First, today (tomorrow by the time stamp that will be on the post) I was called out in class... We're doing this packet on symbolism in Marky Mark's class and we got to biblical allusions. One space had characters from the Bible who are often alluded to: the first was Adam, Eve, and (blank). Marky Mark asked if we could guess who it was, and all became silent and still until Emily said Lilith a few moments later. He briefly explained Lilith and then pointed to me like he had Yorrick's skull in his hand and said "I'm surprised you didn't get that!" I was caught completely off-guard, and apparently it was incredibly humorous to see my face go blank and squeak "Me?" You know what, it's been a while since I've read the Bible. (I don't even recall seeing anything about a Lilith? Was sex even allowed in the garden of Eden?) And then he was like "Reread the part in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when the Beavers talk with the kids." I know they talk about Lilith, but obviously I missed the meaning because I don't have the book of Genesis memorized (nor the Narnia series, as hard as that may be to imagine). Then, we deduced that Jesus had to have been born in March. (Yes, specifically.) Later, at VG club he stopped in, saw me, laughed, and said, "Yeah, I figured you'd be here." Are you trying to say I'm a dork, O Emperor Dork himself? Nyah! Haha. Also, I schooled Robby D three consecutive times in SSBM. Sorry... I was raised with a controller in my hand. Also, Roy is a monster. Though we were equally cheap, Mr Captain Falc--I HATE CAPTAIN FALCON.
Any--Anyway... As I mentioned maybe, my cousin bought me Jonathan Safran Foer's newest book for my birthday. It is Eating Animals and it is about the treatment of livestock animals, in raising and slaughtering. It will, God willing, do what Upton Sinclair's The Jungle did in his time. When I tell you this book is stomach-turning I certainly do mean it. The worst accounts were of turkey and pig raising, so I was disturbed--but felt less sick because I don't eat either meat. Pigs are filthy creatures. Besides that, I invariably get sick when I eat any form of pork, except for bacon, which makes an interesting thing to keep in mind for later. Turkey just grosses me out, but not nearly as badly as pork. Ick. Ugh, let's continue, okay?
This also felt much more like a book by Foer than Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close did. I mean, it was written by him, obviously, it's just... it didn't seem to have really him in it. At least, not the him from Everything is Illuminated. This new book, weirdly enough, felt more like Foer in his first book and less forced. Granted, he was writing as a nine-year-old in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but still. This sounds much more... real. More him.
Basically, Foer started researching for this book because his son was about to be born. His wife and himself were 'vegetarians' meaning they never ate meat except when they did. Before his son started growing up, they decided they needed a clear-cute decision: either eat meat or don't. How to raise their son? He decides vegetarianism is the way to go, and that's very clear from very early on, but how is what the book is about. Of course.
"People get married for many different reasons, but one that animated our decision to take that step was the prospect of explicitly marking a new beginning. Jewish ritual and symbolism strongly encourage this notion of demarcating a sharp division with what came before--the most well-known example being the smashing of the glass at the end of the marriage ceremony. Things were as they were before, but they will be different now. Things will be better. We will be better." You see what I mean about it sounding more like him, even already?
"'If nothing matters, there's nothing to save.'"
Early on, Foer talks about his dog, George. She was bought at a time when he feared and hated dogs, but very quickly he fell in love with the pup. By no means is she a model dog, however--she is "a major pain in the ass an awful lot of the time." She chews shoes and baby toys, attacks skateboarders, squirrels and Hassidic Jews, freaks out around menstruating women, often is attracted to the most uninterested people ("backs her flatulent ass into" as Foer puts it) and is generally obnoxious, it appears. I think I have a feeling of who Sammy Davis Junior, junior, was based off of.
What he segways into after bringing up George is why aren't animals--specifically dogs--used as a food source? They're a common enough food source around the world. Many dogs are just euthanized in shelters (his argument is just for sheltered dogs; not dogs that have homes) to begin with, and those dogs end up in the feed of livestock and pet food. So, in the case of pet food, we kind of are doing it already... Basically, he probes around as to why it's such a taboo to eat dogs. They aren't any smarter than pigs or chimps (yes, some cultures do eat chimps) and other people of this day and age do do it, not just the ancient Romans. I'm--the idea makes me uncomfortable. Again, I can't exactly explain why it is a taboo, it just is. It's a norm in us from the beginning. It's a norm in other cultures in the beginning to eat dog. It... I can see how it would benefit, certainly. But I'm not sure how I'd feel about eating a dog. Logically it may make sense, but those darned emotions get in the way. You say, eat a dog, and I of course think of Dante stuck on the table with an apple in his mouth like a suckling pig.
I'd say everyone knows about the terrible conditions in which chickens are raised, but maybe you don't. Chickens are kept in cages so small they are often held aloft. (Supposedly, broilers have slightly larger cages.) They are starved and are very famished--what I did not know was what happens to male chicks born to layers. Obviously, male chicks can't lay eggs. They're useless. What I didn't know is what happened to those chicks--they are tossed into what is basically a wood chipper. Or they're tossed into plastic containers, left to trample each other and eventually suffocate. Good God. Besides this, chickens and turkeys genes have been tampered with so they produce the most meat--their legs can't support them, they're too fat to fly... Often they suffer from muscle and bone injuries because of said defects. In Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood there is a food factory that created ChickieNobs. Basically, masses of chicken flesh hanging off feeding tubes that resemble light bulbs. They're meant to harvest chicken breast without wasting a whole animal, and cannot feel pain fear or anything and can't move or do anything unrelated to digesting food. Since they cannot feel pain, though, is this acting really cruel? When I read that book, I was quite disturbed by the ChickieNobs--but after reading Eating Animals, I kind of wonder if that way wouldn't somehow be the more humane way? That's a scary question. The fact that that question even has to be asked is scary.
Chapter one in part "Hiding/Seeking" is called "I'm Not the Kind of Person Who Finds Himself on a Stranger's Farm in the Middle of the Night". Hilarious title. But beside that, Foer, in that section, goes with an animal activist called 'C' to a turkey farm. 'C' gives him a run-down of what to expect when getting into these farms in the middle of the night--hiking fences, sometimes avoiding dogs... and sometimes avoiding bulls which are allowed to roam freely in fields to "impale snooping vegetarians". Foer, more than a little scared about this, and asks what should be done in case one should be found. 'C's' response: "'Stand very still,' C advised. 'I don't think they see stationary objects.'" Notice that think in there. You know what other animals scientists thought couldn't see stationary objects? Tyrannosaurus Rex. You know what happened to Repton, the guy who thought that? He ended up as dinner. Oh man, forget reading Mansfield Park. I'm rereading The Lost World. And rewatching the movie. Oooh. Dinosaurs are awesome! Wait--what was I talking about?
"A farmer doesn't lock his doors because he's afraid his animals will escape. (Turkeys can't turn doorknobs.)" Yeah, well I can think of some ancestors to the turkeys that can open doors... CLEVER GIRLS!!! Man. Glad they devolved, or we'd be in quite a spot of trouble; right, Ian Malcolm?
What Foer is referring to is the fact that the doors to the barn holding the turkeys are locked. He's listing all the reasons why they don't need to be locked--basically, there's no reason for them to be locked. To him, "...nothing will unsettle me more than the locked doors. Nothing will better capture the whole sad business of factory farming. And nothing will more strongly convince me to write this book." The chicks are disturbing. Even just described--well, my imagination did the work of providing an image of these poor creatures. It was an image I'd rather not see personally. Bad enough in my head. At first glimpse, the chicks look fine. Cute enough to handle. Baby chicks! Come on. But as he looks closer he begins to notice some are "blood-matted", "covered in sores", "have red spots on the tops of their heads", "deformed", and "there are few places to look without seeing at least one [dead chick]." He approaches C who is "kneeling over something". The something is a baby chick with eyes that are crusted over, that's covered in scabs and bald spots, and on its side. C slits its throat quickly and painlessly--it was too far gone to be salvaged. I was quite upset by this--not her putting it out of its misery, of course--but it being in that misery in the first place. For those who would be disgusted by her killing of the animal, regardless of it being a mercy killing, she defends herself as such: "...that chick was too sick to be moved. And its suffering was too much to leave be. Look, I'm pro-life. I believe in God, and I believe in heaven and hell. But I don't have any reverence for suffering."
The information about most animals--bird wise--can't even walk or support themselves comes from a letter included from Frank Reese, who considers himself the "last poultry farmer". He doesn't consider the factory farm turkeys to be real turkeys because they're genes have been so messed around with. Those birds are all artificially inseminated, they can't fly (turkeys can fly!? I'll be damned! Maybe chickens could fly once, too) and hardly jump or walk, nor can they even handle the elements. He's the only one still raising these 'traditional' turkeys. All of his flock is healthy. People are allowed on premises. No locked doors.
Oh, and the poor pigs. Mother pigs are put in cages so small they can't even turn around. Then bottom of the cages are slotted so their waste kind of... ripens below them. (I didn't get how that part worked, exactly). Then when they have their piglets they are crushed in so tightly they end up stepping on and killing a few piglets. Trying to figure out how to stop this is apparently one of the industry's current biggest goals--as Foer himself points out, this wouldn't happen if the pens were bigger. Among this, piglets are de-teethed so they can't hurt each other when they fight for milk, and are often bathed in their own waste (turkeys and chickens also suffer from this). This brings up the thing I mentioned earlier, about getting sick 99% of the time when I eat pork. Often these creatures are so bathed in filth and so poorly checked over, the meat gets imbibed with the filth on the skin. Ever have a 24-hour flu or stomach bug? More likely than not, according to Foer, it's this filth getting mixed in with the meat that's making you sick, not some form of the flu. It makes you sick until you pass it out of your system.
Just to drive the point home more, Foer compares the factory-farming of pigs with a dog locked in a closet (though he says that's "somewhat generous" an analogy). Of course, even though I don't eat pork, it hit a soft spot... My dog was a rescue dog in exactly that situation. (If I open the boot closet even now, almost five years after we rescued him, he'll walk over and go in). Ehh. And he speaks of pigs' intelligence. They really are damned smart animals. They can be trained to play very very simple videogames, they can recognize their names and come when called or follow on foot, and can open gates with their snouts (earlier, Foer recounts a recounting of a pig farmer's pig who would open her gate, travel a mile or so away to another pig farm, have sex with a male, and walk back and reenter her gate when finished). Going back to Oryx and Crake, this is why I said the guys who decided to grow human neo-cortexes in the pigoons were idiots. Of course, they were even smarter still and more dangerous and more violent. Though if that were to happen--it may be more of a Karmic thing. Yikes.
"'The consumer's couldn't tell the difference between ground pig flesh and human flesh. Of course they couldn't. The difference between human and pig... anatomies are insignificant compared to the similarities--a corpse is a corpse, flesh is flesh.'"
It was disturbing and informative book. Being non-fiction, I don't feel comfortable calling it 'good' or 'bad', but it was interesting. And upsetting.
Marky Mark was doing (continuing) a slide show on symbolism and we got into Christ figures. He had a check list that was "You may be a Christ figure if..." And one of them was they've spent a lot of time alone in the wildreness. He paused and added, "Like Jack Kerouac." Of course my head snapped up because I'm all HEY JACK KEROUAC! and he nodedd at me and I gave him the thumbs up. Haha. I'd say it was fairly awesome... Oh, and I had a dream last night that he became dictator of the school and Big Mikey was his bodyguard and Robby D was his gopher. He (and Emma) figured it wasn't so much a dream it was more of me seeing the future. He was pretty excited to know that yes, undead were involved. I'm staying on his good side.
And Robby D asked me how I was enjoying Ellison's Invisible Man. I gave the you know, ehh cusi-cusi sort of gesture/noise, and he was like "Uh oh, if Angela doesn't like it there's a problem." Which I thought was really cute! We have a problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment