Dear Penthouse Forum,
I know this sounds cliché, but it started just like any other day. I was stationed right past the metal detector, being unnecessarily surly and practically finger-fucking anyone who tried to sneak a bottle of Pert Plus on an airplane. You know, being a hero.
The Article: The Spam Factory’s Dirty Secret By Ted Genoways in Mother Jones.
The Text: On the cut-and-kill floor of Quality Pork Processors Inc. in Austin, Minnesota, the wind always blows. From the open doors at the docks where drivers unload massive trailers of screeching pigs, through to the “warm room” where the hogs are butchered, to the plastic-draped breezeway where the parts are handed over to Hormel for packaging, the air gusts and swirls, whistling through the plant like the current in a canyon. In the first week of December 2006, Matthew Garcia felt feverish and chilled on the blustery production floor. He fought stabbing back pains and nausea, but he figured it was just the flu—and he was determined to tough it out.
Garcia had gotten on at QPP only 12 weeks before and had been stuck with one of the worst spots on the line: running a device known simply as the “brain machine”—the last stop on a conveyor line snaking down the middle of a J-shaped bench called the “head table.” Every hour, more than 1,300 severed pork heads go sliding along the belt. Workers slice off the ears, clip the snouts, chisel the cheek meat. They scoop out the eyes, carve out the tongue, and scrape the palate meat from the roofs of mouths. Because, famously, all parts of a pig are edible (“everything but the squeal,” wisdom goes), nothing is wasted. A woman next to Garcia would carve meat off the back of each head before letting the denuded skull slide down the conveyor and through an opening in a plexiglass shield.
On the other side, Garcia inserted the metal nozzle of a 90-pounds-per-square-inch compressed-air hose and blasted the pigs’ brains into a pink slurry. One head every three seconds. A high-pressure burst, a fine rosy mist, and the slosh of brains slipping through a drain hole into a catch bucket. (Some workers say the goo looked like Pepto-Bismol; others describe it as more like a lumpy strawberry milkshake.) When the 10-pound barrel was filled, another worker would come to take the brains for shipping to Asia, where they are used as a thickener in stir-fry [7]. Most days that fall, production was so fast that the air never cleared between blasts, and the mist would slick workers at the head table in a grisly mix of brains and blood and grease.
Again he walked the lonely June walk. His sixth. But the first time he would rip off a drenched jersey not of the Cavaliers. He unclipped some luckless bracelet, slinked away from the TunnelVision camera, and into his first full summer as LeBron James: The Villain.
A sultry summer locked in the gym. Of endless jump shots and low post spin-moves. Months of watching his first name scroll along ESPN’s ticker as its own category, headlining his every passing thought and tweet. Months of couldas, wouldas, and What Should I Do Nows? Months to dwell on the mid-career crisis.
LeBron James is 26 years old. Half of his career remains. Legacy is still a six letter word tossed around by restless sportswriters. But LeBron James has played 627 NBA games. He is decidedly middle-aged in a young twenty-something’s game. He has an Olympiad on Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose. And just as many titles.
Year 8 was LeBron’s closest yet. But still two wins short. Still six rings short of MJ, five of Kobe. Even one ring short of Brian “The Janitor” Cardinal. And so LeBron James slips another year behind the MJ trajectory. Another year the crown sits a little heavier. Another blemish on the King’s name. In 2009, he walked off the court against Orlando. In 2010, there was Game 5 in Boston. And in 2011, The Fourth Quarter.
Many Americans continue to voice dissatisfaction with high tax rates, specifically in the context of the huge tax increases passed by the current administration.
The data, however, suggests that non-imaginary tax rates have not risen for most individuals. What else could be driving the anger over taxes?
After a number of recent gay teen suicides, the “It Gets Better” video campaign was developed in hopes of reaching out to gay/bisexual/transgendered teens feeling isolated and depressed. In only a month, the campaign has amassed thousands of videos speaking out against gay-bashing and encouraged teens to reach out for help instead of self-harming or committing suicide.
There is no doubt that the campaign is trying to help teens, but does ‘It gets better’ promote the tolerance of bullies and homophobes at the same time? Those who believe themselves to be taking a more honest approach have made “it doesn’t get better” videos which have received much backlash, event though they are honest, non-homophobic, free of ridicule and often made by someone gay or transgendered.
