America, and thousand of people arrive there every month seeking their fortunes.  But such growth is completely unsustainable.  Babylonia used to be a verdant paradise, but too much growth turned it into the wasteland that is now Iraq.  Vegas' growth could have a similar effect, only the place STARTED OUT as a desert!

Unmanaged growth, be it in urban centers, agriculture, or business, makes for disasters.  However much money may be being made in Vegas now, is that more or less than the cost to fix all the mistakes that are being made?  I suspect that it's much, much less.

Okay, that still had barely anything to do with snacks, but it's what was on my mind.  Sigh...

 An ode to Vegas:

Cha-Ching used to be the war-cry

of Buffalo hunting Apache braves

when they finally sprang from behind boulders

to drive their woolly, wholely useful prey

over the cliffs of the Valley of Las Vegas.

All the bison got bagged and baked,

and the Apache all succumbed to the bugs

brought over by the bug that bit the fleas

that bit the Spanish on their way to Eldorado.

The words Cha-ching still echo loudly

Through the valley of the Meadow,

And somehow the mythical Lost City of Gold

has been made real in an empty desert,

brick by gold brick, 

One rococo Casino at a time. 

Posted by iankusc at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last weekend while I was staring at Pacific Northwest tide pools, Newt Gingrich (shudder- flashback from 1994) was sending vicious ripples through time and space courtesy of his (self-declared) Churchill-like prognostications of us being already embroiled in WW3.  No sooner had he banged the WW3 drum than pundits further to the right started acting as if everyone's known about this WW3 business for, like, EVER, and former New Republic correspondent Michael Ledeen retorted, "no way, Newtie- this is World War FOUR!"  I guess I slept through one somewhere in there.

So a couple of sloppily dropped statements from a former professional liar (Contract with America?  Broken long ago), and suddenly everyone's looking for a definition of a World War.  Does it take superpowers fighting over smaller countries?  Does it have to involve Germany somehow?  Doesn't France have to surrender first?

I'm unconcerned with such definitions, as if we assume that there's some World War going on, then people will be quick to say, "the U.S. needs to jump in there and finish this mess."  After all, we tipped the scales in the Great War, and more or less brought Japan to its knees single-handedly in that war's sequel.  Those events, though, differ tremendously from the current slew of disgusting events in many ways, most of which I'll ignore, except one: this time, we're the bad guys.

Now hold on a sec- US?  The aggressors? Didn't those fundamentalist Islamists start this thing back in 2001?  Yeah, that's what the aggressor always says.  The aggressor always likes to blame the aggressed.  See, the aggressor moves in to territory that isn't his, and then cries foul when whomever lives in said invaded territory fights back.  In that way, the Germans and Japanese didn't start World War 2- the Polish and Chinese did when they started objecting to being raped and killed by Huns and Japs, respectively.

When the US jumped to Kuwait's aid in 1991, we started a global conflict whose bills we're still paying.  We hunkered down in a country that had no love for us, and whose regime maintains power only through draconianism.  We offended a whole generation's worth of the fastest growing religion on Earth, and did so blatantly in the name of keeping down gas prices.  When we lingered after the first Gulf War, we overstayed our welcome and became the aggressor.  We're the bad guys.

But it doesn't have to be that way.  The solution to the problem is straightforward and simple- pull out of the Middle East.  Take ALL of our troops out of that region.  Maybe keep the NATO forces in Afghanistan, but everywhere else, bolt.  We do it in such a way as to boldly and clearly let the people of the Middle East know that they can solve their own problems now, and that we're sorry for overstaying our welcome.  Then we can sit back and watch as the Sunni-Shiite war that's been brewing for 1300 years reaches a new, completely insane peak.

The right-wing pundits that I've tapped in to usually claim that this WW3 nonsense is being fought over ideals.  Hogwash, I say.  Wars are not fought over ideals, neither religious nor political.  Ideals are what END wars, and they can certainly be used to rally the troops.  Wars are fought over resources- iron ore, water, agricultural land, manpower.  This war is being fought over oil.  And that's a lousy reason to fight a war.

Poem for the Day:

When is a bad idea a bad idea?

When first it's thought up, smoke rising

From the glowing coals of some twisted imagining?

Or maybe when it's played out

to disasterous headlines, sad 3 minute spots

accompanied by melancholy Sanyo chords? 

Or is a bad idea only a bad idea

when someone finally actually contracts his or her vocal chords

in such a way as to say 

"uh, this is a bad idea."

Or is a bad idea actually a GOOD idea,

until the goofball who cooked it up in the first place

finally admits that, "okay, I was drunk that night,

and we never should have gotten into this mess

in the first place. Sorry..."? 

Have a nice day... 

Posted by iankusc at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm pretty sure that the first Peeled Snack mix ever was Figsated.  I could confirm that by asking our president and founder, Noha, who's actually sitting five feet away from me right now, but it's more fun to speculate.  I contend that it's our first because it was probably the first one that she imagined while looking through an airport in search of something to chew on (and coming up empty, excepting pringles and candy bars).  She imagined it first, so my imagination tells me, because Figsated is basically her childhood afternoon snack.  See, she grew up in the Middle East.

Sigh.  What a mess we're sitting in.  Yesterday the venerable old man of diplomacy, the UN, lost a few of its observers in Lebanon to a perhaps something that can be written off as an accident, but which won't be by many.  The Israeli sloppiness here hints at an incompetence not generally associated with Israeli military tactics.  Usually when we talk about Israeli incompetence, we're speaking about their diplomacy.  But militarily?  They're supposed to be surgeons!

What's this got to do with snacks?  Good question.  When I was a wee little 12 year old, in my social studies class we studied potential causes for World War III, and a conflict between Israel and Lebanon was first on the list.  Seeing as that was the Reagan era, World War III seemed very real and frightening to me, and that nasty little lesson left a deep impression upon my terrorized little mind.  Fast-forward to the Dubya era and strife in the Middle East doesn't necessarily mean nuclear war (or, in Dubya parlance, New Que Larr).  And yet I can't help but imagine the difficulties of selling fruit and nut snacks to whatever mutated peoploids survive a newquelarr conflict.

I'm not given to conspiracies, and while I can be  accused of owning an over-active imagination, I don't usually waste time with "doom and gloom" prognostications.  However, in this new war between Lebanon and Israel, I just can't right now imagine a way out.  The Israeli policy of attrition (that is, punish the Lebanese so viciously that they never act up this way again) seems to me a monkey's policy, very simian, very Jean Claude Van Damme.  They assume that they inflict enough violence to end all violence ever.  Raise your hand if you find that just the stupidest thing.

Hezbollah and their Lebanese hosts don't get off easy either.  Woops, did we take your soldiers?  Sorry about that- they looked like our cousins Fiezel and Ahmed, now you can have them back.  Indignation like Hezbollah's makes for a great shovel with which to dig many, many graves.  Israel could never accede to such a prisoner swap, because it would just mean more hostage-taking.  And yet Hezbollah's "leadership" keeps hoping for a trade.

If Israel is a bunch of murderous baboons running amok in your house, Hezbollah is the whiny little four year old brat that's locked himself in the bathroom and is refusing to open the door.  Neither side is bothering to be either reasonable or logical.  But I suppose it's too much to ask for such things when it comes to that terrorized, trampled, tragic crossroads of culture.

This'll all get worse before it gets better, and not even Condie's thigh-high boots can change that.  Just google "US Clout" and see where we stand in the international press.  It makes me wonder if the current administration thinks that a weak United States is good for business, if they are scrambling to recover all that they've squandered, or if they's just like Hezbollah, locked in the bathroom and ignoring everyone and everything that tells them they're wrong.

Haikus:

Back yard just blew up.

Used to be a nice garden.

Now it's soot for sale.

Nukes don't scare me much.

I live in New York City.

Sucks to live through nukes.

I kidnapped your dog.

Give me back my goldfish, PUNK!

Where'd my grandma go? 

Posted by iankusc at 08:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Have you checked out Al Gore’s latest sonorously delivered dose of buzz-kill, “An Inconvenient Truth”?  Well, neither have I, but I GUARANTEE that come its arrival in Netflix, it’ll be #4 in my queue… for a while, probably.  For those of you in the Netflix know, the #4 spot is reserved for that movie that you really think you should see, but which you keep bumping in order to catch Jim Carrey’s latest bit of goofery.

Anyway, were I to have seen “An Inconvenient Truth,” I’m certain that I’d right now be well armed with dozens of reasons why the world is falling apart and it’s all George Dubya’s fault, but seeing as I haven’t caught it (better add it to my Netflix queue now while I’m thinking of it), I have to rely on first-hand experience with which to extol the current administration’s environmental “policy.”  Of late, I get to look at record temperatures across the Rockies, Sedona’s burning Mc-Mansions, and oodles of melted Peeled Snacks Shock-olate.

I’m given to understand by people in-the-know that the term “Global Warming” gives the wrong impression about what’s REALLY going on, and that “Global Climate Change” is a more apt term.  I hardly know the difference, given that the sweltering weather waiting outside my air-conditioned apartment seems to be “changed” only so far as it has been “warmed,” but as the Republican Intelligentsia repeatedly reminds me, I’m no scientist.  I’m just part of a business that has to ship a lot of chocolate to Arizona, and let me tell you, it’s truly a miracle that any chocolate whatsoever is eaten in the American southwest between April and October.  We can safely assume that Arizonans take responsibility for some or all of the Ice Cream manufacturing to satisfy its summertime population of cone lovers, but Arizona remains a LONG way away from Peeled Snacks’ upstate New York plant, nearly as far from Hershey, Pennsylvania, is separated via at least one ocean from Nestlé’s hidden alpine chocolate lairs, and via an astronomical distance from, well, Mars.

Peeled Snacks obviously is painfully new to the trials and travails of distributing chocolate, that sweetest stuff on Earth (invented, no doubt, at 11:58 PM on the 6^th day in heavy anticipation of the 7^th), and we’re right now concocting some radical strategies to meet our customers’ ample Shock-olate demands.  If anyone somehow has a copy of the M&M-Mars playbook, or at least the pages in the playbook that talk about summertime Snickers distribution, I’d be forever in your debt for five minutes alone with the pages and a photocopier…