DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

One year ago today I published a list of the “do not call” registries across America. It became one of the most popular articles on this site, thanks to inbound links from all over the place.

Today I received an email from reader Stewart Vardaman that contained some very happy news: CO resident David Hakala sued a telemarketer for violating the state’s “no call” law, and settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of cash.

Share the joy! County’s 1st no-call list suit settled; Telemarketing suit pays off

At least 19 US states have set up “do not call” lists, and more are in the legislative pipeline. For more information see my summary, Stop Telemarketing.

(Thanks for the tip, Stewart!)

In case you hadn’t already heard, an obese diabetic named Caesar Barber has filed a lawsuit against the fast food industry for not warning customers that the food they serve is unhealthy.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I believe the fast food industry is guilty of a great many sins, and I believe the world would be a better place without them. Regular readers will have to forgive me for mentioning it again, but I guarantee Barber’s lawyer will have a copy on the prosecution table during the trial: Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation details the ways in which fast food is abusing agriculture, ranching, and its own employees, and although Schlosser doesn’t blame McDonald’s for making customers obese, he makes a strong case that McDonald’s engenders fast-food addictions in children.

Also: There is shit in the meat.

On the other hand, I believe in personal responsibility. Many of the editorials about Caesar Barber’s lawsuit rightly point out that overeating leads to weight gain, and further that oversalted, fried convenience foods are unhealthy. This is common sense, not a Burger King trade secret. Barber didn’t grow to 270 pounds overnight… it took years of self-abuse (and a lack of self-control) for him to become huge and diabetic.

So, it’s hard to be sympathetic. And yet, wouldn’t it be great if the fast food industry got a little payback for the damage they’ve been doing?

I found an editorial that beautifully captures my ambivalence. It’s too rude for print, by which I mean, it’s a lot more fun to read that a typical op-ed piece: Mark Morford asks, Should America Sue McDonald’s?

A septic tank is a multi-hundred-gallon container that temporarily stores all the liquid waste produced by the property’s inhabitants. By “liquid waste” I mean “everything that goes down the drain”, and that does include toilets, so yes, there is solid waste in there too.

In fact it’s the solid waste that causes the problem. The liquids run out into the leach field and dissipate into the ground, but the solids collect in the tank. Some portion of this muck gets digested by the bacteria and microflora naturally present in such an environment, but the rest sits there stinking until it’s removed. Experts recommend that tanks be pumped out every five years or so, depending how heavily they’ve been used.

Our system has not been heavily used. Just two of us live here, and we’ve been more or less vegan for the past year, which I’ve heard makes a difference. But when the inspector popped the top on the tank, he confirmed that it was due to be pumped. This was his official diagnosis: “It looks pretty cakey in there.”

Then I remembered all the little lumps and dregs of sourdough starter and dough that I’ve washed down the kitchen sink over the past five years. A sourdough culture might not flourish anaerobically, without fresh starch to feed on, but then again, who am I to say what might evolve in that awesome biomass buried in my yard? They say there are alligators in the NYC sewers after all.

So I had to laugh when the inspector said that the contents of our septic tank looked “cakey.” Actually I thought “bready” would be a more accurate term, but I didn’t want to argue. I didn’t even want to breathe, at least not until he screwed the lid back down.

The hotel clerk was a diminutive Indian woman — young, perhaps 5'2'' and extremely slender. If I’d thought about it, I’d have expected her to be a vegetarian, based on her age, her size, and the fact that we were standing in California. Plus, given her ethnic background, she’d probably have a thing about cows.

So I asked her for restaurant recommendations. She reeled off a list of places that shared a common menu: cattle. She named grills, burger places, steakhouses. She became an animated Zagat’s Guide to local stockyards, so much so that she even realized it and apologized, then appended breathlessly, “… but I don’t know what kind of food you like, I like STEAK!” When she said “STEAK!” she actually growled. Her eyes bulged, her lips pulled back to reveal too many teeth, and I swear, I could see the cords in her neck go taut.

This was the first conscious thought I had this morning: olive oil comes from squeezing olives… peanut oil comes from squeezing peanuts… where the heck does baby oil come from?

I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere before — it’s not original. My concern is that this was not a very energizing, welcome-to-the-new-day thought to wake up to. It’s pretty grisly, or even gristly, depending how hard you squeeze.