I'm (Not) Into Nuggets Ya'll

So as much as I hate to say it: IM DONE WITH McNUGGETS! A story hit the national presses yesterday about a teenaged girl who had eaten a diet of mostly McDonalds' (R) Chicken McNuggets since she was 2 years old and got sick (finally). This article brings about negative publicity to McDonalds (as if they needed anymore of that after Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me) and McDonald's can react by saying "We don't intend any of our menu items to be designated as an everyday meal", "How people choose to utilize/enjoy our products is their choice", or "While the medical crisis was tragic, we cannot blame it on our food products" or some hybrid of all three. But I'm mainly more concerned with how McDonald's will defend (if at all) their McNugget recipe--because it's quite repulsive.

There are a few questions that I would love to raise about this news story---

1) At age 2, she could not introduce herself to chicken nuggets, her parents went out and purchased them--WHY?
2) After about the second week of her demanding nuggets as a 2 year old, why didn't the parents put their foot down---for the simple fact of financial sanity (nuggets aren't exactly cheap) or the health concerns of their young daughter???
3) Why didn't nuggets lose their novelty and taste to this child after, let's say, a YEAR of a Nugget diet?
4)  How bad can McNuggets/fried foods be if it takes 15 years of daily doses to have an adverse effect? (kind of a weird question, I know)
5) How does McDonald's sell nuggets with all that stuff in it (read the story for the genetic makeup of the beloved Chicken McNugget) and 50% of it being actual chicken.......... They should probably be forced to style it as "Chik'n" to avoid a false advertising charge.

If anyone has any legitimate answers to these questions, please comment. Until then, I'll just drive by the Golden Arches from now on when I crave a crispy coated nugget. (**Looks up the ingredients to Wendy's nuggets**)

Crossing streets with music blasting is dangerous--but what's up with those Beats anyway?

Okay, we get it. You LOVE music. That's the only reasonable explanation for buying noise-canceling, over-the-ear headphones (Beats by Dre, for example) that broke the bank with a price of upwards of $200. And at a point, we all need to ask ourselves (well, whoever BOUGHT them need to ask themselves, because I surely do not own a pair)-- "why did I buy these?" Was it because you truly wanted to hear the crisp sound of every instrument on the MP4? Do you just like how they look? Do you just not get along with inner-ear earphones? These are all legitimate questions. But I think the main reason you bought them is the marketing strategy by the people at Beats. They sold you the thoughts that 'you cant listen to music without these', 'you're not a real audiophile without these', and 'walking around with these makes you cooler than anyone else'. Now, am I being  rude in my analysis? -- Maybe, but I don't intend to be, I'm just trying to get to the root of the issue. Besides wondering how broke college students can afford such an expensive, luxury item, I came across an article that expressed the danger of walking around as a pedestrian with such a distracting item. (And in ALL FAIRNESS, the article legitimately blames all earphone/headphone devices, so us iPhone users with our little earbuds are in danger too!) You can read the article here. But, don't mind me---keep wearing you're painfully white headphones that cost you a month's worth of meals! I just hope you hear me when I honk you down from behind the wheel of my Toyota.

Romney Reveals Tax Returns - marketing at its finest

Mitt Romney (finally) decided to make his earnings public on Tuesday morning in an effort to curb the attacks on his wealth. In disclosing his personal income information, he is utilizing a marketing strategy to make himself both more appealing to the 99%ers (I'm not sure how many of them would be voting Republican anyway, but that's a question for another time) and show that he would be susceptible to the tax policies he plans to implement contingent on his election. (Weird, seeing as his personal federal income tax would be slashed by 40% under his plan.) Mitt Romney has earned (adjusted gross income) almost 22 million dollars in 2010, and paid a 13.9 income tax rate. Alas, the Romney family's income puts them in the top 1/10th of 1% of all 2010 taxpayers but due to different rules in the tax code, the Romney family has a lower tax rate than many fairly well-to-do (rich) families. Why is this important? It's a marketing ploy (albeit, pretty much mandatory) to show Romney's dedication to charity (the article lists his contributions to the Church of Latter-Day Saints and other organizations) and his willingness to subject himself to his own presidential policies. To read the actual story, compliments of The New York Times, click here.