Squishing Gallo´s Grapes

We all know who Cesar Chavez is, right? Yes! (And if your answer was no, Jeeze! Read a book, will ya?) He was the founder of the United Farm Workers Union, the organization that led a boycott on Gallo Wines 32 years ago because the company was exploiting and mistreating all of its vineyard workers in Sonoma County.

Well, it seems like old habits die hard because Gallo Wines has gone back to its scummy ways. Here is a list of their terribleness:

·When Gallo farm workers in Sonoma County voted overwhelmingly for the UFW in 1994, all of them were full-time workers with benefits. Today, 75 percent of them are temporary employees with no benefits whatsoever.

·All of the Gallos’ Sonoma County farm workers endure chronically low pay. Yet the Gallos are offering a zero wage increase.

·The Gallos deny the overwhelming majority of their workers health coverage, paid holidays and vacations, job security, and grievance rights.

·The Gallos abuse, cheat, and deny these workers benefits, job protections, and humane living conditions in the heart of California’s fabled wine country.

So if Gallo Wines wants to be cheap and scummy, we´ll have to hit em where it hurts. That´s right, it´s time to boycott. Tell America’s wealthiest wine making family that you´re not drinking their swill until until they treat their people with good will.

Click Here to sign the BOYCOTT PETITION, and steer clear of the following beverages:

Anapamu
Andre
Ballatore Spumante
Bartles & Jaymes Coolers
Bella SeraBlack Swan
Boone's Farm
Bridlewood Winery
Burlwood
Carlo Rossi
Cask & Cream Caramel Temptation
Cask & Cream Chocolate Temptation
Copperidge
Da VINCIE & J Gallo Twin Valley
E&J Cognac
E&J Gallo Vineyards
E&J VS Brandy
E&J VSOP Brandy
Ecco Domani
Ernest & Julio Gallo Twin Valley Vineyards
Frei Brothers
Frei Brothers Reserve
Gallo Estate
Gallo Fairbanks
Gallo Livingston Cellars
Gallo of Sonoma
Gallo of Sonoma County Series
Gallo of Sonoma Estate Series
Gallo of Sonoma Single Vineyard
Gallo Sheffield Cellars
Gallo Vermouth
Gossamer Bay
Indigo HillsI
ndigo Hills Blanc de Blancs
Liberty Creek
Livingston Cellars
Louis M. Martini
MacMurray Ranch
Marcelina
McWilliams Hanwood Estate
Mirassou
Napa Valley Vineyards
Peter Vella
Rancho Zabaco
Rancho Zabaco Winery:
Red Bicyclette
Redwood Creek
Tott's
Turning Leaf
Turning Leaf Coastal Reserve
Whitehaven
Wild Vines
William Wycliff

Great White Hope

YARG!!!! That is one nasty lookin critter. I hope I never have to see that up close and personal. Poor great whites. They´re ugly, they´re smelly, and they´ve got a pretty bad rep, but that doesn´t mean they´re not cool. These things are the perfect predator, which is why they´re so damn scary. They can smell a drop of blood from miles away. They have electromagnetic sensors, which means no matter how still and quiet you are they can still sense your heart beating (creepy). When they lose one of their 3000 teeth, another one grows back in its place. Their ancestors were ginormous (estimated to be between 40 to 100 feet long) monsters called megalodons, which may or may not still exist in the deepest depths of the oceans. And their beedy eyes and solitary nature liken them to quiet, hardened criminals patrolling the prison for the stool pigeon who put them there.

Yep, evolution has been good to sharks, and you´re not around since the time of dinosaurs without learning a thing or two about a thing or two. For example, I was sitting in a hostal in Glasgow, Scotland when I heard this little doozy. A young Australian was talking about how some guy was swimming off the coast of Australia when out of nowhere a great white comes up from under him. The shark swallowed the man up to about his mid body when it realized that this wasn´t the tasety little morsel it was hoping he would be (like a blubber laden seal). So the shark spit the guy up. Now that is a near death experience I never want to live through.

So all in all, sharks are pretty neat. You probably wouldn´t want to meet one in a dark alley or a brightly lit beach, but they´re still a force of nature worth learning about. And for all you fans out there, here´s Radar Magazine´s step-by-step guide to becoming crudités of the sea, reported by Matthew Thompson.

There are many, many reasons you might want to get bitten by a shark, a pastime that’s become increasingly trendy this summer. For starters, it’s a far less humiliating way of getting famous than appearing on a reality show. Not to mention all the weight you’d lose.

Trouble is, the odds of actually getting bitten are roughly equal to winning the lottery. But like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play. Here are some simple proactive measures you can take to maximize your odds of an aquatic altercation.

1. WEAR SHINY JEWELERY Sharks, like subway chain snatchers, are attracted to flashy bling. This is why you have never seen Mr. T swimming.

2. STICK TO MURKY WATER The Australian government, which ought to know, claims sharks favor “turbid” or “silt-laden” water. When 14-year-old Lydia Paulk danced the incisor tango off the coast of Texas recently, she was picking up beer bottles from the ocean floor, which kicked up sand. If you’re not in Texas—and, thus, the water is beer-bottle free—small shells and loose rocks make an acceptable, albeit less classy, substitute.

3. STAY HORIZONTAL Use a flotation device if need be. The more you stay on your back or stomach, the more you’ll resemble a seal, the animal most deserving of the title “nature’s burrito,” should National Geographic ever bestow such an honor.

4. SWIM LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SWAM BEFORE Seriously. Be creative. Load your bathing suit up with jellyfish if you have to. Remember, the more you helplessly splash around, the more weak, defenseless and delicious you’ll appear.

5. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION Long favored by fisherman, rivers emptying into the ocean are also prime hunting grounds for sharks. A choppy spot with birds dive bombing on the surface? Could mean a feeding frenzy below. A dorsal fin zigzagging to ominous orchestral accompaniment? This, too, could indicate the presence of a shark. Stay alert, read the ocean, and plan your approach accordingly.

6. COORDINATE YOUR WARDROBE Bright, contrasting colors are to the ocean what tube tops and belly rings are to the dance floor. “I’m easy, please eat me,” they telegraph to sharks, as if they were overly fragrant men from New Jersey.

7. CULTIVATE IRONY Donate money to your local “Save The Sharks” charity. Eat shark fin soup every day for a week. Get a law degree. How will this increase your chances of getting bitten? It won’t. But it will add much needed levity to your dismemberment and set you apart from 16 year-old Craig Hutto, who, before his foray into edibility last month, was just another redneck waist-deep in the Gulf of Mexico.

8. BE PATIENT You may want to pack a lunch and bring an extra battery for your cell phone. With only 61 shark attacks worldwide last year, the odds of you actually getting bitten are about one in one hundred million. But here’s hoping!

Source: Radar Magazine Online, July 20, 2005

Drawing High on the Hog

There are lots of weird people in the world, but this guy is one oink away from the funny farm.

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Tattoos of mermaids and roses, cherubs bearing crimson hearts, Lenin's head and the trademarked pattern of French luxury brand Louis Vuitton stand out against bright pink skin soaking in the sun outside Beijing.

This living gallery of skin art is not on display for a tattooists' convention or a Harley-Davidson fan club meeting. It is an everyday sight in Chenjiatuo village and is borne on the flesh of some unlikely subjects -- big, fat pigs.

The idea was cooked up by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye, who has hired a small staff of local farmers and tattoo artists to raise some 20 sows and use them as canvases for skin art at his rustic China base, Art Farm.

"I decided to do something in China first, and I realized tattooing pigs would be a good introduction to the country. It's low-tech," Delvoye, 40, told Reuters.

The pigs get sedatives before they go under the needle and are carefully raised until their natural deaths, normally well past the six-month mark when farm pigs are slaughtered.
Collectors can buy the pigs live and pay for their keep as "foster parents" or simply purchase their tattoo-festooned skins for display after the pigs pass.

"The Art Farm is a real enterprise and by selling, eventually, the skins, the whole thing gets financed and I can go on," said Delvoye, who has pushed other artistic boundaries with previous works.

Mortality is a primary theme in the porky "paintings".

"Tattoos remind you of death. It's leaving something permanent on something non-permanent," he said. "Even when tattooing flowers, there is a morbid side to the activity."

He has tattooed pigs off and on in Europe and Indonesia for a decade, but in booming China Delvoye sees a perfect environment for steady production.

In turn, he has been unexpectedly inspired by the country -- from its burgeoning art scene to the rampant piracy of everything from DVDs to Paris's latest fashions, which is behind the Louis Vuitton-patterned pigs.

"We saw all these fake Louis Vuitton designer bags. You always read in newspapers about other countries complaining about these fakes and then, as an artist, I'm interested in what's fake and what's real," Delvoye said.

"I like to play with ownership rights."

Funny gringo

With fans and radiators in their pens and plenty of food and running water on the farm, the pigs enjoy better living conditions than millions of China's rural poor, even many people in Chenjiatuo, a situation he admits some locals find "crazy".

Still, Delvoye says he has been welcomed, in part because he has given gainful employment to several villagers.

"They love me here. They think I'm a funny gringo," he said.

Wang Chao, 20, followed his father to a job on the farm, which on a scorching summer day meant following several pigs and rubbing sun-block lotion on their sensitive, patterned backs.

"These pigs live very well," Wang said, admitting he did not really understand the meaning of Delvoye's work.

"He's part of the neighborhood now. It's good to work together and understand each other," Wang's tanned, thickly built father said.

For Delvoye, the pigs and the farm represent just the start of his China ambitions.

He is working on a new, larger Art Farm with the space to raise more pigs and crops to feed them. Typical for China's dynamic building boom, construction is set to begin around the end of July and the farm should be finished in September.

"I did a similar thing in Belgium and it took two years," he said.

The new farm will also have video cameras to allow collectors or anyone else to watch the tattooed pigs cavort and sleep live on the Internet, a program he has dubbed "Pig Brother".

For his next project, Delvoye plans to tap China's mighty factories to have 5,000 anatomically correct, Barbie-like dolls in his likeness made in Shenzhen, a southern manufacturing hub.

"I tattoo pigs here today, but maybe tomorrow I do something else. Anything is possible," he said.

"I'm only warming up."

Source: CNN.com, July 26, 2005

Saving Our Flippered Friends

In last month´s edition of La Justa Pulp, in an entry called The Government is Trying to Destroy Our Oceans AGAIN, I alerted you to a dangerous proposal in the Energy Bill that will allow seismic testing along the entire American coastline to explore for oil and gas.

In case you missed that entry, here´s what you should know:

Seismic blasts have a decibel level of 260 - that's more than 14 times as loud as a rocket launch! Whales, dolphins and other marine mammals rely on their sense of hearing to navigate, to locate food and to communicate with each other. Seismic blasts could cause deafening disorientation and could lead to permanent damage, brain hemorrhaging and even cause entire pods of whales and dolphins to beach.

Pretty sick, huh? Well, despite the fact that over 10,500 people contacted their senators last month, the senate voted against including an amendment that would have removed seismic surveys from the Energy Bill by a margin of 44 to 52.

But now we´ve got a second chance! By clicking DOLPHINS AND WHALES ROCK!, you will be instantly transported to the Greenpeace website, where you can send your senators a message letting them know that exposing marine mammals to life-threatening seismic blasts is unacceptable. But be quick about it! The senate will be voting again on the proposal this week! Time is of the essence!

The Unreal World

by Jennifer L. Pozner

In this summer’s defanged revamp of The Stepford Wives, impossibly thin, impeccably dressed and intellectually vapid women exist for no other reason than to cater to their husbands’ every desire, delivering fresh-baked cookies and midday nookie with equal aplomb.

The film banked over $30 million in its first week of release, but if viewers wanted to watch independent women reduced to domestic drones they could have kept their cash and turned on “reality TV.” Nearly every night, on every network, dating, mating and makeover shows routinely glorify the same stereotypes lampooned in Stepford.

On ABC’s The Bachelor, a husband-hunting harem competes to marry a hunky lunkhead. “Ugly ducklings” risk their health to be surgically altered on Fox’s The Swan and ABC’s Extreme Makeover.

Women of color are ostracized for being “difficult” on UPN’s America’s Next Top Model, while slurs like “bitch” and “beaver” are tossed around freely on NBC’s Average Joe and For Love or Money.

The more profitable so-called unscripted programming grows, the more poisonous its representations of women become. Back in 2000, when Darva Conger wed (and quickly ditched) a purportedly rich stranger on Fox’s Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, the stunt was roundly criticized as cheap and chauvinistic, and the network promised to stop airing such exploitative fare.

Yet by February 2003, Fox was devoting 41 percent of its “sweeps” offerings to reality shows. Multi-Millionaire producer Mike Darnell was promoted to executive VP of alternative programming, creating Married by America (women get engaged to strangers by slipping their ring fingers through a hole in a wall on a TV soundstage) and Joe Millionaire (a supposedly rich guy turns out to be a financial Average Joe).

Forty million viewers made the latter show’s finale Fox’s highest rated entertainment program ever. It’s easy to understand what network execs see in reality shows — high ratings, low production costs and lucrative product-placement revenues — and why they deny that the shows are meaningful in any other way.

Occasionally, though, someone unwittingly tells the truth, as Darnell did when he informed Entertainment Weekly that the formula for every successful reality show is an easily understandable premise steeped in some social belief that provokes an audience reaction of “Oh, my god! …What’s wrong with you?”

Brainiac in a bikini?

Viewers may be drawn to reality TV by a sort of cinematic schadenfreude, but they continue to tune in because these shows frame their narratives in ways that both reflect and reinforce deeply ingrained societal biases about women, men, love, beauty, class and race. The genre teaches us that women categorically “are” certain things — for example, no matter their age, they’re “hot girls,” not self- aware or intelligent adults.

To prove them desirably dumb, old-time game-show host Wink Martindale conducted a condescending “smarts test” on NBC’s Meet My Folks, scolding female contestants who incorrectly answered questions like “When was the War of 1812?” or “How many days are there in a typical year?”

Yet when women aren’t embarrassingly stupid, they’re condemned for being smart: Just before eliminating medical student Elyse from UPN’s America’s Next Top Model, host Tyra Banks chided, “One thing with [your] intelligence is that it can intimidate people.”
No one wants to see a brainiac in a bikini in reality televsion. In this unreal world, women aren’t just stupid — they’re also catty and bitchy.

“The backstabbing begins!” a Bachelor promo announces. Cats hiss as a Joe Millionaire preview promises, “The claws come out.” “Girls can be conniving, deceiving and vicious,” one harem girl says; “I know better than to trust women,” another echoes.

Extended intros and “stay-tuned” teasers teach us that women are “money-grubbing, gold-digging whores,” as one Bachelor babe was described. If reality TV portrays women as whores, then the networks are their pimps, providing men with sexy singles in hopes they’ll get frisky on cue, as on Fox’s tawdry Temptation Island.

Media profit off of women’s humiliation, as in Married by America’s climactic money shot, where cameras close in on the tear-soaked face of a jilted bride as she stares off into space, glassy-eyed and broken, whispering, “I’m a joke.”

The Bachelor ’s cheerfully cruel teaser, “Who will get sent home brokenhearted? Find out!” is repeated ad nauseum, and in reunion specials, alumnae rejectees are forced to watch mortifying montages of their most pitiful moments (“I’m a loser!”), while the host says in mock concern: “Wow, that must be uncomfortable for you.”

Weepers, Sluts and Divas

The same themes pop up, often verbatim, in nearly every reality series, belying claims of unscripted storytelling. Producers cast for type, choosing contestants they can mold into a predetermined slate of characters.

There’s the Antagonizer, who declares she’s “not here to make friends”; the naive Waif, who’s “searching for my Prince Charming”; the Slut who plots to “take our connection to the next level” in the “fantasy suite”; and the wretched Weeper who wonders, when she’s dumped, “What’s so wrong with me that someone cannot love me?”

These characters behave as crassly as they do in large part because producers of shows such as The Bachelor deprive them of all contact with the outside world (participants are not allowed to read newspapers, watch TV, listen to the radio or make phone calls while filming) and ply them with alcohol, then goad them to unleash their petty grievances in filmed “confessionals.”

Misleading production tricks top off the editorial sleight of hand. According to the Bravo exposé The Reality of Reality, when Joe Millionaire ditched the cameras to sneak off into the woods with one woman, producers threw the words “ummm,” “slurp” and “gulp” on-screen, along with “chikachika- pow-wow” music and dialogue recorded on another day, all to (falsely) imply that his date performed oral sex to get her hands on his, er, cash.

Not only are the women cast on these shows supposed to be hot, dumb and licentious, but they’re also, for the most part, white. Producers manufacture a fractured reality that looks nothing like America.

Women of color are tokenized and often eliminated shortly after each series debut. Non-Western features are reprimanded, then “corrected”: A black woman’s lips were reduced on Extreme Makeover, The Swan “softened” an Asian woman’s eyes, and American Idol judge Simon Cowell repeatedly asserted that African American singer Kimberly Locke didn’t have the right “image” to become a pop star — until Idol stylists relaxed her kinky hair.

“Ever since you got rid of that weird hair, you got better. You look cute now!” Cowell crowed.
When included in any prolonged way, women of color are used to stroke classic racial stereotypes. On Profiles From the Front Line, a show that followed U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the only black woman featured was portrayed as the military’s mammy — a cook who described herself as “a bitch in the kitchen” who enjoys keeping soldier boys “happy and fed.”
More common is the hypersensitive “sista with attitude” whom everyone hates, such as Apprentice villain Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth and Top Model diva Camille McDonald.
Ethnicity isn’t the only cultural indicator whitewashed on reality TV, where modern fairy tales marinate in socioeconomic anxiety. On NBC’s Meet My Folks, parents choose their sons’ dates from among a gaggle of girlie girls who sleep in the “folks’” lavish homes, languish by their pools and make out in their hot tubs.

The catch? The mini-mansions do not belong to “the folks,” whom producers relocate so as to erase any trace of an ordinary, middle-class lifestyle.

But that’s not surprising, since love and finance are inextricably linked in these shows. A bevy of gorgeous “girls” is invariably matched with one “rich, successful” bachelor (or a penniless poser). During their “romantic journeys,” hopeful brides are decked out in expensive gowns, ferried about in horse-drawn carriages and festooned with Harry Winston diamonds.

The call of these luxury contrivances is powerful — and infantilizing. There’s something ridiculous about watching grown women masquerading as would-be Cinderellas hoping to snag some suburban Prince Charming.

Where women are valued as “perfect 10s” simply for being pretty, passive and intellectually unthreatening, reality TV tells us that all men need is wealth — their own, or an illusion borrowed from producers — to be Mr. Right. Sometimes they literally ride in on a white horse, other times in a pricey sports car.

Forget about decency, honesty or intelligence — the primary criteria to qualify as a reality- TV Prince is a firm ass and a firmer financial portfolio. This standard not only demeans women, but thoroughly underestimates men’s inherent worth as people.

Further, reality-TV “studs” are praised when they’re downright degrading to their female pursuers. Joe Millionaire made his dates shovel horse shit in their fancy clothing, while one of NBC’s Average Joes called the woman he was wooing a “beaver” behind her back (“It’s a slang term meaning a very beautiful, hot, sexy girl,” he insisted).

Most egregious was For Love or Money’s Rob Campos, who got drunk and made a woman bend over and remove his boots while he kicked her in the ass. Producers might have predicted such behavior if they’d done a background check: Campos was booted out of the Marines for groping a female officer while intoxicated.

Flaw Finders

Dangerous beauty myths are fundamental to the reality universe, where women are unworthy of love and happiness if they’re not stereotypical hot babes. This was confirmed on Married by America when cameras followed a couple into their bedroom and spied the woman begging her withholding “fiancé” for sex.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered to him, her insecurities amplified in subtitles. “I’m successful. I have a good personality. Or, do you want me to wear sexier clothes and lose 30 pounds, too?”

Women’s reality-TV worth is literally weighed and measured, as when judges on ABC’s short-lived Are You Hot?: The Search for America’s Sexiest People aimed a laser “flaw finder” at the bodies of scantily clad women to determine who scored a 9.9 for “face, body and sex appeal,” and who rated only a lowly 5.3.

On America’s Next Top Model, frighteningly underweight girls were praised for their gangly physiques, while standard-sized contestants were derided as “plus-sized” at 5 foot 8 and 130 pounds.

The Swan — which shows women going under the knife for an absurd number of potentially dangerous plastic surgery procedures — institutionalizes eating disorders by forcing women who are barely overweight to exercise excessively and go on 1,300-calorie-a-day diets.

When one contestant protests because “I think I look really damn good,” her coach — series creator Nely Galan — angrily labels her self-acceptance as laziness.

More disturbingly, The Swan promises to transform emotionally at-risk women “from the inside out” by sending them to a therapist — who actually who got her Ph.D. from an unaccredited “diploma mill.”

Perhaps that’s why “counseling” sessions seemed more like harassment (“Stick to the program!” “Stop complaining!”), and why this “doctor” endorsed liposuction as a way to help a former battered woman “break the cycle of violence.”

New-Millennium Backlash

Frivolous as reality TV may seem, the psychological browbeating these shows engage in has political ramifications. They reinforce insecurities bred into women by decades of inaccurate media reports of “man shortages” and brokendown biological clocks.

“You always hear those horror stories: 40 and single! I don’t want that!” said one booted bachelorette. The genre’s scare message to self-sufficient women is that they need to make themselves as attractive and nonthreatening as possible, or else Mr. Right will be snatched up by one of 24 cuter and more compliant chicks, and they will be left alone and miserable.
Welcome to the backlash, new-millennium style.

Underneath their pretty promises of “true love” and “fairytale” transformations, producers construct these shows to drive home the notion that no emotional, professional or political accomplishment can possibly compare with the twin vocations of beauty and marriage.
They want women to think like June Cleaver, look like Miss America and — in a nod to modernity — have sex like Madonna. Hello, Stepford.

Apologists claim reality TV isn’t sexist because no one forces women to appear on these shows. But the impact on the shows’ participants is almost beside the point: The real concern is the millions of viewers, scores of whom are young girls, who take in these misogynistic spectacles uncritically, learning that only the most stereotypically beautiful, least independent women with the lowest-carb diets will be rewarded with love, financial security and the ultimate prize of male validation.

Perhaps saddest of all, real love is almost wholly absent from these artificial mating dances. What little girl dreams of being whisked away by a callous, egotistical dimwit who sticks his tongue down 15 other women’s throats before he reluctantly settles for her?

After all the happily-ever-after buildup, every bachelor has dumped his “chosen girl” shortly after their series wrapped production. That’s the thing about fairy tales … they’re not real.
In the end, these programs present a trivial and depressing depiction of the concept of love itself. The equation Fat Wallet + Skinny Chick = Love robs us all of our humanity, and erases the possibility of true emotional connection.

Source: Ms. Magazine, Fall 2004

The Plame Game

by John Aravosis

On Monday, during the daily White House press briefing, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan was answering a question when NBC’s David Gregory cut him off. “If you’ll let me finish…” McClellan said. Then the unthinkable occurred. A reporter didn’t simply succumb to the administration’s heavy-handed press wrangling, rolling over, as the press corps has been doing for years, letting lies about Al Qaeda links to Saddam Hussein and the motivations for the war in Iraq go unchallenged. What happened then is that the gaggle grew a pair. “No, you’re not finishing,” Gregory snapped at McClellan, “because you’re not saying anything.”

The subject of that heated exchange was Karl Rove and his involvement in the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame nearly two years ago. Plame’s husband, former U.S. ambassador to Gabon Joseph Wilson, says Rove blew his wife’s cover in retaliation for Wilson having publicly doubted the Bush administration’s claims (since proved false) that Saddam Hussein was shopping for nuclear material in Africa. “You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved,” Gregory said Monday. “And now we find out that he spoke [to Time’s Matt Cooper] about Joseph Wilson’s wife. So don’t you owe the American public a fuller explanation? Was he involved or was he not?”

“There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time,” McClellan demured, which led a disgusted Gregory to mutter, “This is ridiculous.”

Another reporter at the briefing reminded McClellan that in June 2004 President Bush claimed he would fire anybody involved in the leak. McClellan responded, “We’re not going to get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation from this podium.” During the briefing McClellan employed that same answer several dozen times.

John Roberts of CBS News was next in line to turn the screws—and he had dates! Roberts noted that in September 2003, well after the investigation had begun, McClellan was clearly talking about it. In fact, he stated that any White House employee involved in the leak would be fired. “And then,” Roberts continued, ”on June 10 of 2004…in the midst of this investigation, the president made his comment that, yes, he would fire anybody from the White House who was involved. So why have you commented on this during the process of the investigation in the past, but now you’re suddenly drawing a curtain around it?”

Terry Moran of ABC News started off conciliatory, but soon turned gruff. “You’re in a bad spot here, Scott,” Moran said, reminding McClellan that he’d stood up before that very press corps after the investigation had begun and assured them that he’d spoken to Rove, national security aide Elliot Abrams, and Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who had all sworn they weren’t the leaker.

“Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of a criminal investigation?” Moran asked.
By this point McClellan had dug a deeper hole for the administration than he may have realized. Rove’s attorney claims that he is not the target of the special prosecutor’s investigation. More than likely this is just hair-splitting about whether Rove is the target or a target, or a person of interest in the investigation, or whatever. But splitting hairs is what white-shoe hired guns are paid handsomely to do. Rove split a few of his own when discussing his involvement in the Plame case with CNN last year. “I didn’t know her name,” he said. “I didn’t leak her name.” Maybe not, but Rove did tell Cooper that “Wilson’s wife” worked at the CIA. To suggest that he didn’t identify her only because he didn’t actually utter her name is positively Clintonian.

After 48 hours of silence, the GOP shook off its momentary daze and circled the wagons, singing Rove’s praise. RNC chairman Ken Mehlman went on CNN and asserted, incredibly, that Rove was in fact not the leaker, never mind that Rove’s lawyer had already all but admitted he was. The Wall Street Journal called Rove a heroic whistle-blower. (You can never have enough White House staffers outing CIA agents in a time of war.)

But they’ll have to be a little more convincing in their next media assault as Rove might be in real trouble. In addition to obstruction of justice, perjury (if Rove or anyone else lied to the grand jury) and conspiracy (if the White House tried to conceal his wrongdoing) charges, the stakes also include the not-so-small issue of Rove’s security clearance. Both Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have called on President Bush to yank Rove’s security clearance until the investigation is concluded. Outing a CIA agent is bad enough. But intentionally ruining the career of an undercover spy who works on weapons of mass destruction while we’re at war on that very issue, putting hundreds of her contacts around the world at risk, and doing it as part of a penny-ante political vendetta—that takes a special kind of disregard for national security.

How it makes one long for a simpler era, when justice was worth obstructing only for higher purposes. Like blow jobs.

Source: Radar Magazine Online, July 14, 2005

Cunning Like a Skunk

Anyone who isn´t hibernating has heard of CIA Agent Valerie Plame and how she was outted by that Skunkus Maximus Karl Rove, but just in case you have been asleep since the fall and living off of your accumulated body fat, here´s the back story:

2001
The Italian government's intelligence agency obtains documents that appear to show that Iraqi officials attempted to buy yellowcake, a substance that can be enriched to produce weapons-grade uranium, from the African nation Niger. The evidence is shared with British and U.S. intelligence.

February 2002
February: The CIA, in response to concerns raised by Vice President Cheney's office, looks into British reports that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. CIA officials dispatch ex-diplomat Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate.

March 2002
After an eight-day trip to Africa, Wilson reports to the CIA that he believes the allegations are "bogus." The agency sends a March 9 memo to the White House summarizing Wilson's findings.

October 2002
Both the House and the Senate pass resolutions authorizing the use of force against Iraq. Many members of Congress mention the specter of an Iraqi nuclear threat as a reason; several Senators cite as especially persuasive the British intelligence report claiming Iraq sought uranium from Africa.

January 2003
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice writes an impassioned Op-Ed for the New York Times calling Iraq's 12,200-page weapons declaration to the U.N. in December nothing more than a "lie" that "fails to account for or explain Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad."

Bush's State of the Union address includes the statement "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" but doesn't mention that U.S. agencies questioned the validity of the British intelligence.

February 2003
Speaking before the U.N., U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell conspicuously drops the Administration's earlier allegations of an Iraq-Africa uranium connection, later explaining that he didn't think the evidence strong enough to "present before the world."

March 2003
Less than two weeks before the Iraq war begins, International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei tells the U.N. Security Council that the claim is based on papers that are forged.

July 2003
In a scolding Op-Ed in the New York Times, Wilson reveals, more than a year after his mission, that he is the retired diplomat who visited Niger. He charges that the Administration had "twisted" intelligence to "exaggerate" the Iraqi threat. The next day the White House admits that the nuke claim should not have been in the State of the Union address.

Secretary of State Colin Powell boards Air Force One for a trip to Africa with the President. Either just before or during that trip, Powell is given a memo concerning Wilson's Niger probe. The memo, prepared by State Department officials in June in reaction to media stories about the trip, says Wilson's wife works for the CIA and refers to her as Valerie Wilson.

Karl Rove discusses Wilson's trip and the role that Wilson's wife may or may not have played in initiating that trip with journalist Robert Novak. The telephone call, according to a New York Times story published last week, had been initiated by Novak, who in the course of his conversation with Rove identified Wilson's wife by her maiden name.

Rove discusses the same topic with TIME correspondent Matthew Cooper. The same day, CIA Director George Tenet says mea culpa for not cutting the Niger claim from Bush's speech, citing pressure from the National Security Council (NSC). Within days, NSC deputy Stephen Hadley says he forgot seeing two memos from the agency expressing doubts about the intelligence.

In his syndicated column, Novak outs Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as an "agency operative on weapons of mass destruction" in a piece about the fallout from Wilson's Op-Ed. He writes, "Two senior Administration officials told me that his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger to investigate."

Cooper co-authors a TIME.com story under the headline "A War on Wilson?". It examines the White House's attempts to discredit the former ambassador, which include charges that Wilson was woefully naive, as well as Wilson's defense, which includes the rejoinder, "These guys really need to get serious."

September 2003
The Justice Department informs then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales that it has opened an investigation into unauthorized--and possibly criminal--actions concerning the disclosure of the identity of an undercover CIA employee.

October 2003
As the scandal spreads, White House spokesman Scott McClellan is asked, Did Rove and other White House sources ever discuss Plame with reporters? McClellan: "Those individuals assured me they were not involved in this."

June 2004
During a news conference in Sea Island, Ga., at the conclusion of a G-8 summit, Bush answers very directly "Yes" to a journalist's unambiguous question, "Do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found" to have leaked CIA operative Plame's name?

July 2005
TIME magazine agrees to comply with a court order to turn over Cooper's notes, e-mail and other documents. TIME had fought the order all the way to the Supreme Court, which, on June 27, declined to hear the case.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan jails N.Y. Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to testify before the grand jury. Cooper agrees to comply, saying he had received a specific waiver from his source to do so.

TIME correspondent Cooper testifies, detailing his conversations with Rove. "I testified honestly and openly," says Cooper as he emerges after more than two hours of questioning.

Source: Time Magazine, July 17, 2005

So what can we learn from all of this? That´s right, that Rove is a Skunkus Maximus who would put America and Valerie´s safety at risk just to settle a political score with her husband.

What´s really sick is that the White House has strenuously denied that Rove had anything to do with it. They also said that they would fire the person responsible. But now the word is out and Rove has admitted to being the skunkiest skunk in the room, there still hasn´t been any firing. Could this be because the President doesn´t really give a rat´s ass about our safety or Valerie Plame and that he really just wants to keep that grizzelled, stinky, rabid little Rove by his side forever more. Yes, I think that´s it. But Skunk Boy has done a bad bad thing, and now he´s gonna have to pay. Hopefully by losing his job and spending some time in prison. We shall see.

In the meantime, keep the pressure on Bush. There are lots of online petitions. I urge you to sign all of them by clicking on the names of each of the sponsoring organizations:

MoveOn.org

John Kerry

True Majority Action

The Democratic Party

Don´t Hate Those Who Educate

A prominent human rights activist who campaigned for the rights of people withHIV/AIDS has been murdered in what appears to have been a homophobic hate crimein the central Mexican city of Queretaro. His partner and other activists forthe rights of sexual minorities in the city are in danger.

Health worker Octavio Acuna campaigned on various human rights issues, and also worked for the Quereteran Association for Sexual Education. On June 21, 2005, he was found bleeding to death from multiple stab wounds in the condom shop he ran in Queretaro. The shop was also a center for young people to get information on sexual rights and HIV/AIDS issues. Nothing was reportedly stolen from the shop, indicating that the motive was not robbery.

Local human rights organizations have also reported that another gay rights activist was drugged and beaten on the weekend following Octavio Acuna's murder in what may also have been a homophobic attack. In the past the authorities have reportedly treated attacks on gay people as "crimes of passion," seeking to blame them on the victims' partners or other members of the gay community,without carrying out serious impartial investigations to establish whether the offenses were hate crimes.

Source: Amnesty International

To let Mexican Authorities know that hate crimes should not be tolerated, copy and paste the letter at the bottom of this entry (or write your own) and email it to:

Francisco Garrido Patron
Governor of the State of Queretaro
uaippe@queretaro.gob.mx

Lic. Juan Martin Granados Torres
Attorney General of Queretaro State
pgjq@queretaro.gob.mx

Lic. Pablo Enrique Vargas Gomez
President of the state human rights commission
presidencia@cedhqro.org

I would translate this into Spanish, but I´m to lazy:

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to express my concern that the murder of Octavio Acuna on 21 June may have been a homophobic hate crime, and I am requesting an immediate, impartial and thorough investigation.

The local authorities must guarantee the safety of Mr. Acuna´s partner, members of the Asociacion Queretana de Educacion para la Sexualidad and others campaigning for the rights of sexual minorities in the city. I hope the government will make the eithical decision to provide them with the protection they have requested.

I insist that all lines of investigation into the murder of Octavio Acuna and other apparent hate crimes be followed impartially and effectively, so that partners or other members of the gay community are not unfairly blamed or harassed.

In closing, I would like to remind you that the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders recognizes the legitimacy of the activities of human rights defenders and their right to carry out their activities without any restrictions or fear of reprisals.

Thank you for your time,

[Your Name Here]

Thanks for taking two minutes out of your day for trying to make this world a better place for everyone, no matter who they snuggle up to late at night!

Mad as Hell About Mad Cow

Nearly two weeks after tests confirmed that a Texas cow was infected with mad cow disease—the second time that a downer cow, one too sick or injured to walk, was diagnosed with the brain-wasting disease in the United States—the U.S. Department of Agriculture has still not finalized a ban to keep downers out of the human food supply. Today, The HSUS and Farm Sanctuary filed a legal petition with the USDA to urge the agency to issue a permanent ban on the processing of downer cattle, arguing that the USDA has ample authority to do so.

The USDA certainly has enough evidence to justify a permanent ban. In December 2003, the United States had to grapple with its first case of mad cow disease after a downed cow in Washington State was diagnosed with bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The USDA appeared to grasp the dangers right from the start, quickly publishing a temporary emergency rule banning the processing of downer cattle. At that time, the USDA also suggested that a final rule would be forthcoming, but some 18 months later, it has still not surfaced, despite widespread public and Congressional support for such a policy. The second U.S. mad cow case now confirms what experts have been saying for years: Downed cattle are more susceptible to mad cow disease.

Banning downed cattle from the human food supply not only protects the public health, but it also promotes the humane treatment of cows. Downed animals sent to slaughter suffer immeasurably. They're often forced to walk with broken bones and other painful injuries, or when they can't move, the animals are forcibly dragged by chains or pushed by a bulldozer. A permanent ban on processing downed cattle would provide an incentive for producers to improve the handling and care of animals to make sure they don't go down in the first place.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns has indicated that he supports finalizing a downer ban, but has also stated that before he makes any decision, he will carefully review public comments that the USDA has received on the downer ban. If so, he'll find that more than 99% of the approximately 22,000 public comments support a permanent ban on keeping downers out of the human food supply. Please thank Secretary Johanns for his comments in support of the downer ban, and let him know that you support a permanent ban by clicking here.

Source: The Humane Society of the United States

Historical Pictorial

Tanslation: 1945 Hitler Dies
1975 Franco (Spanish Dictator) Dies
Every 30 years an asshole falls
2005 It´s your turn!

Beating Around the Bush

I find the following piece very interesting. It´s just conjecture, but still, doesn´t it have a ring of truth to it:

Did the president secure Osama Bin Laden’s safety with a kiss? Ever since CIA chief Porter Goss admitted to Time magazine three weeks ago that he has “an excellent idea” where the top terrorist is hiding, but can’t go after him because of “sanctuaries in sovereign states and fair play,” the chatter among Capitol Hill Democrats is that Osama Bin Laden remains at large because he’s hiding in Bush’s blind spot: Saudi Arabia.

“Sanctuaries in sovereign nations and fair play? These have never been things that this administration has been concerned about,” one Democratic congressman tells Radar, requesting anonymity. “There is a lot of evidence from what Goss has said publicly, and our President’s relationship with the Saudi Royal family, that warrants an investigation into where he’s actually hiding, including Saudi Arabia. The Democrats don’t want to appear too hysterical with this, so we’re taking our time to find out the facts.”

If the man responsible for killing 3,000 Americans is in Saudi Arabia it presents a unique problem for the petrol-rich president, the congressman points out. “Who can forget the kiss between Bush and [Saudi Crown] Prince Abdullah two months ago when they sat down to talk about ‘oil prices?’ Well, since then, oil prices have skyrocketed to 60 bucks a barrel! The Saudis literally have the President by the balls.”

Since one of Bin Laden’s stated goals is the overthrow of the House of Saud, it’s unlikely the royal family is sheltering him, but the glut of radical Wahabbists in the kingdom who would happily take him in makes the scenario a distinct possibility, the congressman said. Moreover, Bush knows that going into Saudi Arabia for Bin Laden would almost certainly spark a civil war and global oil crisis. “If he was in Pakistan and the Pakistanis knew it than they would be obligated to arrest him immediately, and they would. But if he made it back to Saudi Arabia, and the administration knows this, than they have a real problem with the Saudis and with the American people.”

Source: Radar Magazine Online, 07/06/05

Pombo = Scumbo

Why do the Republicans want to destroy the planet? I mean, these guys seem pretty hell bent on raping the Earth of her natural resources and killing everything on her in the process. Look at Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA) and cronies. They´re drafting legislation that would weaken the Endangered Species Act.

What have the endangered species done to you, Rep. Pombo? Cause it´s pretty clear what you want to do to them:

For hundreds of species, including the bald eagle, the peregrine falcon, the gray wolf and the grizzly bear, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is working. It has increased their numbers or halted their spiral toward extinction by protecting habitat and energizing conservation efforts.

Yet, some in Congress continue to pound away at the ESA, attempting to weaken its provisions by drafting legislation that takes direct aim at the ESA with flawed analysis and exaggerated conclusions.

These efforts to "reform" the Act would not help species or offer new conservation incentives to landowners. Instead, new draft legislation would allow species to come off the endangered species list without having fully recovered.

We can improve the ESA without weakening its core protections by:

- Creating more incentives for landowners across the country to conserve species under the ESA.
– Providing states with the resources and flexibility to work with landowners to protect endangered species.
- Cutting red tape to help landowners help species more easily.

Source: www.environmentaldefense.org

Click on Scumbo´s name to let your your representative that you don´t like what Pombo is up to.

If the Glove Doesn´t Fit...

My last few entries have been a little on the silly side, and trust me, for as much as I love to bring you strange stuff I've found on the web, I think it's time to turn back to some more serious matters. I promise I'll bring back the bizarre and ridiculous just as soon as I can.

For now, let's talk about injustice. Our justice system is, ironically, ripe with injustice. Now I know a lot of people, maybe even you, believe in the death penalty. I'm against the death penalty, but not just on principle (an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind), rather more importantly, because I think a lot of innocent people are being put to death due to racism, economic inequality and good old botched evidence.

Don't get me wrong, I deffinately think OJ was guilty, but I think that case brought up a lot of good points, such as money can buy you freedom, while dark skin can buy you a lifetime ticket to the clink. Anyhow, here's a case that's being dealt with currently by Amnesty International. Now, I trust Amnesty whole-heartedly, and if they say this trial was screwy and that an innocent man may be on death row, it's probably worth your while to give what they have to say a thought.

Anthony Hinton has been on death row in Alabama for 19 years for crimes he may not have committed. Three leading experts have concluded that the state’s crucial ballistics evidence at the trial was wrong. Hinton’s lawyers have recently filed an appeal in the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals seeking to get his conviction and death sentence overturned. If this fails, the case will go to the federal courts. Because of the deference that federal courts are required to give state court decisions in the USA, the current appeal is seen as his best chance to obtain a judicial remedy for his claim of innocence.

In 1985, there were several robberies of fast food restaurants in and around Birmingham, Alabama. During one, in February 1985, night manager John Davidson was fatally shot. An assistant manager of another restaurant, Thomas Vason, was shot and killed on 2 July 1985.

Then, on 25 July, Sidney Smotherman, the night manager of Quincy’s restaurant, was shot, but survived. He later identified Anthony Hinton as his assailant from a police photo line-up. However, there are serious questions about the reliability of this identification. Smotherman had originally described to police someone substantially smaller than Hinton. Furthermore, on the night of the crime, he had initially thought that a passing driver who offered help was the assailant. He later misidentified this man’s car, described his attackers as “they”, and gave varying descriptions of the weapon used to shoot him. Research shows that eyewitness identifications, especially where the circumstances are traumatic and the identification cross-racial, as in this case, are unreliable.

Police took a .38 revolver belonging to Anthony Hinton’s mother, Beulah Hinton, from her home, and sent it to the state Department of Forensic Sciences (DFS) to be tested against the six bullets recovered from the three crime scenes. The DFS concluded that the gun had fired the bullets. Anthony Hinton was charged with the murders of John Davidson and Thomas Vason. The only evidence linking Hinton to those two crimes was the DFS ballistics evidence. The trial court only approved $500 for the defence to do its own ballistics investigation. The defence lawyer was forced to hire a visually-impaired civil engineer with no firearms identification expertise.

Anthony Hinton had no history of violent crime, maintained his innocence, and even passed a police lie detector test. On the night of the Quincy’s shooting, he had been at his workplace, a secure warehouse, 15 miles (24km), or at least 20 minutes' drive from the crime scene. His employer and co-workers confirmed that he had arrived at the security gate at 11.57pm, clocked in to work at midnight, been given a work assignment at 12.10am, checked by his supervisor at 12.40am, and again at least once every hour during the six-hour shift. The Smotherman crime began at 12.14am. However, the jury convicted Anthony Hinton and sentenced him to death.

Alabama provides no legal assistance to indigent death row prisoners so it took Anthony Hinton years to obtain volunteer counsel to challenge his conviction. Finally, in June 2002, an evidentiary post-conviction hearing was held in the trial court. Three of the USA’s leading gun experts, who had examined and tested the state’s evidence, testified at the hearing. They concluded that the bullets recovered from the three crime scenes could not be matched to Beulah Hinton's gun. They also concluded that the bullets could not be linked to a single weapon.

Anthony Hinton’s appeal lawyers have also discovered work reports contradicting the DFS examiners’ contention that they were able to match the bullets to Beulah Hinton’s gun. These reports were not provided to Hinton’s trial lawyer.

At the trial, Sidney Smotherman had said that he had left Quincy’s shortly after midnight, bought food at a nearby store, and soon after leaving there had been forced at gunpoint to return to Quincy’s where the shooting occurred. At the June 2002 hearing, a Quincy’s employee who was working with Smotherman on the night of the robbery testified that the time the restaurant was locked varied from night to night, and sometimes occurred as early as 11pm. This further undermined the state’s theory that Anthony Hinton had planned the crime and its timing, and had left his work to wait for Smotherman to close Quincy’s. The state’s theory suggests that Hinton drove from the warehouse to Quincy’s in less than five minutes, was away from work for at least an hour and was not missed.

Two and a half years after the June 2002 hearing, the trial court ruled against Anthony Hinton. That decision is now on appeal to the state Court of Criminal Appeals. The state has been repeatedly asked by Anthony Hinton’s lawyers to re-examine its evidence against him, but it has so far refused to do so.

The United Nations Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty (1984) state: “Capital punishment may be imposed only when the guilt of the person charged is based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts.” On the current evidence, Anthony Hinton’s death sentence clearly violates this standard.

The US capital justice system is marked by arbitrariness, discrimination and error. Since executions resumed in the USA in 1977, more than 100 people have been released from death rows around the country on grounds of innocence, five of them in Alabama. Other people have been executed despite serious doubts about their guilt in the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.

Source: Amnesty International

How sickly sad is all of this? If you think there is some serious reasonable doubt going on here, please email Alabama Governor Bob Riley and Senator Jeff Sessions. Clicking on their names will take you to the sites where you can copy and paste and send the following message:

Dear _______________,

I urge you to ask the Attornery General to drop his opposition to judicial relief for Anothy Hinton. I am deeply concerned that the state continues to seek the execution of Mr. Hinton despite serious doubts about the reliability of his conviction. I am troubled to learn that three of the USA’s leading gun experts have concluded that the state’s ballistics evidence at trial was wrong. Furthermore, this ballistic evidence was the only evidence linking Mr. Hinton to the crimes. This evidence against Mr. Hinton was only circumstantial and now appears to be entirely unreliable.

While I have sympathy for the family and friends of John Davidson and Thomas Vason, I believe that the evidence against Anthony Hinton must be re-examined by the state as the defense has requested.

Please demonstrate your respect for life by ensuring that innocent people are not wrongfully accused in the state of Alabama. Thank you for your attention to this serious matter.

Sincerely,

Your name

Thanks everybody!

Wonka Rant

This is priceless. For anyone that loves Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, you must must must watch this.

Just click WONKA RANT and you´ll get just that.

Hey, does the girl remind you guys of me once I get going on one of my political/social/environmental tirades?

Wild Kingdom

Some of my cousin´s friends worked at Disney Land one summer, and I´d heard that there was little to no difference between working at the park and attending an orgy, but I always thought those claims were a little exaggerated. However, if you read this excerpt from the Summer 2005 issue of Radar Magazine, you might see that my assumption was wrong. Enjoy this tawdry tale of debauchery.

In a hard-luck year for Disney, what are Mickey, Goofy, and Pluto doing to blow off steam? Getting wasted, hooking up at pimps-and-ho’s parties, trying to get Cinderella in the sack. In this exclusive excerpt from “Wild Kingdom,” Tyler Gray tours the underground hangout of the long-suffering, hard-drinking, cross-dressing denizens of Disney World.

Before new characters are set loose on Main Street, they must agree not to talk about what goes on behind the scenes. Only then are they allowed into the secret 1.5-mile network of tunnels (formally known as the “utilidor”) that allows costumed employees to move through the park, take breaks, and relax, far from public view. Walt Disney worried that the sight of characters out of context would be disturbing to visitors. Thanks to the tunnels, a cast member dressed as an old-timey cowboy, say, can travel from the employee parking lot to Frontierland without disrupting a perfectly themed jungle scene in Adventureland. Characters typically spend several hours a day concealed in the underground city, a dank place that is in many ways the inverse of the spotless dreamworld served up to visitors aboveground, most of whom are unaware of the bustling scene below.

During my backstage tour I glimpsed a small portion of the tunnels myself. The floors were sticky, and they smelled faintly of sweat, cooking oil, and garbage. Trash is whisked through tubes running along the tunnel walls and ceilings and ends up at a collection point hidden behind the Splash Mountain ride, or at recycling spots throughout the 30,000 acres of Disney property. Aboveground, guests and characters bounce gaily to “It’s a Small World.” Down below, a thin-sounding PA system blares commercial pop. In between songs an announcer hawks Hyundais to cast members on break.

The social hub of the underground is a gathering spot known as the “zoo,” a stark area with the atmosphere of a postgame locker room, where troops of headless mice, chipmunks, and dogs gather between sets to rest and refuel. The zoo features televisions, a fridge, and couches where a hungover Pluto might grab a few winks. The notice board here, several characters told me, is the best way to find the evening’s party location.

If the zoo is the place to unwind, few areas in the Magic Kingdom are as un-settling as the head room, a cavernous storage space where roughly 250,000 Disney World costumes rotate into circulation among thousands of employees. Here, hundreds of Minnies, Donalds, and Mickeys hang side by side, their lifeless heads impaled on posts. Half-dressed characters stroll in and out holding heads under their arms, adding to the surreal mood. For some, staring into the lifeless eyes of beloved childhood icons proves to be an intensely creepy experience. You might shuffle into the head room tired, aching, and feeling none of the magic, only to be mocked by row after row of the relent-lessly jovial look on your character’s face. “You go in there and you see 30 to 40 Mickey Mouse heads,” says former Mickey and Minnie Jodie Rocha, “all with that big old smile.”

For even the most well-adjusted cast members, the reality of the job soon takes its toll. This in turn can lead to subtle acts of subversion — or retaliation. To alleviate boredom during parades, say, a Pluto might work playful punches and smacks into a choreo-graphed set. An employee in a Country Bear costume might break into a moonwalk, totally out of character for a down-home bear. Though speaking in costume is a fireable offense, slipups are fairly common. One former Minnie, Susan Santamauro, admitted to having shouted at kids to “get back” when they rushed her. Three Plutos told me a story about another Pluto who, toward the end of his 30-minute set, dealt a verbal blow to a pint-size tormentor. Parched from the heat and dying to get backstage, he couldn’t break free of one kid who wouldn’t stop pulling his tail. At his wits’ end, he leaned down so other parkgoers couldn’t hear and whispered through clenched teeth, “You…fucking…leave…me…alone. And if you tell anyone about this, no one will believe you.” Pluto then ducked into the utilidor to chug Powerade; the child scurried away in terror.
For a time the fantasy of character life is a kind of drug. When the initial fix fades, not surprisingly, cast members often seek a different high. Several told me that marijuana, cocaine, and other psychopharmaceuticals are common at character gatherings, and that sneaking out to smoke pot between sets is de rigueur among a few. Trevor Allen, a former Disneyland Pluto who wrote a play called Working for the Mouse, relates an incident when Winnie the Pooh dropped acid, went on set, literally tripped, and rolled down a flight of stairs onto Disneyland’s Main Street U.S.A.

Disney’s policy is to terminate any cast member caught using drugs, but it’s sometimes difficult to differentiate between the effects of drugs and those of heat exhaustion and poor vision (the Pooh in Allen’s story, for example, wasn’t fired). Disney even has its own undercover cops, sometimes called “-foxes,” who secretly watch for minor infractions.
Despite Disney’s obsession with control and secrecy, some of the characters’ more colorful hijinks have been documented on video. In 2002, his last year as a Disney trainer, Justin Alt shot a film in which two Disney characters (Judge Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Philoctetes from Hercules) engage in deadly combat. In the end the loser is decapitated. Alt posted the grisly clip on his website, where it remains. Disney supervisors, he says, tend to look the other way during the filming of such videos, because they consider them important for employee morale. “The subject material came so easy for us,” Alt says. “We live it. We love it. We hate it.”

While reporting this story I also obtained several films shot for screening at annual character banquets. One, sent to me by an anonymous source, was clearly produced with a certain amount of Disney foreknowledge. Captain Eeyore is a bawdy send-up of Captain EO, a 3-D intergalactic dance film starring Michael Jackson that had a run at Disney parks from 1986 to 1998; it features a sophisticated soundtrack, fully choreographed dance routines, and expensive special effects. Other, more lo-fi videos were obviously never intended for distribution outside character circles. In one, Snow White, Alice, and a few other female characters bump and grind their way through elaborate stripteases. In another, a clueless tourist is rushed and savagely beaten by a horde of characters, including Minnie, Tigger, and Goofy. Later in the same video, men act out beatings on their female coworkers so they can steal their wigs and dresses, put on their makeup, and venture into the park dolled up in Disney drag. Sexual themes are common. In one skit a pickled Pocahontas is seen wandering through Disney’s manicured landscape. When her legendary lover, John Smith, enters the scene, the squaw pretends to drown herself in a man-made creek, but the blond, handsome Smith is distracted by a well-built young brave wandering by in a loincloth.

The scenario is apparently an inside joke about the high concentration of gay characters at Disney World, which is something of a sore subject for the Mouse. In 1996 Disney was among the first companies to bestow domestic partnership rights on its employees. Soon thereafter, a coalition of Christians led by the Southern Baptist Convention staged boycotts. The park’s gay constituency, however, was undaunted. Every spring Disney World finds itself host to Gay Days, a gathering of more than 125,000 gays, lesbians, and bisexuals identifying themselves to one another with matching red T-shirts. There’s no official head count among character actors, but reliable sources estimate that one in four is gay. Whatever the real number, it’s clear that for at least a week every year, Main Street U.S.A. transforms into a gay hot spot that rivals the Castro or Chelsea.

The action doesn’t stop when Gay Days are over. With a giggle she might have borrowed from her character, former Minnie Mouse Susan Santamauro recounts hearing about an episode aboard a van shuttling a half-dozen sleepy employees to a character breakfast at Disney’s Polynesian Resort. A cast member turned around to discover a Pluto and a Goofy taking turns going down on each other in the back seat. According to Santamauro they were written up but not fired. Working for Disney, she adds, “was just the most promiscuous situation I’ve ever seen.”

Jodie Rocha, who played Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and five of the Seven Dwarfs at Walt Disney World from 1996 to 1999, also describes a sexually charged environment, and not just for gay actors. She recalls that swiping wigs and pieces of costumes wasn’t uncommon, especially for theme parties. “I remember going to a pimps-and-ho’s party,” Rocha says. “Of course, there was all the alcohol you could imagine. They had a bondage room upstairs. Porn was playing. They had the toys up there. There was truth-or-dare, and everybody was making out with everybody.”

“For $6.50 an hour you have to do something to make it enjoyable,” she says.

-Tyler Gray

I Scream You Scream

Oh, sooooo hung over. Headache won´t go away. This is what I get for partying on a Sunday. What would really help is a big, fat scoop of peanut butter chocolate ice cream and a nap. But I am at work and people in Spain don´t believe in peanut butter, so I´m a little screwed. But now that we´re on the subject of Spain and ice cream, let´s talk about the most tasty way to beat the summer heat.

Ice cream in Spain is fantastic, especially when it´s slathered all over a crepe stuffed with Nutella. Some of my favorite very Spanish flavors include leche merengada, rice pudding and hazelnut (how is a hazelnut that different from a peanut?). However, when it comes to ice cream, things have started getting a little funky.

There are 365 flavors of ice cream worldwide, with some of the strangest found in Japan, including fish, octopus, shrimp and eel. Yummy! However, it seems Spain is not to be outdone. Some of the more excentric ice cream shops in Madrid have included flavors such as paté, liver, tripe, sweet corn, mussels, thyme, goat cheese and tequila with lemon. And again I ask, what exactly do these people have against peanut butter?

Well, no matter what flavors they choose, one thing is for sure, Spaniards love their ice cream. Each Spaniard eats an average of 6 liters of ice cream a year, but interestingly enough, Scandanavians on average eat twice that amount.

The Sweatier and Less Fortunate

Ok, now I generally don´t like to post anything that has to do with giving money because I know that most of us don´t have any to spare, but I figured that I could lend a¨"blog plug" to help a friend and an organization worthy of your hard earned dollars/euros/whatever currency you deal in.

My lovely, caring friend Chinelo Okafor, bless her heart, has lost her mind and decided to run the Chicago Marathon. But all her blood, sweat and tears will be put to good use as she is running to raise money for the Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation.

Chinelo has set a lofty goal for herself by attempting to raise $750 by October. The girl´s got pluck, and for that and, of course, the children, I think we should all give her a helping hand. Click Here to donate online with a credit card.

I´ve decided to dedicate my life to art, this blog and the spread of important information and am poorer than a church mouse, and yet I am making a donation, which means you can too.

May you all get back ten fold what you give. KISSES!

Growing Familiar with the New Phenomenon

Being an illegal immigrant is tough. Not many people seem to realize that most immigrants work multiple jobs for very little money and they live in deplorable conditions in order to save up money to support their families back home.

I´ve never understood why people are so threatened by working class immigrants, especially in Spain, where immigration is still a fairly new phenomenon. What´s truely scary is that I´ve heard Spaniards in Madrid talking about these new immigrants, who keep the city functional by working as builders, garbagemen, waiters, etc., as though they are little more than animals that have come to ruin über-civilized Spain.

I don´t think most Spaniards realize what it´s like for illegal immigrants. There´s poverty, instability, racism, fear of deportation, scams promising better work or work papers that con them out of their hard-earned money, nowhere to turn when they need help.

I read an article in the June 28, 2005 20 Minutos about how the number of apartments no bigger than 60 square meters shared by up 20 people is increasing in Madrid. It is primarily the South American and Chinese immigrants that survive by sleeping in building stairways, balconies and stuffed into cramped apartments.

The skyrocketing cost of renting an apartment in the city are partially to blame. However, dirty business a huge factor. The average monthly rent of a 60 square meter apartment is approximately 600 euros. In a lot of cases the original renters sublet the apartment to multiple people who pay approximately 100 euros a month to live in a room with three or more other people. The aparment owners are usually aware of what is going on, but look the other way.

When I read the story, it made me think of the "immigrant spirit." These people are so desperately committed to establishing themselves economically that they will live for years without any privacy or comfort. These people are stronger and more determined than I think I could ever be. However, it also reminds me that there are many many people profiting from the misery of others, and I can´t shake the feeling that some Spaniard will read that article and find one more reason to dehumanize these hardworking, self-sacrificing individuals.

For the Women of Illinois

Here are two new websites that are a good reference for every woman in Illinois:

Illinois Healthy Women
A program that helps plan a healthy birth, when you are ready, and provides family planning and reproductive health care, including birth control. It is free – there is no cost for the services, voluntary and confidential.
http://www.illinoishealthywomen.com/

State of Illinois Contraceptive Coverage
A government website regarding insurance coverage of birth control. This is a great site for women who are looking for more affordable contraceptives.
http://www.contraceptives.illinois.gov/

Time for a Change of Pace

My last few entries have all had to do with some pretty serious issues, so I feel now is a good time for a little comic relief.

I had the pleasure of reading an interview with Kathy Griffin, an amazingly funny lady, who you can find at the bottom of the Celebrity B-List. She was the crazy red-head on Brooke Shield´s show Suddenly Susan, and now she´s got her very own reality tv show coming out on Bravo called Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. This woman is so funny that if I lived in the US and if I had cable, I would actually watch her show.

Kathy is Queen of the Zingers, but don´t take my word for it, just read some of the choice excerpts from her interview with Radar Online:

How about Temptation Island (Reality TV)? I’m ashamed to admit it’s one of my favorites.

I call it Tempty. And I’ll tell you something—you wanna talk hidden gem? Tempty 2. No one gave Tempty 2 a chance, and I’m telling you, it delivered. Listen to this: I had a girlfriend on the crew of Tempty. They flew them all to Mexico on something called, I think, Taqua Airline, and one of the contestants got lost, because she was waiting for everyone at a Taco Bell.

I’m sure Tempty wasn’t looking to cast the sharpest tools in the shed.

I don’t care how stupid you are, you should know that Taco Bell doesn’t have an airline! I don’t think they should allow these reality show people to have driver’s licenses!

Do you believe in euthanasia?

Yes, I believe Nikki Hilton should be euthanized. I had a conversation with her. She was so stupid I actually said, “You don’t vote, right? Because I don’t even want you to vote. Even if you want to vote for my guy, I don’t trust you to remember his name by the time you get to the booth.”

Which ugly Hollywood actor would you most like to sleep with?

I actually have a thing for them. I once wrote something for In Style about how I wanted to fuck everyone from Crispin Glover to Harvey Keitel to James Woods. I love bad skin. They ended up rejecting it.

What’s the most surprising physical flaw you’ve noticed on the red carpet? Seen any cankles or bulbous knuckles lately?

Shannen Doherty has crooked, crazy, uneven eyes. She actually looks a little Mongoloid. Is that a bad word?

I’m not sure. Who has the worst skin?

Britney. Really bad. That’s one of the amazing things about Chaotic, with that night-vision, Jessica-Lynch-rescue-film stuff. It shows how unbelievably gross her skin is. Poor thing.

What handsome guy would you not want to sleep with?

I don’t get Colin Farrell. He seems like a wife beater and he looks like he smells bad and has crabs.

Source: RadarMagazine.com, 07/12/05

Time to Clean Up Their Act

Do you remember the Exxon Valdez tragedy?

Exxon's tanker killed hundreds of thousands of seals, otters, birds, fish and whales when it spilled 11 million gallons of thick, deadly crude oil into the waters of Alaska's pristine Prince William Sound in 1989.

Amazingly, despite making a record profit of $25 billion last year, ExxonMobil is still shirking payment of the full amount it owes fishermen and natives hurt by the spill 16 years ago!

Worse still, ExxonMobil's dirty deeds go way beyond the ugly legacy of the deadly oil spill.

·ExxonMobil is the only oil company that's part of Arctic Power, the group lobbying Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

·ExxonMobil has spent over $15 million since 1998 to deny the existence of global warming by funding junk science groups to cloud the debate.

·ExxonMobil is making record profits but still won't invest significant amounts in cleaner, healthier energy or support greater fuel economy. (The company's pledge to research advanced energy technology is the equivalent of just TWO days' worth of its 2004 profits!)

This morning twelve of the nation’s biggest environmental groups launched Exxpose Exxon, a major campaign to mobilize thousands of Americans to urge ExxonMobil to clean up its act!

Thanks to our country’s over-dependence on oil, gas prices are reaching record highs, global temperatures are climbing, the polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and the U.S. is forced to import millions of barrels of foreign oil every day. Yet ExxonMobil is doing almost nothing to reduce our oil dependence while spending millions to block environmental protections and sabotage efforts to slow global warming.

Please join the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, U.S. PIRG, Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace, Alaska Coalition, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Environmental Trust, Alaska Oceans Program, MoveOn.org Political Action, and the Alaska Wilderness League in contacting ExxonMobil today.

Just click on the magic word to sign the petition: EXXON

Source: SaveOurEnvironment.org, 07/12/05

Ok, folks. Now it´s time to put your money where your mouth is. If you´ve decided you think what Exxon is doing is wrong and you´ve gone ahead and signed the petition boycotting ExxonMobil´s products, you should REALLY boycott ExxonMobils products. To help make this boycott easier on you, I am listing all of ExxonMobil´s consumer products that I could find. This is what you shouldn´t be buying:

General Aviation Lubricants (for those of you rich enough to own a private jet)
Aviation Oil Elite 20W-50
Aviation Oil EE
Aviation Oil

Mobil 1 Lubricant

Don´t shop at On the Run Convenience Stores (chain owned by ExxonMobil) or Tiger Mart

Don´t use Speedpass or sign up for any ExxonMobil or Esso Credit Cards

DON´T DON´T DON´T buy gas from any Exxon, Mobil or Esso gas station or fix your car at any of their repair shops

Don´t buy any of their travel guides or atlases

Don´t buy ExxonMobil stock

Don´t work for ExxonMobil

And for those of you who want to be really gung-ho, don´t watch or attend any Nascar or Formula 1 events, ExxonMobil is a huge sponsor

Exxon produces many more products that are not geared to the consumer, they´re generally fuels, lubricants and chemicals manufactured for industrial use. That´s the bulk of their product, but maybe, just maybe, a few companies will join the boycott and leave Exxon´s products off of their shopping list.

If you´d like to learn a little more about ExxonMobil´s dirty practices, check out Bless Us Kyoto for We Have Sinned and keep reading La Justa Pulp for updates.