SPF 100 will melt your face off, By Mark Morford

[madokie]

" target="_blank">entirely obnoxious little lie that is regularly foisted, like Sarah Palin's insufferable wink, on an unwary populace by a completely evil bedsheet manufacturing industry, drunk on power, black tar heroin and the tears of Chinese sweatshop slave laborers? I bet you did.

Indeed, it's an ongoing, nefarious ruse that effortlessly dupes housewives and sorority girls by the millions as they browse Bed, Bath & Beyond and Target and run their middle finger over the slippery pink sateen and coo about how if 500-thread-count is yummyslippery like dime store baby oil, then 1,000 must be twice as Barbie-liscious. Right?

Wrong. Of course, anything beyond 300 or 400 threads is complete BS, total fakery, often less soft or comfortable, wherein they cheat the verbiage by twisting multiple threads or adding extra layers or coating the threads with oil wrung from dead baby seals (just a guess) and forcing them into entirely useless weavings until all meaning is lost and no one cares anymore and buying sheets is basically an insufferable crapshoot, and the industry goes ha ha snicker.

It's just one of those things, one of those everyday, widespread consumer-oriented lies that have anchored themselves in the culture like some sort of contemptuous tumor, one of a million myriad obstacles you gotta navigate around, through, up and over just to make it through the day and try and sleep at night without slipping off the goddamn bed in a fit of oh-my-God-why-did-I-buy-these-stupid-things. ...

(click here to read the rest)

(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/05/26/notes052610.DTL&nl=fix)

[marions ghost]

1. colorful rant

true, especially about commercial products

I have problems with the conclusion tho...

"The good news is, the good news is still outweighing the bad. The good news is, if everything were as dire and hellbound as the Christian fundamentalist right, the eco-maniac left and the libertarian nutball fringe say it is, we would've blipped out a thousand years ago in a puddle of whining, bloodshed and severely sunburned shoulders. Isn't that reassuring? I have no idea. Who wants lip balm?"

"ego-maniac left"??? We are just as bad as Fundys & Libertarians???

I've never been seen as an ego-maniac. More like someone who gets trampled by ego-maniacs.
:argh:

What's this "ego-maniac left" BS? Where's that coming from?

[TommyO]

2. Check the rant again, it's "eco-maniac", not "ego-maniac"

[marions ghost]

4. thanks! lol

Too much scanning & scrolling...my eyes are swimming with the fishies at this point trying to keep up with all this about the oil disaster.

I also object to "eco-maniac" as defining the left. :shrug: An unexpected putdown from someone who gets it about the absurd marketing blizzard that snows us under, but doesn't get it, in the face of the ruination of The Gulf, that there are times to BE an eco-maniac. So we're all tree huggers, then, unrealistic, delusional?? I don't appreciate the distorted label. And he DOES equate us with Fundys and Libertarians (in an effort to be an egalitarian labeller). :grr: I don't take that lightly.

We are all Gulf Coasters now.

[Berry Cool]

5. He could be using it as a designator, as in "the part of the left that is eco-maniac"

as opposed to the part that isn't.

Morford hasn't stricken me in the past as a guy who never worries about the environment, but he does seem to be skeptical of Chicken Little-ing of any kind.

But hey, you don't have to agree with everything he says to appreciate most of it. Me, I don't like his disdain of religion as nothing but lies. But that's him.

[marions ghost]

6. Needs to be more careful about his designators...

Morford's cute coinage plants an anti-environment bias, because people who consider themselves moderates or independents will not want to associate with "eco-maniacs."

What's an eco-maniac anyway--somebody who cares about rainforests, redwood forests, fisheries, food, endangered species, etc. Tell me where is the bad or "excessive" nature of that? People need to understand it's about preservation of us also. Some see "Chicken Littles" where others see canaries in the coalmine. We'd better start paying attention to those canaries.

OK so he wants to be cool and diss everybody, wants to hone his identity as a general curmudgeon. He's funny, but sloppy. Sloppy labelling--find something that might actually be true, Morford, not just more (yawn) general trashing of the left. Where's he been? Environmentalism is going mainstream fast.

Sorry, that statement rises to an insensitive gaff during this oil blowout catastrophe. You can't convince me he's ever thought about or knows much about, environmental issues. He couldn't make the statement if he did.

[malaise]

3. I love Morford

Great read.

Rec