Shiv to Shank

The Food and Drug Administration is looking into creating a “low carb” labeling system to respond to the demands of the Atkins diet phenomenon. The dietitians, who claim that some of the world’s oldest known food sources are, in fact, bad for you, are pushing the FDA to create a “low carb” standard, which would force manufacturers to comply with the Atkins’ enforced standard of a “low carb” product, which to us, here at the Shivtastic desk of Shankdom, seems a dubious lobbying ploy on the part of the Atkins’ regime to just make a little bit of bread.

Last week, Congress upped the anti by passing a $2 trillion Medicare package that gave a prescription drug benefit to seniors, while also giving a tax break to corporate employers with hopes that over the next twenty years these same corporations, known for their responsible handling of pension and retirement funds in the recent past, would offer private retirement medical plans through private insurance organizations to their retiring employees supposedly lessening the burden on Medicare. By ignoring the ever-rising cost of prescription drugs in the US, this is just another way for the Republican party to put more money into the fat pockets of Canadian pharmaceutical companies, who sell the same drugs as their US counterparts, but for much, much less and with snappy bilingual packaging to boot. Look for the congressional sequel to this economic blockbuster early next year, “Social Security: The Lottery.”

Over the weekend, President Bush took time out of his busy Thanksgiving vacation, which is at approximately 3 weeks and counting, by surprising pre-selected US soldiers stationed in Baghdad during an impromptu P.R. visit, where he helped stuff a turkey provided by Halliburton, the US Army’s gravy train. Over all, the visit seemed to go well (yet no flight suit promenade, mind you), until the moment when President Bush insisted upon recounting the famed Thanksgiving fable of how a long time ago, the Kurds took in the hungry Shiites after landing in the Mayflower and fed them turkey, mashed potatoes, and all the fixin’s.

On Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, the largest shopping day of the year, a woman was trampled at a Florida Walmart by hungry, hungry holiday shoppers, who were trying to get their hands on some shiny DVD players discounted at $29, from their usual retail value of $99. The woman reportedly suffered a seizure while trying to snag a bargain. When other shoppers were questioned about the incident, they replied, “It’s muthafuckin’ Christmas up in this shit. If you ain’t hard, stay the fuck outta Walmart.”

In other Walmart news, Walmart executives perplexed by how anyone could dislike a chain retail store that sells toilet paper for 3 cents less on the dollar than their competitors and has a cocky, whistling smiley face for a mascot have recently conducted marketing research inquiring into the public’s disdain concerning Walmart’s image. Their research concluded that while people do like buying a microwave for less than the manufacturing cost, people don’t like dead end jobs, dirty parking lots, $3 loaves of bread, having to buy censored versions of 50 Cent’s album, union busting, exploiting the old, the mentally handicapped and undocumented workers, corporate bullying of manufacturers into the production of lower quality goods, being trampled on for a $29 DVD player, the discrimination of women in the workplace, clothes produced in US sweatshops that bear the name of Kathy Lee Gifford, not being able to buy porn or Maxim while one “one-stop shops,” the decimation of locally owned small businesses, the “rolling back” of their employees’ benefits, and finally, that cocky, whistling smiley face that they have for a mascot.