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30-Day Challenge: Day 24-Something Embarrassing In Your Room

There are squares of odd colors on the walls. Am I embarrassed?

Nothing. Damn, this could have been a REALLY short post. But…

OK, there may be dirty clothes on the floor at times, or maybe the bed’s unmade. But embarrassing?

I have a stuffed bear in my room named Gunther and a monkey named Oscar. Sometimes they talk to me. Am I embarrassed? I am not.

OK, let’s go around the house, find something REALLY embarrassing. Well, the office is a mess right now, and this time, it’s mostly MY fault. The guest room is actually LESS messy than it used to be.

My wife had great expectations about painting the entire first floor this summer; she got through one room. So in the other rooms, there are squares of odd colors on the walls. Embarrassing? Heck, no; adds character to the house.

The kitchen has a motif that was probably dated when it was done in the 1970s. Embarrassed? Obviously, you don’t know me well.

There IS something perhaps mildly embarrassing in the upstairs bathroom, which is the crumbling tiles, but they’re covered up; what you can’t see can’t embarrass me.

H is for Halal and Haram

So is kosher halal, or vice versa?

I was watching ABC News (US) last month, and there was a piece about Air National Guard members from Illinois putting pallets of meals onto a C-130H at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. The Meals Ready to Eat would be delivered to Pakistan as part of a relief mission after the devastating floods. What I noticed is that every single box I saw was labeled, in a very large font, HALAL.

So what IS halal? The best site I’ve come across is from IFANCA, the Islamic Food and Nutritional Council of America, which defines it: “Halal is an Arabic word meaning lawful or permitted. The opposite of halal is haram, which means unlawful or prohibited.

Halal and haram are universal terms that apply to all facets of life.” So the terms are not in reference to food, though this discussion will be. “While many things are clearly halal or haram, there are some things which are not clear. Further information is needed… Such items are often referred to as mashbooh, which means doubtful or questionable.
All foods are considered halal except the following (which are haram):
Swine/Pork and its by-products
Animals improperly slaughtered or dead before slaughtering
Alcoholic drinks and intoxicants
Carnivorous animals, birds of prey, and certain other animals
Foods contaminated with any of the above products
Foods containing ingredients such as gelatin, enzymes, emulsifiers, and flavors are questionable (mashbooh), because the origin of these ingredients is not known.”

There is a growing number of businesses in countries that are not predominantly Muslim producing foods that are certified as halal. This is less a function of cultural sensitivity than good business practice. A market research report from Packaged Facts suggests that food manufacturers consider kosher and halal certification for wider appeal, driven not just by religious considerations. “Companies should consider the marketing push and public perception of safety that comes with kosher certification and the far broader export opportunities that come with halal certification.

“Regarding halal foods, the market researcher said that there is ‘a dearth of reliable market data’ but cited the Malaysian Ministry of International Trade and Industry – where halal trade is of increasing importance – which estimates the market value for halal foods in the US at $11.6bn, and $548bn worldwide.

“The report also suggested that Canada presents broadening market opportunities for halal foods, with the number of Canadian Muslims set to double from 600,000 in 2000 to 1.2m in 2010, and a lack of convenient outlets for halal foods.”

KFC is going halal in the UK, and there are hundreds of halal Subway restaurants there. The US halal product directory includes foods from companies ranging from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Cabot Creamery to General Mills, Gerber and Kraft. Here’s the list of organizations accredited by the Halal Certification Authority in Australia – which means Vegemite is halal. (Not that I would ever eat it again.)

So is kosher halal, or vice versa? Well, yes and no. Certainly, both sets of food laws come from Abrahamic traditions, though there are specific rituals involved in slaughtering meat, e.g.; not incidentally, the rules for both kosher and halal are exceptions to the general rule in the United States that animals should be stunned before being killed. PunkTorah asks, Can Jews Eat Halal Meat, and if so, might that be a way toward peace?

Muslim-American Demographic Facts

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

Laborious Day

Just got my performance review this week, which went all right. I purloined a good portion of my self-evaluation from this blog. Seriously. It made it so much easier to write since I tend to dread it.

I saw this article 10 Things You Wish You Could Tell Your Boss, but are afraid to, lest you get fired. And in this economy, that’s a legitimate fear. At the end of the article, the author asked readers to throw in other pieces of advice.

For me, it is not to tell me I’m “empowered” to do something for which I have been given no resources whatsoever. Yes, there’s a particular job that I have in mind.

Also, to amplify one of the choices given, Don’t take credit for my work. You MAY say, “We designed this,” if I designed it, as we are part of a team. However, you may NOT say, “I designed this.” You will really tick me off if you do. This actually happened in my current job, with a previous boss. Her I did not like, but she’s long gone.

Song appropriate for the day by the Isley Brothers and the Average White Band.

Speaking of a piece of work, the late Vince Coletta was mentioned recently by two bloggers I know personally. First, Alan David Doane bemoans the fact that the very first book about an inker is someone who he (and many others) believe was one of the WORST working inkers in comicdom. Then Fred Hembeck is interviewed for TCJ, and he tells the story of DC Art Director Colletta dissing his work. Now, I’ve read this tale before; Fred might have even told me before. But there was one tasteless detail that I never knew before, or had long forgotten.

The late Rod Serling, of course, worked on the classic TV show the Twilight Zone. Gordon links to a lost Serling interview from 1970, the year I had the opportunity to (sort of) introduce him at an assembly at his high school alma mater. And Gordon even namechecks me in the intro! As I noted in the comments to the piece, it was painful to watch Serling fumble to light his cigarette then hear him say that those things were going to kill him; five years later, he proved to be right.

Finally, a mother is worried about her 16-year-old son’s infatuation with an older woman. Seems like a reasonable choice when it’s Betty White, who won Emmys in 1952 (as a co-producer, no less), in 2010, plus a few in between. If not the hardest working actress on TV, she’s certainly one of the longest working.

30-Day Challenge: Day 23- Favorite Music Video

Let’s face it: JRC’s Hurt is a bit of a downer.

Another difficult question. Probably from Year 2 through year Six, I watched MTV a LOT. Watched the video countdown almost every week, then not so much. I should note that, for the body of video work, I’d probably pick Billy Joel.

There are probably only three post-1995 videos I both saw and liked enough to even consider. Hey Ya by Outkast (and here’s a longer, though not better version) and I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow by the Foggy Mountain Boys are two of them.

Plenty of good picks in this list of best videos and in this one, although many of the actual videos have been disabled. Two on those lists that I was quite fond of were Once In a Lifetime by the Talking Heads and Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel. I was an irrationally big fan of Weird Al Yankovic’s Smells Like Nirvana.

If I had to pick one video, it would probably be Hurt by John R. Cash, which I watched over and over. But let’s face it, it’s a bit of a downer. So I don’t know that it’s my favorite, but one I watched a great deal in the day: Would I Lie to You by Eurythmics; I’m especially fond of the ferocity of Annie Lennox and the brass.

“Vast Wasteland” QUESTION

My niece will be on TV next week, on a show I would otherwise not watch.

There must be a law: for articles about television in non-entertainment publications, at least fifty percent must indicate that “All (or most) TV is crap” or some equivalent. And almost inevitably, it will 1) note that it was also called that a long time ago, but 2) fail to indicate just who said it. For the record, it was Newton Minnow, head of the FCC, in 1961, who called television a “vast wasteland.” It’s an interesting read.

I was just listening to Springsteen’s 57 Channels and Nothing On. But even in the vast wasteland of summer programming, I did watch a couple of things:

The Closer – liberated somewhat from the formula of the first two seasons, it’s been infused by the fact that Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) is up for Chief of the LAPD against her mentor Chief Pope (JK Simmons).

Aftermath with William Shatner. The concept is to take an event that was once prominent in the news and revisit it, which I think is inherently worthwhile. I actually missed the first episode of this, an interview with Lee Malvo, the young DC sniper, when it was on A&E a few weeks ago. But I’ve seen the rest on Biography, or BIO, as it’s now called.

Bernie Goetz was the subway vigilante who shot four young men in 1984, and was a hero to many; I think Shatner subtlely showed Goetz’s self-justification of his actions to be perhaps a bit sociopathic. Shatner was a sympathetic interviewer to three of the DC sniper victims, and to Jessica Lynch, who he called brave for outing the military’s PR campaign re: her actions in Iraq. I must say that my least favorite episode was his with Mary Kay Letourneau and her now-husband Vili Fualaau, who she started sleeping with when he was 13, and she was his former teacher; Shatner wanted more licentious details of the love story. But the best episode thus far was the most recent one, about the bizarre shootout in Ruby Ridge, ID, between federal authorities and the Randy Weaver family; Sara Weaver, Randy’s daughter, talks about the death of her brother, and her mother being shot dead before her in wrenching detail.

The last episode will be about the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and will feature David Kaczynski, now head of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, who I have heard speak a few times, who had to turn in his brother to authorities. This will air Monday, September 6 at 10 pm EDT on BIO, followed by a repeat of the Ruby Ridge episode.

There will be one other program I will watch this week, and unfortunately, it’s Wipeout. It’s an obstacle course show designed for people to fail, and for the audience to laugh at the annoying running commentary of the instant replay disasters; I’ve seen it for ten minutes and REALLY hate it. But I’m told that my niece Rebecca and her husband Rico will appear on this show Tuesday, September 7 at 8 pm EDT, and family wins out.

So what television did YOU watch this summer?

And what new shows will you watch this fall? I’ve vaguely interested in the Hawaii 5-0 reboot, though a TV Guide article comparing this iteration of Steve McGarrett to Jack Bauer of 24 was discomforting. There’s a new legal show called The Whole Truth with Maura Tierney that I might check out. Anything else I OUGHT to try?