PETA + KFC = ESI opportunity

Yesterday's papers were all clucking over the news that PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - has finally twisted Kentucky Fried Chicken of Canada's drumsticks painfully enough that the company has pledged to: a) buy only what PETA deems to be humanely scragged poultry (which apparently means gassing it); and b) introduce what the Petfinder called "a vegan, faux-chicken flavoured menu item". How droll.

PETA and point-person Pamela Anderson, who by virtue of having surgically crammed her chest full of dangerously gratuitous plastic products, twice, is an ideal spokes-Barbie for the cause of cruelty to animals, have been after KFC for years on this.

Pam, sweetie: Without even going in to the mental images I see when I hear the term "gassing chickens", for your own good I advise you to plan never to be around when I knock off a pheasant or partridge for tiffin. Not pretty. Yum. I mean, ummmm, now 'scuze me, I have to wipe the drool off of this keyboard thingie, so my claws stop skidding... Ahem. I digress. All better now.

Anyway, with this announcement, I believe I smell a toothsome business opportunity for ESI Global PLC. The Mumumelon® line is doing very nicely, and our new lingerie is taking off... so it's time to diversify. The Globe and Mail reports that KFC's vegan menu option will apparently be some sort of soy-based product, generically labelled 'unchicken'. Sounds inhumane to me, but I'm willing to roll with the market: a contract to supply KFC with this stuff could be worth a little scratch. So here's to dee-lishus ESI ChickUn®, served up on a foam platter with sides of fries, gravy and three-bean salad. By the time we finish breading it with eleven secret herbs and spices and deep-frying it, it'll be almost as healthy as the real thing.

Now. Somebody explain to me: why the hell would vegans want to go to KFC anyway....?

RNDP 9: Inhale

Another reason to postpone a shower?While others are off on solo projects and secret projects with artists from other labels, it looks like I am once again carrying this blog. Fortunately, there is a mountain of material in the quest for an RNDP.

We learn of another new dating paradigm in Welcome to Do Land:

Gifted1: dumb! :-/ you've never heard of IWannaGetChemicalChemical.com? it's a pretty incredible new dating paradigm, they can match you up based on chemistry. they use science.

Karlito: i hear that it's a rip off. my cousin used it and he went on three dates with guys before he realized that he's not gay. n-e-wayz, that's not an issue for me anymore, i am pure mind. i am free of the entanglements of the corrupt fleshy matrix of the world.

4D Analysis: It looks like the folks behind IWannaGetChemicalChemical.com didn't get their venture capital funding. However, there is an outfit called ScientificMatch.com that seem to offer the same service and it seems there is real science behind it. Several studies on pheromones (the most famous of these being the smelly sweatshirt study) have led researchers to conclude that women (who are not taking the birth control pill) are more attracted to the scent of men who share low histocompatibility with them. Histocompatibility is highest when two people have exactly the same immune system genes in the major histocompatibility complex.

In other words, women are more attracted to men who are immune to a different set of diseases than they are. This makes evolutionary sense to the researchers because:

1. A child resulting from the match would have a broader protection to diseases; and
2. The more different the genes in the histocompatibility complex, the more likely that other genes are different, therefore the lower the chance of harmful recessives combining.
   

But what about women taking oral contraceptives? It seems they are more attracted to the scent of men with similar histocompatibility, and not attracted or even repulsed by the scent of men with different histocompatibility.

Maybe it is because the pill tricks the woman's body into believing she is pregnant. Perhaps women have evolved to prefer when they are pregnant having male relatives nearby who will protect the offspring because of their common genetic heritage.

Some eyebrow raising questions:

• Is this what is up with women who don't want sex when they go on the pill? Their men just don't smell right any more?
  
• Should women on the pill stay away from their cousins if they don't want to get into a family scandal?
  
• What about women who are on the pill when they meet a guy they like? Say they decide to have a child together and she goes off the pill. Is she going to find his smell no longer pleasant and attractive?

Next: We'll spend some more time on this smell issue. There is a lot of research to delve into. Some of it done here in Canada and even on our friend Megan.

Memo to Steve: Just Shut Up.

A brief pause from dating paradigm updates to inform all and sundry that it's time for another eco-rant. Us coyotes are feeling out of sorts and heavily slimed, this morning.

I have just heard the PM's flat voice invoke words from Wallace Stegner's Wolf Willow in a say-nothing statement to an environmental conference in Bonn, claiming his government is all hot on protecting this country's wilderness. Huh.

Stegner, before he became a writer's writer, was an American homesteader's kid whose family retreated back to the US after the Dirty Thirties' dust storms blew the farm to hell.

So I gag because Wolf Willow's setting has made it a staple classic of Canadian prairie literature. I love that book. It is a history/memoir written in prose as pure and honest as the south Saskatchewan air, in which Stegner lived the life that became the book. Purity that is, in my view, the exact opposite of the policies of a government that pretends to care about environmental stewardship only so far as this is likely to get it re-elected. Preferably with a majority. I hate that Harper has taken a beautiful thing and publicly mauled it with crude, oily mitts. Protecting Canada's wilderness? Tell the ducks that just drowned in tar sand tailings. Tell the next generation about the way Kyoto was dumped because it interfered with short term 'smart-money' (an oxymoron if ever I've heard one, and I've heard a lotta morons in Ottawa....) economic goals.

Pretending to care about the planet to dodge inconvenient questions about his recently fired foreign affairs minister has to appeal to Harper. He also may have enjoyed the semiotic irony of quoting Stegner, an American, writing about saving the Canadian wilderness. But for all his strategic posturing on the world stage, his government is doing pretty much squat.

Steve. You lying bastard. Stop embarrassing us all. Just shut the fuck up. Seriously.

Photo: Wolf willow, near Calgary, by ocean.flynn on flickr

RNDP 8: Google Love

Our next stop on the quest for an RNDP is Google Love. Reece Dano advocates that Google create a new online matchmaking service leveraging their knowledge of us. While other online dating services suffer from limited pools of available people and self-misrepresentation by the people that are there, everybody uses Google and Google knows "your interests, your true friends, your pet peeves, your neurotic preoccupations" and "probably knows about your ‘private’ sexual proclivities".

4D Analysis: Google would indeed have better data and as much computing power as anyone to throw at this issue. You wouldn't even have to sign up for it as Google already knows if you need help finding a date.

But is Google able to tell what constellation of interests will match with another constellation? For example, a man who loves golf can also love a woman who abhors the game, but a woman who likes camping and mountain climbing should never try to be with a man who doesn't even like sitting in a suburban backyard.

More fundamentally, is a high degree of common interests, opinions and preoccupations a good indication that two people should be together? Or that they will want to stay together?

In my next instalment of the RNDP series, we'll see that there is a growing body of scientific research, and we're talking real science with control groups and test tubes, suggesting we should be looking in a different direction entirely.

Taxi Driver Story II - The Soothsayer

Last Monday, after an amusing evening romp with a mere mortal, I was once again heading home in a taxi.

Unlike my other taxi driver, this fellow allowed me time to settle my dainty derrière into his crackly plastic covered back seat before driving off erratically.

He did not speak, but I was aware that he was staring at me fixedly in his rear-view mirror. “Oh, here we go again,” I thought, sighing lightly in an attempt to conjure up serenity.

Suddenly, he began speaking to me in a loud and passionate voice.

He explained that within a few seconds of seeing someone's face, he knows things about them. It is a gift. He does not see the future; he just sees things as they are.

And since, as you well know, it is a long drive to my home in the woods, I was his captive listener.

If I tried to thank him for what I perceived to be compliments, or to comment that he was correct about certain points, or to insist that certain things that he was relating to me were impossible, he would erupt and spurt, "You cannot argue these things with me. That is reality what I tell you!”

That is Reality

You are a kind person. That is Reality

You are a good person. That is Reality

You see life in black and white and know what you want. That is Reality

You have worked very hard all your life, and now you deserve to have fun. That is Reality

You have been a very good mother, and now it is your time to relax. That is Reality

You have taught your children to be the same kind of person that you are - kind, intelligent, and caring. That is Reality

You are involved with a man who loves to give you kisses everywhere. That is Reality

You are involved with a good and kind man. You will have a very happy, kind relationship. It will last forever. That is Reality

You will be married in 1-5 years. That is Reality

You will have 2 children - a boy and a girl. That is Reality

When you live with this man, every night he will want to be with you. He will cover you with kisses, and he will melt into you. That is Reality

To his suggestive comment about a man melting into me, I reacted, "Hey!"

"What?! That is natural what I tell you! It is on TV, it is on the Internet, it is in the movies - it is everywhere," he responded excitedly while waving both hands up I the air."

Has anyone else caught a ride with this soothsayer?