aminals!

there’s a bipolar quality to our relationship with animals. both sentiment and brutality exist side by side. half the dogs in north america will receive christmas presents this year, yet no one gives a shit about the miserable life of a pig. an animal that is surely delicious, but no doubt as smart as a dog or smarter, but will end up being EATEN for christmas. and who the hell knows what that pig had to eat and how it died and everything else that pig had to put up with.

weird?

my problems lay mostly in the respect issues. needless killing of animals and in shitty, disrespectful ways. we don't need to kill the animals and if we ever do, it should be clean and quick and with great thanks if not at least purpose.

if i were King:

hang out with the pig, watch her grow up and have piglets. go see a live, squawking chicken and tell someone i want that chicken there to eat. be aware of what the fuck you put in your mouth. i can't fault (nearly as much) the farmers or chefs i've seen with a deep respect for their food. i saw chef ramsey almost cry when he took his chickens to be slaughtered for eating. he put effort into making sure those chickens were healthy for his own, quality control reasons. but he had to turn away when they were electrocuted. he named each one. he knew it was Furdy that he was cooking and eating. he had a different view on the animal. the animal had value at least.

what gives an animal value these days? how purely interbred it is?

VEGGIEDAG!

The Belgian city of Ghent is about to become the first in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week.

Starting this week there will be a regular weekly meatless day, in which civil servants and elected councillors will opt for vegetarian meals.

Ghent means to recognize the impact of livestock on the environment.

The UN says livestock is responsible for nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, hence Ghent's declaration of a weekly "veggie day".

Public officials and politicians will be the first to give up meat for a day.

Schoolchildren will follow suit with their own veggiedag in September.

It is hoped the move will cut Ghent's environmental footprint and help tackle obesity.

Around 90,000 so-called "veggie street maps" are now being printed to help people find the city's vegetarian eateries.

maybe it would work in toronto or montreal or vancouver. according to wikipedia, "The metropolitan area, including the outer commuter zone, covers an area of 1,205 km² and has a total population of 594,582 as of 1 January 2008, which ranks it as the fourth most populous in Belgium."

i'm excited for this to potentially work. it's gimicky enough for people to try it i think. get good publisists working on the project. health canada and the people who do milk and cheese campaigns. or "good things grow-ohh in ontario-oh" jingle writers. who will head up this project and where is the place to start it in canada...

I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

and boy did Gandalf nail that one.

choices.
fate.
things we can't change.
trying.

i don't know if i believe in any of these things. i can think of good reasons why each one, may not be real.

do we ever have a choice? i've been a victim of something besides choice many a time. for example, do we choose who we fall in love with? i think not.

fate seems more likely then. this was meant to happen. but i've had that rug pulled from under me too, and i think everyone has. feeling like you are where you are "supposed to be" and find that you kind of more or less wanted to be there. perhaps you were supposed to make a choice, but got lazy and decided to let life happen.

things we can't change. what if we can change anything and everything? again, i'm more likely to believe that human beings and myself, are just lazy. how do we become wise enough to know we can't change something. till i'm sure i'm THAT wise, i'll feel better trying to change those things i "can't". attack. fight. punch fate in the face.

trying. at the end of trying and trying and trying and trying, am i just wasting my time. that's the final question for me. it's not empowering, or positive. i guess it's nihilistic or futile. how much valuable time do you put into something before you are a lunatic. or an artist?

it must all be a question of when you play each card?
is there something to be said for a feverish zeal and passion? the ones who try endlessly, maybe dying without a single fruit of their labours? knowing you are meant to be where you are right now? choosing to believe in something, being the master of your own ship?

brother, there is no relief

"You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else."

this has never made more sense till now.
it occurred to me that some people, not knowing how to deal with an onslaught of horrible things dumped on them, develop a failsafe in their head called masochism. a syndrome?

what do you do when you can't take any more beatings? when it just doesn't seem to get much worse? learn to love it.

i think there are healthy(ish) ways to go about it. if you don't have a choice in the matter, for example. i say don't go out finding more suffering than you can get away with. but in the interest of becoming stronger through what doesn't kill you...

i'll practise taking it on the chin. who knows if it will do any good. but i'd always rather take the option that reminds me of Fight Club.

Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled. Not where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

the art of falling in holes

for me the big developments, the ones with impact, seem to have occurred when i realized that no one else was going to do it for me. only when i'm stuck in a hole for a while, and come to realize no one else will pull me out, do i really develop and i guess adapt, pulling myself out.

something needs to break in a sense, and then i look for a newer, better idea to replace the broken one. like when your refrigerator breaks. you need a new solution. i never thought i was so blind, i thought i was more perceptive.

but i'm trying not to be hard on myself. we aren't all refrigerator repair men. there are some things we can't see about ourselves. the options left, seem to be about being open to change. this is a recent discovery for me. i've always felt independent, but i've just realized in the past little while, how much i rely on other people for things. it feels so much better to know i can accomplish it myself. being secure with yourself seems amazingly more important than i first thought.

i have become thankful in a way for not having anyone to rely on. it means i had to rely on myself. a good feeling, that looked like treason at first.

is this a common thing with other people? i've been wondering lately if there is a better way for me to do this, besides being in figurative holes more often. this can be painful. the initial feeling of having nothing to rely on is a big hurdle some days. is there another way to change?

"Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.” SirA.Hopkins

growing can hurt. so what. what else is there?

the hermit

After a long and busy lifetime, building, creating, loving, hating, fighting, compromising, failing, succeeding, the Fool feels a profound need to retreat. In a small, rustic home deep in the woods, he hides, reading, cleaning, organizing, resting or just thinking. But every night at dusk he heads out, traveling across the bare, autumnal landscape. He carries only a staff and a lantern.

It is during these restless walks from dusk till dawn, peering at and examining whatever takes his fancy, that he sees and realizes things he's missed, about himself and the world. It is as if the secret corners in his head were being slowly illuminated; corners he never knew existed. In a way, he has become the Fool again; as in the beginning, he goes wherever inspiration leads him. But as the Fool, his staff rested on his shoulder, carrying unseen his pack. The Fool was like the pack, whatever it was he could be was wrapped up, unknown. The Hermit's staff leans out before him, not behind. And it carries a lantern, not a pack. The Hermit is like the lantern, illuminated from within by all he is.

pep rallies

you know, pep rallies freaked me out in high school and they've only gotten weirder in retrospect.

cuts and pastes.

Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe, sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast, is that portentous phrase, "I told you so," uttered by friends, those prophets of the past.
Bear and endure: This sorrow will one day prove to be for your good. Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.

book quote

he will desire any object so long as he is convinced that it is desired by another person whom he admires.


desire and love have for their object things and qualities which a man does not at present have, but which he lacks.


glances are the heavy artillery of the flirt: everything can be conveyed in a look, yet that look can always be denied, for it cannot be quoted word for word.

the art of seduction

borrowed or maybe stole a book from a friend of a friend. it's a penguin book called the art of seduction i think.
it goes over theories about who has seduced who in history. Cleopatra seduced Caesar and Marc Antony. in different ways at that. elvis seduced young girls of america and the world. so did JFK. Napoleon seduced France and Josephine Bonaparte seduced him.

i'm just thinking about how the book is basically breaking down love, and explaining it in a cold, mathematically-correct way. even if we don't mean to seduce, it doesn't mean that we aren't. very interesting.

to read through the book (i'm almost done) for the reasons of maybe seducing girls or preventing girls from seducing me, turned out to be folly. it's much more philosophical than that. the book actually shows me my flaws, my holes. things i want and lack. and makes sence of why i look for the characteristics that i do. understanding what you want is making it easier to find.

it puts a spin on seduction that is less evil and cold-hearted. we all seduce and we all WANT to be seduced. it's a matter of feeling in control, even though we aren't. it's a matter of confidence.

i'll give final thoughts when i finish the book.

vegetarianism

like it's a religious belief. like hinduism.
maybe that's not too far off.

most religions have an element of theory at it's core, theoretically. something that is important and meaningful. i guess it's when philosophies branch out and into a religion, that i start to become skeptical.

sticking to the topic- like a used piece of tape, the kind of tape you find already being used for something else, but you need tape for the moment and some used, slightly sticky tape, is better than no tape at all- i'm trying out a new vegetarian theory. the word vegetarian is a very poor word for describing what i'm trying to do, but i don't know any other words to use.

i'm talking about fucking, watching what you put in your mouth. watching what you feed yourself. being very concerned what is in these animals that we're eating, not so much as for the fact that we're eating an animal. there are more and more convincing reasons to not eat meat lately, for me. the reasons only became apparent once i listened to a very upset punk/metal/indie/i don't care what to call him, singer from Propaghandi.

it came in a simple explaination: why not resort to cannibalism? why don't we eat each other? well we go down the roads like 1. "it' s not healthy" and/or 2. "we are spiritual and would be defiling the soul".

1. we could totally cook human meat to a degree that was safe. it's stupid to think otherwise. an interesting idea in all aspects to me. it's fine to take a scientific stance to it. but i'm pretty sure we can eat each other safely. this may be disturbing to some. why? because we have faces? and names? interesting tidbit: we call a pig's flesh, Pork meat. we call thymus and pancreatic glands "sweetbreads". how endearing. science would say it's great to eat each other. the closer related the animal, the better it is to eat. it's less work for our bodies to do the converting. so i thought about this. challenge meat eaters to eat their pets instead of buying shitty chicken breasts at wal-mart. at least you take good care of your pets. you know what you've been feeding them.

2. are we spiritual? really? animals have no souls but we do? this whole planet has life on every fucking corner of it and we're the only ones that are something special? nah. i saw a fox on my hike a few weeks ago. there was no way i'd say i was more spiritual than him. maybe if i drugged him and tossed him in a lab, my results would show that Fox's do not scientifically contain a spirit like Homo Sapians clearly do. but that's just more bullshit. drug me and put me in a lab, do tests on me to see if i have a soul. your results will be as rediculous as whatever the procedure is.

so despite this whole rant, science and spirit aside, the issue is: do i eat animals or not. and if i do eat animals, would i eat a human.

-i'm reluctant to eat a human, so therefore, i feel there is some reason (deeper, that i still can't put my finger on) to not eat animals.
-if it comes down to real survival, i'll have no problem eating human or animal meat.

is there something to be said about the respect or lack of respect for slaughtering animals these days. i would feel better buying the meat of a cow that a farmer took care in feeding and watched over. feeding the cow real, natural food, watching the cow grow in a natural, free way. i feel that the respectful farmer would care about how the cow died. a farmer that names each cow and personally kills each one. i'll eat that cow. and be thankful.

is this showing the difference yet? compared to the frozen mcdonald's patty that has the splooge of satan in it? where money is the factor. and taste is secondary, and solved with money and chemicals. the cow here is no longer even an animal but an equation. put this into the cow, you get this. and it tastes bad, so put in this. and that. and add a fuckin clown and toy.

i hate mcdonalds.