Brushing: Tool Of The Corporate Power Structure

Memo to Colgate and Crest: YOU ARE DUMB.

I'm beginning to think that the Cavity Creeps are actually a brave, rag-tag group of rebels against your dental tyranny, and that the commercials I grew up with as a child were actually filthy totalitarian propaganda. And that maybe, just maybe, the polyglot multinational dental force described in those ads weren't heroes at all, but puppets of the oligarchy.

I have not taken leave of my senses and decided to come out against dental hygiene. I have, however, come to the conclusion that the toothpaste industry now disturbingly resembles a trip to Coldstone Creamery. Pick any ingredient you want, you name it, and we'll shove it into a tube for you to smear all over your word-hole. I came to this conclusion after the fine people at Colgate introduced "MaxFresh", which allows one to take freshness, apparently, to the MAX, by including micro-sized breath strips in with the toothpaste.

You know breath strips. Breath strips are the neutron bomb of oral care. They're thin gelatin strips imbued, as far as I can tell, with equal parts menthol and bleach. You pop one in your mouth, and it instantly cleanses it of all life. It's like The Day After, only instead of wandering around and pontificating, the tiny bacterial version of Jason Robards dies a horrible death, and his corpse is expelled from your body in your futile attempt to get the taste out of your mouth.

Oh, the breath strips may say "Icy Refreshing Cool Extreme Mint Arctic Frostbite Blast" on them, but the reality is more like Lysol, with the refreshing undercurrent of five million bacterial corpses. And now, there's a toothpaste loaded with the little fuckers.

My original thought was that some byproduct of the breath strip manufacturing process left a whole bunch of leftover, unusable breath-strip, and thus, some brilliant executive said, "Hey, load some into the paste vats and get a team on a new logo. Five thousand fucking varieties of toothpaste isn't enough", but in trying to remember which company was actually shoving the breath strips into the toothpaste, I came across an article explaining how the breath strip manufacturers were ramping up production. So apparently, they're pouring extra resources into this idea.

Here's a helpful tip from me, the writer, to you, my loyal readers. Never, EVER visit the Crest website. To do so is to peer into madness. A twisting maelstrom of options, none of which make sense, all in the blinding gradations between medium blue and white that are the chromatic stock-in-trade of the oral care industry. Should you visit Smiles Central or Sparkle City? Or peer into the distant future of Crest HealthySmiles 2010?

That's depressing, by the way. 2010 used to be the year that we flew to Jupiter, made contact with the monolith, and learned that all those worlds were ours except Europa, and that we should not attempt any landings there. Now, all we know about 2010 is that there'll probably be a Bush or a Clinton in the White House, and that Crest has some kind of long-range plan for our teeth. The future sucks.

If you manage to make it to the actual list of toothpastes provided by the Crest people, you find twenty three different kinds of toothpastes. And they don't even have a Neutron Bomb paste like Colgate does. At the risk of sounding like a pissed off old guy, only ONE of these is, as far as I can tell, toothpaste. I have to guess, because it's named "Cavity Protection". That used to be the primary purpose of toothpaste, back in the day. Preventing cavities. Now, toothpaste is a magical form of urban renewal in your mouth. These toothpastes will remove any historic old brownstones you may have lingering in your gob, and replace them with Starbucks and condos.

Fourteen of the 23 pastes involve whitening, which is to your mouth what Rudy Giuliani was to Times Square. You can choose between Dual Action Whitening, Vivid White, and Extra Whitening, plus three different flavors of Whitening Expressions. such as "Extreme Herbal Mint", which I can only assume makes your mouth smell like potpourri... ON A SNOWBOARD! WOOOOOOO!

So, yeah, I may join the Cavity Creeps. They're the kind of direct-action leftists I can support. Plus, they've called for a flash mob demonstration at the left rear molar at 2 this afternoon, and those are always a blast. DOWN WITH THE MAX FRESH OPPRESSORS!

Oh My Darlin' Nicotine

Memo to everyone who's used the phrase "smoking ban" in the past three weeks: YOU ARE DUMB.

I mean, I thought the concealed carry bullshit last year was bad enough, but it seems like every summer now we have to have a big brouhaha pitting Public Safety against Individual Rights. And both sides rife with annoying dumbasses.

This year, Minneapolis and St. Paul are thinking of joining the ranks of New York and LA and banning smoking in restaurants and bars. It is, as anyone who's been near NY or LA a couple of years ago can attest, a bit of a divisive issue, pitting obnoxious assholes against nosy do-gooders in a battle to the heat death of the universe.

After watching months of debate, I have finally settled my own internal struggle over the issue, which pitted my general leftist "public health" streak against my vaguely libertarian "back the fuck off" tendencies. Which made things fairly difficult for nearly thirty seconds until I realized that every single person involved on either side of the debate couldn't argue worth a damn and were a bunch of hysterical ninnies. My path was clear. Fuck 'em all. I don't smoke, I don't have asthma or allergies, I don't care, and you fools can't fucking make me.

It is, like I mentioned above, very reminiscent of the concealed-carry debate, where every single day, gun-control liberals would be predicting epic, Miller's Crossing shootouts every hour on the hour through the streets of downtown, while the Charlton Heston wannabes in their gated communities bemoaned their inability to fill anyone of color full of lead who threatened them by coming within a 50 foot radius, leading to anarchy, chaos, the keying of their Lexus, and the imposition of a fascist dictatorship where the Edina school board used to be.

Enough already. And it's not as if they've stopped now that the law's on the books. Every couple of months, some wag with too much time on his hands and a Hotmail account feels the need to let eveyrone reading the paper know that the other side's dire predictions of doom didn't come true. Thanks for the tip, Concerned Citizen. I'm sure Bob Woodward will be asking to intern with you any fucking minute now.

Same thing's happening with the tentative smoking ban. The anti-smoking people are running around yelling about how second-hand smoke is full of tiny Jeffrey Dahmer particles that work their way into your lungs and stuff your alveoli into tiny refrigerators, one by one. Every single day, a poor waitress's lungs explode in a cloud of black and pink tar, you know. All because they're forced to serve jalapeno poppers to people who can't taste anything anyway.

I would be more sympathetic to their cause if I didn't live in a state, and in a country, where most of our electricity comes from coal plants belching particulates into the air, and where the administration thinks 40-year-old tech is just dandy for our lungs because upgrading to something post-LBJ would cost his energy buddies a portion of the money they stole this decade. Think globally, breathe locally. It's enough to make me consider taking up smoking in public, until, of course, I listen to the Other Side.

The other side, of course, is where they're predicting the immediate shutdown and bankruptcy of every single bar, restaurant, and coffee house in the Twin Cities Metro once those tobacco lovers abandon the scene in droves. Massive boycotts and economic destruction await as soon as the rights of millions to take a side trip to Marlboro Country during lunch at Applebees are impinged in the slightest. Their non-stop whining and claims of becoming a persecuted minority would ring much clearer if I could hear them over the sounds of the GIANT MONKEY ON THEIR BACK that's screeching and throwing nicotine-laden poop all over the public discourse.

So, you know. Do whatever the hell you want. Ban smoking. Force everyone to smoke. I don't care anymore. Argue about it amongst yourselves for the next year or so. Maybe if we can keep the local governments tied up with this long enough, they'll forget about the whole "new stadium" thing.

You Say Potato, I Say Retardo

Hands off the potatoes, you meat-crazed carbzombies.

What's wrong, mashed cauliflower wasn't doing it for you? Tough. Youi're the one that decided that carbohydrates were Evil Incarnate. You've gotten all the restaurants to serve Meat Salads. You've clogged the aisles with your mysterious processed fake versions of baked goods. You've jacked up the meat prices for the rest of us. The line must be drawn HEAH.

And that line separated all you low-carb, Atkins, South Beach motherfuckers from my potatoes.

Dieting, you bacon-humping simpletons, is about giving things up. Giving up a little bit of everything, or giving up all of one thing. Crazy or sane, healthy or Atkins, the whole point of going on these regimens in the first place is to stop doing something. It is NOT about crossbreeding some fucking Frankenpotato* so that it's LOW-CARB.

Those are my potatoes. Those are my French Fries. My chips. You don't get them. You gave up carbs. If you miss potatoes so bad, then give up the goddamn Atkins, return to the world of normalcy, and have a Tater Tot. Leave the potatoes out of this. They are blameless, innocent creatures whose only crime is to be full of starch during a time of national insanity.

The way it seems to have worked out is this. The Dutch were fucking around with potatoes, trying to make better ones. Which is fine. I'm all for better potatoes, because that way, when I wave them under some Atkins penitent's nose to taunt them, it'll work THAT MUCH BETTER. But then they tested it and found out it had 1/3 the carbs of a russet. Nobody's saying what takes the place of that third, of course. Could be Dutch worm farts, for all I know.

So now it's all "Coming In January, The Low-Carb Potato!" and asinine marketing statements like "The combination of good Florida soils, warm temperatures and the experience of Florida producers sets the stage for delivery of a fresh potato flavor treat". That's Don Northcott, a Canadian whose job it is to pimp Dutch potatoes to Americans. That is a niche fucking job right there. I almost feel bad for him, but then I remember he turned the phrase "fresh potato flavor treat", and I want to shove metal spikes into his eyes to see if he can power a clock.

Potatoes should be one of the prizes reserved for those of us who are not dumb enough to be on Atkins. You know how dumb Atkins people are? I bet you THINK you know, but I bet you don't know. Unless you've seen the Atkins Crunchers.

Authentic Atkins-branded soy-protein crisps. Marketed as a replacement for potato chips. Some soy protein and tapioca starch, turned into tiny faux-chips, and then dusted with that same barbecue or "sour cream and onion" crap that's probably turning our DNA inside out, but who cares, because that flavor dust makes it all worthwhile. Anyway, soy protein, tapioca starch, a bit of flavor dust. One-ounce package. Price at the grocery store? $1.89.

That's THIRTY DOLLARS A POUND. If you want to snack carb-free and spend thirty dollars a pound, you should be buying lobster. And with the money you have left over, buy me a week's worth of potato chips. If you spend $30 a pound on soy protein and tapioca starch, you should be in a home. A judge should just commit you, because you should not be allowed to roam the streets. You spend $1.89 on a bag of Atkins Crunchers, and after a penny and a half for the bag and what they spend to make your ounce of chips, that's $1.87 going straight into the pockets of Atkins' estate.

It's roughly the equivalent of playing the "got your nose" game with a child, then billing the child $3,000 for "rhinoplastic services". And you Atkins chimps are lining up to pay.

* With apologies to the star of Run Lola Run and the upcoming Bourne Supremacy.

Want Some Comedy With That?

Memo to the USDA and Texas: YOU ARE DUMB.

It's like some horrible SAT question gone wrong:

Reagan : Ketchup :: Bush : French Fries 

It really is funny the way Dubya is choosing to take up the "Reagan legacy", by basically taking Reagan's evil ideas and then ratcheting up the stupidity to the breaking point. Reagan cut taxes so that there'd be no money for leftist social programs; Bush does the same, but throws in a $200 billion war on top. Reagan surrounded himself with crooks and politicians on the take, Bush surrounds himself with crooks and politicians on the take from the crooked and corrupt companies they "used to" work for. Reagan slowly deteriorated into a drooling vegetable, Bush came roaring out of the gate with the mental capacity of an underfed zucchini.

Which, in a borderline-masterful segue, brings us to the regular kind of vegetables. Reagan tried to get ketchup classified as a vegetable for nutritional purposes in school lunches, and failed. Bush's USDA, two decades later, has gotten ketchup's symbiotic partner, the batter-dipped, deep-fried French Fry, classified as a "fresh vegetable". And in an unlikely triumph of Bush administration subtlety, managed to do it a YEAR AGO, and nobody noticed.

It only came out now, a year later, because someone stood to lose some money off of it. Specifically, Fleming Companies, who makes batter-dipped french fries, and is now bankrupt. The serpentine bankruptcy laws treat companies differently if they sell fresh fruits and vegetables, you see. They owe more money if french fries are fresh, so they took the USDA to court over it. This is apparently what Republicans mean by allowing market forces to self-regulate. As soon as the mass warping of the fabric of reality and the meanings of words impacts someone financially, they will then work to correct things so that "fresh vegetable" and "batter-dipped, deep-fried, frozen hunk of starch" are no longer synonyms.

Except that they sued in Texas. And in Texas, food comes in two classifications: Hacked From The Still Warm Quivering Flesh Of A Cow And / Or Steer, and Fresh Vegetable. So the Texas judge had no problems going along with the french-fry industry's argument that chopping up a potato, dipping the pieces in batter, frying them in oil, and then freezing the result is no different than waxing a cucumber. Yee. Haw.

Representatives from the USDA, dimly aware of an epic public relations clusterfuck, were quick to reassure the American public that the ruling did not apply to nutrition, only to laws involving commerce. That's comforting. They're only behaving in a completey insane way in order to pander to huge food-processing conglomerates! They're not expecting anyone to actually BELIEVE that a batter-dipped french fry is a fresh veggie, they just want to call it one so that their corporate friends can use the loophole to get more money!

In a related story that is not real but instead invented to set up the standard comedy premise of taking the already ludicrous real-life example and extending it to other products, tortilla chips will be considered "corn on the cob" for purposes of interstate commerce, the Wonder corporation will now be receiving subsidies for all the "wheat" it "grows", and employees are now designated as "children" for tax purposes, allowing your company to claim you as a dependent. But don't worry. When it comes to school lunches, tortilla chips, Wonder bread, and human employees will retain their scientifically determined nutritional value. At long last, somebody thought of the children.

Altovis

Memo to the fine people marketing Altovis: YOU ARE DUMB.

Actually, now that I think of it, you're probably not dumb. You're probably very, very clever, albeit evil. You're blatantly taking advantage of the idiocy of the general populace. But I can't start this off with "Memo to the general populace: YOU ARE DUMB", because then nobody will think it's a new one. So you get hung on the hook.

See, Altovis is the ultimate proof that America is a nation of drug abusers. In just a few short years, the culture of prescription drug marketing has grown to astonishing proportions. You can't go five minutes without seeing an ad for something that makes your dick harder, makes you able to stand other people, helps you breathe, whatever. They all have three-syllable names*, and after two years, they get promoted to three syllables plus two initials.

You get two types of ads. In one ad, pretty people with unspecified problems have their unspecified problems solved because they asked their doctor about Zamfirim. They are now able to walk through sunny fields and hug their children and pet their dogs, thanks to Zamfirim, and, eventually, once-daily Zamfirim XP.

In the other ad, they actually point out that agoraphobarthritorabies is horribly mangling the quality of life of thousands of people each year, but thanks to once-daily Zamfirim XP, pretty people can now walk through sunny fields, hug their children, and pet their dogs with only a small risk of dry mouth, erections lasting longer than four hours, liver problems, and zombification as compared to sugar pill.

But where does Altovis, the putative subject of this article, enter into it? I saw their ads this past weekend on the Food Network. There's two of 'em, they're almost identical, and they air, inexplicably, back to back. In each of them, a narrator discusses the symptoms of fatigue, and how it's a growing problem in today's busy world, leaving people just too damn tired to hug their pets, take long walks through their children, and pet sunny fields.

In one ad, it's a guy talking about fatigue, and all the images are of office work. In the other ad, it's a woman talking, and all the images are of housework. All the words are the same though, as well as the conclusion that a daily dose of Altovis will fix it.

Altovis has a three-syllable nonsense name. It comes in a plain box, sans-serif fonts, tiny round pills in foil-backed plastic bubbles. It's offered in 28-day "cycles". And it's... not a drug.

It's an herbal supplement. Specifically, it's exactly the same kind of ginseng, vitamin, juice bar, organic co-op hippie stuff they've been selling for YEARS.

But now it's Altovis, the once-daily treatment for fatigue, with its own website made up to look like all the other prescription drug websites, complete with fuzzy picture of a Pretty Person hugging a baby and a small child who looks like the spawn of a Grey Alien and a 70's game show host. Go look at it. I bet you can figure out the URL.

This is how insane we are. It used to be, if we needed to be duped into taking our vitamins, all they had to do was add sugar to them, color them orange, and shape them like a dinosaur. But we're adults now, and have put away our childish things, and must be fooled in adult ways. They're not vitamins, they're NUTRACEUTICALS. Swear to God, that's the company putting this stuff out, "Wagner Nutraceuticals, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkeley Nutraceuticals".

But my favorite bit on the website is the Success Stories. After three short paragraphs detailing how Altovis has helped a mom (Stephanie), a professor (Roger), and a partying sales rep (Bo) ditch coffee and lead healthier, happier lives, they happily point out that "Success Stories are dramatizations of user results and not actual consumer testimonials."

Yes, what better way to instill trust in your customer base and get them to take your magic pill every day than to claim on the very same page as your lies that your lies are lies?

But I bet it works. 'Cause there's a whole heaping pile of DUMB in this one. And there's no pill to cure that. Yet.

* Except for the few who don't. Basically Paxil, Procrid, and whatever gets mentioned by the first three people to e-mail me about it. You know who you are.

You, With The Tiny, Limp Dick

Memo to all you men with the limp, tiny dicks: YOU ARE DUMB.

You couldn't just get over it, could you? You couldn't just buy a sportscar and yell at the mail room guy like your ilk's traditions dictate. No. You had to go and become a market.

And not just any market, no. A market of ULTIMATE IRONY. A market that grows and grows. A market with almost preternatural staying power. A market of length, depth and girth that will not go away no matter how much it's flogged. An inverse penile analogy that would make the late John Holmes say "DAMN!"

As a result, you no longer have to turn to the backs of porn magazines for shady ads for shadier pumps and pills, products where the risk of it turning black and falling off operated as a necessary deterrent. Like a fear hyena culling the herd of its weak members.

Now I've gotta watch fucking Enzyte ads on the Food Network. You've seen 'em. The balding, skinny pusbag with the eternal smile and the giant shoes and the oh so clever innuendos and the blatant racism where the stereotypically small-dicked Japanese businessmen are so awed by Bob's newfound dick-fueled machismo that they submit to whatever Big American Bob wants them to pay.

And you got your Viagra. Hooray. But Viagra wasn't good enough. You had to have Levitra. But Levitra's not good enough either. You had to have Cialis. The thirty-six hour stiffypill.

The list of horrible side effects on this baby would make a grown man cry, which is probably why it's good that it's only marketed to little whining babies who are obsessed with their manparts. Sudden drops in blood pressure when taken with alcohol (seems counterproductive, don't it?) or PRIAPIC ERECTIONS LASTING MORE THAN FOUR HOURS

I don't want anything that lasts more than four hours. I'm terrified of the extended edition of Return of the King. I believe in the importance of federally mandated work breaks. And I certainly don't want to be beplanked for five hours, looking down and wondering "Is this normal?"

But wait, there's more! Headache! Indigestion! Back pain! Muscle pain! The inability to distinguish between BLUE AND GREEN. And then there are the ones they won't even list on their website, that you have to ask your doctor about. You know, assuming you don't die in a car crash on the way to the office because you think all the traffic lights are sales at K-Mart and your penis keeps getting in the way of the steering wheel.

Let me put it this way. You obviously aren't that bright to begin with. Imagine what'll happen if, every 36 hours or so, you pop a pill to send all that brainblood strait to your groin? You'll be EVEN DUMBER. Eventually, we'll be overrun by retarded, naked zombies, clubbing us to death for our pocket change so that they can buy more pills so that they still have clubs to club us with.

Your penis will end civilization as we know it. Best have it removed for the good of society.

All You Atkins Melonfarmers

Memo to all you Atkins motherfuckers: YOU ARE DUMB.

OK, go ahead and do your little low-carb thing if you want to. That's fine. I'm not a nutritionist, I don't know what the deal with the various studies are, I don't care whether or not your friend lost a ton of weight on it. None of this matters to me. None of this is why you are dumb.

Maybe it's not even your fault that you're part of a fad. An "emerging market". A consumer group. A ripe, lush cash cow for the food industry to grind into tiny bits laced with the prions of insanity. But you're caught up in something, and that something gets bigger and dumber every single day. So you may want to consider some cost/benefit analysis, look at the people you're being associated and lumped in with, and just eat some damn ravioli and buy some bigger pants. Seriously.

It was bad enough just a few scant months ago, when the carb-watchers started infiltrating the public space with their discussions and their ketosis and their "no cake for me, please, I'm watching my carb intake". That was annoying, but that's OK, because people obsessing about what they shove in their (now crustless) pie-holes is just so much background noise.

I mean, let's face it. We all know why you love the Atkins.

Editor's Note: In case you haven't figured it out yet, the term "Atkins" is being used as a broad catchall for Atkins, South Beach, and various low-carb eating plans, in addition to the so-called "diets" of people who saw on Regis and Kelly that "carbs are bad" and are thus ordering bowls full of stuff at Mexican restaurants.

You love the Atkins because it tells you what you want to hear. I'm not passing judgment on the effectiveness, short-term or long term. I'm just saying that this Atkins shit is telling you that multigrain whole-wheat nut-berry bread is the stool of Satan, which is something you secretly thought in your deepest heart of hearts anyway. But that's fine.

Now, though, you're being marketed to. And because you're being marketed to, we are now being bombarded with retardorays from the food industry, who have seized on the meme that carbohydrates are some kind of Dioxin-level threat to humanity and are desperate to point out to a protein-addled country that their products contain less of the dreaded C-Word than their other dreaded C-word, competitors.

So first we had the specialty foods. The low-carb energy bars, the low-carb food replacements. There's a specialty market that claims to offer low-carb POTATOES, and how they manage that is anybody's guess. And that was bad.

And then the chain restaurants started pandering, and TGI Friday's started offering a licensed Atkins menu, and the rest followed suit. If you're eating at TGI Friday's, odds are you're either surrounded by people you hate, or you're one of the people surrounding people who hate you, so whether or not you can get "potato skins" with slabs of raw pork replacing the potato is the least of your worries.

But now everyone's in on the act. Low-carb beer, because we apparently needed something new for Guinness-drinkers to make fun of Middle America for. Bunless Whoppers. BUNLESS WHOPPERS. You get it in a bowl. A Whopper in a bowl. Without ketchup or mayo, but with bacon. The AP story calls this a sign that "the burger wars are taking a turn for the healthy." I call it DUMB IN A BOWL.

Not convinced yet? Check under the sea. The fine people at Star-Kist have seen fit to remind us that their pouch full of tuna has.... zero carbs. Yes, that's right. A plastic pouch filled with nothing but chopped-up fish meat, and the public needs to be sold on its carbless qualities. There is, apparently, a significant subset of the population that thinks that FISH ARE MADE OUT OF BREAD.

Oh, and Frito-Lay is working on low-carb tortilla chips. God only knows what they'll make the things out of instead of, you know. CORN, but at least whatever vat-grown concoction of plastics, chemicals, and cow ass the chips are formed from, it won't have very many carbs in it.

Your choice is before you. On one plate - some toast, a candy bar, some fettucine Alfredo, and a couple of Valium. On the other, ten pounds of bacon and twenty pounds of DUMB. Choose wisely.