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That's a shame about Super Size Me. Like I said when we talked the other evening, his interview on NPR was pretty good. And the concept itself, showing what fast food can really do to your body, is a good one. How would you have presented it, if you had taken it on?

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I haven't seen the film yet (and I kind of doubt that I will), but it seems to me that the guy went through an awful lot to prove something that is generally obvious to anyone with a "working" brain. I understand that it was a reaction to a stupid comment made by a corporate crony, but I just wonder what exactly did he prove? Who and what did he serve by performing a stunt that really has "jackass" written all over it?

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I'm always amazed at what should be generally obvious to folks, isn't. Not that I'm standing up for the film--haven't seen it. But educating folks about what's good for them appears to be a neverending battle.

Welcome to lj, by the way! I'm a friend of

fflo and

upsidedownblue.

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Hello,
I have heard of you from B. He said that you and/or your husband are involved in making/restoring wood furniture. That's very interesting to me. My live-in boyfriend is not exactly a carpenter...I would call him a widdler. He makes really lovely little things out of wood. He makes these great log lamps. I'm trying to motivate him to create at least five or so and put them up on e-bay to see what happens. Do you think there's a market for his talents?
As far as your earlier comment, yes, it is sad but true that people do not generally recognize the obvious truth, right before their eyes. I think it's rationalization, really. Somewhere in there the truth is known, but people would rather listen to opinions that make them feel better about their habits. It seems that people will easily rationalize away anything that doesn't fit their desires. I think that was a contributing factor in the fall of the Roman empire?! And I really have no room to talk because I'm a smoker, but I try not to rationalize it so much these days in an attempt to quit. Hopefully, the truth will set me free...
Anyway, it's nice to meet you.

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Yep---

pijeanf, which is pronounced like "pigeon 'f'," was my roommate as a freshman in college. (Okay to "out" us thus, PiJ?)

I'm with you about the cheesy premise for the jackass's movie, by the way,

maffick. The temptation to go see it was that it seemed he might address issues---as he DID, to a small extent and in an amateurish way---of corporate profit from addicting the people, and placing profits over nutrition with terribly low standards for the "quality" of the food, and maybe even the ways which the animals that provide some of the "food product" are kept/treated. (Secretly I think I want to be persuaded to vegetarianism; it's just still trumped for me by issues of freedom to eat whatever the hell I want, thank you very much.) Not to mention issues of cultural/economic imperalism (once again, only vaguely touched on in the film).

Of course, as it turned out, his film went for cheap "humor" in fat-bashing. And in doing so, as well as in presenting an oversimplified advocation (of sorts) of "weight loss surgery," it contributed to the hostile, demonizing atmosphere fat people face in this culture.

He also did a sloppy job with its central schtick---e.g., the guy stopped getting any exercise, too, while he ate only the McDonald's for a month, usually choosing double quarter pounder meals and uber-Mickie-D's options---thus both exaggerating and [thereby] undercutting his point.

Yes, all in all, a piece of crap. And now I've gotten some of the rant out of me after all!

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Well, as my other reply here implies, I like the class and state-dominance perspective as a framework for criticising fast food culture. I think class is the forbidden issue of our times (these unfortunate days still in the legacy of the Reagan "revolution"---what a disgusting corruption of the word!)---as it long has been within "democracy" (read: capitalism). I reckon my world view is pretty Marxist, when it comes right down to it, and I think the people need to be awakened to phenomena---particularly commercially-propagated cultural tendencies---that are damaging to us. I just want that to happen in ways that don't themselves give the state more power over us.

Money has too much power to influence things, and too much money is concentrated in too few hands. It's morally wrong. That's the context in which McDonald's propagates its profitting from the peoples' addiction, and lack of education, and poverty. (How many wealthy people of leisure are eating at McD's several times a week?) And it uses its size/power/dominance to arrange, through advertising, to lure us in more and more.

Super Size did, again, gloss over that issue. The jackass, in addition to being a jackass, took no central focus, and pursued none of his ideas/assertions in a thorough, hard-hitting way---never even aiming at a clearly consumer-advocating sense of a mass of people needing to throw off this way in which we allow ourselves to be kept down. Instead he takes an approach that manages a vague "isn't it a shame" (a cheap, somewhat sensationalist mode), with frequent lapses into "wait---let's go watch some more fat giggle; it's been too long since I included some of that demeaning, easy/stock footage of the headless, pseudo-anonymous bodies of real people on the screen to illicit contempt, and hopefully a cheap laugh."

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I think you mean a "whittler," don't you? I used to love to whittle. Wrote a short story once called "Whittling," told from the POV of a young girl who's just gotten in trouble for standing up as a baby feminist. (She's about to face the music for having punched a boy whose confrontation with her over her whittling ended in the intended trump card, "Girls don't whittle.")

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As my always-correct-supervisor :0) has informed me, yes, I mean "whittler" not "widdler" (thank you for saving me from my spelling faux pas).
That's so cool that you whittle--I used to not know any whittlers and now I know two! I'd love to read your story some time and others, if you aren't shy about them.

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Well said,

fflo! How can this film be anything other than a stunt, if the underlying issues such as class (it is indeed the forbidden issue) and corporate greed aren't brought up?

Of course, that means you would have made this movie more in the vein of that (ahem) "lardass" Michael Moore methinks.

Ahem.

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Good to meet you, too. I friended you--hope you don't mind.

Yep, my husband's a woodworker. Pretty much if it's made out of wood, he'll build it. I handle the office side of things, website maven, and help out with production. Very small at-home thing that we've been trying to get successful for some time now. Sometimes it is; sometimes it isn't. Such is self-employment!

That's cool that your guy "widdles". : ) Don't know if there'd be a market for his lamps or not. eBay's not a bad place to start. Putting up auctions is inexpensive. We've never tried it with our stuff, so I can't tell you anything more specific about that. We started out online with a craft mall. We're still with them, besides having our own website (ask

fflo to give you the link if you're interested). The trick online, though, is figuring out how to get people to find you. We're still working on that.

Another option might be local craft shows. Doesn't A2 have some big arts/crafts fair in the summer? Another possibility might be a bricks-and-mortar craft mall or cooperative.

So, those are my two pennies on the subject. I do blather on if you give me half the chance.

On the other subject, I agree that rationalization is a big part of the picture. People do like to hear what they want to hear, and the way the media feels the need to show both sides on every issue, instead of flat out saying, "This is how it is," gives folks that chance.

You know, I was going to bring up smoking in my previous post. Good luck quitting. It's worth the effort.

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Thanks for the encouragement. Were you ever a smoker? If so, how did you quit?
Thanks for your thoughts on business, as well. Yes, you're right there are plenty of arenas that we could try although I don't know how proactive he would be about it right now because he has a few things he's trying to get going. He's trying to start a painting business as well, figuring that home painting is a chore that people always need done, but don't want to do. He's very good, but just not very motivated. I could go on and on, too... I think if I can get him to make some lamps and we can take some nice pictures of them and see what happens, he might become more motivated to do the artistic thing. Self-employment is the best way to go, if you can do it. I applaud your efforts and hope that you become terribly successful :0) I will get the link from L. and check it out!
I guess when I wrote that thing about rationalizing, I was in a mood. I do see it that way to some extent, but it's never that simple either--there are lots of contributing factors...

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I never was a smoker, really. For a short time I hung out with a group who, if we were at a bar and drinking, would smoke. I joined in, and liked the buzz, but stopped before I got addicted.

My mom was a 2-pack-a-day woman, and it was one of the factors in her premature death at 53 from a heart attack. My dad smoked until he came down with pneumonia. He quit cold turkey. So, I can't give you any words on quitting, other than do it the sooner the better and convert all your friends.

He's very good, but just not very motivated.

Ah, that's been our problem, too. Both R and I are creative folk, but motivated? Not really. We're pretty laidback, so hustling to get established as always been hard. And we've been at this for 13 years!

I'd love to hear your thoughts on our stuff and the website. I'm always looking for ways to improve things. And I wasn't trying to blow you off by not posting the link here. I try to avoid posting identifiable stuff in a public post. I'm kind of paranoid that way.

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(Okay to "out" us thus, PiJ?)

No problem.

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queerbychoice.livejournal.com

I really wish I had seen this about three hours before you posted it, because recently I had added someone to my friends list only to be appalled when the first entry he posted after I did so indicated that he had just come home from seeing Super Size Me and was now overwhelmed with the revelation of just how thoroughy "fast food is disgusting and obesity is disgusting." I commented, in an extraordinarily polite an unemphatic manner actually, that I could agree with the fast food part but not the latter. He then threw a ten-paragraphs-long fit saying how dare I as a random stranger come invade his journal and make condescending remarks to him (despite the fact that he was the one being severely condescending and all I had said was a single two-sentence comment indicating that I wished he would find a better way of phrasing himself than "obesity is disgusting"). Then some other friend of his replied to me in a largely more reasonable-sounding tone, saying that yes, it would probably be more useful to discuss health issues without insulting people's appearances, but that he thought the movie Super Size Me had done a good job of this. I said I hadn't seen the movie and was therefore not qualified to comment upon it, so I would take his word for it. And then I saw your entry.

And now I can't reply to the post anymore because the original "obesity is disgusting" guy has suddenly made his entire journal friends-only all the way back to his first entry in 2002, apparently all because of me and a simple two-sentence polite recommendation that he could find a better way of phrasing himself. I cannot believe that anything I said could possibly have been worthy of any of this melodrama. My faith in humanity has just dropped two notches.

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Hey, who you callin' "always correct"? So's yer old man!

I should clarify that I have whittled. How recently must I have whittled in order to retain "whittler" status? Surely there's some statue of limitations. . .

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Perhaps, at least to some extent. (I have my qualms about Michael, but they're either more subtlely aesthetic or refine'dly political.)

Super Size, to clarify, DID bring up corporate greed, even poking fun at it for a few minutes. But even some of that was fat-phobic. And, besides, what kind of technique is mere random fun-poking for any serious subject of a scathing documentary?

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Part of my ultimate motivation in going was to be able to speak with some authority about whether the thing was part of the mass cultural demonization of fat, regardless of whatever else it may or may not turn out to be. Plus I did have some hope it might not go the way I feared.

Now you just gotta let go of that now-dead-to-you conversation over in that lj person's la-la-land of a life, right?

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I'm not shy about old stories or poems or songs, except the ones I don't like myself any more. Don't know where a copy of that story would be, though.

It wasn't brilliantly executed or anything. But I do think it hung back a little, which is tricky for a young writer. Didn't overtell itself. Someone accused my narrator of being precocious, cuz she thought and spoke in complicated sentences for a girl her age, but some young people do that, you know? Not all children are childish, most particularly the freaks---those who stand out for something, like, say, being a tomboy and prototypical feminist gender rebel.

Besides, it's sort of a literary conceit anyway---the straightforward philosophical assertion of the relative innocent.

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In recent years I have found it to be in my better interest to give up faith in humanity. Seriously! I am not out, yet, of hope for humanity, and I'm rooting for us---I really am---but I don't have much faith in human nature. We are just animals trying to get by in the world, after all, and any higher motivation is pure gravy. There are so many opportunities for us to be fucked up by our surroundings, one way or another, that I'm surprised sometimes how well we do.

I bet if we didn't live in the most privileged country in the world, we'd do a lot less well at some of it, too.

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Well, now, I do believe you mean "statute", however, if there were a statue to limitations I think Bush would make a nice likeness. Don't you think?
And I say, nay. Once a whittler, always a whittler.
Viva la whittler resistance!

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And, besides, what kind of technique is mere random fun-poking for any serious subject of a scathing documentary?

Not a very good one.

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