So here's my deal: I got Salmonella poisoning not too long ago from disgusting chicken that was infected, and since then I've been a vegetarian.
I was SO SICK. I should have gone to the hospital, but since (ahem) no one around me believed I was really sick, because I didn't have a fever, I didn't. I languished for about a week and a half in complete agony, dizziness, pain, and nausea until my wise all-knowing mother informed me what I had was a bacterial infection due to disgusting crawling parasites in meat that I ate, and now I had the parasite. THANKS, Farmers!
The idea of eating meat literally makes me sick now, especially run-of-the-mill meat that isn't organic. I mean, occasionally I'll eat organic meat, but the regular shit? It's filled with bacteria, hormones, chemicals, and cancer (and if you don't know or believe that, you're a fucking idiot).
One of the biggest and best arguments against eating meat that runs through my mind is how horrible it is for the animals. Okay, maybe you're an asshole and think that anything human should be treated like crap and has no value. I see your point but disagree.
Eating ANYTHING means ending that thing's life, including plants, and that makes me sad and I hate that I'm basically a walking monster with strange bone plates set into a moist gaping hole in the front of an extremity into which I shove the cells of other organisms. Alas, if I do not, I die. I don't want to die, but I'm really having trouble coming to grips with the fact that all life is monstrous and disgusting.
Worse than killing and eating something so you don't die is torturing it before you kill it. I mean, okay; you have to kill something and eat it; what's better, letting it be happy, THEN killing it? Or letting it live in hell it's entire existence and THEN killing it? OR, like Camus would say, does it not matter either way because we all die and life is meaningless?
Anyway, I try not to eat meat now because I'm white and can occasionally afford organic eggs and meat when I need them so I don't die. The rest of the time I eat lentils, or some shit like that.
If you think about many many horror films that involve animals and creatures (Jaws, Alien, Piranha, etc.), the main fear we as humans have is of being captured and eaten. Even more disgusting that that, the grotesque beyond grotesques, is the idea of humans being farmed. Like animals. For food. That human life is completely devalued and we are treated the way we've always treated other animals.
Why do we think that animals like chickens and cows are any less capable of feeling afraid? Or is it that we just don't give a fuck? It's okay to admit you don't give a fuck, but at least admit it.
Troma's Lloyd Kaufman and Nina Gielen have made a new short that shows what it's like for animals in a way even the stupid can understand.
As the scene opens onto idyllic Sunny Acres Farms, the viewer can't help but think how lovely this "Old McDonald"-style farm must be for all the happy little animals inside fattening up for slaughter. Pan to the crowded cages of screaming, drooling, terrified bodies, and suddenly it's not such a wonderful world. Mothers scream as their young are ripped away from them. Animals are injected with antibiotics before having their throats slit. Of course, this is all done in accordance with "acceptable farming practices." Horrified yet?
I really like the video and think it's well done.. but I detest PETA and I wish people would stop acting like they're the reigning champions of animal welfare. Their propaganda and use of celebrities is what sucks people into thinking they're this great organization who genuinely care about animals, when really they're just as terrible as the meat industry itself. How can anyone support a company that's said publicly and repeatedly that it would be better to slaughter animals than to make them face the 'indignity' of being house pets for humans?
If I have to, I will go into a PETA rant that will last several days. PETA was temporarily banned in my state for illegally dumping euthanized animals, and I used to actively counter protest against them in my state. I have quite a bit to say on their "Save a chicken, suck a cock." ad campaign as I call it (using porn stars to try and convert people to vegan lifestyles). A lot to say on their hypocrisy when it comes to their own health, etc.
If we can all agree that they are not to be trusted near your kids, and that they are generally bad people I think we'll avoid quite a bit of headaches all around. I don't care if people are vegan, but preachy vegans are just as annoying as preachy religious people.
You can't blame people for eating something hardwired into their brains, like it or not humanity evolved to where we are on a carnivorous diet. Carnivores are smarter than plant eaters, this is a common trend all across the board. Agriculture also causes environmental damage, and is probably one of the biggest causes of obesity (not, as often believed, fats from meat). Carbohydrates are the largest contributing factor to obesity in America, the number one source of carbohydrates in the human diet are from grains which used to make up the base of the old food pyramid and are still recommended in unhealthy servings to this day by a misguided government.
People are not getting fat because of meat, they are getting fat because of fries, bread, pasta, etc. I could ramble on about the BMI being a load of rubbish, but I think it's common knowledge that it's an antiquated system of measuring health.
As to Troma, I used to have more respect for the company. The fact they can be bought now by a homegrown terrorist organization is simply the last straw, they can continue on without my support. I know the company was in financial trouble, but accepting money from those creeps is not the answer.
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Our souls are from the wild, and wings to reach the sky. Let the sun fall into the ocean, let the earth erupt in flame. It is enough to have the strength and knowledge to raise our dream machines into the sky.
Regardless of PETA, as an individual, I have to say I fucking hate the way animals are treated on factory farms. I agree that carbs are the major player in obesity; it's corporate farming, of animals and plants, that has ruined the quality of our meat and plant food and also the quality of life of these animals.
There's something grotesque about the farming of animals like this; it isn't right. It sits ill with me. These are not the farms we grew up imagining as children. And yes, we have a lot of people we need to feed; but there's also a lot of profit being made from this business that motivates the abuse; they're not breaking even just to feed the masses. Most of these shortcuts and the abuse is motivated by a desire to make as much money as possible by cutting as many corners as they can.
I'd rather eat meat the few times I can afford organic than eat the disgusting crap they hand out in grocery stores. That goes for carb-products, too. I'll take my bowl of homemade lentil soup over a bag of chips from the store. Yes, I sound boring.
I can agree that keeping animals tightly packed or force feeding them is bad in some cases, captive bolt pistols are ineffective on some animals (due mostly to operator error, not a failing of the mechanism), etc.
You sound like a vegan I wouldn't regret being near at dinner time. I hunt, fish and grow a small garden of vegetables and fruit. I keep animals like goats, chickens and quail. Not on a large scale though and until the wild dog problem last year and this year, I let them wander. It's simply what I was taught as a kid by my grandparents, a lot of people in my area of NC still rely more on homegrown vegetables, keeping animals and meat from hunting than stuff from the store. More so now that unemployment in my state is hovering around 10%.
A lot of people also don't understand animal physiology, sometimes, not all of the time but sometimes what looks inhumane to us is actually painless to the animal. One example of this is shoeing a horse, which looks painful to us but is actually painless to the animal. The same is true for the force feeding process to produce foie gras. However it does take a skilled hand, otherwise the animal could suffer injury or pain.
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Our souls are from the wild, and wings to reach the sky. Let the sun fall into the ocean, let the earth erupt in flame. It is enough to have the strength and knowledge to raise our dream machines into the sky.
Okay, two things. First, humans are omnivores and are GI system is best suited to eat a combination of meats and plants.
Second, we eat too damn much meat! Sure, it tastes good, but it's suppose to be that way. Back when we had to hunt and kill our meat, we'd gorge ourselves on the flavorful stuff, just like sweets trigger a craving in most of us. We want it, as our bodies know it's good for us. Yet, as it's hard to procure or has a limited harvest time (in the case of fruits), we can gorge ourselves on it and not have the problems associated with today's diet, as we'd be fasting during the winter months.
All current food processing, whether meat or vegetable products, feed into this craving. The food manufacturing companies will find a way to inject fats, salts or sugars into a product to make you overeat. And I think most of that is due to the corn industry.
Cows DON'T eat corn, they eat grass. Part of the reason for the heavy antibiotic use in corporate farmed cattle is to keep them from dying due to the problems with such a dramatic change in their diet (infections due to stomach ulcers and such). Yet, corn is cheaper (thanks to government subsidies) then letting cattle roam on a field. And corn syrup fattens them up more than a grass diet, triggering that gorging response in humans.
And, while we are talking about it, organic corn syrup as a sweetener is just as bad as its non-organic counterpart. A study in England showed that rats fed a diet of corn syrup grew fatter than a group fed the same caloric amount of cane sugar.
We need to eat less meat, and when we consume meat products, make them from humanely raised farms, not corporate fed lots. As Bill Mehar is fond of saying, it's the food that's making us sick.
Okay, two things. First, humans are omnivores and are GI system is best suited to eat a combination of meats and plants.
We need to eat less meat, and when we consume meat products, make them from humanely raised farms, not corporate fed lots. As Bill Mehar is fond of saying, it's the food that's making us sick.
1: Yes, but primarily we've eaten meat.
2: I disagree, carbohydrates and sugars from grain products are the true cause of the obesity epidemic which really isn't as bad as the media claims it is. If you go out with a camera you'll be at a mall for several hours just to get enough footage to make a 30 second montage of real obese people. Bill Maher flirts with germ denial, that line you've just quoted is in reference to his belief that a good diet can keep you from getting sick. I haven't heard him specifically name any diseases, he generalizes. If you have a better clip please share.
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Our souls are from the wild, and wings to reach the sky. Let the sun fall into the ocean, let the earth erupt in flame. It is enough to have the strength and knowledge to raise our dream machines into the sky.
I hunt, fish and grow a small garden of vegetables and fruit. I keep animals like goats, chickens and quail. Not on a large scale though and until the wild dog problem last year and this year, I let them wander. It's simply what I was taught as a kid by my grandparents, a lot of people in my area of NC still rely more on homegrown vegetables, keeping animals and meat from hunting than stuff from the store. More so now that unemployment in my state is hovering around 10%.
This is a dream of mine. We live in the city and even having a small patch of dirt as a garden is a luxury. I'd love a sunny yard in which I could grow my own veggies, and have and take of my own animals so I know exactly where the food comes from and how the animals were treated, raised, and what I'm eating when I eat them.
I'd love to move away to another, smaller city and buy a house with the land that I'd need to make that possible. Alas, in Los Angeles, a house that is 200,000 with acres of land elsewhere is about 4 million dollars here.
I disagree. I'm pulling my physical anthropology card here (let me take it out of my pocket). As a person with a degree in physical anthropology, I was taught by evolutionary human historians and biologists that the primary, day-to-day diet of human beings, up until the industrial revolution, was largely vegetarian.
Not by choice!
It's just that in a hunter gatherer society, meat is VERY hard to come by. Before farming, the only way to get meat was to stalk and hunt it and it could take 2, 3 days to corner and bring down something big enough to feed the 20 -30 people in your village. So, the men ended up spending 4-5 out of 7 days every week just hunting. In order to survive day to day, the women had to gather whatever vegetable matter they could to feed everyone supplementally.
Later, once people lived in villages and cities, we didn't have this mass production of food. Meat was expensive; poor people often saw it only at Christmas. People have had to rely on vegetables so they didn't starve to death.
This is a dream of mine. We live in the city and even having a small patch of dirt as a garden is a luxury. I'd love a sunny yard in which I could grow my own veggies, and have and take of my own animals so I know exactly where the food comes from and how the animals were treated, raised, and what I'm eating when I eat them.
I'd love to move away to another, smaller city and buy a house with the land that I'd need to make that possible. Alas, in Los Angeles, a house that is 200,000 with acres of land elsewhere is about 4 million dollars here.
My grandparents ended up leaving me their house, they didn't even get indoor plumbing until around 1997. Though there is a river that runs beside the house, when they bought the land it cost them $5,500 dollars (57 years ago) and is now valued at only $45,000 because the bridge you have to cross is a bit rickety and a lot of the land is hilly and covered with a forest. I could probably sell logging rights like some of the neighbors did, but I saw the damage it caused. It killed off a lot of the bamboo thickets and drove off a bunch of the deer. The deer started coming back this winter though, but I don't hunt near my home.
If you move East I would suggest somewhere near Blowing Rock, or Boone in North Carolina. Boone being the only place I know of to have anything even resembling horror conventions and even then I think it's mostly just limited to midnight movie stuff, even though it is a college town. I think there used to be one in Wilmington also, but not sure on it.
Superheidi wrote:
I disagree. I'm pulling my physical anthropology card here (let me take it out of my pocket).
I stand corrected, though I thought they used to gorge themselves on meat. Was that because it was rare?
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Our souls are from the wild, and wings to reach the sky. Let the sun fall into the ocean, let the earth erupt in flame. It is enough to have the strength and knowledge to raise our dream machines into the sky.
I stand corrected, though I thought they used to gorge themselves on meat. Was that because it was rare?
You're right, they did! because it was rare, when they got it, they ate the hell out of it. We crave meat, just like we do sweets and salts, because they were rare. Our bodies didn't get them that often, so when we did, it was best to go ahead and get as much as you could.
Now that we have salts and sweets and meta and carbs, we still crave them even though our bodies haven't caught up to our new environments.
2: I disagree, carbohydrates and sugars from grain products are the true cause of the obesity epidemic which really isn't as bad as the media claims it is. If you go out with a camera you'll be at a mall for several hours just to get enough footage to make a 30 second montage of real obese people. Bill Maher flirts with germ denial, that line you've just quoted is in reference to his belief that a good diet can keep you from getting sick. I haven't heard him specifically name any diseases, he generalizes. If you have a better clip please share.
Actually, a study in Britain showed that rats fed a caloric intake of high fructose corn syrup became fatter than rats fed the same caloric intake of cane sugar. And, if you're eating processed foods, most contain some amounts of corn syrup.
It's not the true cause, or the only cause. Obesity has many roots. But our diet, and the amount we eat, are some major causes.
So here's my deal: I got Salmonella poisoning not too long ago from disgusting chicken that was infected, and since then I've been a vegetarian.
I really like the video and think it's well done.. but I detest PETA and I wish people would stop acting like they're the reigning champions of animal welfare. Their propaganda and use of celebrities is what sucks people into thinking they're this great organization who genuinely care about animals, when really they're just as terrible as the meat industry itself. How can anyone support a company that's said publicly and repeatedly that it would be better to slaughter animals than to make them face the 'indignity' of being house pets for humans?