A little early for Halloween, Natalie Angier has written a NYT article about sanguivores - yes, those who eat/drink blood. Gruesome, but exactly in keeping with her lovely fascination with the darker side of the natural world.
Angier is of course the author of Woman: An Intimate Geography
I was poking around recently, trying to find out about a PSA that we’d been discussing in the mHB forums lately which is about trying to discourage kids to say “that’s so gay” when they mean “that’s not cool” when I found that the PSA is part of a larger campaign by The Ad Council & GLSEN to “think b4 you speak.” I love the idea, and not just because “that’s so gay” is unnecessarily homophobic, but because I so wish people didn’t use language so carelessly.
As a result I found change.org, which is a huge social issues/activist-oriented collection of blogs on various issues. There’s a blog on women’s rights, animal rights, global warming, immigration, and of course gay rights, which - lo & behold! - has me on its recommended reading list. How cool is that?
Great resource for us social justice types, so do go check it out.
I can honestly say I’m baffled by this New York Times article, because I’ve grown up with men who like cats, from my brother to my friend Peter to many other guys I’ve known over the years, most of whom aren’t gay, if you need to know. I had a friend when I was 20 or so who always said, “Never date a man who doesn’t like cats” (which I found to be pretty good advice, actually, even if I didn’t always heed it).
So have I just been in some alternative universe? (Yes, I know I have. But still. Do people really know guys who won’t admit to liking cats?)
This is the singularly funniest dumb news story I think I’ve ever read.
I’m trying to figure out how significantly distanced from your own body you have to be to not notice a living animal in your bra.
Secondarily, what it would be like to have 34FF boobs.
Her consideration of the sleeping critter was kind of heart-warming, though. Or bra-warming. Whichever.
Don’t eat salmon: here are a few good reasons why.
The honey bee colonies in the US are dying. We really are up shit’s creek without them, since they pollinate most of our food so it grows. Haagen-Dazs has created a site, Help the Honey Bees, to raise awareness. You can donate there, find out more, & even buy “Long Live the Queen” t-shirts (profits go to the people researching the problem).
Me, I wish them good health when I see them.
Oprah’s doing a show on puppy mills today that I can’t even stand to watch, and I’m not even a dog person.
There are reports around that many of the people who are victims of this subprime mortgage scam are having to give up pets because the rental places they’re moving to don’t allow pets. As we well know, having three cats, & from having numerous friends with pets who had to move, it can be difficult to find a place to live with them.
Volunteers here in Park Slope catch, neuter, and release feral cats. Others like BAFN foster, save, and check in on pets that have been left behind
So why is this the case? With all the people who are currently unemployed, why don’t we have a New Deal type program to take care of our nation’s animals and to change the laws that would keep landlords from barring pets? I can understand restrictions on how many pets, or how many pounds worth of pet (our three cats, for instance, don’t do nearly as much damage as one large dog could), or whatever. But we’re a nation that loves our animals, and yet you have horrors like animal abuse and puppy mills and the stupid decisions that separated people from their pets during the Katrina evacuations.
It seems there’s plenty of work to do, and improving conditions for our four-legged Americans might be a good place to start.
I walk home at dusk, after classes are over for the day, & watch while murders of crows gather in the bare tree branches on my block.
Later, at 10PM or so, I go out for a smoke on the front porch with a bruised apple in my pocket. I toss it to the side of the porch, and in a minute or so, a rabbit who’s been expecting me is gorging on apple while I smoke. Occasionally she gets up on her hind legs and gives me a once-over.
Even later, if I’m up late enough, the apple is gone, and an owl hoots from somewhere up & to the right of my ice-covered porch.
I feel like I’m becoming freaking Walt Whitman.
Betty’s always joking about wanting a magical pony, but I don’t think she had this one in mind.
(thanks to Xtine).
Today on CNN, they’re talking a lot about the Japanese having responded to protests about their planned whale hunt; that is, for the first time ever, the Japanese government has agreed not to hunt humpback whales. But they’re still planning on hunting more than a 1000 other wales, including Fin Whales, which they’re doing with the bullshit explanation that the hunt is for “scientific purposes.”
On CNN they interview some Joe who says, “Well eating veal could be considered cruel too, so where do you draw the line?”
The line is that whales can’t be raised domestically as a food source. They are only wild, and they are endangered. Veal are not. Would it really be that hard for CNN to find someone who is born a carnivore & a concerned animal lover to make that point?
A guy in Germany put a camera on his cat’s collar and exposed the world from a cat’s-eye-view.
The Monterey Aquarium has a live penguin cam you can watch on your lunch hour, or theirs - tune in at 10:30am or 3PM to watch them eat.
Happy solstice, & happy birthday to my friend Lara.
A new mothercat has taken some newborn chicks under her wing. & She looks just like our Aurora, white chin & all.
Since people have asked, here’s a picture of the young Hemingway in a dress with his pretty long hair. Note the caption.
& While we’re at it, & it’s Friday, here’s a photo of a “Hemingway cat,” otherwise known as a polydactyl cat. What you non-cat people might not know is that cats normally have five toes on their front paws, four on their back, so this kittoi has two extra toes!
There’s a bunch more at Wiki.
There’s been a huge recall of cat & dog food, so please check the list & make sure it’s none that you own, as consumption of the recalled products can be fatal.
So. I’ve noticed that two lovely women, Rachel Kramer Bussel and Tristan Taormino, have put up their holiday gift guides, and while they cover our erotic lives, I know every year I’m a loss for what to buy people that won’t stink of consumerism and waste.
That is, I seek to assuage my own guilt about being an overeducated person who lives in a Western country with clean water and half-decent healthcare (unlike most of the world’s population).
As a result, I’ve found a neat list of places who sell cool stuff for good causes:
For you doggie types, Schmitty is a Yorkie whose proceeds to go an organization called Dogs Who Care. The North Shore Animal League, on the other hand, has stuff that makes us cat types happy: Betty and I are getting new PJs courtesy of them! And if you can’t find anything at either of those two places, the Animal Rescue Site also has a store with lots of animal-inspired gifts no matter what types of critters you like.
It’s also easy to go from that site to some others with cool stuff, like the Rainforest Site’s store, where you can get anything from Fair Trade products to Brazilian art works. (Did I mention they have lots of pretty jewelry?)
For lower-impact, good health types of gifts, try gaiam.com for things like yoga videos or light therapy for the depressive in your life. (Just don’t look at their shoes. Only me and a couple of other partners would wear any of them.)
And to round things out, NOW’s store has a bunch of groovy t-shirts and you can buy one that says “Question Gender” to help support the student-run TIC conference.
So go do some good with your money, okay? Just about every organization out there sells cool stuff. If you find anything similarly cool, please post about it in the comments section.
I was reading the news about the rape of that woman and the murder of her and her family by an American GI*, and happened upon another article about marriage by Amy Sutherland.
I don’t know if I’ve read Amy Sutherland before but I’m not planning to again.
This is the kind of stuff I used to read in my mother’s Reader’s Digest. I didn’t think it was funny, or accurate, and I didn’t relate. I guess some women think of their husbands (and themselves) as trainable animals. But even the twist at the end doesn’t justify wasting any reader’s time with crap like this.
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*(I hope the military gets to try the GI. I know rape and murder of civilians has been part of war for forever, no matter how much we like to pretend it hasn’t, but the fact that this was pre-meditated makes me especially sick.)
I had a bad dream about an elephant a couple of weeks ago.* I’ve had a couple of dreams in a row about not being able to keep animals safe (another one involving a calico cat), if anyone feels the need to be Freud - and after this one I woke up haunted by the idea of unhappy, angry elephants. I’ve always liked elephants - they’re peaceful, smart, social, familial. They talk to each other, and they’re otherwise playful and peaceful, even in the most extraordinary circumstances. As a way of purging my bad dream, I started wondering if there was anything I could do, and I came upon www.elephants.com, which is the website of The Elephant Sanctuary.
The Sanctuary takes in old circus elephants. It can only take females (because males don’t socialize with others), but it gives them free range, good food, and a safe warm place to sleep. Plus, friends - the other elephants, dogs and cats, their caretakers.
Elephants occasionally get labeled “dangerous” like Topsy did - usually when they have the good sense to smack down a mean trainer or two - and Winkie was one of the ones who did. At upwards of 7000 lbs., “aggressive” can mean “fatal” in an elephant. But since she’s retired, she’s been entirely peaceful, with no signs of aggressive behavior. There was just something about her story that speaks to me, so I thought I’d share it.
They keep blogs of the doings at the Sanctuary - both African & Asian - and it can be pretty heart-warming reading. I just really love the idea of these formerly cramped, chained-to-a-post, performing animals laying around, taking baths, eating berries, and occasionally chasing dogs (a game for both the dogs and the elephants, apparently). Like there’s some justice in the world, sometimes, for at least a lucky few.
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* The dream was a result of my having discovered the sad and unjust execution of Topsy the Elephant. Please don’t read the story at all if you’re fond of elephants, REALLY. I’m warning you. Her story has haunted me for three years, since I first read about the memorial to her at Coney Island. The short, leaving-out-the-gruesome-details part of the story is: badly-treated performing elephant kills three men and is electrocuted by the famous Edison, who was trying to prove that his form of eletricity was safer.
It’s come to my attention that people who use Premarin may not be aware that they are directly causing the slaughter of mares and fillies. I thought this information was well-known by now, but apparently not.
Since Premarin is created from the urine of pregnant mares, these horses are now created for the sole purpose of harvesting their urine. They’re forced to stand their entire lives in narrow stalls, get little to no exercise, and don’t get as much water as they want. Then, after they’re too old to get pregnant, or too sore to keep standing, they’re slaughtered.
It’s inhumane.
It’s especially brutal considering that the same hormones can be created using plant hormones.
So go right back to your doctor who gave you the prescription for Premain, and ask for one of these instead:
* Cenestin
* Estrace
* Estraderm
* Ogen
* OrthoEst
* Estratab
* Menest
* Estinyl
* Estrovirus
* OrthoDienestrol
* Tace
For more information, you can read the PMURescue.org site. They’ll even give you a pin to wear if you switch.
A cat got herself stuck in the walls of a building in the West Village. She’d been missing two weeks - and presumed stolen because she’s a pretty cat - but then the walls started meowing.
With the help of remote video cameras, a whole fish donated by a nearby restaurant owner, and a guy named Kevin Clifford, Molly was rescued.
What caught my attention was that Kevin Clifford was described as a miner who extended his workday to help get Molly out, and I couldn’t imagine what a miner who lived in NYC could possibly be doing. But it turns out, Kevin Clifford isnt’ a miner per se, or rather, he’s a very special kind of miner called a sandhog. (I confess, I’m really antsy to get back to working on my novel that concerns - you guessed it - both miners and sandhogs.)
But either way, he loves animals, and Molly is now hiding/resting under furniture in her owner’s apartment after time in spent of flashbulbs, chaos, and crowds. Hopefully everyone’ll go away shortly so that she won’t want to find a new wall to crawl into.
