Soylent Sauce Is Made From Clams!
Jun. 18th, 2004 09:44 amIn downtown Seattle, the clams are engaging in a full-frontal assault on our sensibilities. If you wander down to Westlake Center, that vast, brick-lain triangle dedicated to mad consumption, with its brick-shaped Starbucks inappropriately chromed and bumpered, its crowds of shoppers, and its front facings to Nordstrom's and the Westlake Mall, in the middle of this you'll find five large, scary-bright yellow tents, each about twelve feet across, each decorated with a black and white banner proclaiming "SOMETHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT."
No mention about what "it" is or what that "something" is; this bland appeal to curiousity in bright yellow turns out to be an army of clams: a horde of "Scientology Volunteer Ministers" attempting to pry you out of your favorite worldview and into the paranoid vision of L. Ron Hubbard, the most prolific dead author of our century. And there they are, the Volunteer Ministers of the "Cavalcade", tallow but hardly callow youths with perfect haircuts and parentally purchased smiles pasted to curiously immobile faces, as if the first Thetans cleared from their minds and bodies were the ones that operated the muscles of emotional expression.
And in what may be the most disgusting case of food industry corruption yet seen, a soy sauce company in China has been busted for using human amino acid blends in its product. The amino acid syrups, produced independently of the actual sauce and mixed in as a bulking agent, were derived from piles of human hair collected from barbershops and similar sources, and processed down with industrial (rather than food) grade acids.
And in Naperville, Illinois, it's illegal for a minor to be in the presence of other minors who are drinking or intoxicated. In the spirit of the Law of Unintendend Consequences, this is a biggy: it means that no teenager can be a designated driver or even approach a party to drive the kids home. The only way kids can get home from such a party... is to drive home with other underage drinkers.
No mention about what "it" is or what that "something" is; this bland appeal to curiousity in bright yellow turns out to be an army of clams: a horde of "Scientology Volunteer Ministers" attempting to pry you out of your favorite worldview and into the paranoid vision of L. Ron Hubbard, the most prolific dead author of our century. And there they are, the Volunteer Ministers of the "Cavalcade", tallow but hardly callow youths with perfect haircuts and parentally purchased smiles pasted to curiously immobile faces, as if the first Thetans cleared from their minds and bodies were the ones that operated the muscles of emotional expression.
And in what may be the most disgusting case of food industry corruption yet seen, a soy sauce company in China has been busted for using human amino acid blends in its product. The amino acid syrups, produced independently of the actual sauce and mixed in as a bulking agent, were derived from piles of human hair collected from barbershops and similar sources, and processed down with industrial (rather than food) grade acids.
And in Naperville, Illinois, it's illegal for a minor to be in the presence of other minors who are drinking or intoxicated. In the spirit of the Law of Unintendend Consequences, this is a biggy: it means that no teenager can be a designated driver or even approach a party to drive the kids home. The only way kids can get home from such a party... is to drive home with other underage drinkers.