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The 'scorned bull' of our delusions.

Saturday August 9, 2008 11:30 AM by Alex

I've noticed some Burger King commercials over the past couple of days that display so perfectly the social stupidity that seems to underly our strange conception of nonhuman animals.

How to frame something so ridiculous? Well, it goes like this:

A man sits comfortably eating a cheesy-bacon-chicken sandwich in either an isolated car or a hotel room off the beaten path - the type of place one visits when they are sleeping with someone who isn't their husband or wife. There he sits devouring decomposing chickens when a large bull forces himself into the room - or bashes himself into the parked car - with a rage in his eyes reminiscent of the stereotypical "scorned wife."

His anger is the result of jealousy of course: This man, how dare he, chose another nonhuman to kill because he/she tastes good, which seemingly doesn't allow the bull to fulfill his life's ambition to be that piece of rotting flesh in our bellies. And he's not happy about it. Breathing is overrated when compared to suffering and death for our gastronomical pleasure, right?

"Chicken so good it will make you cheat on beef," as the commercial says.

What's interesting is the display of gluttony animating these commercials. This man slinks away into dark corners not to fulfill a fundamental need of his - you know like "I need to eat chickens because it's not healthy to do otherwise" - but because he loves the taste of dead chickens. We must applaud the honesty, finally. No longer will Burger King attempt to deceive the public into believing that meat is necessary for our health: It tastes so good therefore all that pain and frustration that these nonhumans have to undergo can be swept under the rug along with the rest of our species' evil doings.

How can we dispute this given the underlying message of these commercials? This bull is so rational and self-aware that he experiences this man's deception as a moral harm - an insult to the very fabric of his being and life's work. Hell, he made the conscious decision, apparently, to live his life for our ends. Who are we to deny him the realization of his purpose?

It's not self-interested rationalization any more that justifies our torture of this bull and all his friends and family. No! We are simply acting as he would have us act. He says, "Please! Kill and eat me! I need it - I love it...I love you."

Indeed, it's as if we entered into a marital agreement with all the bulls in the world: "I do solemnly swear to kill and eat only you and yours for the rest of my days so long as you fulfill your end of the bargain and accept the suffering with a smile."

This isn't an isolated example of our collective idiocy. For hundreds of examples just like this visit Suicide Food. I'm sure I have unconsciously attempted to channel the brilliance of this excellent blog into my post here, but I could never do so with as much eloquence and insight. So go and read some of the posts and you will be astonished. I assure you of that.

Will be crossposted @ Vegan Soapbox

The lesson here is don't attack Mormons in Orem.

Friday August 1, 2008 10:57 AM by Jen

Several days ago two pit bulls and a labrador attacked a nice young Mormon man on his way to work in Orem, which is about 45 miles south of Salt Lake. The story was on the news the other day, and they showed a shot of the male pit bull, the only one who didn't get picked up and taken home after the attack (the female and the lab were both taken home by their people). The show shows him huddling at the back of a small concrete cage, devoid of food, water, cushion or toys. In fact, devoid of anything to offer him the remotest comfort, all alone in a strange and scary place.

Regardless of whether the dog 'meant' to do this, does he still deserve to be treated worse than the worst of murderers? Even people like Jeffery Dahmer have a bed, and a sink, and access to water. And yet here sits a dog who both victims say shouldn't be held responsible, sitting on a concrete floor, plainly terrified.

Were this the human world, and this a man who had attacked another man, perhaps he would get a five year jail sentence. Perhaps less, especially with his victims speaking out for him. Instead, this dog's life is at stake, teetering on the edge. Were he a child, or even mentally handicapped, he would be allowed to live. Even if he was on death row, he would have some small comforts. All because he's a pit bull, and in our racist, prejudice world, that's enough to send him to death. Reminds me of a by-gone (and good riddance) era in which Black people were killed for even looking at White women.

Home on the range.

Wednesday July 2, 2008 4:05 PM by Jen

Sorry for the rather long hiatus. Other than working more than I'd like to, I've managed to catch some kind of weird, nasty throat bug that is preventing me from not coughing every 10 seconds or so. Rather hard to breathe while doing that.

Just wanted to bring attention to the plight of the BLM Mustangs. I know, there she goes about horses again, but I can't help it. For those of you who don't know, the Bureau of Land Management is in charge of rounding up 'excess' wild horses, called Mustangs, and doing something with them. The problem is that we're running out of somethings to do. The horses lost a major battle several years ago when the BLM decided to allow the outright sale of 'undersiable' horses, who could not be adopted out. The adoption program is stringent, requiring the horse to remain in the adopter's home for one year before the deed of ownership can be transferred over. An outright sale, however, can mean the horse ends up sold for slaughter. Despite the well-meaning regulations in place to prevent this, it can and does happen. Even with outright sales allowed, the BLM can no longer maintain the herds of horses captured from the range. Their new plan? To murder them. Oh wait, I mean euthanize.

I understand that the captive and free roaming herds alike are overcrowded, and that adoptions have decreased, but isn't there a way to reduce the free herds, thus removing the need for the round ups and holding? Something like feral cats - trap, neuter (or spay) and release? The senior horses, and other 'undesirables' have been moved to sanctuaries - a step in the right direction, provided they are run properly and provide adequate care. These two in tandem with the continued adoption and education of the public could provide for the Mustang's future - if they're begun now.

What really angers me are the responses of those people who are supposedly protecting these horses, like Dawn Lappin of Wild Horse Organized Assistance. Apparently she shares the sentiments of one Fred Burke, an Arizona rancher quoted in a Salt Lake Tribune article as saying "The best thing we could do for that horse is put him down. We can't afford to send him to an old-timers rest home to die." Lappin was quoted in the same article as saying, "How these horses ended up on a refuge when they should have been destroyed is beyond me." And Matthew Mackay Smith, veterinarian and medical editor of an equine magazine? According to him "..death is meaningless to a horse. It only understands the moment." I challenge that one, on the mere grounds that if death was truly meaningless to any sentient being, food and water would probably be as well. With an attitude like that, how could we NOT euthanize them?

How can animals win when those who are supposed to be protecting them believe that their engineered deaths are an appropriate end? Obviously leaving the horses to starve and die on overgrazed ranges is not appropriate either, but perhaps if other 'animal agriculture' weren't continually moving in on the horse's territory, or if predators hadn't been driven off, it wouldn't be such a problem.

Damn you Morgan Spurlock.

Wednesday June 18, 2008 12:53 PM by Alex

Last night on Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days, an avid hunter, George, leaves his home in North Carolina and joins the Karpel family, who are vegan animal rights activists, for 30 days. As Mary Martin writes,

"[George] participates in some demonstrations, rescues a calf, goes to a dairy farm, and works at a farmed animal sanctuary."

Overall, the show was good. George's experience with Sugar, a dairy calf rescued from a factory farm, was quite moving. The time George spends at an animal shelter - a dog pound - wherein he gains an understanding of the plight of dogs, and the extent of human indifference and disloyalty, make's George noticeably uncomfortable and upset. George admits that he "believes animals have rights"; what this means to him is unknown, however, I believe he was changed by his experience. (I'm knocking on wood as I write this - I hope George was forever altered, for the sake of nonhumans and himself.)

This said allow me to express some hostility I have for Mr. Spurlock. A seemingly intelligent person, Mr. Spurlock begins his show with some statements that absolutely disproves whatever belief I once had that he wasn't an idiot:

"Should animals have the same rights as us (human beings)? Should they have the right to vote, the right to bear arms, the right to not be deep-fried, battered and eaten?"

Who the hell believes that nonhumans ought to have the right to vote!? How does Mr. Spurlock rationalize his efforts to analagize the right to vote and the right to bear arms, to the right to not be treated as a thing that counts as much in our moral decision-making as a key chain?

I'm filing this post under "Fuck Off" for a good reason: Mr. Spurlock's statements caricaturize those who believe that the interests of animals ought to be given equal consideration, e.g., their interest in not being forced to consume heroine therefore becoming addicted and suffering limitless pain and psychological distress ought to trump my interest in forcing them to do so because I'm seeking a way to better understand how to help those individuals who freely choose to do heroine in the first place.

How Mr. Spurlock could extrapolate from the basic right to have your interests given equal consideration (a right to be considered a person not a thing) to the right of a pig to vote, defies reason. Mr. Spurlock is an idiot. He has no excuse because his girlfriend is vegan. Why didn't she say to him, "You know babe, you're a fucking dumb ass if you believe this shit your saying."

Indeed, I believe, given the obviousness of how ridiculous it is to suggest that an individual who doesn't stand upright, or have arms, or hands ought to have the right to shoot a weapon, Mr. Spurlock is purposefully attempting to mock those who believe animals have a right to be free from unnecessary suffering. This assertion that some people actively strive to ensure a pig the right to vote is so stupid it's telling of the intelligence of those who would make such a statement. Just as it's ridiculous to suggest that a human infant has the right to bear arms lest we make a complete mockery of this right - making this right completely unintelligible - it's equally inane to say that we in the animal rights movement want to give a chicken the right to freely speak his/her mind.

All sentient beings have the right to equal consideration of their interests - they're entitled the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - Mr. Spurlock. That's what we want you jack ass; it's what justice demands. If you disagree, let's have a conversation but don't begin with statements that suggest you're unwillingness to have a rational thought. Perhaps you should just remove yourself from the table, so-to-speak, and allow the grown-ups to have this conversation. Idiot.

Don't try to make fun of us, we're smarter than that - and some of you are too. We are talking about billions of sentient individuals, billions of lives. It's not funny; this is an amount of suffering unknown to this earth until now. I find nothing humorous in that - Charles Manson and Ted Bundy probably would though (?).

Makes me so proud to be from Utah.

Monday May 12, 2008 12:44 AM by Jen

For about the fifth time my home state of Utah has failed to pass 'Henry's Law' which would make animal cruelty a felony. Utah is one of only seven states where this crime is still only a misdemeanor, and while I fully support the passing of any law that will deliver a heavier punishment to those who participate in un-sanctified cruelty, there's another issue here. Actually, there are several.

First and foremost is the fact that animal cruelty is almost impossible to prosecute. Did you know that animals cannot be seized from situations without surrender or a warrant? The probability of being prosecuted for animal cruelty tiny. For example, in Massachusetts there were 80,000 complaints of abuse and neglect between 1975 and 1996 but only 268 prosecutions. That's .3%. Of those, only 44% of cases were found guilty and only 5.2% were found not guilty. The rest were dismissed, defaulted, denied, not sought. So out of all those cases, only .14% were ever sentenced or prosecuted. While this may speak to problems with the criminal justice system as a whole, it's well documented that certainty of punishment and not severity is what leads to a decline in crime rates. So even we do make animal cruelty a felony, if people don't think they'll get caught and prosecuted, they probably won't care. Plus, according to Arnold Arluke from Northwestern:

"Criminal justice professionals, including police, district attorneys, judges, and criminologists do not appear to regard animal abuse as a serious or common crime."

That sends a great message. Microwaved your cat? Yeah, just don't do it again, please.

Second is that even under if animal cruelty is prosecuted as a felony, animals still remain property. Some people, like the delightful Charles H., feel like this is okay. As Charles puts it..

"Animals should be treated in a humane and civil manner. BUT, they are and must remain chattel property of the owner. And punishment for mistreating an animal should never exceed the punishment for mistreating a spouse or child or even complete stranger."

Apparently to Charles I should also remain chattel property, or at least be compared to it? No one is asking that the punishment for animal cruelty should exceed that of mistreating another human. If I put my baby in the oven, I hope I get charged with a felony. If that's not how it is, than those laws must change too. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't punish willful acts of cruelty to living beings with more than 7 hours of community service and a $100 fine. He does make a good point though:

"How many persons have been convicted of animal cruelty and sentenced to the maximum penalty under current law, actually served that sentence, and then gone on to re-offend because the penalty was too leniant? How many in the last 15 years?"

Too few have been convicted, have been sentence to the maximum, too few have served and far too many have gone on to re-offend because the message we send is that it doesn't matter. I've had speeding tickets with bigger fines than the majority of people receive for animal cruelty and I still speed.

Thanks for painting such an awesome picture of Utah, Charles. I too am glad we haven't given in to peer pressure and that our beer remains at 3.2% alcohol, that you can't buy wine coolers in grocery stores, and that poking a dog's eye out won't get you jail time. Maybe we should change out state motto to "Utah: You can't buy beer on Sunday, but heck, you can torture an animal instead."

Please, just shhh.

Monday April 21, 2008 8:35 PM by Jen

I am one of those people who just can't help yelling at inanimate objects like they can hear me. I think I spent the whole 2004 election cycle yelling furiously at the radio like it would some how effect the voting. Every now and again I'd catch the people pulled up next to me at stoplights staring, mouths open, like they'd just seen a crazy person. Which indeed they had.

I also have a tendency to forget where I am when I'm doing this yelling. On days where I'm say, at school, in the library, this is a little bit of a problem because I generally don't like the student population thinking I need to be locked up. Like today when I came across a site called "All The Critters" which claims to "welcome all animal lovers" and yesterday featured a charming entry entitled "I am too soft hearted." Which clearly, the author is not. What she IS made me say several choice expletives loudly enough to make the girl sitting next to me suddenly decide to be in a different room.

If you run a blog dedicated to "the animals we all love and share our planet with" and you admit that you're bothered by the idea of a dead cow to the point where you get emotional and begin to tear up, why are you still eating dead anything? I don't get it. If you're incapable of eating animals you've raised and killed, why do you still eat other dead animals? Are the ones you raised magically different than the ones you didn't? There's a disconnect there. You obviously think that slaughtering animals causes pain or suffering or is wrong for some reason, or you wouldn't have an adverse emotional reaction to it. Am I missing something?

Even stranger? On March 6th a post about the depravity of horse slaughter was placed on the same blog. It strikes me as curious that someone who is so adamantly against the slaughter of horses didn't think about just how close a horse and cow really are. Or a horse and a pig. Or that the justification used for eating horses holds up for all 'meat' animals. It reeks of ethnocentrism that you believe that eating horse flesh isn't normal or right. I totally applaud you for picking up on the fact that money actually makes people treat animals poorly, by the way. High five on that one.

This idea that animals are only worth something if we form attachments to them is like me saying that genocide in Africa is fine because I've never met anyone who is being killed there. Why should it bother me? I don't know them. I don't have to see them die, right? And yet strangely, it does bother me.

Also, it's 'citing' not 'sighting'. I know you're blog is big and important, but if you're going to be making such a big, important point and trying to sway people's opinion, maybe try picking up a dictionary.

Maybe I shouldn't have slept through art class.

Saturday April 19, 2008 2:57 AM by Jen

A friend sent me this link today, and I was blown away. No matter how many times I see people being cruel, how many times I think there's no way in hell something can surprise me, someone does something stupid like KILL a dog for an art installation. Yeah, you heard me. Some out-of-his-fucking-mind 'artist' woke up one morning and thought - today? Today I think I'll tie up a dog and not feed it, charge admission and CALL IT ART instead of shooting myself in my worthless head. This is not art, unless we changed the definition of art to murder and I didn't get the memo.

What is it about the death of an animal we find so aesthetic? There is nothing beautiful about the torturous, slow, agonizing death of starving, just like there is nothing beautiful about the brutal murder that goes into the 'production' of fur. Perhaps there is a haunting beauty in a natural death, but there is nothing attractive, nothing beautiful, nothing worthwhile about senseless, pointless, useless murder. Perhaps art isn't meant to be beautiful. In many cases, it could be argued that art should cause discomfort - to the VIEWER. Provocative though this might be, to walk through this 'gallery' and see a dog look at you, suffering, and to do nothing more than sip your champagne and talk industry is nothing short of purely callous. It is an example of all that is wrong with out treatment of animals, how we treat them as nothing more than pieces of art to be disposed of as suits the artists' fickle pleasures. It doesn't matter that he's a dog - if he were a pig, a duck, a freakin' giraffe, it would remain inexcusable.

Photo from El Perrito Vive.

This dog died starving slowly on a concrete floor while people walked back and forth in front of him, carrying drinks and probably food. They were within feet of him, watched him die in abject misery. And they did nothing. That he is a dog does not matter. He was a sentient being, and he felt every minute of this.

Note: There are various rumors throughout the art world about what may be actually occurring here: one rumor is that the artist found the dog on the street, tethered him up for three hours to "make a point about human cruelty to non-human animals," and then took him home as a companion animal; another rumor being circulated is that the dog was already dying, so this man simply tied him up and allowed him to die in the museum.

The former rumor make's an excellent point, however, the means to the end of making this point is an example of cruel animal exploitation, which is precisely the point the artist was allegedly attempting to make. So, where does he stand on the issue? Perhaps he could have taken several photographs of homeless and hapless dogs, and exhibited them to make his point. What if he were to have tethered a sickly African to a corner of that museum to make a point about the plight being suffered by millions of individuals throughout the African continent?

If the latter rumor is substantiated, then he ought to be petitioned because this is a tragedy. Who could claim otherwise?

Look at the picture(s). This is sanctified cruelty, regardless of the morality of the point he is attempting to make.

There's a petition here to stop this 'artist' from putting on another 'art installation' in 2008. Please, sign it.

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My name is Jennie, and I'm a vegan. Vegans don't eat or use anything that comes from an animal. I've heard it described at "nothing that farts or has a face" but that's vulgar and I'm a prude. This blog is my labor of love, all about how I kick ass and take names on a regular basis.

The 'scorned bull' of our delusions.
August 9, 2008

The lesson here is don't attack Mormons in Orem.
August 1, 2008