Another Halloween photo, featuring my friends dressed as Monsterican Dream-era Lordi. From left to right, White, Kookaburra, Bear, Kelpie, and Magpie. Don't they look awesome?

oh dear

It's been a little while between posts, hasn't it? I'm afraid I'm currently in the middle of exam season at uni. This, fortunately, ends tomorrow after my Psychological Science exam (scheduled ridiculously early.) To entertain you, nonexistent readers... something I came up with a few days ago.


I saw, on a Twilight fanboard that shall remain unnamed for now, that there were girls--I am not making this up--who read Twilight, and then dumped their boyfriends for not being enough like Edward Cullen. Hence, boys, just in case you wind up dating a Twihard fan, this handy-dandy list:

How To Be Like Edward Cullen.

1. Start taking crystal meth.
No, I'm not kidding. This is the first and most important step. Get your hands on some ice and start taking it, NOW! This will induce the required Edwardian personality traits; i.e., paranoia, jealousy, and, of course, bizarro manic depression. Edward is, as you'll note in Twilight and Midnight Sun, constantly swinging between wanting to kill Bella and wanting to make babies with her. He also swoops from the heights of rapturous joy to the depths of darkest despair, often within a single paragraph. The side effects of anorexia, insomnia, and an utterly trashed immune system will also help you to create that skinny, pallid, vampire look the girls love. Crystal meth may give you fatal lung, kidney, and heart disorders, but it's the best possible way to start on the road to becoming the perfect Edward Cullen-style boyfriend.

2. Perfect your housebreaking skills.
If you can't already climb up drainpipes and pick locks on both windows and doors, now's the time to learn! One of the most romantic things Edward did was breaking into Bella's house before they started dating to watch her sleep. So, once you can effectively enter and leave a house without getting caught (it's best to practice this on your own house a few times--your family is much less likely to call the police if/when they catch you than a stranger's family is) simply pick some cute, pale girl you've never actually spoken to, find out her address, and get started! It's best to do this in summer, when the windows are more likely to be open. If she has flyscreen or security bars installed, you're shit out of luck--pick a new girl and try again.

3. Buy body glitter. Lots of it.
Edward Cullen sparkles in the sunlight. To achieve this effect, simply find a shade of body glitter that works well with your skintone--silver or white will probably be best if you want to truly imitate Edward's diamond-like shimmering--buy it in bulk, and smear it on yourself on every sunny day. Make sure to cover all skin that has a chance of being exposed--face, neck, shoulders, chest, hands, forearms, feet, and ankles for a start. If you plan on opening your shirt at any point, make sure to cover the whole of your torso. A full body wax will also help here; remember, Edward Cullen doesn't have anything as mortal or unsightly as body hair!

4. Steal pieces of your girlfriend's car whenever she mentions going somewhere.
Edward routinely steals the engine out of Bella's car when she wants to do something that doesn't directly involve him. You may need to brush up on your mechanical skills to do this, but if you've been diligently taking your crystal meth, the intense paranoia may well be all you need. If she wants to visit a male friend other than you--steal her engine! If she wants to take a daytrip to somewhere without you--steal her engine! If she wants to visit a family member--steal her engine! See how easy it is? Removing every possible vestige of her independance is very much something Edward Cullen would do.

5. Invest in a chastity belt.
Edward doesn't have sex with Bella until they're married. Therefore, neither can you. The chastity belt may help. Good luck.

i've got a bad, bad feeling...

Title from "Long Way to Happy" by Pink. Here's hoping that bad feeling is just paranoia on my part.

So in honour of the US election today, some people have been posting about what they would do if they were dictator. One of my favourites is up over at FHotD. This was originally posted in the comments there. For the record, I'm Australian, not American--these are my opinions only.

1. Legalise illegal drugs. People are gonna take them anyway, and a lot of them are no worse for someone than smoking. Plus, this way, the addicts who want help can seek it without having to worry about being arrested for drug possession or use (this happens a lot more than you think...) As well as that, most of the deaths and health issues caused by drugs like heroin, ecstacy, and crystal meth don't come from the drugs themselves; they come from the drugs being cut with all kinds of crap, from something as innocuous as flour to something like Ajax or oven cleaner. If the drugs are produced legally, quality control can be introduced, and suddenly we will have a lot fewer druggies in emergency rooms.

2. Legalise prostitution! It's legal here, recognised as an actual profession (you need a licence to own a brothel, but anyone over the age of 18 can become a sex worker if they want to--they just have to register as one.) This makes it a lot harder for people to be forced into prostitution, because of the regulations, stops people from cheating on welfare by making extra income through prostitution, and makes prostitutes do things like pay income tax.

3. Scrap the death penalty. It doesn't do shit, and if someone is wrongly convicted, it's just a little bit of a problem... Life in prison with hard labour, though, that I am all fuckin' for.

4. More stuff for prisoners to do in prison. Even if it's just TV. Seriously. I'm starting to apply for jobs in state facilities like prisons, I visited a prison yesterday, and things like that are godsends. Guards are outnumbered in prisons, frequently a hundred to one. The more time prisoners spend rotting their brains watching The Bold and the Beautiful or whatever, the less time they have to test their boundaries and make life difficult for everyone working with them. It's a great tool. Anything that lets the guards and other staff go home at the end of the day without some kind of injury is a fantastic tool.

5. Castration for ALL sex offenders, be they male or female, the first time they are convicted for sexual assault. (It can be chemical, if they'd prefer.) People (usually men--no offence, guys, I know most of your rock) frequently argue that rapists 'just can't control themselves' or some other bullshit. I say if that's the case, the only logical way to deal with rapists is to take away their ability to rape.

6. Before you sue someone--before you even see a lawyer--you must present yourself before a board of people deemed to be sensible, sane, and representative of the population, and explain who you are suing for what. They will then either approve or deny your suit. That burglar who tripped on some loose carpet while trying to break into a house and then sued the home owners, for instance--he'd be told to fuck off. Same as that person who's responsible for the 'CAUTION: CONTENTS IS HOT' labels seen on coffee cups.

7. Abstinence-only sex education is banned. Education on sex, including STDs and contraceptive methods, will be mandatory and will begin for all children at age 12. This way, people might stop breeding!

8. If you are caught protesting abortion at a clinic, you will be forced to pay what it costs to raise the average child to age 18--this is about $3.5 million. The money will be used by the government to fund the sterilisations of those deemed unfit to breed. You will also be sentenced to community service, in the form of handing out condoms on street corners. This will be a much more effective method of lowering the rate of abortion.

9. If you want to move overseas on a long-term or permanent basis, you have to learn some of their language. If you want to move to Australia or England or America from a non-English speaking country, you must learn enough English to get by either before getting here or shortly afterwards. Same deal for people in English-speaking countries who want to move away; you must learn to speak French or Japanese or German or whatever the language of the coutry you are moving to speaks before you go there or very quickly after you arrive. I'd say the same for travel, too, but that might be a bit much.

10. I don't know enough about American gun control laws or gun culture to speak much about it... but frankly, it seems like the people most likely to own a gun are the people who don't have the maturity or intelligence to safely use a microwave, much less a firearm. Something will be done about them when I am dictator.

the rogue's gallery

The first of what will hopefully be several Halloween photos. This was from the second night, when we went collectively as Batman villains. Let's see... I don't have a blog moniker for Harvey Dent/Two-Face there on the far left, but there's Genet as Catwoman, Staffy under the Joker's Goon mask, and a guy whose blog moniker is tentatively Bear as Mistah J himself. By process of elimination I'm sure you can work out that I'm the Poison Ivy at the back there; as one of the tallest unless Curt is wearing platforms, I get relegated to the back whenever it's standing room only.

vampires and werewolves and zombies, oh my

Another choice Halloween quote. All three nights, there were people who wanted to take photos with us (a fair few of my friends are professional costumers.) This is from a mother who took photos of her children with us last night.

"Stop picking your nose, Spiderman."

Pictures coming sooner or later... hopefully sooner.

quote of the day

On watching the music video for 'Hard Rock Hallelujah' by Lordi:

"It's nice to know that monsters are too busy changing the status quo in
highschools to destroy us all."

halloween

It's the last week of university! I am very excited. After this, we have a week off to study, then two weeks of exams. To celebrate the end of my first year, I am going to three halloween parties. Photos will come eventually.

In the mean time, to compensate for my very lax posting schedule, have a picture of the best wedding cake ever:

Isn't it just awesome? Double-click to get a better picture of the details.

fever dreams

Snippet from an MSN conversation, demonstrating exactly how weird my brain can be, especially when I'm sick. Background: Pilot (the friend who wants to be a pilot, yes, that would be her) is having issues with finding a flight school.

Pilot: I HAVE NO FUTURE.
Emele: why do you have no future?
Pilot: Mrf.
Emele: Tell me :(
Pilot: I just want to be a pilot ;_;
Emele: You should be a pirate <3
Emele: ...what the hell, brain
Emele: That should've come out 'You will be a pilot <3'
Pilot: ...
Pilot: ...::loled:: XD
Emele: xD At least I made you smile?
Pilot: Yes. <3

the greed gene

The last week or two has been lousy. First I was hospitalised for a bit because of that stupid fever (and am still pretty unwell, but recovering) and then my grandmother was hospitalised, which led to much musing.

The greed gene is what my grandmother claims put her in hospital the other day. She's very, very elderly--exact numbers escape us, since she doesn't have a birth certificate and no longer remembers, but the minimum possibility is 96--and her digestive system is rooted. She basically can't eat anything more than a really light meal because otherwise things go... haywire. This doesn't bother her because she doesn't get hungry very often anyway, apparently another side effect of being old. (Side note: she is so thin. All the women in my maternal family have huuuuge stomachs, asses, and thighs, something they've passed on to me, but because she simply doesn't eat very often. Possibly because she is powered by the souls of the damned and no longer requires mortal indulgences like food. As a result, she has the figure of a mummified supermodel -jealous.- I did have a point. What was my point? Umm...)

Anyway, she went over to my aunt Valerie's place for dinner the other night, and partook in an enormous roast, because Val's two surviving children, her three surviving children-in-law, and her five grandchildren were also persent and Val had to stuff all their faces too. She ate a single cut of roast beef. Usually that would be enough for her. If she was in her house, where cuts of meat are basically all she has because anything else would just rot before she ate it, that's all she would have eaten. But because there was other food there... she felt compelled to eat a second cut of meat. And then a third. And then four roast potatoes, three pieces of roast pumpkins, a roast parsnip, a metric crapton of green salad (mostly cherry tomatos and fetta cheese, apparently) and seven glasses of very strong red wine. And then she had dessert (suffice it to say, there was at least three kinds of cake, and she tried all of them at least once and a half. And a loooot of coffee.)

What I'm trying to say is, my grandmother literally ate herself into the hospital. She's out now, and fine, and insisting it was the fault of the 'greed gene'.

I'm starting to seriously believe this 'greed gene' because to date, no less than sixteen members of my maternal family (of both genders) have been diagnosed with either binge eating disorder or an EDNOS which resembled binge eating disorder very closely except they weren't overweight and therefore can't have BED, proving once and for all that some psychologists are fucking hacks and how did these people pass uni anyway? Most of these were my cousins or second cousins, but we strongly suspect my aunts, mother, and indeed grandmother have BED or an EDNOS or whatever it is--they've just never been tested for it because the youngest of them is over fifty and they can't be bothered with that fancy psychological stuff, and what are you doing wasting your life in university Emele, you could be married by now, you're going to end up as a mad spinster--sorry. The last family reunion was hell.

So--genetic links to body type? Yes, duh, every woman in my maternal family has the exact same body shape as I do from the nipples down. Genetic links to binge eating disorder? Entirely possible, except no one's ever studied it (because clearly people who eat a lot MUST be fat as hell and therefore lazy and disgusting and bad people who aren't fit to raise children and don't need treatment because it's all their own fault and besides I don't want them to come in because then they will be FAT AT ME--sorry again. Umm.) I believe it is not only possible but probable, since they've proven genetic links to things like metabolism and effectiveness of certain diets and all kinds of other foody things you can find if you know what to Google.

Further things for consideration: a couple days ago, this study was published. Basically, genetic quirks make it possible for someone to develop a classical addiction to food, same as someone can get addicted to smoking or drinking or illicit drugs. (Does this sound like basically the definition of binge-eating disorder?) Teal dear: some people have less dopamine receptors or poor dopamine reuptake in the brain, and don't get as much of a dopamine (i.e. pleasure) kick from food. They enjoy eating less than other people, and so end up eating more and more food (possibly becoming overweight, depending on their metabolic quirks) to keep their dopamine levels as standard. Dopamine levels are passed down genetically. The titular greed gene appears to be passed down genetically.

Another possibility; several members of my maternal family also have major depression, including my mother and myself, one of the potential symptoms of which is overeating (theoretically this is also for the dopamine kick, but they haven't really looked into this in chronic depression cases to the best of my knowledge.)

siiiiiiiick

I have dengue fever. Don't expect a post for a little while.

i do so love a nicely bandied word

Title quote from the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' novels by George R. R. Martin. If you haven't read them, you really should.

For once in my life I'm actually ahead of schedule--statistics assignment is finished, two of the fiction pieces I'm writing are finished (one is an assessment piece, so I won't post it here in case it comes up as plagiarised, but I may post the other) and I have an actual cohesive plot for my NaNoWriMo novel. So here is the Pit Bull Rant, Part Two. Part One is here.

When we left off, I was mentioning that pit bulls are actually small dogs, and most so-called 'pit bulls' are mutts. The next part of this rant is that pit bulls, as most dogs, are not actually aggressive by nature. The reason pit bulls have a bad reputaton is actually the media. Now I know people are disinclined to believe that--after all, the media hype has to have some grain of truth somewhere--but bear with me...

Once upon a time, some idiot bought a spiffy new rottweiller puppy, because they were famed as a great guard dog. The idiot neglected or abused the dog, and the poor dog became vicious, and the dog attacked someone. Suddenly the papers were absolutely flooded with "ROTTWIEILLER MAULS CHILD", "ROTTWEILLER KILLS MAN", and so on, and so forth. While it's very likely that more than half these 'rottweiller' attacks were large mutts with black and brown colouring and possibly a docked tail, we'll ignore that for now. The important thing is, the scum of the earth--drug dealers, dog fighters, and the like--saw this, and ran out and bought rottweillers. Suddenly rottweillers were actively being trained to be vicious, and things got worse.

Breed-specific legislation was introduced to make it hard for rottweiller owners to do things like find houses or get property insurance, and the tide of vicious rottweillers slowed. Then someone's neglected German shepherd bit a person, and the cycle started all over again.

This has happened to rottweillers, German shepherds, dobermann pinschers, akita inus, chow chows, boxers, Rhodesian and Thai ridgebacks, Irish wolfhounds--in fact, just about every dog that's either large or known as a good guard dog has had this happen. And now it's the turn of the pit bull--who used to be known as a great dog to protect your kids while you were out.

Pit bulls are territorial, though--that I will never deny. If someone goes breaking into your property at night, they will happily chow down on the intruder. They will not, however, go seeking trouble--unless they're abused or totally neglected, which tragically is most often the case. Moreover, pit bulls need to be trained, as much as any other breed of dog and often more than any other breed of dog, because if you're buying a pittie from anyone other than a first class breeder who consistently shows and wins with their dogs, they've probably been bred for viciousness and/or had some mutts with totally unpredictable personalities put into their bloodline.

Recently I've also noticed an increasing number of people wanting to let pit bulls go quietly extinct, which I think would be a horrible shame, and also be like letting quarter horses go extinct because some of them have a genetic defect that causes them to keel over and die on occasion. Not all of them are bad--in fact, some are pretty damn good, and moreover will never spontaneously keel over before the age of 25. Same deal with pit bulls. Most of the good ones will go their whole life without so much as nipping a human, or another dog, for that matter.

I think that's all I wanted to cover. There may be a Part Three eventually, but I'm not sure--it depends if something else sets me off about pit bulls.

far too many notes for my taste

Title from 'Phantom of the Opera' soundtrack. I'm on a soundtrack binge lately, could you tell?

Hmmm, I have nothing much to say. How about another picture post?

This is the M24 I mentioned the last time I posted a photo from uni. This is also known as the Psychology Building. Five floors, the first being a psychology clinic where the postgraduate students often work. The second floor is filled with classrooms and offices, the third floor is basically one large computer lab, and the fourth floor is, once again, mostly classrooms and offices, and the fifth floor has laboritories where things like dissecting brains and running rats through mazes are done.

Also--you probably noticed this by now--it's a rather vibrant shade of mustard yellow. That continues to the inside of the building too.

I have some of the best and worst classes inside this building. Among the best; Individual and Social Psychology, which is about how people interact and the basics of abnormal psychology, and Psychological Science and Society, which is about psychology in media and popular debates among psychologists (for example, a topic such as homosexuality: nature or nurture, on which I recently wrote an essay and presented an oral report.) Among the worst: Research Methods and Statistics 1, the report for which I have just handed in. That class is a nightmare, and is the first of at least four to come. Ugh.

There are several reasons I like this building. For a start, it's essentially home base for all psychology students at my university, so necessity forces me to, at the very least, not loathe it. Second, despite the myriad corridors, it somehow manages to avoid feeling as claustrophobic as some buildings on campus do (see: the windowless M10 about which I once posted, which seems cramped and subterranean even in the upper floors. M24 manages to avoid that feeling, even though most of the rooms are physically smaller, by having very large windows and generally good lighting.) Third, while the third floor is a place of dread due to my statistics class taking place in one of the computer labs there, I have nothing but good memories associated with the second and fourth floors.

Hmm. I really must take more photos, of more interesting things. I simply don't have much to amuse me while I'm at uni.

inside her skull

Yes, I'm still listening to 'Needle Through A Bug'. It's just good.

A collection of random musings; I'll warn you now, there are spoilers for some literary works ahead.

I was talking about the Chronicles of Narnia with a friend, and she said she ahted them, because Susan didn't arrive in Heaven at the end of The Last Battle. She thought that Lewis implied that being a silly teenage girl means you go to Purgatory/Hell/whatever. It seems that several people were similarly distraught at this point. I don't understand that reasoning. It's always been simple to mean--the reason Susan didn't appear in Heaven at the end of The Last Battle was simply because she wasn't dead.

Arguably one could get up in arms about the fact that she didn't go to Narnia, either--but Diggory, Polly, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy only showed up in Narnia because they were dead. They died in a train crash, which also killed the Pevensie's parents. Jill and Eustace were also dead when they met them, having been killed at some point in the battle, or possibly the ensuing apocalypse. Susan was not dead, so she didn't appear.

Besides, why would they bring up that 'Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen in Narnia' refrain so often if Susan got booted out for being a teenager?

On to Shakespear. The titular characters of Romeo And Juliet are not the ideal of a couple in love, and were never intended to be so. The fact that so many people hold them up as a golden standard of love... actually explains a lot about why dating and marriage is kind of screwed up nowadays. Romeo and Juliet were fourteen and thirteen, respectively, and were basically morons. The bit Shakespeare actually wanted people to take in was the Friar's 'Love to moderation' speech at the wedding--but most modern performances cut that scene because it's such an unromantic thing to say at a wedding.

It also makes Edward and Bella from Twilight by Stephanie Meyer being compared to Romeo and Juliet frickin' hilarious, though.

i won't imagine the pictures

Pushing the Envelope" - American Head Charge.

I'm trying out this image-adding thing, so you're get a photograph. Let's see...

This is M10, the Social Science building at my university, as you can probably tell. It's where the criminology students basically live. I believe they're largely fond of it because of its gaping black maw, as shown. All the doorways look like that.

I don't really understand the love affair criminologists have with staircases, either (this building was erected with them in mind, according to the professors here.) M10 is riddled with them, the way an ant nest is riddled with tunnels; an endless number of winding staircases, going down into floors that seem subterranean for their distinct lack of windows. Sometimes staircases come together and cross over each other like a house in a farce, which rather ruins the gloomy appeal for me, but apparently criminologists don't see much in the way of the farcical.

It also holds a room dreaded by all students--the overflow exam room. It's a small, cramped, claustrophobic lecture theatre, and it stinks overwhelmingly of carpet glue. (Remember what I said about a lack of windows? This would seem to be a natural consequence of that.) Students only come to that room when their professors were woefully underprepared for the course, so not only is it an extremely unpleasant room to attempt to engage your brain in, it also implies a level of inadequacy in your education which tends to tug at the nerves until the end of the course.

I don't have much reason to go into M10--my own 'home' is at M24, who may well be the subject of a later photo-based post. But there you go, a little snapshot of my life.

you forced my hand and made me do

Edit: Part Two is here.

Title from 'Things You See In A Graveyard', from the Repo! soundtrack. This is The Pit Bull Rant, Part One. The second part will be posted later. I'll link to it from this post when it's up. Just for the record, to see bigger or better quality picture, click on 'em.

Pit bulls--TRUE pit bulls, by which I mean the American Pit Bull Terrier, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and the American Staffordshire Terrier--are small dogs. Not one of them weighs over twenty kilos, which is in the vicinity of forty pounds if you don't use metric. They're all around forty or fifty centimetres high, so around sixteen inches. They are smaller than a labrador. So if a dog any bigger than that goes after you? It ain't a pit bull. It's either a mutt, or a different breed of dog you can't recognise.

Take this test. See if you can identify a real American pit bull. I guarantee you'll miss a fair few times, unless you're intimately familiar with the breed.

For example, this is not a pitbull. This is a mutt. Her name's Honey, and she's pictured here in full flight across a beach. She does have some staffordshire bull terrier in her, but she also has boxer, rhodesian ridgeback, and mastiff in her, and the most dominant breed is actually labrador. I've mentioned her before--I got her for ten bucks after seeing an ad for 'labrador' puppies, so called, in the Weekend Shopper. The mother was a friendly, yellowish dog with short hair; patently not a labrador, but a cute dog. While Honey does have some pitbull-like features, she's too big, clocking in at about sixty centimetres tall, and has the wrong body-shape. The pit bull breeds have deep chests like hers, but Honey's body tapers off after that in the manner of a retriever's, whereas true pit bulls have a consistent barrel-shape.

Anyone familiar with the pit bull breeds can tell you that this is also not a pit bull. This dog was accused of mauling an older man who was walking past it's house. The media immediately slapped the 'pit bull' lable on this particular beast. This is as much a pit bull as I am. It's a mutt. If anything, it looks like a shar pei or dogue de bordeau cross. Another breed I'd toss in as a possibility is the patterdale terrier. It's definitely not a pit bull.



For comparison; here we have a composite image of an American Pit Bull Terrier, an American Staffordshire Terrier, and a Staffordshire Bull Terrier--with acronyms, for your convinience. They're all winners in their breed classes at dog shows, and so should be the best representation of their breeds. (I'm not sure about the AST in the middle there, actually, but she came up on a reputable site and it could always just be a poor camera angle, so she'll do.) The picture quality is not great, but you can see what these dogs have in common--wedge-shaped heads, deep chests, thick bodies, and strong legs. You can also see that they're on the small side. The first APBT is at the larger end of the range for pit bulls, and he only comes from the judge's knee to the judge's thigh, bearing in mind that the judge is actually a foot or two behind him in that shot and not a tall man himself.

inconceivable!

Given the people I know, I don't think a Sarah Palin fan will stumble across this blog... so, have a link to an article about her debate that summarises almost everything I felt was wrong with it. (If it tries to make you log in, you can get a password from Bug Me Not.)

The one thing it didn't mention was something that I found a little scary as opposed to comical; it was the moment directly after when Biden choked up talking about his late wife and child.

What Palin should have done: made some sympathetic noises and a nice, conservative-friendly comment about the importance of having a mother figure present in a child's life, or about how single parents need more support, or whatever.

What Palin did: blinked and launched back into her "John McCain is a maverick" shtick. I honestly expected her to show a touch of human feeling, but... no.

On that note, regarding her use of 'maverick': You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

My hair is orange.

No, I'm not kidding. My hair is orange. It was black, but now... it's orange. Huh. There you go, then, lesson learned--if I'm going to bleach black hair, I can't do it half-assed. At least it looks all right--in most lights it comes out fluro red, so it's more Blood Rayne than Stephanie Plum.

No lyrical title today because my iPod has been critically wounded. Usually I'd just pull a line from whatever song I'm listening to at the time (bonus points it it's vaguely relevent) but I have no music. Plus... my hair's orange. What more can I say?

just a little glitch, patch it up again

Title from 'Throwing Punches' by Page Hamilton.

The other day, I was wearing leather boots. I wear leather boots a lot--most of mine are old and beat-up and comfortable. These ones looked kind of new, because I'd buffed them up with Dubbin (it shines and waterproofs the leather) the night before.

Anyway, I was walking through a square in the city, and a protester threw tomato sauce all over my nice, clean, buffed-up leather boots and new jeans that for once in my life actually fit okay. Needless to say, I was slightly unhappy, and expressed myself vocally to this protester. Turns out they were vegetarians crusading for an end to animal slaughter.

Now, ignoring the fact that the grain and vegetable industries kill several hundred million tiny animals like field mice and rats with big harvesters every year (why don't vegetarians protest safer way of harvesting grain? I guess rats and mice aren't cute enough--though I personally am often worried by the thought of minced rat ending up in the wheat used to bake my bread,) I believe in eating meat. It's good for you, after all--in a different way to how broccoli and carrots are good for you, sure, but it's still good for you.

When I was younger and more idealistic, I thought I would become a vegetarian. I like almost all animals. Horses like me better when I smell herbivore than when I smell carnivore. Then... I met chickens.

My mum kept one or two chooks at various times in her life when she was a kid, little bantam hens and one rooster named Smedley von Sturdley. Now, I love bantam hens. They're not part of the meat or egg industry, although I guess you could use the hens for laying. They're mostly backyard pets. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about all those grotesquely fat, blond chickens that will one day end up on your plate.

Look at the eyes of a meat industry chicken. (Yes, I'm including free-range in this. They're the same breed.) Now go watch Dawn of the Dead, and look at the eyes of the zombies. There's a distinct resemblance--shrewd, but dumb as a box of hammers.

Actually, now that I think of it, chickens are mean bitches.

Maybe a better example would be a meat industry cow. Again, look at the eyes of a cow, then at the eyes of a movie zombie from Shaun of the Dead or something. Same thing. Shrewd, but so, so stupid. They have all the personality of a hamburger on hooves. And unpleasant, too--cows can (and do) projectile shit when they run. Often they drool, piss, and shit at the same time. An entire herd of cows running around with every orifice leaking is a sight to behold. Especially at feeding time. If one cow sprays the five cows next to it with dung, none of them notice--they all just keep eating.

The current slaughter methods are pretty shitty, of course, and I would prefer it if all meat was free range and humanely killed, but frankly, if we didn't eat cattle, they would become extinct. If we turned them loose they'd just follow us around, waiting for us to go refill their feeding trough--still leaking, of course. There's only a couple of species of truly wild cattle left. They mostly live in Asia and their numbers are diminishing--animals like the kouprey and the gaur. There definitely aren't enough around to knock sense into our domestic steaks. Meat industry cattle have been bred for generations to have the intellect of your average rock, and to taste great when roasted with potato and onion.

I personally would rather not feel responsible for the end of a species, so I keep on eating cow.

after this the rest is all bullshit

'Bullshit' by Mindless Self Indulgence for the title.

Another plug; Kate Harding's Shapely Prose. It's been slow there recently, but it's a generally awesome blog, and reading through the archives is well worth the time. As a plus-size lady with some pretty serious body-image issues I find it invaluable.

Still haven't gotten seriously started on that damn statistics assignment, nor the two writing assignments I also have due that week. Hmm. Tomorrow is going to be a long, dull day.

Oh, and psst--if you haven't download the very cheap, very awesome Repo! The Genetic Opera soundtrack yet, you really really should. It's already made its way into my Most Played list, and there are songs I've been listening to for years on there.

you're beautiful

Title lyric from 'Needle Through A Bug' from the Repo! The Genetic Opera Soundtrack. I've had this album since it came out on September 30--I got the digital download from Not Your Parents Opera but you can buy it at least four different ways--and oh. My. God. This album is like aural crystal meth; highly addictive and euphoria-inducing. It's something like ten bucks to download, or about twelve bucks to order a hard copy from Amazon.com and more than worth the money. Hell, buy a few dozen and hand them out to your friends. You will be so popular.