You should replace fogtext2.jpg with that.
Nipples angrily facing down! grrrrr!
Fontana Labs is so gay he posts photos of men's torsos on Unfogged.
I noticed the nipple placement, too.
Wait, seriously, you think those are nice pecs? They're asymmetrical!
Plus, what do you mean, "nothing," I just sent you something intriguing!
Nipples angrily facing down! grrrrr!
This is how I'm going answer the phone from now on.
8: "What fresh nipple is this?"
Put that up. Don't your people love conspiracy theories?
"What fresh nipple is this?"
I think I know. His house is in the village though.
He will not see us stopping here, to watch his nipples diverge in a yellow wood.
In the blog the pecs come and go
Nippling toward Michelangelo
They're asymmetrical!
No way can you tell from that angle.
I was told that Labs was going to post about *his* breasts. Therefore, one can only assume--well, do I really have to say it?
Do nipples point down when the pecs are flexed, maybe? The contractions of the abdominals or something? Or is this someone who's had liposuction and an unfortunate removal of a piece of skin?
Obviously, I have exclusively dated sunked-chested swim-n-bike boys.
I've only seen nipples at that angle on overmuscled gym bodies. I think the hypertrophied pec has more mass above the nipple than below, so it pushes the nipple to point down.
Do nipples point down when the pecs are flexed, maybe?
It's fairly typical for guys with a lot of muscle mass in their chest.
You know, some of the straight people here are so much gayer than I am that it's beginning to make me feel a little insecure.
That said, this waxed, weird-nippled chest obviously belongs to a gym queen and yes, I really would kick him out of bed.
24: Yeah, I've never really understood straight and bi guys' taste in men. The only women who are interested in guys who look like this are 13-year-old girls and women from Staten Island.
I really would kick him out of bed.
You must have powerful thighs.
LB has averred that she likes muscley men.
Wait, that was cerebrocrat rather than JM, wasn't it? Damn.
Anyway, the guy in the pic is way overmuscled. Labs wants tits, but he's afraid of women. Swimmers have great pecs.
Also girls out for bachelorette parties.
30: Yeah, this is a little too much. Beefcake is nice, but this is ridiculous.
AWB:
You must be around more bikers than swimmers. Real swimmers have chests.
I like muscley men, but that guy glistens weirdly.
Nipples angrily facing down! grrrrr!
Worthy of repeating. Funny hb
Holy shit, I just found M Doughty on Nerve.
35: Swimmers and I parted ways in college. Since then, it's been all bikers, with their little arms.
He probably doesn't look as freakish IRL. Oiled up and flexing for a pic tends to make these guys look strange. Same for really muscular ladies. In regular clothes they look better than those photoshoots.
39: Teo, teo, teo. Soul Coughing?
AWB's gonna liveblog rock star sex!
13yo girls don't want guys like that; they want the pretty skinny unthreatening boys. That, or horses. That just leaves women from Staten Island.
42: Remember, teo doesn't listen to music.
45: Will no one think of what the horses want?! Ridiculous—neigh—OUTRAGEOUS!!!1!
44: I interviewed him for my college webmag when I was 19. My best friend at the time nearly murdered me from jealousy, as she was obsessed with tracking him down and doing him. The imaginative possibilities that arise from this newfound information are truly overwhelming.
47: Nice horsie, pretty horse. Do you want a carrot?
So this guy is a musician of some sort?
47: Mostly the horses want apples, oats, and carrots--all of which the girls are only too happy to supply. It works out pretty well most of the time.
A couple random blegs since this is the most popular happy thread:
1) Does anyone know good exercises for improving sprinting speed? I'm talking very short distance, probably 40 meter sprints and the such. Any exercises to increase jump height would also be welcome. There's a lot on the internet, but I'm not sure what's quackery and what isn't.
2) Are any of you coming to Chicago for the Pitchfork Music Festival in a couple weeks? Anyone want to do an informal meet-up that weekend at the festival or an afterparty?
You know what I did tonight? I ate Quorn.
53: But you love meat, apo. Why eat Quorn, which is disgusting?
24. damnit but Cerebrocat wins the blog.
That just leaves women from Staten Island.
And other gym queens.
Yay, pretty unthreatening boys!
Yay, fungus protein!
55: Aw, shucks. I hope the prize isn't a date with The Chest.
54: Somebody else made dinner for us. The Quorn was like chicken chunks in burritos. It wasn't disgusting. It was kinda meatish.
54: Wtf? Quorn is not disgusting. It's one of the most convincing of your fake meats, particularly if the impersonated flesh is chicken.
Does anyone know good exercises for improving sprinting speed? I'm talking very short distance, probably 40 meter sprints and the such. Any exercises to increase jump height would also be welcome.
Deadlifts. It's all about increasing how much force you can generate. Heavy weights, low reps, like 2-3 reps at 80-90 percent of your max.
Should help your jump as well. Also for jumping, get or build jumping boxes.
one of the most convincing of your fake meats
Hence, disgusting.
Yeah, deadlifts, squats. Also work on power, not just strength: do some excercises with fast movement of lighter weight. At that short of a distance you don't have to worry about oxygen or anything.
Does anyone know good exercises for improving sprinting speed?
Throw rocks at cows.
one of the most convincing of your fake meats
I know there's a dildo joke buried in there somewhere, but I can't seem to find it.
PoMo, that's good advice from gswift, and you want to do some plyometrics to be able to use that strength (I'm not a fan of one-legged hopping, but the rest of the drills there are good).
I just like the image of Brock digging through fake meats, trying to find a dildo joke.
65: Not at all. If you're going to be a vegetarian, eat real food. If you want meat, eat meat. If you don't eat meat, then quit with this "meat substitute" weaselling.
Of course, in about five minutes someone's going to pop up and tell me quorn is an ancient and highly revered protein source somewhere in the Urals, or something.
And, dude, Kotsko just showed up as a highlighted profile. Lots of action on Nerve tonight.
69: That's how I feel about futons. If you want a couch, get a couch. If you want a bed, get a bed. Futons just ruin both.
IF someone likes fake better than real, who cares? I don't like fake meat because its gross and less healthy, not because its fake. I have no problem with skim milk or whatever
I have a real problem with skim milk.
71: Heh. See, I find futons quite comfortable for sleeping on, but I'd go along with that as a general rule.
Yet another thing about which B has a surprisingly strong opinion.
I have no problem with skim milk or whatever
I was raised on nasty-ass powdered milk, for the record. Please feel my pain.
69: I hear this a lot, but I don't understand it. Why do people eat meat? Because it's a tasty and conveniently compact little package of protein. Why do vegetarians sometimes want fake meat? Because it's a tasty and conveniently compact little package of protein. Unless your reasons for being a vegetarian are limited to a disgust response to meat, I don't see how it follows that choosing not to eat meat requires that you choose not to eat anything that resembles meat. And who knows what you mean by "real food."
I was also raised on powdered milk! Which my mother didn't even re-hydrate-- she just dumped the powder on my cereal and made me eat dry. Nasty stuff.
73: Agreed. Especially in coffee.
Skim milk is not fake milk; it's just milk with the cream skimmed off.
77: It is sort of entertaining to me when they dress fake meat up to look like real meat. Like it's Diet Dr. Pepper, now tastes more like Real Dr. Pepper Than Ever Before!
78: Oh my fucking god. Seriously. Oh my god. At least mine was reconstituted with most of the lumps stirred out.
I loved eating dry stuff as a kid. Dry oats, dry cereal, dry oyster crackers, whatever.
Powdered milk is great to add to crepes, because it makes them brown up better w/o adding butter.
And skim milk is inauthentic or non-traditional or more processed or whatever your complaint against pseudomeat is.
82: Seriously. She was under the impression that it was all the nutrition with significantly less trouble. I don't think she was right about that.
I'm talking about when I was small though. When I got older I just made my own damn milk.
Also i keep powdered milk around for those days when you wake up and realize you have not enough milk left for your cereal and tea. Who wants to drag themself to the grocers first thing when you have to be somewhere or are hungover.
Why did you guys used powdered milk? Last time i checked its the same price per unit as normal liquid stuff.
But powerderd milk has that weird sweet aftertaste. Picture me pretending to hack up a hairball to indicate disgust.
When I got older I just made my own damn milk.
Snort.
My mother had a lot of weird food quirks though (to accompany her general weird quirks, I suppose). Like we never had butter or even fake butter or margarine -- she just sprayed Pam cooking spray on my toast, and called it butter. I was actually surprisingly old before I learned there was something deeply wrong with this.
Also, before a photoshoot, bodybuilders go on a crash diet to thin out, sodium balance, shit like that. Then you grease up. Then you do some pushups to get a pump. Then you flex hard, and take the pictures from just the right angle in just the right light. The you shop the pic. then you go binge on cheeseburgers.
75: I have the same number of opinions as everyone else, I'm just not mealy-mouthed about them. Mr. I-hate-makeup.
77: I mean food that isn't ridiculous processed or containing bizarre lab-created ingredients. Trendy foam soups or what have you are nifty enough in restaurants, sure, but if I'm going to eat it at home I want it to be something I'm at least theoretically capable of actually making at home from yer basic ingredients.
If you're going to be a vegetarian, eat real food. If you want meat, eat meat. If you don't eat meat, then quit with this "meat substitute" weaselling.
B., this is so 90s. 80s. 70s, really.
Meat substitutes may be about tasting meatlike, or a having a meatlike texture, but these days they're about protein.
Get with the program.
This is not to say that I eat many of these meat substitutes myself, but that's sort of problem, you see. I have The Book of Tempeh, so why don't I use it?
I have the same number of opinions as everyone else
You know what they say about girls and math...
94: I think so, but I honestly don't recall. I can tell you that shit is NASTY soaking all over a bag of microwaved popcorn.
IF i didn'tn eat meat i'd probably just have a protein shake, because meat subs are all pretty gross though.
Tofu is perfectly good, people.
(I'm already bored by any jokes that seek to remove that comma.)
IF i didn'tn eat meat i'd probably just have a protein shake
Speaking of protein shakes, I'm running out of Oatrim, which is a great thickener for that kind of thing. And apparently the commercial producers aren't supplying it to anyone for retail sales anymore. Fuckers.
I don't think tofu counts, though. I agree it's good (or can be, at least), but it's real food.
I'm already bored by any jokes that seek to remove that comma.
How about "Tofu is, perfectly good people."
if i'm making a chocolate shake, banana +nut butter makes them pretty thick.
How 'bout we just move the comma around a bit in the sentence. Is that OK?
banana +nut butter makes them pretty thick.
Oatrim was great because it only added like 30 calories. Banana + nut butter sounds like it's seriously ramping up the sugar and calories.
She just sprayed Pam cooking spray on my toast, and called it butter.
Was she in "Repo Man".
B. has as many opinions as everyone else, it's just that they're a random scatter, and all strong.
My mom served powdered milk for a few weeks when she was feuding with my dad. The kids are always the ones who suffer.
On the other hand, I really liked that sickly sweet condensed milk. I don't use it any more out of respect for others' feeling, any more than I eat canned corned beef of canned tamales with the half-inch of grease floating on top, but Mmmmmmmmmmm.
B is totally right. There are so many wonderful vegetarian things to eat than eating soy sausage and tofurkey is just crazy.
61, 63, 67: Thanks, guys. I'll throw more leg lifts and squats into my weightlifting, though I'm not so sure about squats offhand. Plyometrics look great, too. I've seen a few of those exercises before, but never knew they were part of a particular school of thought.
Damn. Somebody beat me to that. Y'all really need jobs or something.
85, 90: Damn. And I thought MY mother was loony with the brewer's yeast and goat milk. Pam on toast wins.
89: hee
93.2: whatever. I don't know why raising a cow at home is theoretically easier than making mycoprotein. Unless you have one hell of a windowbox garden, most of what you eat is fundamentally shaped by modern technology. I like rice and beans a lot, but if I want a nice salty little protein package sometimes, I can eat Quorn without thinking about antibiotic-loaded chickens with their beaks cut off. That's technology I'm willing to pay for.
Is 103 one great big euphamism or a series of several smaller euphamisms?
105: oh true. I'm one of those skinny fucks who has to eat like 4000k calories a day, so extra calories isn't really a problme for me ever.
107: Once again, I hear this often, but totally don't understand it.
I can eat Quorn without thinking about antibiotic-loaded chickens with their beaks cut off
That's an impressive ability to blank out your thoughts, since a lot of Quorn products are made with factory-farmed eggs.
Fake breakfast sausage is straight-up tasty, and better than real breakfast sausage. I can admit this freely because I am not a vegetarian and thus have no veg-cred on the line.
Gosh, I hate to be outdated. But there are plenty of protein sources that aren't "meat substitutes." Tempeh is one of 'em. I mean, if you're gonna be a vegetarian, isn't part of the point that in fact, you don't need meat in your diet, and therefore there's no need to "substitute" for it?
The author of 116 is so very wrong he is ashamed to even identify himself.
I'll throw more leg lifts and squats into my weightlifting, though I'm not so sure about squats offhand.
Deadlifts are not leg lifts. IME one of the advantages of deadlifts over squats is that they're much easier on the knees.
I mean, if you're gonna be a vegetarian, isn't part of the point that in fact, you don't need meat in your diet, and therefore there's no need to "substitute" for it?
People are vegetarians for a variety of reasons, and this is not necessarily part of all of them.
I don't know why raising a cow at home is theoretically easier than making mycoprotein.
Because one can grasp the basic concepts quite easily. Anyhow, you don't need to raise a fucking cow at home to consider milk a fairly basic unadulterated food source. Whereas I don't even know what the fuck "mycoprotein" is.
Oh...116 me. I forgot to put a name because I couldn't decide whether I wanted to stick with Pony.
Fake breakfast sausage is straight-up tasty, and better than real breakfast sausage. I can admit this freely because I am not a vegetarian high as a kite.
120: Oh? People become vegetarians because they *do* need meat in their diet?
you don't need to raise a fucking cow at home to consider milk a fairly basic unadulterated food source
You might, however, need to not know a whole lot about how most modern milk is produced.
Some fake meat is awful; some tastes as good as or better than the real thing.
I like veggie burgers much better than I ever liked hamburgers.
I think B's just trolling this thread. She owes us pastries.
124: No, people become vegetarians because, say, they can't stand the thought of eating poor little animals, without necessarily wanting to overhaul their whole diets.
'needing' sounds like some objective thing though.
I mean, if you're gonna be a vegetarian, isn't part of the point that in fact, you don't need meat in your diet, and therefore there's no need to "substitute" for it?
Let's all pretend that B didn't actually write this, so we can continue to take her semi-seriously.
I mean, to become a vegetarian you have to believe on some level that meat isn't necessary to your diet, but that's not necessarily part of the point of being vegetarian.
"I hate milk! It comes from cow wangs!"
-- Nelson Muntz
Soy milk and tofu come from different plants, don't they? And they're just substitutes for milk and meat anyway.
125: Milk, in and of itself, is a basic food. I know where it comes from. In a pinch, I can even produce the goddamn stuff myself, and have done so.
127, please see 130.
129: You should take me absolutely and thoroughly seriously at all times. Because I'm not funny, ever.
132: Tofu, like soy milk, is a soybean derivative.
I don't know why raising a cow at home
My mom raised goats, and I spent a lot of my childhood drinking goat milk. She also was raising chickens, ducks, geese. Fresh eggs! Goose eggs are huge.
I'm not so good with the meat substitutes, but my sister makes awesome use of them as ingredients. So I'm definitely down with the fake meats.
134: I don't think you're taking 132 in the spirit in which it was intended.
133: Just because you're not funny doesn't mean we should take you seriously.
Jonah Golberg isn't funny, but we don't take him seriously.
Yes, I'm very like Jonah Goldberg. Glad someone finally noticed.
When B. really pisses me off, I eat a veggie burger, making sure to snap a photo. The photo I staple to a mouse, which then scurries 'cross the continent to B.'s lush and over-watered California oasis, to live amongst the koi and the Mexicans.
133: oh come on, B. Unless you're out in the field sucking cow tits your milk isn't fundamentally any more "unadulterated" than whatever the hell a mycoprotein is. Assuming you're buying regular stuff from the supermarket, they're both pretty thoroughly processed.
I do the same thing as Stanley in 141, except I mail the mouse to gswift so he can stomp on it.
a lot of Quorn products are made with factory-farmed eggs.
Huh, that's news to me. And kind of disappointing.
Whereas I don't even know what the fuck "mycoprotein" is.
Ah, okay, now I get it. I have to agree with you, the strange and unfamiliar is always bad. (btw, do you eat chocolate?)
141: You should wipe your ass with rippled toilet paper while eating that veggie burger.
141: Luckily, I've become really good at treating minor mouse injuries, and they all survive. Otherwise I'd have to put out a contract on Stanley.
142: Come on yourself. Milk comes from cow teats, and it's homogenized and pasturized by blending the cream and milk and heating it to kill germs. That's a pretty basic and simple fucking process, and people have been doing it for a very long time. And you, too, don't know what a mycoprotein is. It's a bit silly to argue that they're fundamentally equivalents.
Next someone will try to convince me that Pillsbury croissants are the equivalent of a French bakery.
There should be a Godwin's Law corollary specifically for comparisons to Jonah Goldberg.
that's news to me. And kind of disappointing.
Uh huh. And in the same breath, you imply that I'm hostile to the unfamiliar, when really, you're kind of proving my point.
135: Fresh eggs are awesome. Goat milk, not so much.
Skipping the milk thing altogether, ~20-25: I've been told by someone with no real credibility on the matter that downward-pointing nipples such as the ones on display in the picture are an indication of steroid use because the muscle mass grows too fast for the skin to keep up.
Either way, gross. Ugh. Jesus. So gross.
You owe us pastries, B.
You can serve them with either soy milk or cow milk.
*You* apparently don't even know how the stuff is made. But you're willing to put it in your mouth and pretend that my clear argument that foods that are made of recgonizable ingredients are better than things that aren't is somehow totally bizarre and insane.
And people think *I'm* trolling.
If I owed you pastries, which I do not, I'd damn well know how to make them myself from scratch. But since apparently the lot of you prefer processed crap, you can go out and buy your own box of Little Debbies.
It's made out of feces, cutting out a lot of pointless, useless intermediaries in the great cycle of life.
I can't even figure out why foods with more easily understood processing processes are better. Do you only eat it with utensils you could make on a desert island?
140: Of course not. Jonah has bigger tits.
Can someone else answer 156? I'm bored with this argument.
I only respond to trolls who use live bait.
Isn't "mycoprotein" just a fancy name for processed mushrooms?
Mycoprotien is probably what, algae? Fungus of some sort? Reminds me of the weightlifters I used to know who were into cheap protien supplements, and the one guy who compared the ingredients on GNC's "whey protein weight gainer 2000" and the 50 pound bags of cattle feed supplement down at the Southern States, and excitedly reported back that they were identical and the 50 pound bag was actually cheaper than the jug at GNC, and they tried some in their shake this morning and it was kind of gross but not really that bad once you got over the initial taste.
Deadlifts are not leg lifts.
I know that, but my small gym does not have any free weights larger than the 50 lb dumbbells, and I would almost certainly need more than 100 lb for deadlifts.
If it's just mushrooms or what have you, then my argument would be that mushrooms are a lovely food in their own right, and that calling them "meat substitute" does them a grave disservice. Also, that you can get them in the goddamn produce aisle.
Plus it's still awfully meat-centric for a vegetarian.
Mycoprotein. A fungus, and I'd say it's a stretch say milk is processed to the same degree.
163: I don't disagree with you on any particular point. 'Cept that, any form of chicanery that can serve to undermine the market for modern industrialized meat production is probably a good thing. So, bring on the mockmeat and the milquetoasts who love it. Mockmeat for everyone!
my small gym does not have any free weights larger than the 50 lb dumbbells
Christ, where are you working out, in a jr. high?
Look, everyone! Gswift is having a strong opinion about something!
165: I don't disagree, I'd just also call it a stretch to say most milk is unadulterated. Those cows on the modern farms are not monogamous!
I don't remember eating Quorn!
Those cows on the modern farms are not monogamous!
Their milkshakes bring all the bulls to the yard...
I can't even figure out why foods with more easily understood processing processes are better
Doesn't it seem to work out that way though? How often does the uber processed turn out better than the simpler hand made stuff?
Jerry... you're my ambassador of Quorn, man.
153: Oh. I didn't know that it was often made with eggs, and I'm still not clear on how common that is or why it's the case. What I did know is that it's made from a cultivated fungus, and is then processed into something vaguely chickenlike. Humans have a long and happy track record of finding things that occur naturally, cultivating them, and then transforming them from something icky to something tasty; chocolate and cheese are good examples. I don't see how quorn is fundamentally different, except that it's more recent. Chocolate and cheese of course are uniquely tasty in a way that quorn isn't, but unique tastyness is only one of several virtues a food can have. I love fresh garden vegetables as much as anyone, but sometimes I eat the half-assed salads from the sandwich shop across the street, because it's across the street. As happy as I'd be eating a delicious, nutritionally balanced vegetarian dish at every meal, sometimes convenience wins. Quorn is neither gross nor wonderful, it's good enough, and I don't see anything wrong with that.
I'd just also call it a stretch to say most milk is unadulterated
Did I actually say that, or is this something you're pretending I said in order to play the "B's preference for minimally processed food is completely strange and alien" game?
The bulls were served up as veal years ago.
175: What was that you said, gwift? Oatrim?? I couldn't quite hear you.
177: Fine, eat the damn stuff. All I'm saying is that it's gross.
You know, if B had expressed her preference for minimally processed food in a way that didn't go quite as far in denigrating other people's food preferences maybe people wouldn't have reacted this way.
Can someone else answer 156? I'm bored with this argument.
The standard argument is that the easier to understand processes are older, simpler, and cause less ecological damage. Unfortunately, the third comment is not true in many many cases. To take an analogy from a non-food domain: hippies are really fond of wood burning stoves, but wood is an incredibly damaging way to heat your home.
In this particular case, though, there is no reason to think that pasteurization is a damaging form of processing. You are just heating the milk, which doesn't require much energy. My wife did it at home for a while when we were getting our milk direct from the source. (That had to stop when Caroline objected too much to milk with "things in it." You can't homogenize at home [at least we couldn't] so it was back to the organic industrial complex for us.)
Some hippies, under the pernicious influence of the raw food movement, are convinced that unpasteurized milk is healthier than pasteurized. Really, though, no health benefits will outweigh the obvious risks of getting sick from bad milk
"to consider milk a basic unadulterated food source" is *not* the same as "most milk is unadulterated."
The way she did in 182, for instance.
quorn ain't mushrooms
Plus it's still awfully meat-centric for a vegetarian.
Once again, I don't see how it follows that choosing to be vegetarian requires that should be disgusted by anything that resembles meat.
175: wine, chocolate
183: As always, Teo, thank you for your hard work in pointing out that hyperbole is, indeed, hyperbolic.
What was that you said, gwift? Oatrim??
I didn't say processed is always bad, but generally food tends to be better with less processing.
186: You did kind of imply that you were talking about most generically available milk. Not that it's a big deal, really, but... yeah.
186: ?
I guess, sure, it's not the same, but it think it will take you a good bit of nuance to explain the difference.
I did not say you were required to be disgusted. In fact, I'm saying that I would like to think that people's dietary choices are positive, rather than negative ones.
189: Next I may turn to the shockingly counterintuitive idea that hyperbole is not always the optimal choice of rhetorical mode.
Dios mio, dumbest argument ever on Unfogged, and that's saying a lot.
52.---
In ballet, the exercises that might be helpful would be the plié-rélévé*, and the slow tendus**.
_____
*bending the legs and slowly rising up on the foot. (This really is good training against shin splints, I swear.)
**extending the foot to a pointed position in various directions. (If carefully practiced, this really can develop those tricky-to-reach upper hamstrings, I swear.)
Nuance, shmuance. Milk, in and of itself, is milk. It comes from tits. The fact that a lot of it comes from cows that are fed all sorts of nonsense doesn't affect the essence of milk-ness. Whereas the essence of "mycoprotein" seems to be "mushrooms grown under bizarre conditions and processed in weird ways so that they look and feel kinda meat-like."
I refuse to believe that you people don't understand the difference here.
generally food tends to be better with less processing.
If by "better" you mean environmentally better, you have a good case for saying that this is generally true. It isn't true if you mean aesthetically.
The best example here is the most environmentally damaging form of processing of all, this habit we have of passing corn through a cow to make dairy products. I will be the first to day that milk and cheese are yummier than corn (and much yummier than grass). But it is not an environmentally friendly process.
94: That would be a completely new and welcome argument from my point of view. I await your instruction, as always.
Yeah, I find it suspect that Quorn has no vegan product line at all. Their main market is, it seems (according to the last ten sites I looked at), meat-eaters who are trying to eat something a little more healthy, and they have little interest in courting the vegetarian community. Besides eggs, almost all of their products contain dairy of uncertain origin, and they have repeatedly been stopped by others from saying their product is "just like truffles or morels" when it is, in fact, not from the mushroom family of fungus, but from the mold family.
I'm not against eating mold, or the possibility that my food has been weirdly cultivated. But I am concerned when a meat-substitute product is consciously not aimed at vegetarians, and when misleading things are said about the ingredients, not because I'm some kind of hardcore vegetarian who is obsessed with keeping things out of my body, but because I like knowing where my food comes from. The more ignorance I have of where it comes from and how it's made, the likelier it is that my money is fueling bad labor practices and animal cruelty.
I don't mean it to sound sanctimonious--in fact, it's only that I'm very lucky--but because I go to a coop, I can shop for my food in such a way that I know 90% of it is organic and local in origin, and what's imported is fair trade and controlled-origin. The problem with processed whatnot is that companies that hide how they treat their animals are likely to hide how they treat employees, and also likely to hide what additives and processes are happening to that food.
I mean, honestly. Do you prefer this to a more measured discussion of the same issues?
195 is right. Proposed new topic of discussion: is Zardoz the greatest movie of all time, or does Surf Nazis narrowly edge out the win?
198 is silly. Milk is not "processed corn."
Unless it's some kind of bizarre hippie vegetarian milk substitute, in which case it's disgusting.
In other news, I hate all of you except Teo, who seems only to have my very best interests at heart.
JM, are you sure that "the slow tendus" isn't some exotic sexual or martial arts maneuver?
If by "better" you mean environmentally better, you have a good case for saying that this is generally true.
I'm also talking about taste. Homemade pastry vs. mass produced, McDonalds vs. the hamburger you grill at home, etc.
Re my 196:
Um, sorry for butting in on a flamewar, the content of which I'm carefully ignoring.
201: Are you kidding? A "measured discussion" of the merits of quorm would be excruciatingly dull. At least this way everyone's entertained by being annoyed at me.
I thought I was on your side, B.
In any case, I was just referring to the practice of raising corn fed cattle for milk. Actually a much better way to describe this process is that it is a method for turning oil into milk. Still not environmentally friendly.
Gotta run. Love to you all.
206: Not at all, please. I had no idea we were having a flamewar; at least, initially, I thought I was merely playing the fun game of making-outrageous-statements-about-personal-taste and then having a fun argument about them. You know, like we used to do here before the feminists ruined everything.
208: Nah, it's cool. I'm just not, myself, talking about environmentalism (though there's that argument). I'm just saying, real food is better than lab-produced food.
207: Hey, I defended you on the Goldberg comparison. I don't give a shit about quorn one way or another. Until now I don't think I'd even heard of the stuff.
No sex in this food thread, it seems. Sheesh.
Is 197 supposed to reply to 192? Because they don't have anything to do with one another. I'm actually starting to believe you *are* trolling; I thought everyone was joking before.
Zardoz is, in fact, the greatest film of all time.
I'd fuck you, Stanley, but that mouse thing's put me off.
188: there's an "I' missing in there somewhere.
182: No, it's not gross. That's what we're arguing about. It tastes pretty good, and it's no more processed than many other things we commonly eat. Maybe it seems gross because it tries to impersonate something else, and thus has a kind of moral taint? [Let's see, fake crab made out of fish, that's pretty gross. Margarine, I don't like it, but I wouldn't really say it's gross. Carob, not as good as the real thing, but not really gross.] Maybe that's all this is really about, a food that pretends to be another food earns a devalued status. But since I don't value the real thing, I'm not bothered by the lowered status.
Finally, someone with the courage to weigh in on the real issues.
Rather than try to respond to 207 (and 210), I think I'll just take hold my peace.
The penis is bad! Guns are good!
Although in its defense, Surf Nazis does feature the line: "I am the Fuehrer of the New Beach."
And thus far, Sir Sean has the better of the argument.
214: Yeah. Really, the connection's unclear?
217: See, I'll eat the fake crab b/c it's so much cheaper, but yeah, I'd agree that it's gross--a kind of violation of the very idea of crab, and I don't eat it very often. Carob, I'd say gross, simply on the grounds that chocolate is good and carob isn't and if you can't eat chocolate for some reason carob is only going to make you pine for the real thing.
Maybe this is a moral argument; I honestly think it's more an aesthetic one. At least, I'd say that it doesn't *matter* if you value meat (and that your not valuing it makes valuing "meat substitute" all the weirder)--even if you were eating the stuff because it was a good protein source rather than a "substitute" for meat, I'd still think it was an offense against the nature of good food.
A "measured discussion" of the merits of quorm would be excruciatingly dull.
Your point being?
225: Fair enough. Anyway, if JM had responded to Ben's 204, we wouldn't be here.
I'd still think it was an offense against the nature of good food.
And I still think this is a weird position to take. But since everyone else is bitching about how boring we're being, I'm going to stop worrying about it and fuck off to bed. Maybe that'll clear the way for a most excellent Harry Potter conversation to get roarin'.
204.---Yes.
However, you're giving me ideas for exercises with my honey.
Like spreading him all over someone's wife and feeding him to bears?
226.---Oop! Cross-posted. Anyway, I should get some sleep.
You catch more bears with milk than honey.
239.---I would be too afraid that the fucking mosquitos would be drawn to the scene and yet bite me, because that's the kind of girl I alas am.
I was talking Black Bears. White Bears of course are totally prissy.
BTW, B, I kinda flaked out on the San Diego meetup thing, but 200 miles is way too far to drive for the dubious pleasure of drinking with me anyway.
238: I kinda figured you had, and I probably wouldn't have been able to do it in the event. But even so, you suck and the drinks are on you next time.
White bears do not eat fungus-based Inuit substitutes.
Quornography involves meat substitutes, IYKWIM.
And now google reveals that's an old joke. Oh well.
Wanna join Helpy-Chalk and me when I get home next week? I'll buy.
"Home"? Probably it's too far, and anyway I'm supposed to hang out with my cousin in Ojai at some point that week, plus the Bay Area thing. Which I obviously have to attend, because Ogged will cry if I don't.
God forbid that you should make Ogged cry. I wish I could do the Bay Area thing, but of course I'm a week off and in the wrong end of California.
Where I live home, not where I grew up home--Honolulu. Probably the onliest Unfogged meetup that will ever happen there, and you could singlehandedly increase attendance by 50%.
But yeah, the flight is even longer than the drive to San Diego.
167: My apartment building has a weightroom that's included in the assessments costs. It has machines to cover pretty much everything necessary for the upper body, and considering that I don't have a spotter most of the time, I'm fine without doing heavy free weight barbell exercises. They really do need better lower body stuff, however.
206: Thanks, I'll look those up in private sometime, as I'm not quite confident enough to perform ballet exercises in public gyms.
Ah, yeah, long flight on short notice a bit difficult. If you want to send me a ticket, though, I'll work my schedule around you.
Plus I'm boring.
Next year this conference is in NY, which would have possibilities if our office had a more reasonable budget for such things. But we have to rotate, so each of us only gets to go once every three years or so. 2010 is in DC. I guess that's something to shoot for.
And now to bed so that I can go try to learn something useful in the morning.
In this particular case, though, there is no reason to think that pasteurization is a damaging form of processing.
Pasteurization was one of the the first steps on the road to industrialized processed food, with its tradeoff of safety for portability / long storage for flavor and character. Pasteurized cheese is dead cheese, good pasteurized cheese is to good raw milk cheese as Velveeta is to good pasteurized cheese.
Pasteurization sucks ass. I'm just old enough to remember the great Odwalla controversy, where they had to stop selling their tasty brand of cider just because a couple of pussies couldn't stand getting killed by it. I mean, sure its wrong to get whacked by your apple juice, but that's what warning labels and waivers are for. Now they don't sell it at all. Thank you very much, litigious society.
If you want the real deal, and you live in northern california, check out the apple hill area come september-october. It's just outside of placerville, and their cider will rock your world.
Does anyone know good exercises for improving sprinting speed?
go up to a really big bloke with a pitbull and kick him in the nads.
re: 196
Those are useful exercises. I do some vaguely related exercises that are very similar to the slow tendus* as part of my martial art practice.** The plié-rélévé is a new one, though, and looks worth trying.
* lots of very slow kicks, done with the foot extended and with the supporting knee bent (plie, style) or straight.
** french martial art, so lots of techniques with names the same as ballet positions/moves, etc The chassé and fouetté, for example, are names of savate techniques.
re: 255
Kick the pitbull in the nads, surely.
Why would anyone name a vegetarian meat substitute after a fox hunt?
Surf Nazis Must Die is not a great movie. It is not a good movie. It is not a sort-of-ok movie. It is a bad, bad, bad movie. It is, however, a great title. To compare it with Zardoz, which a great, albeit insane, movie, but not a great title, betrays an appalling lack of moral fibre.
No-one can tell me that final chase scene is anything less than maximum win. "Get you some of Mama's home cooking, Adolf!" BLAM!
French martial arts? How pasteurized.
64 gets it exactly right.
But, I got problems with the discussion around the 70's - 80's (so far, maybe it continues further). If anyone wants to resurrect this I would lay out some of my problems with it.
Eh never mind, my problems are mostly addressed by around the low 120's.
228's "exercises with my honey" brings to mind -gg-d's wingnut friend's camping trip with the bears.
Oh but I see that is already pwned at 229.
One thing that's kind of fun about ballet and martial arts is the terms, because you first think of the words as meaning this beautiful fluid motion and then you learn they translate as 'big jump' or 'hard hit.'
You know what bears and elephants really like? Clover. If you're at a zoo where you can feed them, throw fresh clover and they'll go past the carrots and peanuts to get the clover.
Probably alfalfa would work too.
re: 267
Heh, yeah.
Although the movements can still be beautiful and fluid [when done by people less fat than me].
Oh, they're definitely still beautiful. Just mildly amusing, like translating the fancy French cuisine terms into English.
Well, I was planning to do some cover-cropping with clover. But scratch that idea if it's going to attract elephants.
On the topic of local food vs. non-local food, my wife and I oddly juxtapose the two every Saturday: farmer's market at 7:30am, Sam's Club at 9am. Strangely, we buy vegetables at both.
Carrboro tomatoes and Guatemalan avocados FTW!!!1!!
Just watched some savate on YouTube. Those guys must have some insane hip flexors. And it's strange to see a combat sport that favors very long legs.
re: 273
Yeah. Although I can do most of those techniques, and I don't think I am that flexible. It's partly just about doing them properly.
It does favour long-legs, though. At least in the semi-contact version [most of the stuff on youtube is semi-contact]. Full-contact savate you can make more use of punching power close-in.
The long leg thing is because savateurs wear shoes. So you can kick with your legs fully extended using the toes, gaining an extra 30cm or so in range. In most traditional martial arts that'd just end with broken feet.
Isn't it time for a reference to Batrok the Leaper?
Honestly, this is something I never heard of back in the day. BtheL was my only indication there was such a thing. It it was every on Wide World of Sports, and it just has to have been, I never saw it.
Last year I watched some WWoS compilation shows on ESPN, but I am no longer unemployed. Motorcycle ice racing—the Russians were good at it.
There are some fairly comic newsreels of savateurs from the 1930s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJme1iy6qOc&mode=related&search=
That one is fantastic. With laugh out loud silent movie titles.
That is pretty cool. The way to train your husband!
Like her un-pronified fitness. Could such a film be made today? Could it possibly have that quality?
I want to say I doubt it. The woman has actual thighs. On the other hand, I'm not sure whether that film would have been received as pronified, so maybe it's just a question of radically different beauty standards.
Still, it's telling that there's no way she could look as she does in that video today, and be thought fit even though it's pretty clear than she's in excellent shape.
275: it's always time for a reference to Batroc ze Leapair!
Dudes, by the film standards of that time, I'm pretty sure that was porn. Pron disguised as fitness curiousity, but lewd nonetheless.
281: Especially with the leg-spreading exercises on her back. It doesn't take much imagination.
I agree about the moves and exercises, completely. It's the general fitness I'm thinking about.
Savate looks pretty cool. The last time I tried any sort of martial arts I became too annoyed at the other practitioners ("it's Eastern, it's more spiritual", come on, punch the damn bag) exoticizing the whole thing the entire time.
But kicking at people is good exercise.
But kicking at people is good exercise.
Nothing hammers home just how long three minutes really is like boxing/kickboxing. Especially if the other guy is connecting a lot.
re: 284
My instructor actually says things like, 'this is not a martial art'. Her intent, I think, is to distinguish what we do from all that stuff. It's a sport that involves hitting/kicking people. There are no forms to learn, no solo exercises, there aren't thousands of techniques. There are 4 basic punches, maybe 5 or 6 basic kicks. Everything else is just about further refinements of those basic 9 or 10 things.
The irony, of course, being that as a result savateurs spend way more time actually hitting/kicking people than most martial artists -- with the exception of the other 'boxing' related arts (thai boxing, kickboxing, western boxing, etc) which are broadly similar in approach.
280 -- Hey Tweety, could you send me an email? Thanks.
Hm, sorry. I meant to include my address with 287. It is anacreon at gmail.