Sometimes We Hate Being Right

…because this is so wrong.

headline that reads "failed backyard farms lead to growing number of homeless animals"

Breaking news: people suck.

You should read the whole thing, but here is a choice excerpt:

The Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary gets weekly calls from people looking for new homes for their roosters, goats and other animals. Founded in 2004 with just a few chickens and a rooster, today the 23-acre refuge in Woodstock, N.Y., is home to more than 200 animals. While most of them are the result of investigations into farms and slaughterhouses, “a surprising number” are rescued “from the streets of New York City,” according to the sanctuary’s website.
“We get calls all the time from people who don’t want their animals or can’t afford them. We get emails about roosters found in the city or goats being neglected or pigs that are going to be killed if we don’t take them,” says Elana Kirshenbaum, programs coordinator at Woodstock.
As the local food movement takes hold and urban homesteading gains popularity, more people are giving backyard farming a try. The prospect of fresh eggs and milk inspires them to bring home adorable chicks and goats — but when chicks grow into roosters or goats begin eating the landscaping, these animals are often given to animal sanctuaries or simply abandoned.

As luck would have it, I’m heading up to a different farm sanctuary in May, and you better believe I’m going to bring some printouts and see if I can get those damn animals riled up enough to start a movement.  I’m pretty sure Elliott, a badass goat who escaped a meat market in Brooklyn, is ready to get Orwellian. (Remember it was Muriel the goat who could read and figured everything out.)

The One Person We Wanted to Keep Talking

Andy Rooney, an old white man with bushy eyebrows, in a suit and tie, sitting at a desk with books behind him.

 

As you all know, we here at Shut Up Foodies consider Mr. Andy Rooney to be our patron saint and trailblazer in vaguely angry social commentary. (Our other patron saints are Charles Dickens, Flo Kennedy, and Al Flipside. Actually those are mine. Meatball’s are irrelevant because she is still asleep.)

 

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Honestly, “What’s wrong with coffee-flavored coffee?” is as trenchant and relevant today as it was when he first said it 200 years ago. Or was it 150? Anyway, we were supremely flattered to have been compared to him once, even though it was by someone who says “meh.”

Only Andy would take the time to expose this nutrage and be so focused on his truth that he completely does not die laughing saying “nuts” over and over. (Note that he takes the time to get English Major on Planter’s ass and explain the difference between “less” and “fewer.” Zap!)

 

 

I’m glad we took the time to honor Andy with things like Andy Rooney Friday back when he was alive and we still cared about and updated this blog. I’m sure for him heaven is full of mixed nuts and rainbows, as it should be.

What we’ve been sayin!

Laurel Miller knocks it down in an article entitled “Dropping the F-Bomb: why ‘foodie’ needs to go away” today:

I’m not saying it’s wrong to spend disposable income, if you have it, on costly ingredients or dining out. But the fetishizing of food, the pissing contest that is the hallmark of the archetypal foodie is what I cannot abide. This is what’s at the heart of foodieism; the need to belong to a special club, with a language all its own. In our status-obsessed society, we need to separate ourselves from the plebes who think that the Olive Garden is serving “Italian” food.

The article pretty much hits the nail on the head.

Get Some Skin in the Game

This is hands down the MOST DISGUSTING THING EVER and I am including a lot of shitty blog commenters on that EVER. Every single person in this story on chicken skin, which includes a discussion of “skinwiches” and chicken skin tacos (OH THE JOKES), should be forced to wear this mask, which is made of chicken skin and available, of course, on Etsy.

A mask of a human face that is made from chicken skin and is disgusting

In other news, our hero, Andy Rooney is retiring. His first piece for television, back in 1964, was “An Essay on Doors.” A brilliancy.

It is grosser even than the above mask which is made of chicken skin and being sold on ebay.

Eatering!

Oh, Eater.com. Sometimes even you can’t be as gross as your commenters. From a post on “cone-ing“–which should really be called “scooping,” no?–(check out my impressive punctuation styling on this sentence):

Ugh, whatever… Kind of like shelling out for a Spitzer-level hooker and fingerpainting her elbows.

I pity this guy. You know this poor soul’s steering wheel and car upholstery must smell like rotting dairy.

SO CLASSY.

So Michael Foucault and Jeremy Bentham Walk Into an Elementary School Cafeteria

Surveillance, food police, outrageous bodies.  Leslie Kinzel is a genius. Read it. The only thing wrong with this story is that there should be a photoshop of the above scenario for LOLs. Which is what we are here for!

A shot of a school cafeteria. Two children are pushing their trays down the counter. One has Michel FOucault's head and the other has Jeremy Bentham's. Foucault has a thought bubble that says "Ever feel like you are being watched?" Bentham has a bubble that says "All the time."

If this isn’t hilarious enough for you, perhaps you’d like to send your squirt off to school with a Foucault thermos as a Statement.

a thermos that has the text of "Foucault's Critique" silk screened on the outside [I'd like a criticism of scintillating leaps of imagination. It would not be sovereign or dressed in red. It would bear the lightning of possible storms. ~ Michel Foucault]

(Yes, we have considered “Shut Up, Cafe Press.” OF COURSE WE HAVE. But this is a hobby, you know?)