Now that I’m an official blogger, and unbearably hip to boot, I just had to take the bloginality test.
Really, it’s a simplified version of the Meyers-Briggs, and so my result (INTJ) was expected.
The descriptor for the INTJ is “Mastermind,” and I’m not about to quibble with that. Of course, the drawback is that I’m utterly lacking in tact and social skills.
But who needs people when one has an overheating laptop?
In all the hooplah about mad cow disease, it’s ironic to me that no one’s calling for a change in how we feed cattle. After all, feeding cows rendered cows is nothing more than forced cannibalism and a direct violation of the natural foodchain.
This is one of the reasons I initially became a vegetarian, and stayed one until spring last year (when an acupuncturist looked at me for two seconds, asked if I was a veg. and then told me I had a blood deficiency). White meat is in demand, so chickens are bred with enormous chests, and can’t walk as a result. Cattle are pumped full of hormones so they get bigger and leaner. Even salmon comes from fisheries, where they’re fed icky stuff, and don’t HAVE the Omega-3 fatty acids that are so healthy. Whatever the beast, most animals are kept in tightly enclosed spaces and have miserable lives until they’re slaughtered to feed us.
So we tromple down to our local health food store and spend an outrageous sum on a free-range chicken, happily envisioning our chicken to have had a delightful life scrabbling around in the dirt and clucking at passersby before being dressed with herbs and lemons, and gently placed in our ovens. But did you know that to be labeled free range, all that is required is that the chicken have a window of a certain size to the outdoors? Not that it has to be opened, not that the chicken has to set foot outdoors for a healthful regimen of chicken cardio. Just a window to the outside world.
If that’s free-range, imagine what it would be like to be a regular chicken.
My point, circuitous as it may be, is that mad cow disease is of our own making, fuelled by the credos of bigger, faster, cheaper. And we didn’t learn the first time, back in the mid-90s. Spongiform encephaly originally started in sheep populations because there was one infected sheep who was rendered and fed back to other sheep. Which then became cow food. I guess it’s a cheap source of protein. I guess it’s even recycling, in a sick sort of way. But when I think about how many Native American people offered up a prayer of gratitude before slaughtering an animal for food and clothing, it makes me think that we have no respect for life other than our own.
It’s still technically the first of the year, and I can honestly say that I did NOTHING today except fight with this blog. As you may see, I’ve changed the format completely (thanks to a nifty template that can be found at www.noipo.org (my heartfelt gratitude), and have added the ability for my vast multitude of readers (see, I can make fun of myself) to add comments to the site.
So please, please, please do. Otherwise I will have wasted yet another perfectly good day.
Happy New Year!
I just finished fighting with Blogger to let me archive–God, it made me feel like an idiot.
Last night, went over to Karen Bubb’s for New Year’s. Her husband was enthralled with a Twilight Zone marathon, but he cooked fabulous food, and Dana, Karen and I sat around the candelit living room, read tarot cards and then toasted each other with champagne and sparklers outside in the snow. It was fun. Steve went to a party, but, being Steve, left well before the countdown. After all, that’s way past his bedtime.
Starting to do research on where we should live in Seattle. He needs to be able to get to Belleview (sp?), but we’re leaning toward living on the West side. Any comments anyone? Shoot me an e-mail (the nifty little link over to your left) if you have any suggestions.