Thursday, August 20, 2009

Posted elsewhere



As I've said elsewhere, my best stuff shows up on other people's blogs. Mr. Beer N. Hockey posted one of his excellent poems and I just had to mouth off:

"Some neighbors decided to buy some ewes, raise a few lambs and make a couple of bucks. Seemed like a good idea until it was time to separate the lambs from their mothers. The lambs screamed and the ewes screamed back, that lasted all night until the truck came to haul the lambs off. The ewes continued to scream and cry for a couple of days afterwards. The sounds they made were heart rending. I couldn't eat lamb for several years after. Reminded me of the time a calf died in a field near here. The cow stood over the body, rigid with grief, and didn't move for days.

The longest I ever lasted as a vegetarian was about a year. By the end of the year I was dreaming about meat. I thought about it like I thought about sex when I was sixteen. Finally a vegetarian friend told me that I should probably go ahead and eat some meat. By that time I probably could have clubbed a baby seal and eaten it's heart.

These days I eat dead things frequently. I try and remember the animal on the plate but mostly I don't bother.

Twenty some years ago, I spent a few years around big corporate agriculture. I saw all of those factory farms that the animal rights assholes like to talk about. They were pretty bad. Being an animal on one of those farms was about as bad as being a human and working at most human jobs. That's the part that animal rights people miss".


Beer, as usual, offered a good reply:

"When the morning whistle blows, everybody I work with know they are just meat in a grinder.

I too am in favour of free range humans."


Work- Scott H. Biram (Buy)

Work- Maureen Tucker (Buy)

Here's a song about work, not in the Marxist sense, rather what one does with "That Thing".

The Way That You Work- Les Sexareenos (Buy)

Finally a song about a man who has slipped the bonds of labor and everything else.

The Bottomless Hole- The Handsome Family (Buy)

8 comments:

Joe said...

We can free ourselves from the food chain. We can show compassion.

Though admittedly this is not easy when you are being treated like a number.

Your driver said...

Actually, I can't think of a better time to act human than when I am being treated like a number. I am remarkably lucky to have found a job where they really don't bother me much so long as I show up regularly. Even that is enough to leave me exhausted. When that happens it is hard for me to tell that I am being loved.

Nazz Nomad said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nazz Nomad said...

As Husker Du so aptly put it

We are starting a cat ranch and taking one hundred thousand cats
Each cat will have twelve kittens a year
The catskins will sell for thirty cents each
One hundred men could skin five thousand cats a day
We could be dealing a profit of over ten thousand dollars
But what should we feed the cats?
We will start a rat ranch next door with a million rats
The rats will be twelve times faster than the cats
So we can have more rats to feed each day for each cat
But what should we feed the rats?
We will feed the ratsThe carcases of the cats
After they have been skinned
Now get this!
We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats
And get the catskins for nothing
We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats
And get the catskins for nothing
We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats
And get the catskins for nothing
We feed the rats the carcases of the cats
After they have been skinned
We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats
And get the catskins for nothing
Rats to the cats and the cats to the rats
And get the catskins for nothing

Your driver said...

Husker Du were so scientific.

Madame Pamita said...

I just got a job that doesn't feel like factory farming. I'm a high school librarian. I work alongside lovely kids, decent staff and I'm around books and computers in a beautiful library. What could be better?
Driving a bus is not factory farming. You are performing seva - you are getting people where they need to go inexpensively and with less impact on the environment. You let people travel who normally would be tied to their homes. You are wonderful!

Your driver said...

Pam, some of my best friends are librarians. I have a mad long distance crush on a librarian in Marin City. I never go into her library, but I see her when I drive by and I fall in love. One of my old friends even ended up a Librarian of Congress in DC. I think I would be happy as a librarian. As to my job, I like it and I'm grateful for it. But you know, every time I was in one of those industrial hen houses or feed lots I always watched the workers and worried about them even more than I worried about the chickens.

Rose C said...

Nice blog you have

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