A donkey by any other name...

Still cleaning out my inbox, drafts folders, etc., planning out this year’s work, but I’m pausing to tender these links to you. Plus, also, because I have to subscribe to so many different foodproduction, foodservice, recall notice, etc., bulletins for work, I’m being hammered with news about Walmart China’s latest donkeymeat recall. And it makes me crack up every time. And I need to write about it and get it out of my system. Which of course, is usually why I write...caught in some circular thought pattern, chasing itself round and round my head like some kind of Ouroborean wordstream. The only way to make it stop is to tell someone or write about it. Which makes this basically an exorcism journal.)

If you’re thinking “poor donkeys, how can she find that funny”…remember, for me, pretty much everything’s funny if you turn it up to the light in the right direction. And it’s never EVER too soon.

I don’t know, there’s just something about donkeymeat snacks that tickles my funnybone. That it’s Five Spice Donkeymeat snacks, just makes me chuckle more. But then I read that some of the DNA found was fox DNA and then I’m all, wait, what? What the hell is FOX doing in there? Oh, China! Did you think “pah, horsemeat masquerading as beef, piffle, they’re practically the same animal. Four legs, hooves, about the same size, eat the same things, generic herding prey animals. That’s easy. Screw that. If you’re going to adulterate meat, let’s use something completely wacky.

(To be fair, people do eat fox, although my gut says this isn’t wild-caught fox, but fur fox, which brings us right back to not only is the outrage that you’re lying about what it is, but also using meat that probably isn’t cleared for human consumption due to medications/disease/testing.)

Hey, libertarians, if this happens with government regulation in place, can you imagine what the hell you’d be eating with LESS regulation? I’d like to think everyone would do the RIGHT thing, but clearly, clearly, there are an awful lot of people out there who’ve got the moral turpitude of….people who would sell contaminated food to children.

Anyway. Donkeymeat recall. That’s just funny.

Also, if you don’t know about this site, you should. Before you get yourself all exercised about something, make a stop here, and also at Snopes, before you even consider letting loose the stopcock on your indignation:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/dec/31/top-10-most-viewed-fact-checks-2013/

I don’t know if I agree with the statement “snarky”. I think just clever, slightly subversive and sometimes small acts of revenge are enough to make you feel better:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/27/academics_hide_snarky_clever_comments_in_the_acknowledgments_sections_of.html
The manager of this café must be a long lost brother/sister of mine:

http://www.springwise.com/cafe-charges-customers-rude/

And, on the hind paws of our discovery of the olinguito, we found a new kind of tapir. Tapir. Sure, shy, reclusive, but definitely bigger than a breadbox. This is why I get all frothy at the mouth about degrading resources we haven’t even fully explored. (Not because this tapir is likely to make a difference to the world at large. But a tapir is BIG. This tapir’s habitat, as well as many other habitats that we’re mowing down to feed your insatiable need for soft toilet paper or cheap hamburger, could well contain insects or plants that could extremely valuable medicines, as well as who knows what else. I mean, we need to compensate these countries for not developing parcels of land – no fair to say, oh, well, we killed all OUR stuff in order to get where we are today, but we want you to stay a backwater until we can properly judge whether this is valuable sensitive land or not. Anyway, tapirs.

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/20/new-species-animals-tapir-brazil/