Kimberly,
I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said.
Except I think that you like meatloaf more than you did before Meatloaf came on the scene. Yup. I do think that.

The PETA people always do some kind of gimmick with girls in bikinis lying on a downtown Bakersfield sidewalk with “Save Our Pets” signs next to them. It’s goofy.

The mountains around here are strange, and should be where the PETA people hang out, as the area attracts animal hoarders. One recent animal hoarder had hundreds of pets living in squalor. The owner went on the run (she assumed the alias of a dead journalist) and when a bounty hunter caught her, he found a bunch of dead cats in her hotel room. I spoke to the bounty hunter over email he said the hoarder ran like a deer and he had to tackle her.

Since then, in prison the woman has gone bonkers…the story gets too long to tell.

Strangely, there are more like her, and animal hoarding is a sort of illness I’m finding out.

Anyway, your piece reminded me of PETA and the animal hoarders around here.

I remember Pet Shop Boys music spun at my prom back in the day.

PETA is like a cult. i think it’s one of those causes you can join if you want to be an actor but you have no connections. and then once you get famous and rich, you start wearing leather and eating beef again.

animals eat animals. shouldn’t that mean something?

My favorite part about PETA is their commitment to raising awareness about animal cruelty through sexism. ( http://www.feministing.com/archives/013665.html ) Well, that and their ill-advised “holocaust on your plate” campaign.

Thoroughly entertaining and accurate. You crack me up!

I am lovin this comment board. (Irene, thank you for saying what we’ve all been thinking about Brangelina!)

Also, Kimberly, I agree with you totally about PETA. Though I wasn’t able to bring myself to wear my grandmother’s mink when it landed in my lap last year, even though, when you think about it for a nanosecond, doing so would have been much better for the planet than buying a new coat.

But I didn’t buy a new coat either, so I think I’m good.

But back to your post. Are we sure this whole No-Kill Santuary Boys thing wasn’t an elaborate April Fool’s joke? It seems ludicrous even for PETA …

And indeed I had (mercifully?) completely forgotten all about them.

I’m not a PETA member or a full-blown vegetarian, but I’ll play devil’s advocate and say that Ingrid is a PR genius. She may be completely bat-shit crazy, but she is definitely aware of the fact that her cause will get zero traction in the public consciousness unless she does things like this. It’s the choice between zero public awareness and “sane, reasonable” advocacy. If her aim is to get her cause into people’s minds and mouths, she’s quite brilliant at it.

Me personally, I have (a perhaps unusual?) sympathy for the animals, who are voiceless and who suffer so terribly. I can empathize with the PETA cause to an extent.

I think about pigs, for instance. They’re as intelligent or more intelligent than most dogs. (And yes, they taste good.) But most of us would never eat a dog, would consider it a nauseating outrage to eat a dog. And yet we eat the poor pig or piglet without a second thought. A pig is just a dog we don’t know. (Isn’t it?)

Why do we get to be the arbiters of when and how that pig dies?

What does our treatment of animals say about us as people?

Cultural stuff.

Weird compromises.

Sometimes I think everyone (myself included) should have to slaughter their own calf, skin it, and butcher it at least once in their lives if they’re gonna eat meat. (Of course, I’ve eaten plenty of cow and have never done this myself, so I’m a total hypocrite.)

Point being: I’m pretty positive that there’s no way in hell I could ever do it unless I was absolutely starving, facing death, and had no other options for food. That’s an important point for me. I eat this stuff sometimes, but I would never have it in me to do what must be done to get it to my plate. What does that say about me?

Last point: My grandfather was an Italian butcher, as were all of his brothers. I visited the old slaughterhouse when I was a kid. That spooked the shit out of me. Talk about brutal.

My wife is similar. She went full vegetarian at age nine because she saw a video about animal welfare and slaughterhouses, factory farms, etc. Didn’t eat meat again until age 27, and now she only eats it here and there, with reservations. We’re both huge animal lovers and are both sensitive to that sort of stuff. We project. We worry about cows and shit. But we still eat meat sometimes. I still wear leather underwear with regularity.

I’m a monster!

*I don’t actually wear leather underwear with regularity. But you wish I did.

Preface: I know I’m going to Hell.

The Story: I visited a slaughterhouse in Central Illinois once, as I believed, as Brad mentioned, “everyone should have to slaughter their own calf,” or at least familiarize oneself with the process by bearing witness. I remember one of the employees (a slaughterer?) wore a white smock with “Lazarus” stitched in green over his right breast. He wore really big square prescription glasses.

Since the calf was young enough to maintain its suckling instinct, Lazarus extended his thumb and, as the calf suckled in vain, backed the beast to the air-compressed steel-gun, and boom! The animal was strung up and bled into a brown plastic trash can.

The Twist: The slaughterhouse sold its own meat in a front room lit with fluorescents. I couldn’t help but buy some beef and some bacon (I saw them chainsawing a hung pig in two and blowtorching the hair from each half), knowing how fresh it was. I admit it: I was hungry.

Conclusion: So I’m with you, Kimberly, though I understand the motives of the opposition, unless they’re maddeningly overzealous, and missionary-esque.

Coda: Thomas Keller, famous chef of Napa’s The French Laundry states, “…Because killing those rabbits had been such an awful experience, I would not squander them. I would use all my powers as a chef to ensure that those rabbits were beautiful. It’s very easy to go to a grocery store and buy meat, then accidentally overcook it and throw it away…What cook, I wonder, would let his attention stray from that [rabbit] loin had he killed the rabbit himself? No. Should a cook squander anything, ever? It was a simple lesson.”

Yes: An ugly process can occasionally yield a beautiful product.

That is hilarious, just the kind of ridiculous and ballsy thing PETA does.

I remember once when I was about nineteen, sitting in a bar, bitching about my job to a guy I’d just met. My job at the time was working as a bussy; picking up glasses, getting stock, emptying bins, that kind of thing, at a nightclub.

The guy finished his drink and told me about how his job was shooting steel bolts into the foreheads of cattle.

He won that particular contest.

And yet, that knowledge doesn’t change the taste of bacon.

As much as I couldn’t agree more with the ridiculousness of PETA’s proposition, and as much as the legions of the-man-fighters consistently degenerate into totally blind and hate-able tactics worthy only of the-man-his-own-self, I find that ultimately, when forced, I have to come down on the side of the-man-fighters. So, you go PETA!!!

I don’t think eating meat is wrong, but I do think that eating mechanized, poison-filled, life deprived flesh that is even more life depriving when taken in consideration with the huge industry of hands-in-flesh-all-day immigrants that it thrives on (check out the section of ‘Utopia’ where More says that only slaves should be able to work as butchers due to its dehumanizing effects). I guess I sort of feel like PETA is the Palestine of the conflict, and I’d much rather put the pressure on the good folks at Purdue- the chicken co, not the University (check out Murakami’s Jerusalem award acceptance speech, but Vegans, try not to take the egg metaphor to seriously).

Not to mention, meat makes, me at least, feel a bit dodgy. I like myself better on vegetables. Plus, the poison and exploitive immigration tactics of vegetables don’t soak hands and minds in blood all day.

I loved this article, and I am fully on board, but sometimes I kind of wonder about all the backlash of our generation to the overboardness of PC… I feel like no matter which way we turn something is shoving us too far, and eventually we’re going to have to be able to stand and balance our segway’s wherever we find ourselves. I for one am glad someone is finally standing up to the tyranny of the Pet Shop Boys, but the rescue shelter boys… seriously?

I must be the devil because I am a vegetarian and Brad is my advocate, and those are my assless chaps he’s wearing. heehee

We, people whom have compassion for those things that suffer, must always keep these issues in the front of the minds of humanity…. and humanity is best entertained with extremes.

We’re always drawing lines, making choices on how much compassion we will practice in life. From not drowning kittens to not eating meat to not wearing hide to prostrating upon the ground in shame and repentence for the microscopic life forms we kill with each step upon the earth… somewhere in there we each draw a line of our own threshold of compassion.

Loved all the music references, Casio - very clever… saved me from researching it all myself… oh the sweet compassion of the hyperlink creator… :::giggles::: xoxo

A friend of mine who is one of the heroic animal rescue types recently told me about what she was doing on 9/11. She said that she spent the day watching a bad vetrinarian erroneously put down a horse that was not sick enough to be put down. Apparently afterwards she kept calling the vet to argue about what had happened and the vet eventually said to her, “There are more important things going on right now than a dead horse.” To which my friend said, “There is nothing more important than a dead horse.” My friend then (just a few weeks ago, I mean) told me that she views that horse as having “died for our sins.”
She is not Christian or anything . . . I have never heard her use a fucking phrase like that before in my life.
I don’t know what to say except that this horrified me in a much less funny way than the Pet Shop boys/PETA thing. It made me think that my friend is, quite simply, completely out of her mind and out of touch.
I am not a New Yorker and I was not someone who went around shell-shocked for months after 9/11 and experienced the whole thing as a pivotal Personal Event in my life–I watched on TV from the Midwest, and mainly went on with my own life as a new mother, etc. But to compare one horse humanely (if erroneously) put down by a vet who thought she was making the best decision to all the people on the planes and in the Towers–including innocent young children, not to mention all the other innocent people–who died horrific hate-induced deaths just seemed delusional to me.
And worse than delusional, too.
People can go too far with their obsessions.
I am all for animal rights and am mainly vegetarian (except sushi, which I know is totally politically incorrect–depleting the fish from our waters and all) and buy the cruelty-free products and what-have-you. But come on.
The Animal Rescue Boys.
They’d have had their asses kicked after more than one gig, for starters.
Geez.

I like nearly none of the Pet Shop Boys hits but a lot of their non-hits. Love Comes Quickly chill remix is lovely.

Hey, I like Ted Nugent too though.

And generally depise any orginzation that takes itself too seriously.

PETA should put the screws on Pita bread too.
Peta Framptom and Petra as well.

My nana is an animal hoarder. She has a double-wide trailer on a couple acres in Brooksville, and she has about 30 cats living on that land with her.

A clowder.

She has so many cats, and they’ve bred so many times, that the kittens are often born with birth defects. And many end up dying of parasites, hick neighbors who poison them, coyotes who eat them, and starvation from competing with so many others for a limited food supply.

And yet, she would tell you that she loves them all and has saved them from being euthanized.

She also has over a thousand dolls, and at one time had 11 foster kids.
In a double-wide.

Weird.

I actually find this post difficult to respond to. I am the animal rescuer friend Kimberly mentions in this piece and an 18 year vegetarian who has never looked back. While I am not an animal hoarder nor a member of PETA, I will argue the other side along with Mr. Listi in hopes of speaking for the non-extremist, relatively sane advocates out there.
For me, vegetarianism came from a desire to contribute personally and daily to the recovery of the environment rather than from an animal rights perspective. Raising meat and commercial fishing create a large number of environmental problems that become difficult to surmount or recover from and the people fed per pound of food produced from the meat/fish, well the numbers don’t make sense if we’re talking about making sure the world has enough to eat. I don’t make the argument that people are meant to be vegetarian, only that too many people eat too much meat for our environment to support it without massive damage to the earth.
That aside, the animal as a sentient being does come into play as well. None of us who have and love our pets would argue that these beings are without feelings such as love and fear at the very least. And the practices of harvesting meat are, to a large extent, inhumane.
From a research standpoint, many more animals are used in the testing of products we already have answers about, or testing that can be done with grown tissue rather than on a living, breathing being. Agreed, some medical testing cannot get around the need for live animal testing, but much less than is currently done.
PETA is for the most part an alarmist organization that appeals to the Evangelicals of the animal loving public. Of course they exist, look at the Bible Belt. Every cause has it’s extreme right and extreme left. I don’t believe this organization makes friends. It’s antagonistic and often offensive. On the other hand, I don’t think the meat-eating public can lump all animal rights/welfare people into this category and right us off.
I have never asked a meat eater to stop, nor have I ever asked someone not to eat meat in my presence. However, I am routinely harangued by meat eaters to “take a bite” or “skip my diet for today,”. There are certainly arguments for both camps but as much as the meat eaters don’t want to be recruited by PETA, I don’t want to be heckled for my choices either. In the end, everyone makes a choice they are comfortable with. The most you can hope is that it is informed.
Successful piece KW. You sparked quite the conversation and my longest comment ever.

PETA makes a lot of people crazy but promise you won’t wear chaps. It’s not a good look on anybody and you’re such a fashionable girl.

Sorry for the rant. You hit one of my button topics but as you know me so well, you probably already knew that. Next salad is on me.

“Any of us would kill a cow, rather than not have beef.” –Samuel Johnson

I hold with the doctor. But I’m happy to have someone else do it for me and buy it at the supermarket all chopped up. In fact, that’s one of the greatest benefits of modern life. Johnson would have LOVED Bubba Burgers.

I think the Pet Shop Boys should cover “Meat is Murder,” and it would sort of cancel out…

Great article, Kimberley - and what a comment string! It’s been fun to read (and a good distraction for a Monday morning).

I went vegetarian (except for the occasional bacon) for a couple of years to raise my own awareness of how much meat I eat - and how unnecessary it is. I knew that if given the choice to slaughter my own food for a meal or eat vegetarian, I would usually choose to just go veggie, hands down. Then…I got pregnant for the first time and all I wanted was red meat. Kind of changed things for me. And still, I wish I could have kept it up… Maybe some day I’ll swing back. Moderation seems to work for me, though. (But let’s just wait until I get watermelon #3 out of my belly, shall we?)

Pet Shop Boys. Kryke.

A few years ago some friends and I went camping on my friend’s family’s land. My friends were all off in the forest acting like fools when I heard a very loud MOOOOO. There was a HUGE red cow behind me, looking for all the world like a demon-possessed monster (I was very drunk.) I tried to chase it off, but that seemed to anger the beast. It ran through my tent and two others. My dog tried to chase it off, but it turned on her and chased her under my truck.

Long story short, my friend’s uncle gave me a steak from that cow. It was delicious and vengeful. I have never enjoyed a steak more.

This was a great story, and the comment board has had me absolutely cracking up!

I never know what to think about the whole meat debate. I love animals, and yet I love meat. I go bird hunting on occasion, but I’ll walk around ants to keep from stepping on them. At times I marvel at the amazing advancement and enlightenment of the human race, and other times I drool over the sizzling smell of a rib eye steak.

I, like most humans, am a walking contradiction. And I’m cool with that.

Great post, Kimberly.

This is important to remember when thinking up a band name. I have friends who languish over thinking up the perfect name for their group and I’m always telling them it just doesn’t matter. Eventually, the band name starts to stand for you, not the other way around.

I mean, when people hear “Pearl Jam”, they don’t think of some kind of white jam stuff (gross) - they think of that band that had the decent first album and then continued to produce subpar listening experiences after that (or whatever else they might think of the band).

First off, wicked title.

Second - if Bush isn’t Satan, PETA might be. They actually want to ban ownership of pets. Your dog. Your cat. Your goldfish. Well, I know you don’t have a goldfish, but if you did…

They want to make pet ownership illegal. And if Hollywood actors would start reading the find print on legislation, they might not have such a huge support system.

We’ll have to bitch together over eggs and tea sometime.