“Don’t confuse a totalitarian society with a dictatorship,” Kellerman said dryly. “A totalitarian state reaches into every sphere of it’s citizen’s lives, forms their opinion on every subject. The government can be a dictatorship, or a parliament, or an elected president, or a council of priests. That doesn’t matter.”
–Philip K. Dick, In the Mold of Yancy

“We can put television in its proper light by supposing that Gutenberg’s great invention had been directed at printing only comic books”- Robert Hutchins

Blogger Netwerke Transmission Stardate 2.13.2-double aught-3:

So I pull up to the drive through window. Or rather the first of two. Like a gauntlet. Eventually you will have to pass through a half dozen windows. Out of each one will lean a perky teenage girl who will say “Hi! How are you doing? Here’s your (whatever). Have a nice day!” before you have a chance to reply. The fast food equivalent of conversation.

“Hi! How are you doing?”
“uhh…”
“Here you go. Have a nice day!”

Here is why I get nervous when they talk about “frivolous” lawsuits. First of all, what really is the real harm of a “frivolous” lawsuits? “They make the companies have to increase prices”, you say. Not really. If you ever checked out the profit margin on a McDonalds genetically engineered hamburger, or a $3.50 pack of cigarettes that contains around $.17 worth of tobacco, or a $200 Nike or Reebok shoe that was sewn in a sweatshop in Indonesia for 35 cents, it would make you sick. Not to mention the absurd government handouts to Fortune 500 companies. For every tax dollar we spent on “traditional” welfare in 1996, we spent TWELVE HUNDRED tax dollars in corporate welfare. The government gives companies grants to move their locations to third world countries, closing down the American counterparts and forcing their American workers onto “traditional welfare”. Blah blah blah. I could rant all day. But that’s no fun.

By the way, here’s some facts most people never hear about “frivolous” lawsuits:

The lady who sued McDonalds over the hot coffee was elderly, she spilled the coffee into her lap and recieved SECOND AND THIRD DEGREE BURNS on her private area, requiring surgery to recover and having to endure an obviously painful and embarrassing recovery period. I would assume she still has scars.

The earliest and most successful lawsuits against the tobacco industry were from people who started smoking in the 40s and 50s, when there was no Surgeon General’s warning, when the tobacco industry knew, but did not publish that nicotine was both poisonous and addictive, and when popular tv stars (and in the case of the Flintstones, even cartoons) endorsed smoking. I mean come on. Nicotine was and still is used as a popular, effective insecticide. Did you know that if you were able to extract all the nicotine in a single pack of cigarettes (barely a gram) and ingest it all at once, it would kill you instantly?

And as far as the recent lawsuit against the fast food industry, I have 2 things to say:

1. How much harder would it be to print one of those little nutrition and ingredient boxes they have on EVERYTHING ELSE we consume on the nasty grease-stained wax paper wrappers they stuff everything in? Or even have a chart on the wall (some fast food places already had it, why not make it mandatory? They could place it next to the Ten Commandments plaque)

2. “Frivolous” or not, the lawsuit did bring up some serious questions to the ethics of the fast food industry, and possibly the marketing industry in general.

Oh well, I’m done. Take care.

Signing off Blogger Netwerke…