nosh nook #23 - wednesday, april 15, 2009

when fast food gets in the fast lane (link)
04.14.09 - los angeles times - by dan neil

for years, americans have been having somewhat of a problem with body image. we've got magazines offering tips on how women can shed those extra, bikini-busting pounds for the summer. we've got pretty high rates of both obesity & eating disorders. we've got personal trainer-led tv celebrities setting the gold standard for body types. at the same time, we've got an insatiable lust for both junk food & the regulation of fatty foods...oh & we also have a problem dealing with sex.  yeah, we sort of have issues.

as dan neil explains in his article, fast food joints are attempting to repair/gloss over their own negative image through sexy tv advertising. carl's jr now has a tv commercial featuring skinny hottie top chef host padma lakshmi sucking down one of their burgers in a way that neil describes as "sex with a burger." of course, neil also describes young men as "coarse, callow, emotional imbeciles with suicidal dietary habits," so you have to take what he says with a grain of salt.

he continues on, mentioning a few other examples of sexy fast food ads & notes that "if i put on my magic deconstructing spectacles, i can see neo-feminist subversion in these messages." no shit, dude. they are friggin' fast food commercials. he also notes that no matter how sexy the commercials become, the foods will still be fattening & lead to weight gain. "if you eat a lot of (quizno's tuna melts), you'll get fat and smell strange, and nobody will want to have sex with you"...ok dude, way to back up that "skinny is sexy, fat is not" way of thinking with your flawed idea of body image. he's all over the place in his article & i hope he's being sarcastic & generally trying to prove a point by doing so, but when's the last time the l.a. times took that approach?

#58 - i touch myself.

so both my personal & work computers are currently deader than pushing daisies (i killed em both good!) & it's a lazy lame friday night in shawnland & ooh the blog urges, so i'm doing it. i'm blogging entirely from my ipod touch.

it's like twitter to the fifty gazillionth degree! jack dorsey is going to be so proud of my tiny handheld device writing abilities when he hears about my skillz...although he'll likely frown upon my excessive use of characters. here you are jack dorsey:

i find that 140 characters is an insultingly insufficient & stifling amount of characters in which to try to develop a full, coherent tho...

i'm friggin' obsessed with my ipod touch. it's like a mini-computer & it's about as jetson as i've ever been. if you're a close friend somewhere else other than nyc & want to talk about the weather, that's cool with me. i embrace that thought, as i likely have your city stored in the weather app on my ipod touch & know about your blustery winds.

don't want to talk about the weather? let's talk about my ipod touch then. my ipod touch has a facebook app & a myspace app on it, which means i'm now stalking you on the go & probably listening to fresh air as i do so.

i love my ipod touch. ipod touch. ipod touch. ipod touch.

#58 - i touch myself.
snack: cold mcdonalds french fries with sweet & sour sauce
drink: allagash white ale

earlier tonight, i got lazy & got mcdonalds for dinner & after inhaling the ranch bacon chicken sandwich, i had to wait on the fries to avoid stomach explosion. two hours later, i've returned to the fries with a tub of sweet & sour sauce. much of the time, i could be eating cardboard, as long as it's slathered in sweet & sour sauce, so cold mcdonalds french fries are more than sufficient as a delivery mechanism for the sauce.

& i'm washing these cold fries down with an allagash white ale. i think it's safe to say that the allagash white, from portland, maine, is my favorite white beer. it's made with all sorts of yummy spices & i'd take it over blue moon any day of the week.

hey! did you hear about my ipod touch? if i want, i can get all kinds of stupid apps for it. there's one app called "sound grenade" that "generates a really, really annoying, nauseating and headache producing high pitched sound." there's another called "fart for free," which allows you to "disgust your girlfriend" or "reminisce on past farts." both sound extremely useful.

ooh! you know what's the best part about my ipod touch? with the stellar economy, when i find myself looking for work, i'll be ready to kick ass on those touch screen registers at mcdonalds. i'll be like the tiger woods of those things. minimum wage & high school companions here i come!

sent from my ipod touch