You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News Read online

  4. ROSALIND FRANKLIN

  Rosalind Franklin was a pioneer in the field of genetics, whose work on unraveling the DNA double helix was largely ignored. Franklin studied at Cambridge in the 1940s, a school that didn’t give women degrees at the time, figuring they wouldn’t know what to do with something like an advanced biology degree—probably sew it a little suit and take it for summer constitutionals.

  Still, Franklin went on to research molecular biology around the same time as Francis Crick and James Watson, the scientists credited with discovering DNA’s double helix model. In fact, she wasn’t far from making the discovery herself and was well ahead of Crick and Watson when her boss, Maurice Wilkins, intervened. Doing his duty as a concerned citizen, Wilkins knew he couldn’t trust such valuable scientific knowledge in the hands of a mere woman—surely it was only a matter of time before she accidentally baked it into a pie!

  Working behind Franklin’s back, Wilkins gave her findings to Watson, who used them and Crick’s LSD-spiked intuition (see page 123) to leapfrog Franklin and discover DNA’s double helix pattern before her.

  Their double helix model was published in an issue of Nature magazine, instantly making them international celebrities. Rather than acknowledging the role a woman played in the actual discovery, Nature published Franklin’s not yet complete work in the same journal. Sure, publishing the almost-discovery of DNA’s model in the same issue as the actual discovery might seem redundant, but Nature couldn’t miss out on the adorable hilarity of a woman trying to do science. That was probably considered the monkey riding a bicycle of its day.

  Buried by the boobs

  In 1962, Crick, Watson, and Maurice goddamned Wilkins (whose contribution to molecular biology amounted to hating women) received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, while Franklin received the Dick-All Prize for Diddly-Squat. Franklin’s huge contribution was almost totally ignored in Watson’s paper. We never thought we’d say this, but damn you, boobs!

  3. CAMILLE CLAUDEL

  Camille Claudel was a young, shockingly talented sculptress whose works are today considered masterpieces. Her career path followed the classic artist model: fabulous early works, discovery by a great mentor, total insanity, dying unloved, alone, and weird. (This is why your parents didn’t let you go to art school.) But while some artists go crazy because it’s the cool thing to do (we’re looking at you Van Gogh), Claudel was force-fed crazy pills for her socially unacceptable lack of a penis.

  In 1800s Paris, women were prohibited from studying the nude human form, because this would’ve ruined the wedding-night surprise. (Surprise! It’s a penis.) Claudel was therefore unable to gain entry to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where she would have been able to promote her work and receive commissions. In short, Claudel needed some cock in the worst way.

  Luckily, her father managed to get her enrolled at the lesser Academie Colarossi, a place dedicated to the free and unbiased exploration of penises. Claudel thrived until she fell in love with Auguste Rodin, and it all went to le toilette.

  Buried by the boobs

  She became Rodin’s lover and muse, influencing and reportedly even working on some of his greatest works. Meanwhile, her sculptures were shunned by the public, since no one could stomach the idea that a female might be responsible for their favorite rock penises. In fact, artistic genius in women was believed to be a form of mental illness.

  After Camille broke off their relationship, Rodin switched to shafting her metaphorically, blocking all funding for her future sculptures. Claudel’s own brother decided to have her committed to an insane asylum, despite the hospital’s protests that Camille was totally sane for the next thirty years. Sadly, convinced that she would never gain recognition, Claudel ultimately destroyed the vast majority of her works. Those that survive are lauded. In the words of Ludovic Chanzy, cultural director of the Nogent museum: “That Camille was shunned by the art world, despite her beautiful work, can be explained by the fact that she was a woman. It was just not acceptable that a young lady could sculpt erotic pieces showing men and women in the nude.”

  That’s right: People turned down free, publically viewable porn because it was made by a woman. How far we’ve come …

  2. LISE MEITNER

  Lise Meitner was the physicist who, working with Otto Hahn, pioneered the principles of nuclear fission. Meitner also discovered the Auger effect two years before Victor Auger. To add to her list of challenges, she was also an Austrian Jew in Hitler’s Germany. The odds were against her, to say the least. But Meitner’s biggest problem wasn’t even the Nazis (that’s a hell of a Jew who can say that): Berlin University was so sexist that she was only allowed to conduct experiments in a carpentry shed in the basement.

  In 1938, when the Third Reich began sending subtle signs that she might want to flee for her life, she reluctantly abandoned her research with Hahn.

  Buried by the boobs

  Despite Meitner’s crucial role in every stage of fission research, her erstwhile partner Hahn won the Nobel Prize all alone. Some of the blame in this must be apportioned to Hitler, since he drove her out of the country, but it’s not like the Nobel Foundation didn’t know she existed, seeing as she had been jointly nominated with Hahn ten times previously. But she would have been the first woman to win a Nobel Prize without her husband, and the committee had a policy to uphold.

  1. BEATRIX POTTER

  Beatrix Potter was a children’s author, most known for the Peter Rabbit series. That sounds about right; that’s a charming, nonthreatening, non-emasculating and totally, quaintly appropriate career for a woman.

  But the bit you probably don’t know is that she was also an absolutely brilliant mycologist, someone who studies fungi and their effects.

  Since she was excluded from universities, Potter was forced to assist Scottish mycologist Charles McIntosh, illustrating his fungal specimens (which is either exactly what it sounds like or sexual innuendo was a much more dense and terrifying thing back in the day).

  She became a pioneer in her field, proposing that lichens were a mixture of algae and fungus living in a symbiotic relationship, a revolutionary idea in the 1890s. She also noted that some fungi produced antibiotic chemicals, a discovery so important it shook the world … when it was discovered again by Alexander Fleming! And, hey, we just discovered it right now! And so did you! Man, science is cake!

  Buried by the boobs

  In 1897, Potter contributed a paper on mycology to the Linnean Society entitled “Germination of the Spores of the Agraricinae.” It didn’t get published. The Royal Society followed suit, scientifically cock blocking Potter at every turn. In 1901, a disheartened Potter wrote and illustrated The Tale of Peter Rabbit as a means of keeping her drawing skills alive. The book’s unexpected success, along with the collective and multitudinous shafting from the entire scientific community, persuaded her to drop her groundbreaking work in the sciences. In 1997, the Linnean Society publicly apologized for its treatment of her. Perhaps they owe the rest of the world an apology too: Because Fleming didn’t “discover” penicillin until 1928 (see page 103), a full thirty years after Potter first identified it. If Potter’s work hadn’t been rejected, countless lives would have been saved. On the other hand, the world would have been denied the soothing balm of Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail. And, really, when you lay it all in the balance, which is the more effective antibiotic?

  Penicillin? Fair enough. Just trying to make a point.

  THE AWFUL TRUTH BEHIND FIVE ITEMS ON YOUR GROCERY LIST

  HEY, that banana you’re eating? It probably killed somebody! Well, sort of. Bananas don’t kill people; people kill people … over bananas. And soda. And a bunch of other stuff you buy at the food store. For example:

  5. CHIQUITA BANANAS

  In 1975, Chiquita president Eli Black left the company by leaping out the window of his forty-fourth-floor office in the Pan Am Building in New York. His replacement, upon taking the reins, was quoted as saying, “It’
s important that I don’t get too knowledgeable about the past.”

  What’s this “past” he didn’t want to think about? Well, there was the massacre of striking Colombian workers the company allegedly ordered in the twenties. But that was almost fifty years before. He was likely worried about more recent atrocities, like the CIA coup they’d orchestrated in the fifties. Yep, a freaking CIA coup. Orchestrated by a banana company.

  The idea gets a lot less ridiculous, and way more depressing, when you know a few things: The head of the CIA in 1951, Allen Dulles, had been on the board of trustees of the United Fruit Company, which is what Chiquita was called in 1951. Around this time, Guatemala elected Jacobo Arbenz to the presidency, and Arbenz made the mistake of thinking that meant a damn thing. His plan was to purchase a small portion of United Fruit’s land and distribute it to poor Guatemalan peasants.

  When Arbenz hesitated to pay the company $16 million (its own internal documents valued the land at half a million), United Fruit decided this was a reasonable point in the negotiation process to ask the CIA to intervene. And goddamn did they intervene, replacing the freely elected Arbenz with a right-wing dictator and starting a goddamned civil war. Guatemala’s brief flirtation with democracy and prosperity was over, but, hey, it’s not all bad. The civil war that resulted from the coup eventually ended. In 1996.

  4. NESTLE QUIK

  For any youngster who cringes at the thought of having to choke down a glass of plain milk with dinner, Nestle Quik is a little box of magic. One tablespoon of the powdery goodness can transform that glass of white nasty into a delectable cup of chocolaty awesome. Add to this the fact that every box is emblazoned with an adorable cartoon rabbit, and what you have is a certified childhood dream maker.

  At least that’s true for most kids—lazy, shiftless bastards that they are. Some kids, on the other hand, have to work for their Nestle Quik. The majority of the world’s cocoa supply comes from Africa’s Ivory Coast, where child labor, trafficking, and (oh dear) slavery are not uncommon. But, hey, there’s no way a corporation with such an adorable mascot would let that shit go down on its watch, right?

  Well, after years of flying under the atrocity radar, word of the unspeakably harsh conditions on Ivory Coast cocoa plantations finally came out in 2001. In the face of an influx of negative publicity, Nestle valiantly leapt into inaction. After issuing public statements claiming it had no way of knowing who did what, where, or when, the company was finally forced to acknowledge the problem by an agricultural bill that would have created a federal system to certify and label chocolate products as “slave free.”

  Finding its hand forced, Nestle decided to nut up and make a claim it had no intention of following through on: to end forced labor on cocoa farms by 2005. Of course 2005 came and went with little or no change. According to Nestle, an escalating civil war in the Ivory Coast made it too dangerous to go in and save the children. Amazingly, its team of buyers, presumably a team of crack military commandos, has yet to have a problem getting the cocoa in and out of the region.

  3. IAMS PET FOOD

  When PETA isn’t being crazy and launching the only public-awareness campaign that people have masturbated to, it’s actually been known to do some good not related to celebrity nudity. In 2002, a PETA official went undercover at an Iams testing facility and found out that, in addition to pet food, IAMS is in the business of making budding serial killers look like the kid from Lassie.

  In case you’re (justifiably) suspicious of anything tofurkeycrazed PETA members tell you, they brought back video footage of the facility that you can find on the Internet if you’re ever in the mood to have your day ruined.

  You really don’t want to read about the most horrifying things they found. Among the less nightmare-inducing tidbits were cats and dogs gone stir-crazy from constant confinement and an employee overheard talking about a live kitten that was accidentally washed down a drain. For you statistics geeks out there, one procedure performed at the Iams facility (seriously, you don’t want to know) resulted in twenty-seven dogs being killed. Just one more record Michael Vick will never break.

  When confronted with PETA’s findings, Iams attempted to turn the tables, claiming the undercover PETA official was responsible for the various atrocities. A review of phone transcripts revealed the exact opposite. The PETA official actually tried to prevent animal cruelty. Iams officials acknowledged this to be the case. And then presumably drowned a bag of kittens out of frustration.

  2. DOLE BANANAS

  Making their second appearance on the list, bananas are the standard-bearer when it comes to corporate atrocity. Following in the heinous footsteps of Chiquita, Dole has a long track record of bringing the pain to South American countries unlucky enough to grow their shit. And unlike most other companies on this list, Dole didn’t even try to hide its hell-raising ways. Kudos!

  When several chemical workers became sterile, tests determined the cause to be a pesticide made at the plant where they worked, called DBCP. When tests revealed it caused liver, kidney, and lung damage, the Environmental Protection Agency banned its use in the United States. Proving themselves to be a paragon of classiness, Dole made note of the “in the United States” part of the ban and continued to use DBCP overseas. When Dow Chemical informed Dole of its concerns over the safety of DBCP, Dole did what any company concerned with the well-being of its employees would do. It advised Dow it would be in breach of its contract if it refused to provide DBCP and agreed to take any liability for the resulting damage it may cause.

  A brave move, agreeing to take the liability—or at least it would be if Dole thought for a second that it would ever have to act on it. See, Dole knew about a legal doctrine that would allow it to force the cases to be tried in the impossibly corrupt courts of the plaintiff’s home country, so when a bunch of Nicaraguan farm workers started getting sick, Dole calculated that it would cost less to pay off Nicaraguan courts than to stop using DBCP. When that plan failed and the banana workers started winning cases, Dole moved to plan B, plugging its ears and humming loudly. So far, despite court-ordered judgments favoring Nicaraguan banana workers totaling more than $400 million, the workers have yet to see a dime.

  1. COCA-COLA

  The sweet bubbly deliciousness that is Coca-Cola has been a beacon of happiness for generations of kids and adults alike, even those who weren’t around back when it was spiked with nose candy (see page 127). With all of this universal joy spreading, some people may be surprised to find that Coke II isn’t the only atrocity in the big red machine’s closet.

  If you work at one of the Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia, South America, dear God why? There’s a saying in Colombia that “union work is like carrying a tombstone on your back.” If you spend too much time thinking about it, you’ll realize that saying makes no damn sense. Just trust that unions are generally frowned upon by the armed paramilitaries who rule the Colombian streets.

  But it’s not like the unions didn’t have it coming. They’re always asking for things like fair wages and humane conditions for their workers, both of which can hurt the bottom line of global corporations thinking about housing their factories there. This in turn means less money for the Colombian government. Fortunately for global corporations, the Colombian government is corrupt as hell.

  A great example of how economics works in Colombia is the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa, where five union leaders were murdered between 1994 and 1996 alone. In the most publicized case (meaning not really publicized at all, unless you count the Internet, which you shouldn’t), union executive board member Isidro Segundo Gil was murdered near the gates of the Coke bottling plant by paramilitary thugs.

  Of course, Coca-Cola denies the assassination had anything to do with their policies. It was probably just a coincidence that a union organizer who opposed management policies was gunned down! Hell, machine-gunning someone is probably considered a sign of respect in Colombia!

  In 2004, then New York City co
uncilman Hiram Monserrate assembled a fact-finding delegation to conduct an independent investigation on behalf of his strongly Latin American constituency. After meeting with Coke officials, Monserrate’s delegation travelled to Colombia and spoke with workers and eyewitnesses to the unfortunate machine-gun accidents that kept befalling unionized factory workers who opposed the bottling company’s policies. After hearing both sides of the story, the delegation concluded that management had either looked the other way or actively employed paramilitary enforcers to murder union supporters.

  The thing that seemed to push the delegation over the edge was the day after the murder, when eyewitnesses say the gunmen returned and forced workers to sign paperwork resigning their union memberships. For whatever reason, Monserrate’s fact finding delegation also seemed to take issue with the fact that Coke never bothered to conduct an investigation into a murder that was committed in a Coke bottling plant and that conveniently helped Coke’s bottom line.

  Of course, we can’t say for sure that Coke deserves any blame for Gil’s murder. Those are just allegations, made against a giant corporation with way more lawyers than Cracked.com. So, really, you shouldn’t assume anything. Like the old saying goes, “When you assume, you just make an ass out of you and me and evil corporations that have rancid sucking wounds where their hearts should be.”

  FIVE CLASSIC CARTOON CHARACTERS WITH TRAUMATIC CHILDHOODS

  SATURDAY-MORNING cartoons offered children of the 1980s and ‘90s hilarious gags, flashing colors, and lovable characters their age, some being brought up in environments so abusive they made even your crappy parents seem decent by comparison. Don’t remember that last part? You must not have been paying attention to the plight of characters like …