Letters by Boz

The Discerning Brute on "Bacon Bumption"

Joshua Katcher at The Discerning Brute has a great piece about the silly, gross trend of hipsters and would-be gourmands obsessing over dead pig flesh:

Something that I’ve noticed a lot of over the last several years is what I’ll call Pork Pride, or Bacon Bumption – a level of  bacon obsession that is suspicious of being in response to something. Time Out Chicago has a very interesting article on the subject. This seems to have been happening in urban areas like Brooklyn, Chicago, Portland, and San Francisco over the last 5 or 6 years among an otherwise intelligent and educated culture of young people who act like they’ve just discovered the stuff (as if it weren’t already in every market in America). Celebrating with everything from bacon ice-cream, chocolate covered bacon, and bacon crochet to bacon band-aids,  bacon vodka and bacon festivals with bacon sculptors and people who are so passionate about bacon that they seethe. They should form a religion (oh wait, the Holy Church of Bacon actually exists).

Read the rest here.

Then check out this video by the good folks at Mercy for Animals and think about the animals that are being tortured and killed to fuel America's gluttony for trendy meat.

 

Animal Research Won't Cure Alzheimer's

Top Alzheimer's Disease researcher and neuroscientist Lawrence A. Hansen, M.D, has written an important article questioning the place of animal research in finding a cure for this awful disease (which, incidentally, killed my grandmother). He describes some research methods... 

One particularly egregious example is a decades-long series of highly invasive monkey experiments performed at universities across the country to study neural control of visual tracking. Luckless monkeys have coils implanted in both eyes, multiple craniotomies for electrode placements in their brains and head immobilization surgeries in which screws, bolts and plates are directly attached to their skulls. This is followed by water deprivation to produce a "work ethic" so they will visually track moving objects.

... before concluding

Because such monkey torture will not lead to improved human health, you don't need to be an animal rights advocate to wonder if an ethical cost-benefit analysis might conclude the ends just don't justify the means, especially since rapid advances in sophisticated high-resolution neuroimaging on humans will very soon obviate the need for such invasive techniques.... Most animal experiments on monkeys, dogs, cats and other animals are not related to human benefit, and describing such research as "humane" requires an Orwellian-newspeak definition of the word. "Humane" means to treat with kindness, consideration or mercy, and as long as words have meanings that cannot be twisted Humpty Dumpty-like into whatever we want them to mean, animal experimentation is not and can never be humane.

Based on my readings, many animal researchers simply believe in experimentation for the sake of experimentation. They enjoy the scientific process, and if animals are tortured in the process, so be it, as long as it's in the interest of the great god Science. Whether or not there is any actual relevance to the research seems to be besides the point.

Shooting Cats: Evil

From the great folks at Alley Cat Allies: 

Lately Alley Cat Allies has heard from our supporters and seen more than one news item about people who should know better—elected leaders no less—suggesting that the best way to handle feral cats is to shoot them.

To take action against this horrible practice, go here.

If only it were possible to arm the cats with little tiny firearms of their own...

Favorite Film Draculas for Halloween

In rough descending order:

1. Count Dracula: This BBC production is the best, most faithful version. Moody and atmospheric despite a low budget. Fantastic performance by Louis Jordan as the Count. Watching this on Halloween on PBS was a ritual of mine as a child.

2 (tie). Nosferatu: Both the silent original and the Herzog remake. Probably the weirdest, creepiest versions of the story. The "ship of doom" sequence in the original and the "feast with rats" scene in the remake are particularly memorable.

3. Dracula (1979): Takes a few liberties with the story, but Frank Langella is great as Dracula and the feel of the film is suitably dark and gothic.

4. Horror of Dracula: Takes way too many liberties with the Stoker novel, but must be mentioned due to the presence of Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as the best Van Helsing ever on screen. Greatest climax of any Dracula film.

5. Bram Stoker's Dracula: Really Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. I've got a love/hate relationship with this one. It is gorgeously filmed, and is probably the most faithful big screen version of the story. There are some great scenes. Yet some of the performances are a bit much, and the whole thing teeters on the edge of total camp.

Slave Bear Rebels, is Killed

A sad story out of Boratesque Kyrgyzstan:

An ice-skating bear with a visiting Russian circus turned on its trainers on Wednesday, killing the circus director and seriously wounding another man during a rehearsal in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan.

via www.cbc.ca

As so often happens, the bear was shot dead. 

It is important to remember that animals forced to perform in these despicable circuses are often cruelly mistreated. Per the Voice for Animals Humane Society, 

This circus featured bears wearing skates and playing hockey. It is difficult to imagine what the trainers must have done to these animals to make them perform this act. While in Alberta the bears were housed at Doug’s Exotic Zoo in Red Deer in individual cages so small that most of the animals were unable to turn around or stand up to their full height.

I recommend reading more about the subject here. 

Marketing Geniuses

On recent ticket orders for Morrissey’s upcoming west coast gig,  Ticketmaster has allowed Denny’s to run a cross promotion offering a free hamburger. Why isn’t this okay? Only because Morrissey is one of the most outspoken vegetarian celebs ever!

via www.ecorazzi.com

I hope Morrissey raises holy hell over this. It's easy to choose sides here. The ex-leader of one of the greatest rock bands ever (the Smiths), or fountain of greed Ticketmaster and purveyor of disgusting near-food Denny's. Time, perhaps, to revisit a particularly relevant Smiths song...

Newest Sadistic Thrill for Animal Hating Scum

Police in Shelton, Conn. have arrested 19 individuals in connection to a canary fighting ring. In order to satisfy their deranged need for bloodsport, scummish people would apparently watch as these beautiful creatures were made to fight to the death. What type of person looks at this defenseless creature and thinks to himself, "I want to see that bird fight for its life!"? A sick person. I could care less about "culture" or "tradition." Animal fighting -- chickens, dogs, horses, whatever -- is just disgusting and wrong, and those who indulge in it are mere sadists.

 

Obama Crazies and the Spirit of 1776

The September 28, 2009 issue of New York has a good (if somewhat cursory) article about the nuttiness of some anti-Obama activists. A few pictures of the various cretins can be viewed here. (The chubby hick chick giving the middle finger pretty much sums up the class and intellect of these people.) Most of the things throwing the wingnuts into conniptions are lies and mistruths we've all heard countless times already: Obama is a Muslim/Nazi/Socialist/Communist, he wasn't born in the U.S., and so on. 

One small item did catch my attention. One sign at a Scranton, PA teabagging party apparently read, THE ANSWER TO 2009 IS 1776. What, I wonder, was so great about 1776? In 1776, country was involved in a bloody war. Hundreds of thousands of blacks were held in slavery, while countless whites were locked into the virtual slavery of indentured servitude. Participation in politics was pretty much reserved for white, male property owners, leaving huge chunks of the population disenfranchised. Essentially, the U.S. in 1776 was a far more tyrannical place than the U.S. in 2009. Free, libertarian 1776 America never existed except in the fevered minds of some reactionaries, and is just as fanciful as the supposed Marxist dictatorship we live under now.

Hot-Buttered Torture

I've already given up meat and poultry, and am moving to greatly reduce my consumption of dairy products and eggs. This video from an undercover PETA investigation of a Land O'Lakes dairy supplier shows why:

The Literary Palin