Colt .45 in comics: sippin' and chillin'

I rarely drink alcohol since personally it's not as yummy as orange soda or an IBC Root Beer. And, I have absolutely no idea what Colt .45 tastes like since I never ran in those circles. But, being an overly educated brown-skinned person who's only lived in urban areas, I know what it signifies to me:

• a cheap high
• more bang for your buck

packed in a whopping 40 ounces. So it's amusing to read at MSNBC's Ads of the Weird about the effort to upscale the thin swill with a big kick.

So I got curious about the actualities of the demon brew.

Would you have imagined that malt liquor has been the subject of a PhD dissertation? I kid you not (and, the first twenty-five pages are allegedly available for free):

Brown Taylor, Didra. 2000. Knowledge, Attitudes, and Malt Liquor Beer Drinking Behavior Among African American Men in South Central Los Angeles. Thesis (Ph. D)--California School of Professional Psychology, 2000a.

In the wings, there are more scholars waiting. [What did we do before we had the web?] See what further unblinking can unearth. Now, go forth, read and become more truly aware with "A Story without Heroes: The Cautionary Tale of Malt Liquor".

Do you buy meat thinking it's been carbon monoxided?

Regardless, you may want to read ABC News: Hill Debates 'Carbon Monoxide Meat' where you can learn that CO makes meat and fish look fresh indefinitely.

The FDA's David Acheson, who along with other FDA and USDA officials sat at a table covered with various samples of year-old meat that still appears fresh, and said that 'this particular issue is not a safety concern even remotely high on our radar screen.' He added that he believes that most people are aware that meat is packaged with carbon monoxide...

It just makes me wonder what exactly would make this a bad idea to officials; I can only guess their thinking...since it don't kill it's okay for corporations to add whatever they deem necessary to the food web.

20071117 info UPDATE: Even after reading about the scientific merits of the minute levels of CO exposure, I still think it's a slippery slope ... because of unanticipated consequences and strange coincidences. I still want greater assurances ... with regard to actual habits of those increasing numbers at the margins -- on the street, or unsupervised -- along with the unknown animals being fed whatever from who knows where ... ! I understand the need to save the many over the imagined or projected unknowns but recollections of efforts to track down mad cow disease makes me pause and ask do we really ever know what monsters we're creating.

ohmygod, now I know why my cell ... CINGULAR bites

Serendipity at work again. This time browsing the cell phone sub-section of The Consumerist I discovered the truth about the pre-ring utterance emitted by our GSM cellphone, a Sony Ericsson z525a -- N.B., the american is important to me since discovered in December 2006 that the only difference between it and the international version is that us USA-ians can't install security-signed third party software on our cells.

Anyways, this noise causes SOME serious radio interference that has allegedly blown out one of someone's speaker. Curious...it's all captured (too) fabulously in this consumer art byte-back:

Other fun to catch at The Consumerist include "Wendy's Wins Fast Food Zagat Survey" and "McDonald's Employee Hides Pot Stash In Happy Meal Box, Gives Happy Meal To Child".