Vote YES on Prop 2

I was going to write a well-reasoned, journalistically sound, philosophically adept (and adroit), not to mention incredibly convincing post about why everyone in California should do as I'm doing: Voting Yes On Proposition 2.

However, to do so would require that I carefully consider the opposition's point of view. This I cannot do. I know what they're saying; it just pisses me off so much that I tend to start flailing about and screeching obscenities.

Okay, let me see if I can calm down a tad. But first, an illustration:
Proposition 2 is the "standards for confining farm animals" initiative. It's basic tenet is that cows raised for veal, egg-laying hens and pregnant pigs be kept in cages that allow them to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely. That means that right now, these animals are being kept in cages that restrict their movements.

Like that pig above, the one with a bunch of piglets feeding at her. Here, have another look:See those bars. Their purpose is to stop the sow from standing up. Because she might step on one of her wiggly little piglets. And that would be very bad for the economy, because that piglet is MONEY IN THE BANK FOR THE PIG FARMER. Not to mention cheaper bacon and pork chops in the stomachs of American consumers. When I queried the UC Davis vet techs at the State Fair where I took these photos, they seemed quite proud of this contraption. Before someone came up with this pig prison cell, you have no idea how many wiggly piglets were lost to mommy-stomping.

I am voting YES on Prop 2 because I am absolutely certain that our humanity, and therefore our success as a nation, is tied to the way we treat animals. The connection between violence to animals and violence to humans is well-established. We're understanding that where our family pets are involved, but farm animals? Nope. Why bother about some dumb animals. Dumb doesn't mean stupid here; that phrase is using the archaic word for inability to speak. Those pigs can't cry or complain. Animals can't communicate in our language so we feel quite comfortable in doing with them as we wish. Until recently we did the same to human infants. Since they were pre-verbal and thus assumed to be without memory, we performed surgery on them without anesthetic. Now we know better. The inability to communicate in spoken language does not equal the inability to think, to feel, to need, to want.

Okay, now I'm going to be calm and speak to the opposition's arguments: I can't. They have everything to do with food production and food prices and California's egg industry. Frankly, my dear, I give a shit about any of that. I'm far more concerned with the production of our morality, of working to recreate an America that is not the font of corrupt capitalism (hello, Wall Street..hi there, sub-prime mortgages).

There is no question that this election is a watershed one for us as a nation. We have the chance to return to being a people of hope and promise, to be the country the Founders imagined when they saw this land as the City on the Hill. Vote to give us back our humanity.
Do it for this pregnant pig.

Monday Monday -- I Like It Like That

My dark and woeful mood has lifted somewhat. I think it is the weekend that does me in. Seems to me that I've spent a lot of Saturdays over the past year or so sitting on the sofa and watching movies during the day. Maybe other people do that all the time, but me--no, except on these Saturdays when I can't think what else to do with myself.

Sunday is my Food Network Day. That's an allowable excursion into TV Land, mainly because I don't do it sitting on the sofa. Rather, I'm standing in the kitchen, cooking up my own Food Network show. Yesterday I did some conglomeration of bacon and pork and onions and greens. It was what I had in the refrigerator.

Please do not tell God that I had all that pork, because we're right smack in the middle of the Days of Awe. If God gets mad at me, he will not write me in the Book of Life for 5769 and consequently I WILL DIE.

So not only is the American Stock Market continuing to tank, but the rest of the world's as well. If I am not going to die this year, then I WILL NEED AN INCOME. Anybody out these hiring a good, marginally shop worn writer????

And what about them Cubs. Or was it the White Sox? Twitter is all a-tweet with the boys watching the game. Or maybe they're watching football. I'm not quite sure, because I haven't paid attention to boy-talk about sports, like ever. Even in high school, when I had to seem to listen, I'd really just perfected a round-eyed, rosebud mouth, "Oh really? Fascinating. Huh. That far." God knows what they were saying, because my ears were elsewhere, and you know something, no one ever called me on it. This is not a special talent that I had; it's one that most girls learned quite early. Think of it as the precurser to the "ahu hu hua ha hu hu eeeeeeeeeeee" in When Harry Met Sally. You know, the line that provoked the response, "I'll have what she's having."

Survival of the Fittest, and Other Political Stuff

WARNING WARNING: if you don't like reading about the election, if my progressive views bother you, go away right now.

I had a conversation the other day with a woman who is supporting McCain, and I wondered what about his platform appealed to her. Turns out, it's his economic policies. Or rather, it's Obama's economic policies that are so reprehensible to her that she is voting against him. This thing of helping the less fortunate, of the wealthiest sector of America taking a tad less so that the working middle classes could stay above the poverty line--this bothers her. Not that she was unsympathetic to the plight of the less fortunate, she was quick to tell me.

"But really," she said, "why should my husband and I have to give up anything that we've achieved? To help out these other people who haven't been able to achieve what we have?"

And then she smiled and said, "After all, it is survival of the fittest, isn't it?"

Yes, indeedy. Let's just flush all them there low achievers down the toilet where they belong, gutter scum that they are. Meanwhile, we lofty ones who had the wisdom to be born to parents of privilege, we get to assume our rightful place up there in the pantheon of the gods. And by parents of privilege, I don't mean those who were born well or wealthy. No, just your average mom and dad, like mine, who stressed education and fostered my dreams.

Survival of the fittest as an ideological stance: somehow I don't think that's what Darwin had in mind. It is, quite frankly, a nauseating concept to me. I don't think I betrayed that to her, because I wasn't interested in a debate. But perhaps I blinked. Or maybe some part of her heard herself and she quickly said, "If you talk to my friends, they'll tell you what a good person I am and how much I care about the less fortunate."

Yes, indeedy. As long as they're not in my backyard. Or at my front door. Or anywhere near my piggy banks.