100% abusive

sometimes while i'm moderating, i come across comments i really really really wanna post... but can't. like this one, in response to natalie portman's article about how she went vegan after reading a fucking book.

The silliness of going vegan in 2009 in response to a book on factory farming could only be perpetrated by an actress. I find it hard to believe she attended college; her logic and faux shock are of the 'Omigod you guys!' variety.
Factory farmed animals are nutritionally and environmentally destructive. Also morally despicable. Most Americans have known this for decades, and there's recently been a bit of a renaissance, Natalie, of pasture raised animals, and a return to farming methods of the past. Google Salatin.
Soy, the go-to protein replacement for many vegans, is a heavily treated, usually genetically modified, crop that has serious environmental consequences. Nutritionally, it can also create some issues, as it is estrogenic and can interfere with thyroid function.
My "backyard is polluted" by free range chickens. The six of them function as family pets, organic insect/pest control, fertilizer and compost providers, lawn aerators, egg producers, and entertainment. Would you keep silent about them if you came on my property? Or would that be tatamount to rape?
Because factory farms exist, and apparently Natalie Portman didn't realize this until JS Foer wrote about it, she will now shy away from supporting small family farms that sell eggs, honey, and ethically raised meat, seafood and shellfish at farmers markets, in favor of agribusiness crops like soy. Monsanto's Roundup-Ready corn does not posess a superior virtue, just because it is a vegetable. The complexity of good choices doesn't always lend itself to labels.

DO NOT CLICK

saw this ad while surfing the internets.

for obvious reasons, i did not click the link.

baby

hospitals are terrible places. the sickly pastel chairs with their stiff cushions lined up beside plastic plants posing ironically in dirt-filled pots. this is the world's most horrible place to cry. sitting in one of those chairs, you look down at the bare tiled floor, glowing with a disinfectant sheen, and try to pretend you're sleeping and not catching tears in your sweater sleeve. breathing deeply and pinching between your fingers to still the waves of nausea, binding them together to quell the shaking. feeling like a complete idiot. feeling like you've gotten lost somehow. stranded on the surface of the moon.

my happy place

this morning i walked to yoga (this is a million times more exciting than you know), and tried my first led ashtanga class ever. needless to say i got my ass handed to me, but my teacher was really encouraging and lovely. afterward, i hobbled my sore self up the stairs to the locker room, and tried out the sauna. no one else was in it because early morning classes are usually pretty empty, so i got about 15 minutes of quiet alone time to still my shaking legs and relax my spine after all the twists and binds and crazy contortions my teacher wrapped me into. then i took a shower, and was pleased to find that they had very nice smelling shampoo, conditioner, and body wash, and those giant showerheads that make you feel like you're standing naked in the rain, and extra large towels. i got dressed, did my make up, and then went downstairs and had some tea outside the meditation class. watching people meditate is relaxing. it's also a lot more fun than actually meditating. after my tea, i walked out peaceful and refreshed onto the newly awakened streets of new york. a cabbie honked at me as i crossed the street, but i was too yoga'ed out to mind. so i just smiled. not now, chief. i'm in the fucken zen.

tired

i held so many people in my suitcase heart that i had to let the whole thing go, it was taken by the wind and snow.

dream

last night i dreamed of blood inside my abdomen, and my body like a tube allowed the blood to flow downward with gravity, into my legs. i scratched my calf, and a plum-red bruise blossomed along the path of my fingernails like a rorschach test, and i could see that there was so much useless blood inside me, a legion of rogue platelets that were no longer confined to my veins and capillaries to deliver oxygen and nutrients and carry away waste. i pressed my fingerstips into my thighs, gripped my knees with my palms, pinched my toes, and the bruise followed everywhere, until my legs were a watercolor of red and purple and charcoal black stains. each leg held gallons of blood, and i sat in bed, staring at them, feeling my bones quake within the pressure, my exo-sheets of skin cells and lipids strain desperately to dam it back. the blood had nowhere to go. i took hold of a small paring knife, and pressed it into the flesh above my right ankle, and followed along my shin bone up to my knee. blood flowed forth from the wound in halting waves, pouring over my sheets and into my mattress, and i felt the whole bed swell as it drank me up. the warmth was so heavy over me that i wanted to sleep, but the blood continued to flow and the wetness kept me awake. the force of the stream made it seem like the bleeding would never stop though i could feel my loss growing palpably. my feet emptied first. they flattened, and soon the flatness spread upwards as my blood drained, over my legs and my pelvis and my abdomen and rib cage and neck and arms and hands and head, until i was practically 2-dimensional except for my heart, which looked like it was shrink wrapped inside my chest. it continued to beat. i watched it beat but didn't know what it was beating for, i had no blood inside me. it beat with force, and i knew as it pulsed on and on, that if someone were to press my shrink wrapped heart like an on-off button, my paper doll body would go up in flames, and my bones would become ash, the rest of me would melt, and i would escape with the smoke.

what sisters are for

Esther: hey there are tiny little brown slivers in muy food

im trying to figure out whether or not they are slugs...

me: um..

i think the food is ok

Esther: are u sure they're not slugs?

me: im sure

Esther: i love you?

34

e.e. cummings

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father's fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father's dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
yes humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
--i say though hate were why men breathe--
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!

it's rather alarming how often this story appears in the news:

man mauled by tiger after scaling calgary zoo fences

it's good to know the tiger isn't being put down. i never understood why zoo animals ever had to be put down after attacking humans. the attacks are usually in response to taunting or someone climbing into their cage. i mean, what the fuck do you think is going to happen? human beings too often forget what pathetic puny creatures we are. we're like naked mole rats with only slightly better vision. in the especially stupid cases, like when people climb into a tiger cage or jump into the pool and swim towards a polar bear, i find myself quietly cheering for the animal. can you imagine how boring it must be to live in a zoo? these are wild animals, meant to be out in the vast untamed wilderness, running and fighting and hunting and killing and mating. instead, they're stuck in a cramped space that attempts to trick them into thinking they're actually out in the wild. they're not blind. they can see the crowds of slow moving fatties milling around just outside their reach, eating ice cream and cotton candy, holding silly balloons. scientists at zoos get so worried when their animals won't mate with each other. well maybe tony the tiger can't get it up because he feels emasculated by the all the times you dragged around a piece of bloody steak so that he would get excited and stalk it only to find in the end it's a neatly cut portion of an already dead thing. how demoralizing. so when one of those fatties who stand around and gawk at them all day so condescendingly actually starts to move within reach... can you imagine how intensely thrilling that must be? how fantastic an opportunity? it's funny that the zoo officials are making excuses for this tiger who clawed up of the idiots who climbed the fence. he was trying to defend himself. he was startled. are you kidding? the siberian tiger wasn't trying to defend himself from those two scrawny little dipshits. he was probably watching them the whole time as they clambered up and over those fences all giggly and uncoordinated-like. closer... just a little... bit... closer...... and then BAM! i'm a motherfuckin siberian tiger, bitch! even if i'm named like an opera singer!

muhahahahaha. pwned.