The beaver is a proud and noble animal

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The parent of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's burger chains is cashing in on consumer backlash against healthier fast-food fare with new premium burgers that make Big Macs look like rabbit food.

While many of its competitors have downplayed traditional burgers in the last two years while scrambling to add lower-fat salads and grilled chicken offerings to their menus, CKE Restaurants Inc. has taken a different approach.

Carl's Jr. on Wednesday introduced the Breakfast Burger, a hamburger topped with a fried egg, hash browns, bacon and cheese, that weighs in at 830 calories and 46 grams of fat.

Hardee's, meanwhile, last month added the Monster Thickburger to its menu. With two one-third-pound beef patties, four strips of bacon, and three slices of cheese, the burger has 1,417 calories and a whopping 107 grams of fat. McDonald's Corp.'s Big Mac, with 560 calories and 30 grams of fat, doesn't even come close.

“Obviously, the health of its customers is not one of Hardee's top priorities,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University.

The Monster Thickburger has hit a nerve with consumers weary of so-called “food police,” said Brad Haley, executive vice president of marketing at Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. “We don't make what we want to sell, we make what people want to buy,” Haley said in an interview. “There is sort of a backlash against political correctness in food.”

One Hardee's customer said the Monster Thickburger piqued his interest because it flew in the face of recent trends toward healthier food.

“The fact that they would have the wherewithal to invent a product that could choke a mule is something to be prideful of,” said Tim Shea, 43, a magazine publisher from Chicago.

But the burger has also sparked outcry from consumer groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which called it the “height of corporate irresponsibility.” To be fair, both Hardee's and Carl's Jr. have added healthier fare such as low-carb sandwiches to their menus and Hardee's will introduce a new barbecued chicken sandwich with just 4 grams of fat next week.

But the success of products like the Monster Thickburger and Carl's Jr.'s Pastrami Burger, which cost more than standard fast-food burgers, has sent sales soaring, one expert said. “It was a very smart move on their part,” said Malcolm Knapp, president of restaurant research firm Malcolm M. Knapp Inc. “They are making more money.”

CKE on Monday said wider profit margins, helped by the success of premium products, led to higher-than-expected quarterly earnings. The company's stock rose more than 14 percent the following day. Other burger chains are also responding to consumer clamoring for beefier burgers.

Burger King International Corp. introduced the Angus Steak Burger, made with 100-percent Angus beef, in May as its high-end burger offering. So far, the product has exceeded expectations and is forecast to generate sales of about $500 million a year, according to the company's chief marketing officer, Russ Klein.

“The indulgent burger segment is as robust as it's ever been,” Klein said in an interview, adding that sales of Angus Steak Burgers were two or three times those of its salads.

Wendy's International Inc., also, is currently promoting its Wild Mountain Bacon Cheeseburger, with Colby Jack cheese and spicy pepper sauce, though only for a limited time.

But don't expect No. 1 fast-food chain McDonald's, which has enjoyed overwhelming success with meal-sized salads and other new products like fried chicken strips, to get into the premium burger game any time soon, said one expert.

“It seems that McDonald's is marketing more toward families or women with children,” said John Beisler, an analyst with Monarch Research. “They haven't been promoting their burger line as much and that strategy seems to be working for them.”

original link here: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20041216/hl_nm/leisure_ckerestaurants_dc

*drool*

Gotta love my bank.

I've been spending a bit more than usual these past weeks, getting things ready for xmas and my trip and all. Paid all my bills, my rent, my investment loans. Made sure to have enough funds for all that. Except that I forgot my pre-authorized payment for my home insurance. Damn you Murphy. That payment bounced, and the Caisse Populaire Desjardins smacked me with 20$ of service fees!

Jeebus.

I spent about an hour takling with katy tonight. it felt good to hear her voice :) Poor thing was really tired though, and the way the conversation ended made me giggle. She was in bed, and was starting to fall asleep. I know my cue to start saying goodnight is coming up when she starts mumbling and talking very slowly. Tonight was the best though, she was snoring on the phone :)

Me: katy, sweetie, hang up the phone now, you're falling asleep
Her: ok, ok, night night, love you.
Me: I love you too hun, now hang up.
*sounds of snoring on the phone*
Me: sweeeetie, hang up the phone, you're falling asleep
Her: oh, ok.
*more snoring*
Me: kaaaaty, you're going to leave your phone line open again, hang up
Her: right, right, love you
*snkzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

And this went on for something like 5 minutes, before I managed to get her to hang up :)

silly girl.

I love her :)

Just wanted to write this in regards to something I posted earlier.

I am not an angry person, but everybody has lines that you don't cross. Not respecting me is one such line. Personal respect is a big issue for me. For years, I was picked on and it generally made me feel like shit, until the day that I realized that I deserved respect, just like anybody else and wouldn't put up with this sort of crap. If people won't give me basic respect, i'll just avoid them. I don' t need to submit to that, and confrontation is not in my nature… but when people come into my space to disrespect me, that will not stand.

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LONDON (Reuters) – American author and journalist Tom Wolfe has won one of the world's most dreaded literary accolades — the British prize for bad sex in fiction.

The prize is awarded each year “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel”.

Wolfe won it for a couple of purple passages from his latest novel “I am Charlotte Simmons”, a tale of campus life at an exclusive U.S. university. “Slither slither slither slither went the tongue,” one of his winning sentences begins.

“But the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns — oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest — no, the hand was cupping her entire right — Now!”

Judges described Wolfe's prose as “ghastly and boring”.

The former Washington Post correspondent, whose debut novel “Bonfire of the Vanities” was a defining text of the 1980s, fought off stiff competition from 10 other authors including South African Andre Brink, whose novel “Before I Forget” contains the following description of a woman's vulva:

“(It was) like a large exotic mushroom in the fork of a tree, a little pleasure dome if ever I've seen one, where Alph the sacred river ran down to a tideless sea. No, not tideless. Her tides were convulsive, an ebb and flow that could take you very far, far back, before hurling you out, wildly and triumphantly, on a ribbed and windswept beach without end.”

Another writer who only narrowly escaped the prize was Britain's Nadeem Aslam for his novel “Maps for Lost Lovers” a tale of life in a Muslim community in an English town.

“His mouth looked for the oiled berry,” one of his raunchiest passages starts.

“The smell of his armpits was on her shoulders — a flower depositing pollen on a hummingbird's forehead,” another reads. The winner of the award, organised by the London-based Literary Review, is given an Oscar-style statuette and a bottle of champagne — but only if he or she comes to the awards ceremony in person.

Organisers said Wolfe, who is based in New York, was the first writer in the 12-year history of the competition to decline his invitation.

Original link: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=857&e=1&u=/nm/oukoe_odd_literature_sex

I just threw somebody out of my office. It felt good to do.

I was making a playlist, ordering Pink Floyd tracks according to their original albums. Fascinating, i know, but bear with me. Thing is, I was concentrating on it. Now anybody who knows me knows that I kinda turn autistic when I concentrate, i.e. I block out the world around me and focus on a single thing.

So when an idiot silently walks into my office and yells “JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!” behind me, bad things happen. Like me almost falling out of my swivel chair and having a heart attack.

I am rarely pissed off. Rarely angry. But this time, I just looked at him and calmly said “get out of my office before I punch your face in”. Funny thing, I meant it. Funnier thing, he left.