McRib is McWack

The McDonald's McRib is back, hitting restaurants nationwide today. The legendary boneless pork sandwich, famously molded to resemble a rack of ribs, is both a feat of modern engineering and shrewd marketing.

It garners almost as much attention for its pseudo-meat shape as its impermanence on restaurant menus. 

The barbecue-sauce-smothered sandwich was supposed to return at the end of October, but was pushed back to help boost end-of-the-year sales. 

Better late than never.  Or as I like to say, never, ever again.  The picture you see is my next door neighbor "Samson".  He is my friend, and yes he is a pig.  Every so often I would hear a snort or grunt at my front door and I would open to find his half hidden smile and kind eyes saying; "Can you and Lucky come out to play?"  He was always escaping from his pen to come and say hello.  Then he stopped his visits.  I wondered if his owners finally mended all his escape routes in their fence.  Lucky and I went looking for him one day and he was nowhere to be found.  Did he escape this time for good?  Why didn't he say goodbye?  Maybe he didn't have time.  He got that right.  His time was up.  His whole life was meant only for one thing.

Dinner.  He didn't end up in a McRib but what difference does it make.  He ended up.  Sad.

The McRib is a product of "restructured meat technology."

Rene Arend came up with the idea and design of the McRib, but it's a professor from the University of Nebraska named Richard Mandigo who developed the "restructured meat product" that the McRib is actually made of. 

According to an article from Chicago magazine, which cites a 1995 article by Mandigo, "restructured meat product" contains a mixture of tripe, heart, and scalded stomach, which is then mixed with salt and water to extract proteins from the muscle. The proteins bind all the pork trimmings together so that it can be re-molded into any specific shape — in this case, a fake slab of ribs.  Yum!

As it appears out of the box, the McRib sandwich consists of just five basic components: a pork patty, barbecue sauce, pickle slices, onions, and a sesame bun.

But, as recently reported by Time magazine, a closer inspection of McDonald's own ingredient list reveals that the pork sandwich contains a total of 70 ingredients. This includes azodicarbonamide, a flour-bleaching agent often used in the production of foamed plastics. 

Animal rights group sues McRib meat supplier over inhumane treatment of pigs.

Not everyone is ecstatic about the return of the McRib. Last November, the Humane Society of the United States filed a lawsuit against Smithfield Foods, the pork supplier of McDonald's McRib meat, claiming the meat distributor houses its pigs in unethical farm conditions. 

A 2010 undercover investigation by the animal rights group shows pigs crammed into gestation crates covered in blood and baby pigs being tossed into carts like rag dolls (WARNING: the video contains some pretty graphic content).  I won't eat animals anymore.  Animals are my friends and I don't eat my friends.

12-12-12

photo taken at 12:12 PM. EST on 12-12-12

Poor Dec. 12. It’s one of the year’s more interesting dates, but Dec. 21, what with all its doomsday this and end-of-the-world that, is completely monopolizing the spotlight. Sure, Dec. 21 is the winter solstice and the day that countless legions of gloomy doomsayers have anointed as the pinnacle of important dates, but Dec. 12 deserves some attention too. So in honor of the 346th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar, here’s what Dec. 12 has to offer:

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific has declared Dec. 12, 2012, as Anti-Doomsday Day in celebration of rational thinking and reasoned discourse.

Dec. 12 is the last of the repeating dates until Jan. 1, 2101. Repeating dates (like 12/12/12) can, for obvious reasons, only occur in the first 12 years of a century.

At 12:12:12 p.m., the day will offer fans of the number 12 a whopping six repeats! 12/12/12 12:12:12. Nice.

At 1:21:02 a.m., palindrome lovers everywhere can rejoice in the single second that marks when the date-time combination is the same read both forwards and backwards: 2012-12-12 1:21:02 = 201212-1-212102.

But perhaps most fascinating of all, Dec. 12 is National Ambrosia Day; once known as food to the gods, now known as canned fruit combined with Cool Whip, sweetened coconut, mini-marshmallows, and the food-dye bombs called maraschino cherries. Yuk.  Which leads us to think that perhaps Dec. 12 would have made a good candidate for doomsday after all.  This is the first and last  time that I have been photographed on a repeated date in history.