corporatism sucks (IE transformers 2, IE Crunch)

[cacophony]

and by the way, i'm totally not disagreeing that there's a fucked up corporatism that rules our lives now. i just think he sort of shot himself in the foot with his ridiculous argument in that clip.

i mean, the next time you go grocery shopping really really pay attention to the products you see. like, take the produce section. say you want lettuce. you're going to be able to get iceberg and romane. and if you're lucky there might be a small section with a few heads of bibb and red leaf. if you want a tomato you're going to be able to get globe, roma, and..... well you used to be able to get plum tomatoes but i haven't seen those since romas showed up. maybe some specialty types like heirloom and grape tomatoes but you're going to pay a premium for those. now go look for mushrooms. white button mushrooms. maybe portobello. want anything else and you're going to pay through the nose for a teeny couple of ounces.

now look for things like butternut squash and poblano peppers and turnips and parsnips. the sections dedicated to these items are getting smaller and smaller until in many cases they're just aren't even carried anymore. i went to our local kroger a couple of weeks ago because i make all of my own babyfood (yeah, THAT kind of hippie bullshit) and i was looking for lentils. this great big store and guess what? no lentils. i asked them why and they said "well... we have split peas." i asked them to show me the split peas. you know where they were stocked? the one-case wide micro section labeled "kosher foods."

every producer is trying to get us to be happy with less variety so they can simplify their production lines and lower their per-unit price and maximize profit. which means after a while if you want cheese your options are going to be cheddar and mozzarella and THAT'S FUCKIN' IT. if you want canned stewed tomatoes your options are diced or whole. FUCK YOU IF YOU WANT CRUSHED. making a cream-of type soup and want to use light cream? good luck. it's heavy whipping cream, half and half or NOTHING.

it's been a slow evolution but if you're paying attention you can see this ledge we're teetering on where basic food staples are starting to disappear because they're not profitable. wait, that's not exactly it. it's not that they're not profitable, it's that there's greater profit to be made if we're slowly convinced that no one eats turnips anymore. and if we're convinced no one eats turnips anymore then there's no reason to buy them and if there's no reason to buy them, then no one has to grow them, and that means that much more farmland for the same 5 fucking vegetables they're pushing on us: lettuce, green peppers, potatoes, carrots and corn.

the only true "variety" at this point is in the fabricated foods, where they take a truckload of oats and put it through a press and make flake cereal, and then pump it through a jet puffer and make puffed cereal, and put it through a grinder and make hot cereal. if you want lentils, buy the preservative laden, oversalted prepackaged "taste of india" stuff in your grocery store's "ethnic" section. but don't actually look for a bag of jasmine rice. fuck that, your options are white, brown, or wild.

so i'm not saying i disagree with the concept. we're totally being herded like cattle into a chute where the inevitable outcome is about 3 different food staples made available to us, processed into a "variety" of a thousand different prepackaged health disasters. and we're willingly going along with it, never thinking about the fact that we haven't seen fresh kale in the produce section in longer than we can remember.

rant done.