Downer Cows.

I love meat, but after my love affair with that Bantam rooster I rescued some years back (those of you on my mailing list remember this story), I realize how smart chicken is. You hang out with a chicken long enough, you'll ask him what he wants to watch on TV.

I have this fear that all religions are correct, and when I see the treatment of our food, I'm horrified about being reincarnated into a cow. You think I'm kidding? Can you imagine a worse horror? It'd make Auschwitz seem like summer camp for endless generations of farm animals to be treated like half-dead mice for cats to play with, then kept alive a little longer to be batted around some more.

I burst into tears this morning because it just seems so hopeless. But I have to find hope in the fact that this is the largest beef recall. Perhaps if you appeal to business interests, they'll eventually realize this kind of treatment isn't safe or profitable.

One day it's got to get better. In the history of civilization, some things are already better. Aren't they?

I think so.

Fuck capitalization...

i took cliff's class one week and he said we try to avoid details because details end up controlling us. you know, feeling pain and love and joy.

and it's pansy agony to realize how bad things are for the little critters all over. pansy agony because that's like feeling sorry for someone in dar fur from far away. what can you do?

i don't know.

but the details control us.

maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. maybe we're supposed to be more careful because then that's related to how we love each other.

i think what must it be like to be married to a guy who works in a slaughter house? maybe he's nice if he knows you. but are we all just slabs of breathing meat? and maybe that's all we are. is a guy who uses cattle prods on lame cows a good lover?
does he move a tendril of hair from your eye and say, "i love you. i've never loved anyone the way i love you," as he traces his forefinger up your arm?

Or does he tell you to get your fat ass in the car?

is he the same as a surgeon who's able to sew a leg back on while people like me are freaking out over the stranded puppies getting hit by cars on a deserted road in arizona and i'm only on a motorcycle?

i can't sew legs back on.

but i don't much like people in general.

individual people? beautiful.

but my old high school guy friends from florida live as working class guys with houses and send me republican joke emails about how the democrats are financially evil rapists and i think, "you fucking believe this stuff?"

but it's all "go team, go!" and working class guys never want to pick the fat girls for kick ball. so they go with the republicans who always act like they're winning when they're gang raping some unsuspecting fat girl.

i'm not all go team regarding the democrats, either. i see little difference between any of them.

but i digress.

it's all about spitting in the wind and having it splat back on your face.

i love meat. once in awhile. i love bacon. once in awhile. i have to go into a place of NO DETAILS to eat meat.

i'm glad there are small farm people who have the courage to look their pig friend in the face and say, "i'm hungry and i'm gonna eat you."

i'm not saying that vegans are nice people. in fact, i can't stand most of the vegan-y people i've met. they'd rather kick a homeless man than eat a non-organic free-reign egg.

i'm just saying there's something to peeing in your own water. spitting upwind.

we treat each other as disposable all over the place. people who don't even slaughter cows for a living still call their wives fat asses. wives still emasculate their men. how does anyone manage to fuck each other without cringing?

it takes so much to feel lovable and worthy and beautiful as we get older and more tired. how can you piss on someone you're going to make love to? that's like kicking around a zucchini skin before you rape it.

why would you do that to a zucchini skin?

you wouldn't, would you? so let's treat our lovers and our children and our friends and food with less trauma.

it's exhausting to be an asshole. i've done it. i've been there. sometimes i still try to go there when i have to, and i'm just tired.

i can't even deal with arrogant people in the business of art anymore. it bores me. it's just fear. and all artists must run the gauntlet of thousands of simon cowells on every project. all you have to do is think, "how good could anyone that critical possibly be in bed? and besides, he thought 'Divo' was a great idea."

and then you're free. free of their snarkiness.

life is too short to take arrogant people seriously, those chicken shit little fucks.

in fact, chickens have more charisma and courage. i spent a week with chicken joe. i know. he could scare the hell out of any smarmy little arrogant twit.

no more arrogance is allowed.

no more fear parading as hostility.

and i will pay extra for meat killed with the kind of kindness that say, "hey, look over there!"

and i'm going to donate $50 to the humane society. i tried to avoid that video all week. i felt like such a pansy. they are GOING through this and i'm looking away all Dar Fur like.

and anyone who thinks i like animals more, yeah, i do. they're always at our whims. i can't even stand being at the whim of some editor so i couldn't imagine being slave to some dumb shmuck.

that is a worse hell than i can even imagine.

i just hope that i don't get reincarnated into a cow in america. i'd rather be a cow for the masai. they could drink my blood like martinis as long as they patch me up with a little mud and kiss me.

so maybe starting to become a donor to the humane society is kind of like the afterlife's retirement plan.

maybe if i come back as a cow in a future life, in america, i'll find myself one day leaving a field of clover, and entering a big warehouse. and a friendly man will hide something behind his back, act surprised and point behind me and yell, "hey! what's that over there?"---

And that'll be...

The End of Erika the Cow.

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If you're as afraid of being reincarnated into a cow as I am...
Humane Society...

www.hsus.org/

(i don't know how to make this a link, so click the title of this post for immediate humanity)