Some Things I Read Make Me Have to Go Lie Down

Today Andrew Sullivan says they’ve done a report to determine…

I’m sorry.  I’m going to need just a second.

Okay.  Let me compose myself.

Let’s try again.

Today Andrew Sullivan says they’ve done a study in which they’ve determined, and I quote,

The bulk of a fast-food hamburger from McDonald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s is made from cows that eat primarily corn, or so says a new study of the chemical composition of more than 480 fast-food burgers from across the nation.

And it isn’t only cows that are eating corn. There is also evidence of a corn diet in chicken sandwiches, and even French fries get a good slathering of the fat that makes them so tasty from being fried in corn oil.

I don’t even know what to say about this.  You eat corn-fed beef and corn-fed chicken and corn-oil fried things all the damn time.  Who doesn’t know this?!

You have to have a study to tell you that?  Where do people think all that corn in the midwest goes?

I mean, y’all know it’s not sweet corn, right?

Happy Birthday

I ate Pirouettes in your honor.

And Now the Fords are Involved

Duana Johnson deserved a lot of things, let me just say that up-front.  She deserved, at the least, to live.  She deserved, at the least, to not have been used as a punching bag by the Memphis police.  And she deserved, at the least, the money she was suing the city for.

Let me tell you instead what happened.  After she gets beaten up by the police, after there’s talk of a lawsuit, which she would have had a good chance of winning, there being a video of the assault, she ends up dead, murdered over the weekend.  She knew she had to get the hell out of Dodge, but neither she nor her family had the money to put her on a bus headed to a place that would be safer for her.

So, she’s dead.  That’s bad enough.  And, of course, people are concerned that the city police are going to be less than enthusiastic about bothering to track down her killer.  And now, I’m reading in my feed-reader and I read this:

Duanna Johnson’s family needs donations for funeral.

The balance for Duanna Johnson’s funeral is $1195 and the funeral home is requiring Mrs. Skinner (Duanna’s mother) to pay it by tomorrow (11/14). The cost is a hardship, so we are asking anyone who can to donate. Please send any donations to:
N.J. Ford and Sons Funeral Home
12 S Parkway W
Memphis, TN 38109

If you want any clarification from NJ Ford, here is their contact number: (901) 948-7755.

Please forward this to as many people as you can!! Thanks!

Please donate or spread the word; if you can’t afford yourself to donate but can put this someplace where people who can might read it, please put it there.

According to spoggly, out of state checks won’t work (due to the length of time it would take for them to get there) unless you overnight them and the funeral home says that credit cards would be ideal; however, barring either of those options, it may be good to just call the funeral home and ask that they delay payment due date until it’s possible to raise more funding…

I cannot emphasize strongly enough who the funeral home is.

Blogosphere, I know you often think I’m full of shit.  I know there are folks concerned about this who have dismissed me as just another white woman, but listen to me now.

If you look at the last name on that funeral home and you look at the long history of Memphis politics, you ought to be asking some damn hard questions about their involvement.

Do y’all not remember which funeral home it was that let Thaddeus Matthews in to photograph Shindri Robinson after the Lester Street murders?!  (Warning: that link goes to Matthews’ blog, to the post where he names NJ Ford as the funeral home that let him in to photograph Robinson; it also contains some photos of Robinson, so please be warned before clicking.)

It is dodgy!  Dodgy, dodgy, dodgy.  I don’t know what can be done about it.  Maybe someone needs to call Harold Ford Jr. or the folks at MSNBC and ask him if he can’t call in some favors with his family to get this poor woman a decent burial.