Friday, April 29, 2005

Cheese Friday: NOOOOOO!!!!

Mormons buy Cheese factory

By RON FIELDS
rfields@thehawkeye.com

NAUVOO, Ill. — The shuttered cheese factory here is slated to be demolished after its purchase by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter–day Saints.

The Mormon church purchased the Nauvoo Blue Cheese plant for $100,000 from food conglomerate ConAgra Foods, based in Omaha, Neb.

According to Barbara Renouf, a public affairs missionary for Historic Nauvoo, workers already have begun to dismantle the plant. She expects the razing of the building to begin in earnest next week.

"I think it will be taken down and probably grassed over," she said.

The factory has a long history in Nauvoo. Blue cheese was a traditional food brought to the area by the Icarians, a French utopian movement that moved into the area following the exodus of the Mormons in 1846.

Nauvoo Blue Cheese began in 1937, when cheesemaker Oscar Rhode founded the company, taking advantage of the area's limestone caves — caves that provided the constant temperature needed to cure the cheese.

The factory remained family–owned until 1987, when it was sold to St. Louis cream cheese maker Raskas Co. In 1999, Raskas sold the company to ConAgra, which renamed the factory Beatrice Cheese–Nauvoo.

"There's nothing left in the place," said Bob Hopp, one of several Nauvoo–area residents attempting to revive the blue cheese industry in the Illinois river town. "It's just a big, empty building."

The cheese plant, formerly a brewery before it was purchased by Rhode in 1937, occupies nearly an entire city block in Nauvoo near the the Joseph Smith Academy. It was surrounded on three sides by property owned by the Salt Lake City–based Mormon church, which in 2002 dedicated a rebuilt temple in Nauvoo.

Friday, April 22, 2005

My neighbors are awesome.

Hello Friends,

20 seconds of my evening. These recordings (worksafe,
requires Quicktime™
) were made at approximately 1:45am Friday
morning.

I didn't get the bit where he accuses her of being 'typically strung
out' or the many times she claimed to not know him but if he just gets
away from the door she will put his 'stuff' outside.

I also didn't get the bit where 'he' copped to being 'her' boy toy
when she takes him to the bars they enjoy frequenting and the fact
that it is all over know and that he hopes she knows that, seriously
because it is, because she screwed it up, so it's over, because of her
screwing up the good thing going on, and that he will be happy to be
on his way as soon as he gets his stuff (one assumes)
because it is over and finished. This was followed by the bit where a
guy from upstairs told them he was gonna call the cops,

To paraphrase the late, great Mr. Rick James "[your poison] is
a hell of a drug
".

tw





Crazy Neighbors Video #1


Crazy Neighbors Video #2

Cheese Friday: PETA rebuffed.


April 20th AP, San Francisco—The California Supreme Court is putting to pasture a lawsuit brought by an animal rights group alleging the California Milk Producers Advisory Board is falsely advertising that California's cows are happy... court in January ruled that Milk Producers Advisory Board, funded by farmers, is immune from being sued under false-advertising laws, just like other state agencies.

Whether the cows in a state milk board's ads are really happy is apparently none of the California courts' business.

The state Supreme Court denied review of an appeal Wednesday by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which sued the California Milk Producers Advisory Board in December 2002. The board's ads, funded by dairy farms, showed cows grazing in green pastures with the slogan, "Great cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California.''

Actually, PETA declared, California dairy cows commonly spend their lives in dirt and mud, are repeatedly impregnated and milked throughout their pregnancies, often suffer painful maladies and are slaughtered when they can no longer meet the industry's production demands.

But San Francisco Superior Court Judge David Garcia ruled that the milk board could not be sued for false advertising or unfair business practices, the two laws invoked by PETA. He said they can be used only against individuals, companies and private associations.

A Court of Appeal panel in San Francisco agreed with Garcia in January, saying past rulings had established that government agencies are immune from lawsuits over their ads.

The court denied review without comment.

The case is PETA vs. California Milk Producers Advisory Board, S131634.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

30 Minute Comics Vol. 3 Issue 3

Billy the Kid



It was pouring rain outside, and the fur on Billy's face was matted and wet. It hung down his face like an old pair of curtains someone hadn't bothered to pack up when they moved out of a house. He wondered if the water pouring over his horns would sharpen or dull them.

The sharpening post at the colosium would always become a madhouse before the first matchup. The fighters would kick and butt each other just to get a moment to sharpen their own horns or tusks. It was almost impossible to for him to wedge his way in among the other animals. He suddenly found himself wishing he had spent more time grinding them against his own steel beam at home.

Billy had been sparring for two months now, but it still felt brand new every time he stepped into the ring. The blinding white lights that shone from the ceiling of unending darkness, the smell of the hard rubber ropes that were strung around the bright yellow square. Billy had heard they chose yellow, because it would best contrast with the blood splattered on the matt night after night.

Through the fog and the rain Billy began to make out the barnyard coliseum; it loomed, wooden and ominous, above all who passed before it. His hooves made a clip clop sound on the pebble filled road bringing him to his fateful destination.

Billy didn't know who his opponent would be tonight. It might be another goat, a wild boar, or even a young bull. He just knew he'd have to give it all he had if he wanted to see tomorrow.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Double Dipping

They don't only want their asses kicked - they'd prefer to have them completely caved in.

Click and watch (without your mouth open the whole time)

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

30 Minute Comics Vol. 3 Issue 2

A Man & His Monkey



Things were better when Barry came to visit me. Those might have been my best years at the zoo. He would smile and then bare his teeth, and I would bare mine. He had the loudest laugh; even through the glass I could hear his hearty chuckles and goofy guffaws.

From the time that Barry was very young, his mother would bring him by the zoo. I remember noticing he was one of the tiniest kids in the viewing area. I guess most parents are afraid to bring in their real young ones. They think we'll frighten the children, make them cry or something. But Barry never cried. Not even when he was a toddler. He would just sit in his stroller and look at me with those cheerful green eyes of his. As Barry got older, his mother would drop him off at the monkey house, and leave him for a bit of time, unattended. We would play all sorts of games with one another: copy cat, I spy, staring contests, who can make the funniest face… The time flew by so fast during those days, - Barry's mother would come to pick him up and it would feel like she had dropped him off minutes before, even though a whole hour had gone by.

Then came the days when Barry didn't need his mother at all to bring him to the zoo. He would just show up all on his own. I could never wait until he got there and see his smiling face. None of the zoo keepers ever smiled at me the way he did. To them I was just another "animal" under their care – but to Barry, I was a true friend.

I still think about Barry sometimes, and I wonder what he's doing now. Maybe one day he'll come back to visit, and bring a little monkey of his own.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

100 naked women! How come it isn't sexy?



So this artist, yeah, she fiqured out a way to get a room full of 100 naked women, and make me NOT think about sex. I think I'm either getting old or she's doing some sorta David Blane mind trick on me. click here

Friday, April 08, 2005

Cheese Friday: Cheese Disaster



Driver escapes injury after cheese truck crashes

Radio Iowa - Des Moines,IA,USA
by Stella Shaffer

A Storm Lake trucker escaped without serious injury yesterday (Wednesday) when high winds upset his rig on Highway 9. The driver had left from the dairy manufacturing plant at Sanborn, and Sheryl Meschke with Associated Milk Producers says he was hauling processed milk products. It was carrying 37-thousand-750-pounds of cheddar cheese, nearly a full load, from the plant in Sanborn to a processor in Wisconsin, and the truck was overturned. The driver was briefly trapped in the cab but was able to get out with help from a passerby who smashed the windshield of the semi and helped him climb out. Meschke says going by prices yesterday on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the value of the product was about a dollar-59 a pound. That comes out to 60-thousand dollars for the load. The cheese was loaded in the tractor-trailer in the form of 700-pound blocks. Dairy company managers will have to decide whether the cheese can be salvaged. The driver, Floyd Patton of Storm Lake, is quoted as saying everyone should wear seatbelts, as he was doing, because it would keep them safer in accidents. AMPI is a regional cooperative of 4,600 dairy farms in Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Minnesota Wisconsin, and North and South Dakota. It operates fourteen manufacturing plants and is a major cheddar producers as well as producing 60-percent of al the instant milk sold in the US. It makes more than 5-Billion pounds of milk a year into butter, cheese and other solid milk products.

Sunday, April 03, 2005

30 Minute Comics Vol. 3 Issue 1

DEAD WOULD



Listen Mister. This is my town. It may be a one horse town. But its my God damned town and my God Damned horse, horseshoes and all. You see this star? This star says I'm the sheriff. I make sure that roughnecks like you who pass through our community don't get too out of hand, or make too much trouble. That whisky you been drinkin'? I made sure it got here. This saloon you're sittin' in, I helped build it. I've bled for this town. My pain has been sifted in with the dirt here for so long that I am the foundation of this place.

I know just the kind of man you are and I know the kind of man you think you are. You just come into town, and kill a couple whores; make a mess of our watering hole. You think you can get away with it. Just cause they're whores. Well they're our whores not yours to kill. You wouldn't go onto a man's ranch and slaughter his cattle without askin' him would ya?

Just because one of my eyes ain't what it used to be don't mean I can't see right through those beady eyes of yours and into the hollow, where your soul should be. But you don't have a soul. You're the scum of the earth. I hope you take a good look at this star. Because I'm gonna to make sure it's the last thing you see before you hang.