Terrible Analogies

Unpacking our weekly haul of groceries Karin picked up a seal pack of mushrooms and mumbled something about picking up a hitchhiker.  Handing the ‘shrooms to me she pointed out this little guy desperately trying to figure a way to freedom:

This got me thinking; I wonder how many bugs people inadvertently eat on a yearly basis.  If you ponder the process by which food is made, it isn’t raised or grown in sterile environments, but rather in farms and barns deluged with creepy-crawlies of all shapes and sizes.  It has to be an impossible task to remove all of them between the time it’s picked, caught, or killed, to when it finally appears in manageable bite-sized chunks on our plates ready and willing to be converted into energy.

The FDA apparently has guidelines in place that attempts to regulate how many contaminants consumers can ingest before it becomes something other than an “aesthetic” issue.  To quote the FDA:

The FDA set these action levels because it is economically impractical to grow, harvest, or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects. Products harmful to consumers are subject to regulatory action whether or not they exceed the action levels.

Diving into this handout I’ve picked a few passages that you might find interesting.  I’ve made notes along the way to help you visualize the percentage of foreign material that can legally make it on to your dining room table:

ASPARAGUS, CANNED OR FROZEN
10% by count of spears or pieces are infested with 6 or more attached asparagus beetle eggs and/or sacs

BROCCOLI, FROZEN
Average of 60 or more aphids and/or thrips and/or mites per 100 grams
(NOTE: average bag of frozen broccoli is 100 grams)

CHOCOLATE
Any 1 subsample (100 grams)  contains 90 or more insect fragments
(NOTE: a standard Hershey’s Chocolate bar is 3.5oz (or 99.645 grams))

COCOA POWDER PRESS CAKE
Any 1 subsample (50 grams) contains 125 or more insect fragments

FIG PASTE
Contains 13 or more insect heads per 100 grams of fig paste
(Question: Why to so many insects lose their heads in the making of fig paste?) 

Blue Fin and other Fresh Water Herring
60 parasitic cysts per 100 fish (fish averaging 1 pound or less) or 100 pounds of fish averaging over 1 pound)
(NOTE: see Parasite Detoxification for further details.  This will make you think twice next time you order sushi.)

MACARONI AND NOODLE PRODUCTS
Average of 225 insect fragments or more per 225 grams
(NOTE: service size of macaroni is 2oz (56.94g))

NUTMEG, GROUND
Average of 100 or more insect fragments per 10 grams

OREGANO, GROUND
Average of 1250 or more insect fragments per 10 grams
(NOTE: small container of ground kitchen oregano is 21g)

PEPPER, GROUND
Average of 475 or more insect fragments and 2 or more rodent hairs per 50 grams
(NOTE: typical kitchen container of pepper is 63g)

TOMATO PASTE, PIZZA AND OTHER SAUCES
Average of 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams
OR
15 or more fly eggs and 1 or more maggots per 100 grams
OR
2 or more maggots per 100 grams in a minimum of 12 subsamples

I’ve been living with a secret, one so dark and heavy it weighs me down with guilt, shortens my step, and drains me of my otherwise radiant charm.  It haunts me, daring me to go one more day before letting loose to the world this dreadful unknown.  

But I can’t bear the burden any longer.  My trembling, creaking bones can no longer carry the weight of this ill-gotten fortune.  I must share the origin of my blog title…

As a child I grew up with comic books.  For several years I even worked in a comic book shop.  My favorite series was one that holds the record for longest running english independent comic…Cerebus.  Originally a parody of Conan The Barbarian, it quickly evolved into a tale of politics, finance, religion, and ethics.  In the 300 monthly black and white issues that this story spanned Cerebus, an earth pig born, was a warrior, Prime Minister, the Pope, a witness to God, and finally serving as His vessel and doing His bidding before succumbing to a sad, uncelebrated fate Cerebus has foreseen and knows is ultimately unavoidable.

And this brings me back to my original point.  The title of my blog, Terrible Analogies, comes from an issue of Cerebus.  In it, Cerebus the Pope is rejected by the only woman he ever loved.  Having shed his papal garb and holding his old blade he stands at a pivotal crossroads; continue with his mad plan to bankrupt the city-state of Iest, or slink back to his old ways of living by the sword.  

If you’ve never read independent comics when they truly were independent, then I implore you to read the history of this series.  It’s a quick read, but well worth your time.  Check out some of the amazing cover art as well.  And after having reviewed this information you find yourself wishing to dive into this series, you can purchase the phonebook encyclopedia novels that covers the entire run of Cerebus.

So there you have it.  Terrible Analogies owes its title to Dave Sim and his amazing body of work.  

My love for this series knows no bounds…  

Here’s hoping that you had a nice, relaxing Valentine’s Day.  

It appears that the weatherman couldn’t have been more wrong about the forecast.  The weather was actually quite comfortable in southern California.  In between celebrating the wife’s birthday and Valentine’s Day I managed to squeeze in two trail runs in as many days.   When the rain does finally arrive I plan to spend my days in the gym, so it’s all good.

Not to get all non-sequitur on you, but for no apparent reason reason I’m been thinking about The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air recently, and something’s been bothering me about the show’s premise for the past three days.  If the Fresh Prince and his mother lived in the projects, and the Fresh Prince had an extraordinarily rich aunt who lived in a wealthy and prominent neighborhood of Los Angeles, why would his aunt let her sister live in such a squalid, dangerous location?  

It seemed that his mother and her sister were on good enough terms to let the Fresh Prince live with the aunt apparently with no conditions attached.  If they were on such good terms, why couldn’t his aunt kick a few bucks his way, helping he and his mother escape from a strangling life of targeted, criminal, gang-related violence?

I mean, here’s the aunt who’s dripping with jewelry, three self-centered kids, a powerfully-connected husband who happens to be a well-respected high-ranking judge, a smarmy butler, gardener, and an unknown number of servants lurking in the background performing a variety of tedious tasks all in an effort to keep her comfortable in the lifestyle to which she’s accustomed.  Floating in a pretentious sea of haute culture and callous celebrity, his aunt couldn’t lift the three fingers it takes to write a check that could change the life of an extremely intelligent, grounded, good-natured child that deserves the opportunity to excel beyond his wildest dreams, breaking the cycle of turbulence and strife that his family has no doubt experienced for generations?

This is, after all, family.  No?

Through a delicate, subtile combination of psychology and extreme violence, I’ve managed to wrangle the next five days off from work.  In my head I had planned out a few days of long trail runs and hill work in preparation for my attack on Mt. Whitney, but as luck would have it, it appears that one of those “storms of the century” type deals is going to start rolling into San Diego starting Friday evening, and I’m told it will linger around through at least Monday.  Great.

But at least I won’t be sitting in front of my laptop coding some abstract program, administrating Sharepoint or our Project 2007 environment, installing an iffy change control for a developer who can’t write a coherent sentence to save his life, or resurrecting a dying server that houses a database which contains the true name of God or some other business critical app.

But hey, I guess I should be grateful that I’m employed.  I mean, that’s what the news tells me, right?  In this current economy I should just acquiesce, fall on my knees, and grovel eastwards in reverence that a nameless corporation sees fit to take advantage of my talents, milking me for all I’m worth, draining me of my soul and slowly wringing out by carefully measured increments my will to live.  

And to think, I used to be such an upbeat guy…  ;-)

If it’s Friday, and you’re sipping coffee from a styrofoam cup in front of your corporate computer dreading what the day is about to wrought all over your shocked face, take comfort in the fact that I’ll be at Disneyland with the wife, eating a big stack of pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse, zipping down Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and deftly maneuvering the claw machine at the Disney arcade in a desperate attempt to pluck a stuffed fish or teddy bear for the birthday girl Karin.  

Yes….her birthday does fall on Friday the 13th.  Heap that fact on the teetering pile of innumerable reasons why I love her.  Heh…

My wife’s birthday happens to fall on the day before Valentine’s day, which makes for a delicate gift-giving juggling act. I guess I should be thankful that her birthday doesn’t fall right before Christmas. I always thought that, as a kid, the cruelest thing that could happen to you was to have your birthday fall on the same day as Christmas. You would totally get screwed on the gifts because your parents would simply merge the two days together gypping you out of an entire days worth of presents.

At least when I was a kid the gifts were pretty cool. I remember getting an Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle, Aurora Monster Models, a Green Machine, a Speak & Spell, and a Big Trak.  Admittedly, I didn’t get many toys as a kid, but the ones that I did get were nothing short of awesome.  

As an adult I wonder what kind of toys I’ll be buying for my future kids.  Slinking through the isles of the toy stores, I found one line of products that I certainly won’t buy simply because of the high creepiness factor: