Saturday XLVIII: Still Making Trouble · 5 April 2008
It is the Editor’s birthday. But I’m not really supposed to blog about the Editor because I might slip and write something inappropriate again. Profess my undying love, for example. So just nevermind I mentioned his birthday.
For April Fool’s I hilariously took a pack of address labels he received from Amnesty International (secular humanist alert!) and stuck them all over his things. He was pretty mad. The one he found on the seat of his pants just before leaving the house actually got me in trouble. So I can’t blog about that either.
I also can’t tell you don’t worry about him being Aries and me being Scorpio, because I’m Aries moon and he’s Scorpio moon so we cancel each other out or something. Kind of like cross- multiplication. Bucause we don’t believe that astrology malarkey here in the Owl House! Rationalism, yo. Linearity. Sciiii-ence.
Monday I stooped to the slur of calling him a "flatlander." Again out of bounds.
Now off to LaBrea to shop and brunch with old friends and shop some more. I mostly hate buying shit. Except I love taking him shopping. It is the best. For later, we rented a season of MacGuyver from The Video Story Named Desire. I'm not kidding.
Links. I might stop doing this for a while, so maybe there will be less reason for these frivolous Saturday blogs altogether:
● The best blog in the universe is back as of April 1. Fafblog. Political satire (esp. re: War on Tara) since 1993. Maybe the fact that Hillary still hasn’t figured it out drew the Faf back from the dead. The comments are the best part, but I’ll be restraining myself to the RSS.
● How? Like this. I’m sorry: it’s not forever. I just have to use this prop for a while in order to get myself re-aligned.
● Trite and true. This was something I liked when I skimmed the RSS this morning [via]. Self help is not my genre. If you have these principles on hand (or, um, a yoga practice), you don’t need it.
Bye!
Posted by (0v0)
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Happy Birthday to The Editor!
Posted by: karen · Apr 5, 04:33 PM · #
:)
Ok, one more link. Does Meat Cause Crime?
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 6, 09:38 AM · #
I’ll go way out on the crazy limb here: I’ve been wondering whether the collective suffering of the consciousnesses of millions upon millions of factory farmed animals deeply affects our “reality.”
Okay, seeing it written like that, I have to just go for it: How couldn’t it?
Posted by: karen · Apr 6, 10:59 AM · #
Hi (0v0)
I will not say in my comment that your post is a good example of the classic technique of informing people through writing about something, by stating that you will not talk about it. Unamumo was a master at it. Best wishes to The Editor on his (secret) birthday.
Cheers, Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Apr 6, 11:56 AM · #
I love MacGuyver
Posted by: CJ · Apr 6, 01:14 PM · #
CJ, there’s a Sasquatch episode! (“Ghost ship” in Season Three.) Otherwise I have to admit that it was a lot better when I was 10, even though the “chemistry set espionage” genre (A-Team?) is awesome.
Arturo: (he says thank you). I can’t believe I have anything in common with Unamuno/Unamumo.
What’s the name for it when you refer to something by saying you will not refer to it? Help me out here.
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 6, 02:09 PM · #
More seriously: I am actually inspired and humbled (given my tendency to rue my beloved sociology as a 19th century, naively faux-empiricist, non-forward-looking discipline) by that Meat research question. This is really good sociology: oriented toward solving empirical puzzles, and leveraging abstractions like “society” and “social problems” in a useful, critical way.
No shit the industry is perverse and breeds violence! We can’t really say that in polite conversation because it’s non-non-judging. But hey, if that is what the research says…! :)
I’ve known some very good people who were butchers and slaughterhouse workers. This is a big part of growing up in rural Montana, where cattle ranching is huge business. (Billings has always been a cow town.) But god. The bigger these operations get… Hello, mechanized death! There’s a lot of pain these creatures experience. (Has anyone read Temple Grandin? So provocative and eyes-wide-open.) I have heard the cattle crying across the Montana plains on still winter mornings, just being loaded out of the feedlot into the transport-truck to slaughter. And from what Grandin says, that’s nothing.
I had eggs today and I’m feeling the benefit. Thank you, creatures. But god: who needs animal every single day? Personally, I can do third series and a dissertation on six eggs a week, occasional swigs of fish oil, and a few bites of salmon here and there. That is just my experience and humans’ “needs” vary. But god.
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 6, 02:35 PM · #
I ate beef today. BEEF! At least it was organic. I think I need more animal than average.
I have read Temple Grandin’s book! Fascinating!!!!! her cow-hug machine! Wow. Just wow. Love the parallels between human anxiety and prey anxiety – they’re really the same thing. I have a quote on my computer, on a post-it: “Anxiety is a form of emotional avoidance.” But really it’s an even lower level of thinking, a basic animal instinct.
Anyway – you and the Editor. Happy b-day Editor!
I am Aries/Virgo moon and once had a very tempestuous relationship with (not D!) a Virgo/Aries moon. Bad combo. BAD. Interesting that it works better with Scorpio.
Posted by: katie · Apr 7, 10:03 AM · #
You’ve read the book! Awesome.
Read the book!
Yes… seeing anxiety that way is strangely… freeing.
I thought my comments about meat had been a little sharp, but now I’m hearing from critics about my egg habits—apparently this is morally problematic? Ok. You’re totally right about that. But hey, what I’m consuming is not from the meat industrial complex, people. I would not go there and won’t reserve criticism for those who do. Especially if they’re also not looking at the bigger picture. But I’m pretty much responding to a level of hunger that I trust. What do you do?
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 7, 11:35 AM · #
My personal belief is that if I make an effort to seek out meat, eggs and dairy that is organic/ free range/ grass fed, it’s natural and OK (basically, human) to feed myself from these categories a few times a week.
I have a problem with the “meat industrial complex”. I do not have a problem with humanely killing animals to feed myself, in moderation and outside of that “complex”. I think probably above 90 percent of Americans don’t truly pay attention to moderation when it comes to meat (let alone the “complex”) and that’s a problem.
I’m happy to let (or even support) vegans agitate against the complex as I think it benefits everyone; if some of that agitation gets directed at me for eating meat, so be it.
Posted by: katie · Apr 8, 06:42 AM · #
This makes so much sense to me, Katie. Veganism’s cool, but can be this myopic festival of self-congratulating moral perfectionism… because where do you draw the line? Seriously… life lives off of life, in so many ways.
But, as you are saying, vegan militants are also really useful because the majority of people are unreflective carnivore jerks (a jerk being anybody who chooses not to see the obvious consequences of her actions and moderate accordingly).
I wouldn’t want to BE a vegan militant though. Power to them, but they can be anemic whiners (especially those erstwhile red-blooded activists who are actually not well suited to the diet, at least not for decades on end)... particularly those who subsist on bugles and bagles while looking down their noses at me for the occasional whey protein or fish oil. :) Hard to support an activist lifestyle on bugles and bagels and coffee, but I see a lot of fringey opposition-monger friends do it, slowly draining themselves into lassitude.
Seeing the ecosystem clearly and being responsible about it is a big deal… but I’m also (less importantly, in the big picture) trying to see my little body system clearly and take care of it too. Kind of concentric circles of responsibility.
And hopefully, in the mean time, good meals.
Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 8, 11:00 AM · #
Word. I do admit that part of the reason I want to eat meat occasionally is that I don’t want to categorically deny myself anything that tastes really good and is made from good (meaning, organically sourced and high quality) ingredients.
Vegan militancy is a no-can-do for me. But I respect it and appreciate that some of that group actually have no problem with people who eat like me (some do, of course).
Posted by: katie · Apr 8, 12:52 PM · #
Hi (0v0)
I could not find the exact name for the literary technique Unamuno used. However, some search online revealed that he practiced the methodical negative in his writings, and was fascinated by mirrors and the ambiguous significance of the double. If I recall from my studies in philosophy, he used the technique of starting an essay by saying, “I will not say that…” and then proceeded to say what he intended to say. It was a way, I suppose, of revealing something he didn’t wish to reveal but fell compelled to do so, just as you did with the tidbits about The Editor’s life.
Cheers,
Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Apr 9, 06:30 PM · #