Kara & Michael’s Blog

There are hundreds of perfectly valid reasons to dislike PETA. The feminist websites get up in arms about the fact that they use the nude female form to incite interest from the public. This bothers me too. Not because I think it’s disrespectful - I think it’s distasteful, but that’s PETA’s game. And that’s it - it is just a game to PETA.

PETA shocks people because they can’t stand on the merits of their own arguments. Much like pro-life people hoisting signs of aborted fetuses. It shocks you. But what does it mean?

If you’re in their value system, it represents a battle of life and death, the slaughtering of an innocent life. PETA feels the same way about animal rights - the slaughtering of an innocent life. But their tactics only mean that if you’re in their value system. Outside their value system, things turn into a  muddled moral area. That muddled moral area is not their strength because their tactics don’t hold up there, their arguments don’t. Those groups don’t want to fight on their arguments because they can’t win because there is no one moral system for mankind. Maybe that’s unfortunate, but it’s the way the cookie crumbles.

PETA will never succeed in ridding the world of fur, in converting everyone to a vegan. So instead of trying to get you to consider the real repercussions of doing so (including the positive ones, like bacon), they throw up pictures of slaughtered animals, they present you with naked women writhing in cages and expect those shocking sights to motivate you to their side.

It’s stupid, and the only people it attracts are immature and unconcerned with a real discussion of morals or our duty, as humans, to serve as watch-dogs for things that can’t protect themselves - animals, fetuses, the environment, our natural rights.  Where each of those things falls on your personal moral continuum is your own business, but operating within your own continuum without regard for the differences among people is probably the stupidest way in the world to try to affect change.

That’s why I dislike PETA. Also - those naked girls just open up the conversation for a bunch of really stupid guys to start making stupid sex jokes about “meat”. To the men of the world - those jokes are stupid. Really. Not clever at all. If you’re trying to get laid, please come up with more clever jokes.

Not so Funny, akshully

Maybe this is mean to say, but I am actually laughing, just a bit. Because I’m 23 years old, I live within my means, I don’t have shit invested and no offense, but you got yourselves into this mess, America. Expecting a quick fix to a problem inherent in the capitalist system upon which all your finances depend is just plain stupid.

Besides, look at all those clean-shaven faces. Wouldn’t you love to see them driving a tractor? These people aren’t hurting that badly, they got up and dressed in fancy suits. I didn’t even do my laundry this weekend. Pshaw.

There is no candidate who can rightly be called middle-class. Don’t let them sway you with life stories and down-home country charm. They are rich, rich, rich. They have the best health insurance this country can afford.

Don’t you ever let any politician convince you that they know where you’re coming from. They don’t.

We should be looking for intelligent candidates who actively seek information about issues and listen to our concerns. But my concerns are my own, and I don’t believe that any action made on my behalf alone would be for the benefit of the nation as a whole.

So stop it, America. Stop falling for charm and stories about people’s roots. Those people don’t know your life, and they never will. But they do have the power to make it better or worse. And you give them that power.

I am sick of candidates courting middle-class voters. None of these people belong to our shrinking middle-class. Maybe they did at one point, maybe not. Either way, there are millions of dollars to their names, houses and health insurance. Don’t fall for the bologna about how they’re just like you, how much they can relate to you. They can’t. You shouldn’t want them to.

You should want them to have a bigger picture in mind.

I think labels are really useful, especially in the vegetarian/vegan community. It’s really easy to pick out the crazy assholes based on whether or not they defend their label.

Listen, I get that vegetarians/vegans have chosen to adhere to a certain lifestyle. It just so happens that most of that lifestyle revolves around foodages. What I don’t get is people who complain about ovo-pesco vegetarians, flexitarians diluting their label.

You’re a human being and you’re attempting to protect and defend a label? It doesn’t make any sense to me. Then they complain how those people make it harder for them in life because other people don’t know how to treat them.

Maybe this is a lesson people miss. But generally speaking, I treat all people like, well, people. If you tell me you don’t eat meat when I’m offering you a chicken wing, I’m not offended and I don’t really give a crap that you don’t eat meat. Jolly good for you, I’ll think, as I wipe my hot-saucey fingers on a multitude of napkins.

It seems to me that people who are concerned about labeling themselves have divided up their world and think we all should agree to their definitions and labels. Just because you choose to call yourself a vegetarian under your own definition (which is as flawed as any of our definitions) doesn’t matter to me, only to you. But you want to enforce it on the world. You want to tell me how I should or shouldn’t define myself, and my lifestyle. Screw that.

I take up the fight against labels on all sides of life. I don’t belong to a political party, I don’t consider myself heterosexual, I respect that some people might not identify as any one gender. Heck, for a woman I sure do scratch my butt a lot. Historically, enforcing labels has belonged to the majority and its been done to keep the minority down.

Darn vegetarians. Keeping me down.

There’s been this big hullabaloo about the corn refiners association commercials talking about how high fructose corn syrup has been demonized in the media.

I take their side. I think there are very little ingredients that are harmful to any healthy person in small dosages. Also, those HFCS maniacs are freaking crazy. Have you ever met one of these people? They go on and on about how unhealthy it is and then they act like sugar is healthier.

HFCS is highly processed, but how do you think sugar gets to your plate? Have you ever seen sugar cane? Do you think it falls out of the plant onto your plate like an apple?

Then these people start acting like they’re fucking food chemists and going on and on about fructose versus glucose, when they can’t even draw a molecule of the sugars they’re discussing.

Finally, they think the government should be involved in warning us about HFCS and banning its use, for no good reason except they think life would be perfect that way. They complain about how impossible it is to find food that doesn’t contain HFCS. And when they say that, I cackle.

It’s not impossible. Make your own damn food. The only HFCS I get is if I go out to eat, and possibly in the bread Michael and I have. Stick to whole grains, produce and whatever protein you choose and, surprisingly, it’s hard to find HFCS.

Unless you’re a raw-foodist, your food has probably been processed. It’s okay. Yes, food changes as it’s processed, but those can be good changes. I process my food every night when I cook it, denaturing proteins and burning off water and sugar. It happens. If HFCS bothers you, it’s entirely within your power to stop eating it. and if you just want to whine, I’m going to buzz you out after a few minutes unless you’re an eminent scientist, because I’ve heard it all before.

Found carved in a lightning-struck tree in Oregon:

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A lot of people are talking about how crazy PETA is since they wrote Ben and Jerry’s telling them to use human breast milk instead of cow’s milk. Ben and Jerry’s released a statement saying they applauded their out-of-the-box thinking but thought that human babies needed that breast milk.

Hello? Welcome to PETA’s point.

If you’ve never researched the dairy industry, I encourage you to do so. I personally don’t care much for cow’s milk and never have, so it’s not that hard for me to eat soy milk, hemp milk, rice milk,etc instead (I actually prefer hemp milk in a lot of things.).

But here’s what I know about the dairy industry. They impregnate female cows, take their babies away from them to become veal or dairy cows and then use all their breast milk - the milk intended to feed those babies that are in the process of being slaughtered (or raised to be used and then slaughtered)- to make your cheese, your milk, your butter, your ice cream. Your three servings daily.

This is the point PETA, however insane they are, is trying to make. You are treating a cow as subservient to your needs. Subservient to what you think your needs are, anyway.

I’m not vegan, yet. And I see dairy cows every week when I go to the natural market. They look pretty happy, I guess. They could probably use more land. But it’s hard for me to think about the dairy industry without getting sad and angry. Not just for the lies they tell you (those three servings a day… totally not necessary), but also because of the way they take advantage of nature to feed people who have other options. Those calves don’t have any other options.

I still think PETA is crazy. Writing Ben and Jerry’s instead of… I dunno, a dairy company that doesn’t specialize so much seems wasteful. Besides, Ben and Jerry’s, whatever their animal politics are, refuses growth hormones for their cows and takes an ecological stand. They’re doing less damage, as a whole, than many other dairy companies.

This is the funny thing about online classes - you still get the same people. I find this amusing.

The most irritating person in real-live class discussions is that one kid. There is always one, there is usually only one. They treat the class like their personal showcase, arguing with the professor and classmates, offering help as a means of asserting superiority.

Sometimes they’re just anti-social douchebags who want to assert their own genius. I met one guy at college a few years ago who helped me with a paper I was writing in the writing center. One on one, he was very reasonable and did not come off as patronizing or as a know-it-all. Then again, maybe he could afford not to since I was already asking him for his expertise.

Generally speaking, while I hate these people wasting my class discussion time arguing with the professor instead of letting us move on to a different discussion point, I don’t mind people being cocky or showy if they have the knowledge to back it up, and the good sense to know when they’re wrong and admit as much. I am that person, sometimes.

I’m not surprised to find a number of cocky men in my computer classes. Heck, most times I’m not even irritated because I can simply move on to a different post by a different classmate and leave it at that.

But not when you do something wrong and instead of looking at your own work, assert that someone else is having the problem on their end. He’s not. You wrote something incorrectly. And just because everyone else uses programs that auto-correct it for them doesn’t mean that your error is acceptable. In the real world, if your client is unable to access your work - your work is worthless. Accessibility is an important factor.

Also, I hate my programming class because they keep telling us to download software to create web pages. We’re supposed to be learning basic html tags, and I mean basic. The only requirements are messing with text, centering something, creating a table, posting an image and creating a link. Why does anyone need a software program to create that page for them? What are they learning by doing that? Besides, most of those programs insert all sorts of crap into your code. Who needs that?

Unfortunately, all the instructions we get assume that we have downloaded software that will code our pages for us, FTP clients that will automatically upload those pages to the server, etc. So people who are interested in doing these things on their own have to figure it out on their own. I make Michael help me. I made my page in a shell session on a text editor. It does not look pretty, but it completes the requirements for the assignment. And at least if something goes wrong, I can look at my code and see it, instead of blaming the eyesight of the person who gets the finished product and sees a flaw.

PS. In my applications course, there are people saying children shouldn’t use computers until they’re in middle school. Seriously. I was using one at home as soon as I could, at the very least to play games. Michael said he started learning programming as soon as he could type and use a mouse. We played educational games at elementary school and used paint and Word. I remember because I got extra time in the lab to help the special education class use the computers. I just had to laugh about it. And hope that person didn’t have any young children, because they would be putting them at a severe disadvantage.

Maybe you guys have been following the upheaval in the light of Palin’s email being “hacked” last week. Maybe you’ve been watching Oprah discuss anonymous, describing it as a terrorist network of child molesters. Maybe you’ve been on 4chan laughing your ass off to a video of Oprah reading an obviously sarcastic comment posted on her website.

And maybe you’ve, at Oprah’s behest, been writing to your legislators about internet issues you have no understanding of. Because the internet isn’t safe for the children and “won’t somebody think of the children?”

I have some important news for you. Your children are anonymous. I went to a wonderful wedding this weekend with a few “members” of anonymous. None of them are child molesters, in my estimation. Mostly they’re moderately intelligent people with killer senses of humor. And an understanding of the inherent anonymity of the web.

That anonymity is important. The web is one of the last respites of truly free speech in this country, in this world. It is free, it is universal, it is accessible to all. And you are demanding that our government, the people who brought you the patriot act, telephone tapping, torture, the suspension of habeas corpus… you’re demanding we give them the power to legislate the internet.

Fuck you. Don’t you think they have enough power? Do you want them to tell you what to eat in the morning so you don’t get fat? Do you want them to tell you how to do your job, how to raise your kids, when to have kids, how to spend your money? These assholes can’t even take care of our economy. They can’t keep our people safe and healthy. So you want to give them more power?

Oprah, you stupid cunt, how dare you encourage people to give up our last respite of free speech just because you have power to speak. How dare you. Because you’re fucking rich and have your own tv show and magazine and website. You have the power to speak and you want to deny the masses that same power because that makes you even more powerful. This isn’t about protecting our children, this is about you denying other people the right to speak.

Yes, some of those people will be child molesters. They’ll be hackers. They might have morals you disagree with. That is the POINT of free speech. Those people are our neighbors, they’re our fellow country-men, and as much as I might hate what they do, I respect they have a right to speak and to exist.

America, don’t give up your free speech. The government won’t protect your right to speak, Oprah won’t protect your right to speak. Only you can.

And as a side-note, before you EVER email your legislator about the internet, why don’t you test your own understanding of it? If you don’t know how a website appears in a browser after you type in the url… if you don’t even know what the http or url stand for, you have no right to even TALK about the internet. Seriously. I guarantee you that 95% of our Congress couldn’t pass that test. Those are the last people I want legislating anything I can do on a resource I understand better than they do. I would give the reigns for regulating the web to anonymous before I would ever trust our government. At least anonymous knows a thing or two about how the web works and the importance of free speech.

Fuck all y’all.

Every so often, I forget why I chose to become an English major. Don’t get me wrong, I read endlessly. But so often, I’m reading the same things because there is a comfort and familiarity there. Or I’m reading a cookbook or a magazine. There is enjoyment in all those reading activities, but little surpasses the experience of sitting down with something new (to you) and inspired.

I finally sat down this week with The Most of P.G. Wodehouse, a collection of short stories and a novel. I bought it for a little over ten dollars in order to buffer an Amazon purchase and get free shipping. Michael read through it and enjoyed it thoroughly. He’s begun amassing Wodehouse.

Michael and I have different philosophies on writing. We enjoy different styles. We have totally unique repertoires - minus the things every English major has to read: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton. He loves Agatha Christie, I can’t think of her without picturing Angela Lansbury. He’s much more well-read in terms of classic British Literature, I read crazy modern fiction that he’s not really inclined to read.

So, I took a shot on Wodehouse. I wasn’t sure I liked it at first. The writing didn’t seem that interesting, the characters were obnoxious. But first appearances are deceiving. The writing is fantastic, dry and witty, well constructed. His characters are obnoxious, but unfortunately they’re also painted so well that you sympathize with them and cheer for them. His stories are… well… sitcoms on television have pretty much stolen everything that redeems them from Wodehouse. He constructs these impossible situations and as a reader you sit on the edge of your seat because you know something awful and hilarious is going to happen.

He’s the first author who has made me laugh out loud in a long time. It will happen when you don’t expect it to. So I thought I’d give props to Wodehouse, who I never heard mentioned in an English class. Read him! Some works can be found at Project Gutenberg, but it’s not expensive to get The Most of on Amazon, and your library probably has some Wodehouse, too.