Apparently, I was wrong. Chief Justice John Roberts does give the tiniest fuck about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution. Good for him? In the meantime, Anthony Kennedy, I'm so fucking sick of you. I mean, sure, Tony Scalia is a ranting old man, and Clarence Thomas is a joke, but I know those things about the SCOTUS going in. But I keep holding out some hope for you, Anthony, I guess because of Lawrence v. Texas, even though I knew clear back when you were fretting about how grown-ass women couldn't be trusted to live with the consequences of their own choices in Gonzalez v. Carhart at that you were an asshole. ("Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision, Casey, 505 U.S., at 852–853, which some women come to regret. In a decision so fraught with emotional consequence ..." You know what, Anthony, you don't need to worry your pretty little head about us ladies not knowing the potential emotional consequences of abortion. We're adult citizens of this country, who are entitled to make decisions without your paternalistic trolling -- there's no such thing as taking away someone's rights for their own good.) Anthony, if you fuck up gay marriage next year, I don't even know.
But you know, living in the world is strange. I used to be much more political than I am now. I was the president of the Pitt College Democrats when I was in college, and a committeewoman for the Pennsylvania Young Democrats; I volunteered for many political campaigns, mostly as a grassroots organizer, and I wasn't bad at it. But at some point I was standing in a hotel room in Harrisburg, drinking cheap beer with a lot of 40 year old men in bad suits who had basically no principles whatsoever, and I realized that to pursue a career in politics was more or less tantamount to voluntarily giving up your soul. I stopped that shit.
But that's not what I'm thinking about. What I'm thinking about is the levels of the world.
So today, everyone's very worked up about the Supreme Court upholding Obamacare. I'm glad they did for several reasons, the first of which being, simply, that the law is constitutional. So, really, we could just come full-stop there. But beyond that fact, I also want to see health care reform in America. I support single-payer, government care; I am, in fact, extremely dubious about the government forcing me to buy anything from a private corporation. I know and am fine with the fact that the government can take my money; I am not fine with private companies being able to take my money. I also think that any system in which private health insurance coverage is anything except a niche luxury for the very rich who want "Cadillac Care" is not really any kind of solution for our nation's health care problems. Like I said: government-provided, single-payer, universal care. Nothing else will ultimately suffice.
But anyway, everyone on my Twitter feed and a lot of people on my Facebook page, and Americans in general on teh interwebz are all thinking and talking about this big national issue.
At the same time, I found out last night that a friend of mine tried to kill themselves yesterday. They're in the hospital, and OK for the moment, thankfully.
How does one navigate the world? Where should our focus lie? What is the connection between big national problems and those of our day-to-day lives? I'm not suggesting that my friend's situation implies anything about Obamacare -- they're getting care in a hospital, so they're apparently OK. I'm just saying that there are so many concentric circles around us, from the very intimate and personal to the international, that today I'm wondering how we decide how to parcel out our concern. I know that personally, the older I get, the more my concern shrinks. I cared enough about today's Supreme Court decision to have an opinion about it, but not enough to like, volunteer for a health reform group. But that's not necessarily the choice everyone makes -- many people stay active in large issues their entire lives. I don't know why I choose to keep my focus on myself and those immediately around me -- it's probably some laziness. And probably also an affect of what I've described previously, the need -- in order to protect my mental health -- to have a small life, lived day-to-day.
I wonder, though, if engagement at a society-wide level is important to living a good life, or a satisfactory life. Am I losing something by restricting my chief care to my family and friends? Is it a responsibility to care about people I don't know and things I can't directly control, but only marginally influence? (Though one could say that I can only actually marginally influence even those relationships that I think of myself as having the most power over.) I don't actually think I have such a responsibility (to whom?), but am I missing out on an important aspect of life in the world by withdrawing from engagement with large concerns in favor of small ones? Between one person in a hospital bed and 300 million people fighting over how those hospital beds get paid for, where do we draw the circumference of the ultimate extension of our effort, if not our gaze?
I don't know. I'm just asking.
Showing posts with label Life and Death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life and Death. Show all posts
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
More Death. (And a Boyz II Men Concert.)
I did a lot of cool stuff between Thursday night and Sunday morning. Then my aunt died unexpectedly.
Liz was technically my great aunt: she was in her early 80s, so she lived a relatively long life. But her death came out of the blue; she hadn't been ill at all, except for the various standard complaints of old age. Then she got a blood clot in her brain on Sunday morning and died.
I feel like a jerk because her birthday was three weeks ago. I had meant to write to her, but hadn't gotten around to it. There is no way now to amend for this.
What I'm troubled by is the fact that this regret only matters to me. It cannot matter to Liz now. Nothing can matter to her. Liz is dead. All the matters of her life are over, and that is that. Someday nothing will matter to my mother. And nothing will matter to my husband. And nothing will matter to me. And given that fact, it is hard for me to say why anything matters now.
***
I had my midlife crisis extremely prematurely. Starting in junior high or so, adults -- my relations and teachers, mostly -- fed me a lot of bullshit about how I was Special and Talented and Smart, and was definitely going to succeed in life. I don't think they were deliberately setting me up to fail, and I don't even think most of them were lying. Given where I'm from, I was Special and Talented and Smart, and seemed like a good bet, at least compared to the general population of my peers, to succeed in life. I went to college and continued to receive reassurances about my future. I went to (a very prestigious) graduate school, having been reassured by an actual, professional literary author who was mentoring me at the time that some day I would write books for a living.
Of course, this was all horseshit. I'm not saying it was ill-intentioned horseshit, but come on. My imminent disappointment began to make itself felt in my final term of graduate school. I seemed to know without knowing. I began to suffer from panic attacks. I developed what I called a "doom cloud"; it is difficult to describe what this was, other than to say that there was a constant, dark weight at the back of my mind. It wasn't composed of any specific or articulated thoughts -- just a layer of discontent and anxiety that was my constant, looming companion.
I finished my thesis and graduated with my masters, magna cum laude. One of my advisors at the time gave me the following career advice: "Clean up your thesis and then get an agent." Really. That was it. I tried to place a few of the stories from my thesis, but that went no where. I was unemployed for nine months while I lived with my (also unemployed) husband in what I can only describe as a garret in the ghetto. I applied for a variety of jobs, and finally was hired as a Clerk Typist II for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services. I answered the phone in a windowless room and performed minor clerical functions. Everyone assured me that this was a Good Job, because I had Benefits, and would someday retire with a Pension.
I honestly thought about killing myself almost every day. I had dark and violent thoughts I couldn't suppress. I concluded that I couldn't actually kill myself because 1) my mother and Ted would feel so bad, and 2) Jesus would be angry. So instead I would walk along the edge of the sidewalk at my lunch hour and to and from the bus stop and hope that I got hit by a bus.
I quit my job to go back to school for a career that I didn't particularly want. Everyone had told me that I absolutely couldn't quit such a Good Job, so I studied for and took the LSATs and got a scholarship to go to law school, because at the rate I was going, I was never going to get a bus to hit and kill me. Going Back to School is a socially acceptable reason to quit a job -- apparently, violent depression is not. More could be said about how fucked up that is, but I'll just leave it there for you to contemplate.
I ended up dropping out of law school because it was expensive and I didn't want to be a lawyer. But by then I was working part time as an adjunct, a job I like, and which I now do "full time" (at least for two-thirds of the year), so everything worked out. Plus I didn't dislike law school per se -- I like learning things, and the atmosphere of academia is like a warm blanket to me. My doom cloud finally dissipated.
My point is that all of this took a lot of readjustment. Once it became clear in my mid-20s that I was not going to Succeed as promised, I became very depressed, and the prospect of a lifetime at that Good Job made me, as I said, honestly want to die. I don't know if other people find it so difficult to live in the world, but it's clearly difficult for me. Finding a way to do it took a few years. I decided that my only ambition was to live a happy life (that was still guided at least in theory by moral principles). Eating curry and drinking wine and watching Star Trek make me happy: today I will eat curry and drink wine and watch Star Trek. Visiting with my friends makes me happy: today I will visit my friends. Reading books makes me happy: today I will read a book. Mission accomplished, mission accomplished, mission accomplished.
I am, basically, happy. I love my husband and our little family of cats. I have good friends and enjoy myself most days, though I wish we had more money -- but who doesn't?
But it is a very small life.
And small lives don't stand up to death well, do they? Someday you will wake up and not finish out the day. You will die, and nothing will matter to you again. And so what will have been the point of all that mattered previously? Even if it was difficult to live in the world, so what? You're dead now. So what if you found a way to be happy, eating curry and drinking wine? You're dead now. I realize that this is solipsism and nihilism, but there it is. I don't know -- I guess I just haven't been in a very good mood since Sunday.
P.S. Still haven't heard from God. After 30 years, I'm starting to feel a little stood up.
***
As to all of that fun stuff: on Thursday, Ted and I went to see Friends Sarah and Roger host a dance recital at their Arthur Murray studio. It reminded me of when I was little and took jazz dance classes at the YMCA, and we would have little performances for our parents periodically. Except this event was for grown ups. We chatted with Friends Saundra and Neilbert -- Neilbert even danced a rhumba! -- and got to see Roger's newly grown ponytail in action: he is bringing the Latin Heat, dear readers.
On Friday we had dinner with Friends Carley and Lindsi. It was Lindsi's birthday, and she decided to nom at Pusadee's Garden, in our hood. I was so, so happy to not cook dinner. Then they both came back to our place for some gin 'n' tonics, and finally Sarah stopped by, too.
On Saturday, I tailgated for the first time in my life. Ted and I and Carley and her boyfriend Chris and Friend Nick all had tickets to the Pirates game. I hate baseball: baseball is boring as shit. BUT. After the baseball game THERE WAS A BOYZ II MEN CONCERT. HOLY SHIT YINZ GUYS. ABC BBD. Chris has a big truck, and so we decided to tailgate before the game. This turns out to be basically sitting in a parking lot while eating and drinking. Carley brought fish sammiches with guacamole and cilantro; I brought ginger-stewed beets, haluski, and Doritos; Nick brought beer. We had an unusually healthy tailgate, is what I'm saying, but it was nice, and when Chris helped some other parking lot drinker jump his car, the guy gave him $20, which covered the price of our own parking. Sweet.
But then a cop told us we had to clear out of the parking lot, so we had to go into the actual baseball game. It was only the fourth inning. Good Lord, getting through that baseball was interminable, especially because I couldn't afford to buy All The Beer. SEVEN FUCKING DOLLARS FOR BUD LIGHT. Nick, I think feeling a deep sympathy for me, even though he loves baseball, actually bought me a $7 Bud Light. I literally was so grateful I teared up a little. I then scraped together $7 of my own for another godawful beer. These two beers got me through to the end of the baseball.
The baseball was made even more interminable by the world's most obnoxious eight-year-old boy, who was sitting next to us. His mother was not paying any attention to him, natch, and every 15 or 20 minutes or so, he would want to exit the row, forcing all five of us to stand up while he filed past, obnoxiously shouting, "Excuse me! Excuse me! Coming through! Make way!" Then a few moments later he would realize that he had forgotten money, or whatever, and come back through. Then go back out again. Over and over again. So eventually, every time he came past, I said something hateful to him. "You're an asshole." "I hope you fall down the stairs." He finally responded to me when I said, "I hate you." "Why?" "Because you're obnoxious. GO SIT DOWN."
Yes, I was a bitch to an eight year old. No, I have no regrets.
But finally, my trials over, Boyz II Men began to perform. 30,000 people sang along to "On Bended Knee". They played all the hits. It was fantastic. The nostalgia was rolling out of PNC Park and wafting down the river, eastward into the night (in the direction of Motown Philly, of course). Ted had not anticipated any of this; he had no idea everyone my age in the park was going to wig the fuck out. It's kind of a weird phenomenon. It's not like I'd buy a new CD from Boyz II Men. Their moment is more or less over. But their moment was so formative of my and Carley's junior high school years that we sat through most of a Pirates baseball game so that we could sing along at the top of our lungs to "End of the Road". I don't know if this is good or bad for the Boyz, sad or reassuring. In any case, they've got an album of covers coming out. They sang a Journey cover on Saturday. If nothing else, they know their audience.
Liz was technically my great aunt: she was in her early 80s, so she lived a relatively long life. But her death came out of the blue; she hadn't been ill at all, except for the various standard complaints of old age. Then she got a blood clot in her brain on Sunday morning and died.
I feel like a jerk because her birthday was three weeks ago. I had meant to write to her, but hadn't gotten around to it. There is no way now to amend for this.
What I'm troubled by is the fact that this regret only matters to me. It cannot matter to Liz now. Nothing can matter to her. Liz is dead. All the matters of her life are over, and that is that. Someday nothing will matter to my mother. And nothing will matter to my husband. And nothing will matter to me. And given that fact, it is hard for me to say why anything matters now.
***
I had my midlife crisis extremely prematurely. Starting in junior high or so, adults -- my relations and teachers, mostly -- fed me a lot of bullshit about how I was Special and Talented and Smart, and was definitely going to succeed in life. I don't think they were deliberately setting me up to fail, and I don't even think most of them were lying. Given where I'm from, I was Special and Talented and Smart, and seemed like a good bet, at least compared to the general population of my peers, to succeed in life. I went to college and continued to receive reassurances about my future. I went to (a very prestigious) graduate school, having been reassured by an actual, professional literary author who was mentoring me at the time that some day I would write books for a living.
Of course, this was all horseshit. I'm not saying it was ill-intentioned horseshit, but come on. My imminent disappointment began to make itself felt in my final term of graduate school. I seemed to know without knowing. I began to suffer from panic attacks. I developed what I called a "doom cloud"; it is difficult to describe what this was, other than to say that there was a constant, dark weight at the back of my mind. It wasn't composed of any specific or articulated thoughts -- just a layer of discontent and anxiety that was my constant, looming companion.
I finished my thesis and graduated with my masters, magna cum laude. One of my advisors at the time gave me the following career advice: "Clean up your thesis and then get an agent." Really. That was it. I tried to place a few of the stories from my thesis, but that went no where. I was unemployed for nine months while I lived with my (also unemployed) husband in what I can only describe as a garret in the ghetto. I applied for a variety of jobs, and finally was hired as a Clerk Typist II for the Allegheny County Department of Human Services. I answered the phone in a windowless room and performed minor clerical functions. Everyone assured me that this was a Good Job, because I had Benefits, and would someday retire with a Pension.
I honestly thought about killing myself almost every day. I had dark and violent thoughts I couldn't suppress. I concluded that I couldn't actually kill myself because 1) my mother and Ted would feel so bad, and 2) Jesus would be angry. So instead I would walk along the edge of the sidewalk at my lunch hour and to and from the bus stop and hope that I got hit by a bus.
I quit my job to go back to school for a career that I didn't particularly want. Everyone had told me that I absolutely couldn't quit such a Good Job, so I studied for and took the LSATs and got a scholarship to go to law school, because at the rate I was going, I was never going to get a bus to hit and kill me. Going Back to School is a socially acceptable reason to quit a job -- apparently, violent depression is not. More could be said about how fucked up that is, but I'll just leave it there for you to contemplate.
I ended up dropping out of law school because it was expensive and I didn't want to be a lawyer. But by then I was working part time as an adjunct, a job I like, and which I now do "full time" (at least for two-thirds of the year), so everything worked out. Plus I didn't dislike law school per se -- I like learning things, and the atmosphere of academia is like a warm blanket to me. My doom cloud finally dissipated.
My point is that all of this took a lot of readjustment. Once it became clear in my mid-20s that I was not going to Succeed as promised, I became very depressed, and the prospect of a lifetime at that Good Job made me, as I said, honestly want to die. I don't know if other people find it so difficult to live in the world, but it's clearly difficult for me. Finding a way to do it took a few years. I decided that my only ambition was to live a happy life (that was still guided at least in theory by moral principles). Eating curry and drinking wine and watching Star Trek make me happy: today I will eat curry and drink wine and watch Star Trek. Visiting with my friends makes me happy: today I will visit my friends. Reading books makes me happy: today I will read a book. Mission accomplished, mission accomplished, mission accomplished.
I am, basically, happy. I love my husband and our little family of cats. I have good friends and enjoy myself most days, though I wish we had more money -- but who doesn't?
But it is a very small life.
And small lives don't stand up to death well, do they? Someday you will wake up and not finish out the day. You will die, and nothing will matter to you again. And so what will have been the point of all that mattered previously? Even if it was difficult to live in the world, so what? You're dead now. So what if you found a way to be happy, eating curry and drinking wine? You're dead now. I realize that this is solipsism and nihilism, but there it is. I don't know -- I guess I just haven't been in a very good mood since Sunday.
P.S. Still haven't heard from God. After 30 years, I'm starting to feel a little stood up.
***
As to all of that fun stuff: on Thursday, Ted and I went to see Friends Sarah and Roger host a dance recital at their Arthur Murray studio. It reminded me of when I was little and took jazz dance classes at the YMCA, and we would have little performances for our parents periodically. Except this event was for grown ups. We chatted with Friends Saundra and Neilbert -- Neilbert even danced a rhumba! -- and got to see Roger's newly grown ponytail in action: he is bringing the Latin Heat, dear readers.
On Friday we had dinner with Friends Carley and Lindsi. It was Lindsi's birthday, and she decided to nom at Pusadee's Garden, in our hood. I was so, so happy to not cook dinner. Then they both came back to our place for some gin 'n' tonics, and finally Sarah stopped by, too.
 |
| Apparently, this is what tailgating looks like. |
On Saturday, I tailgated for the first time in my life. Ted and I and Carley and her boyfriend Chris and Friend Nick all had tickets to the Pirates game. I hate baseball: baseball is boring as shit. BUT. After the baseball game THERE WAS A BOYZ II MEN CONCERT. HOLY SHIT YINZ GUYS. ABC BBD. Chris has a big truck, and so we decided to tailgate before the game. This turns out to be basically sitting in a parking lot while eating and drinking. Carley brought fish sammiches with guacamole and cilantro; I brought ginger-stewed beets, haluski, and Doritos; Nick brought beer. We had an unusually healthy tailgate, is what I'm saying, but it was nice, and when Chris helped some other parking lot drinker jump his car, the guy gave him $20, which covered the price of our own parking. Sweet.
But then a cop told us we had to clear out of the parking lot, so we had to go into the actual baseball game. It was only the fourth inning. Good Lord, getting through that baseball was interminable, especially because I couldn't afford to buy All The Beer. SEVEN FUCKING DOLLARS FOR BUD LIGHT. Nick, I think feeling a deep sympathy for me, even though he loves baseball, actually bought me a $7 Bud Light. I literally was so grateful I teared up a little. I then scraped together $7 of my own for another godawful beer. These two beers got me through to the end of the baseball.
 |
| SO INTERMINABLE. |
The baseball was made even more interminable by the world's most obnoxious eight-year-old boy, who was sitting next to us. His mother was not paying any attention to him, natch, and every 15 or 20 minutes or so, he would want to exit the row, forcing all five of us to stand up while he filed past, obnoxiously shouting, "Excuse me! Excuse me! Coming through! Make way!" Then a few moments later he would realize that he had forgotten money, or whatever, and come back through. Then go back out again. Over and over again. So eventually, every time he came past, I said something hateful to him. "You're an asshole." "I hope you fall down the stairs." He finally responded to me when I said, "I hate you." "Why?" "Because you're obnoxious. GO SIT DOWN."
Yes, I was a bitch to an eight year old. No, I have no regrets.
But finally, my trials over, Boyz II Men began to perform. 30,000 people sang along to "On Bended Knee". They played all the hits. It was fantastic. The nostalgia was rolling out of PNC Park and wafting down the river, eastward into the night (in the direction of Motown Philly, of course). Ted had not anticipated any of this; he had no idea everyone my age in the park was going to wig the fuck out. It's kind of a weird phenomenon. It's not like I'd buy a new CD from Boyz II Men. Their moment is more or less over. But their moment was so formative of my and Carley's junior high school years that we sat through most of a Pirates baseball game so that we could sing along at the top of our lungs to "End of the Road". I don't know if this is good or bad for the Boyz, sad or reassuring. In any case, they've got an album of covers coming out. They sang a Journey cover on Saturday. If nothing else, they know their audience.
 |
| But Pittsburgh is The Best. Ever. |
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Eating Animals, or: I'm Lazy and Morally Weak, or: Seriously, What's Wrong with Me (Us)?
I didn't blog yesterday. In fact, I did exactly two things yesterday: watered the plants, and made dinner. Well, there were other actions taken, of course: the making of tea, texting, microwaving lunch. But basically nothing. I did start Dostoevsky's The Idiot, which frankly gave me a little existential crisis, because about half of the first 60 pages is all about the inevitability of death. I'm hoping a nascent wedding plot picks up soon, there.
What I avoided writing about yesterday was Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, which I finished on Sunday night. It's a book that's chiefly about the abuses of factory farming. Foer is in large part concerned with the ethics of how the vast, vast majority of animals are confined and slaughtered, though he also discusses the truly disgusting practices of modern agribusiness in terms of its consequences on human health (the nullification of antibiotics, the release into the environment of literally billions of metric tons of animal feces, etc.). Did you know that the USDA is perfectly cool with the poultry industry standard that 11% of the factory farmed "chicken" you buy is actually a slurry of fecal- and disease-infested waste water that the chicken absorbs in the vat cooling process? ELEVEN PERCENT. That is motherfucking disgusting. Buy air chilled chicken people -- if you take nothing else from today's blog, buy air chilled chicken.
As horrifying as eating that is, of course, it's nothing like what the animals suffer, which was already known to me. Most of what Foer reports is familiar to me, because I've spent many years worrying over the ethics of food, particularly in regards to animal welfare. Foer, though, is not primarily a journalist -- though he spent three years researching this book -- and as a novelist, his descriptions of the processes by which we obtain meat are perhaps particularly ... affective. I literally got sick to my stomach reading about how cows are often not killed at the start of the assembly line that dismantles them, and so will be conscious and screaming as they are skinned, as their legs are cut off, and as their stomachs are split and their ribs pulled apart. This is not some rare abuse or exception -- it is normal and usual. Chickens living out their entire lives in a space the size of a piece of paper -- never turning, never flapping, never standing -- sandwiched into cages into the wire mesh floors of which their feet literally grow, crushed on either side by other chickens with equally little space, while the waste of chickens stacked above rains down upon them. They are often -- often -- also not killed at the front of the assembly line, and so are frequently scalded alive. Perhaps worst is the pigs, because pigs are notoriously intelligent. Their suffering is intense and horrifying.
It's possible that you just don't care at all about how animals are treated, but I doubt that. Most people, I think, would agree that even if you intend to eat an animal -- and after a lot of consideration on the subject, I've decided, for myself, that there's nothing immoral about killing and eating an animal per se -- it is morally objectionable to torture it first. Think of the way people dote on their pets. Think of the outcry when a notorious animal abuser is caught and put on the local news. Granted those abusers exist, and I've known some people who would honestly remain unmoved to see an animal abused to death in front of them -- I grew up in one of America's fucked up small towns, after all. Crystal meth is a hell of a drug. But I think in general, we can all agree that even food animals deserve to be treated humanely. I mean, I swear before God and everyone reading this that if I came into my house to find an intruder threatening one of my kitty cats with real harm, if I had the power to do so, I would kill that son of a bitch and never, never regret it. So, you know, I know that I, at least, can get pretty intense about animals.
Look, my purpose here is not to exhort you to go vegetarian. It's more that I keep wondering why I'm NOT a vegetarian. I was a pescetarian -- I ate fish but not meat -- for four years, and often times that amounted to eating vegetarian, because fish is expensive and a pain in the ass to cook, and frankly, I only really like fish when it's in its sushi form, or if it's shellfish (crabs, shrimp, clams, mussels, etc.). A fish fillet has never excited me. My point is that I have known about the abuses of the factory farming industry for many years, and yet I, who would kill a human to protect my pet cats, who harbor the deepest hope that the lowest circles of hell are reserved for the people who abused my rescue cat Floyd, or Friend Katie's rescued dog, just keep eating shit like chicken wings.
Don't get me wrong, I make a half-hearted effort. I only buy organic eggs, which according to the research I've done, means a marginally better existence for the layer hens. ("Cage Free" or "All Natural" mean absolutely nothing -- you have to get the actual certified organic eggs, or eggs from a trusted local source.) I always buy my chicken thighs from Whole Foods, because they are marked with this little sticker that says the thighs have an animal welfare rating of "2". I gather this means that the chickens had an "enriched" environment, though it's hard to discover what this actually means. I do know that factory farmed chicken -- which makes up 99.9% of poultry in the US (no, you didn't read that wrong) -- does not qualify even for a rating of 1, so I am comforted by that. (Here's a piece on the system from the Chicago Tribune, and here is the system as described by the group who created it, a nonprofit called Global Animal Partnership.)
But here's the thing, yinz guys. I don't just eat Whole Foods chicken thighs. First, of course, there was the exchange from Monday's blog with the guy behind the counter at Parma. It sounds like their prosciutto pigs might count for an OK animal welfare rating, but clearly, the sausage pigs wouldn't. And clearly, if I'm out at Sidelines for chicken wings, they can't sell a dozen of them for $6.75 if the chickens have been treated well. There's no honest way for me to say that it's morally acceptable to pay for and eat an animal that's been horrendously abused, and yet, boy, do I ever. In general, I don't consider myself a bad person, but here we are.
You don't need meat to live, I assure you, and in fact, many studies have shown vegetarian diets to be healthier than omnivorous ones. What Foer doesn't account for sufficiently in his book is the cultural weight of eating. He takes stabs at describing how starting the new tradition of refraining from meat for ethical reasons could be just as rewarding as the old family traditions surrounding food, but frankly, that's horseshit, and I kind of think he knows it. A lot of how we interact with friend and family, how we identify ourselves as part of a culture, is wrapped up in food. I'm not saying that justifies anything, I'm just saying it's harder to give up some foods than he makes it sound, for a variety of reasons that aren't all about taste and satisfying one's oral fixations. (Though it dismays me how easily my morality is put aside because bacon tastes good.)
Ted -- who is a kind-hearted man, and who is sympathetic to this ethical plight -- and I have thought of how we might array ourselves as ethical eaters. Invest in a used chest freezer for the basement; purchase meat from regional farms that have good standards of care for their animals (there are a surprising number of such, if you're willing to make a day trip out of buying half a hog or a quarter of beef); refrain from eating meat when out, unless we're at the kind of classy joint where they can tell you where the meat came from (of which there are a good enough number in Pittsburgh, for sure). It's easy to buy nicer eggs and kindly procured milk -- the cheese, though, the cheese is a problem. Who the hell knows where fine cheeses come from, honestly?
But we never seem to put this plan into action. I think one part of the problem is the effort involved: it's not just laziness, it's that living gently in the world is real work, and when you also have, you know, work to go to, plus the work of keeping a home, maintaining relationships, and etc., adding more work on top of that can be daunting. And while just giving up animal products might be the "easiest" solution, I'm here to tell you that being a vegan sucks. It sucks. There is usually a vegetarian option on any given menu -- there is NEVER a vegan option, and making vegan shit at home is boring and laborious, unless all you do is eat processed patties, which are sort of gross since you just know those things are a chemical shit storm, and frankly, eating vegan all the time is deeply unsatisfying, I don't care what anyone has told you, and the two times in my life I've gone vegan (for Lent) I emerged unusually pale and tired and somewhat angry.
Another thing that makes me angry is the prevailing economic, cultural, and government conditions that make it this much work to eat reasonably ethically. How in the hell much governmental corruption is required for the USDA to allow feces to be classified as a "commercial blemish" so poultry slaughterers are allowed to sell chickens whose intestines have been split open in the butchering process, coating them in disease-ridden shit? How disconnected from the world and basic compassion are we as a society that almost every animal that is slaughtered in America is tortured first -- which was absolutely not the case as late as the middle of the 20th century, when factory farming began to supplant traditional animal husbandry? How heinous is the late capitalist economy that no concern for animal, human, or environmental welfare (let me tell you what miles and miles of lagoons of pig shit do to a watershed sometime) is permitted to stand between the owners of production and their rich-ass shareholders and the last possible cent of profit?
I don't know. I've lost the thread of where this blog is going, I think. I'm a lazy, morally weak person who keeps eating meat even though I am well aware of the horrifying conditions that most of our meat-providing animals live and die in, as well as how absolutely disgusting it is to put these carcasses into my body -- ELEVEN PERCENT WASTE WATER, people. Absolutely nothing excuses it; my mind just paves it over, the way it naturally does all death. I'm not sure how other people handle this question. Well, I know how Jonathan Safran Foer does -- he's a vegetarian.
What I avoided writing about yesterday was Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, which I finished on Sunday night. It's a book that's chiefly about the abuses of factory farming. Foer is in large part concerned with the ethics of how the vast, vast majority of animals are confined and slaughtered, though he also discusses the truly disgusting practices of modern agribusiness in terms of its consequences on human health (the nullification of antibiotics, the release into the environment of literally billions of metric tons of animal feces, etc.). Did you know that the USDA is perfectly cool with the poultry industry standard that 11% of the factory farmed "chicken" you buy is actually a slurry of fecal- and disease-infested waste water that the chicken absorbs in the vat cooling process? ELEVEN PERCENT. That is motherfucking disgusting. Buy air chilled chicken people -- if you take nothing else from today's blog, buy air chilled chicken.
As horrifying as eating that is, of course, it's nothing like what the animals suffer, which was already known to me. Most of what Foer reports is familiar to me, because I've spent many years worrying over the ethics of food, particularly in regards to animal welfare. Foer, though, is not primarily a journalist -- though he spent three years researching this book -- and as a novelist, his descriptions of the processes by which we obtain meat are perhaps particularly ... affective. I literally got sick to my stomach reading about how cows are often not killed at the start of the assembly line that dismantles them, and so will be conscious and screaming as they are skinned, as their legs are cut off, and as their stomachs are split and their ribs pulled apart. This is not some rare abuse or exception -- it is normal and usual. Chickens living out their entire lives in a space the size of a piece of paper -- never turning, never flapping, never standing -- sandwiched into cages into the wire mesh floors of which their feet literally grow, crushed on either side by other chickens with equally little space, while the waste of chickens stacked above rains down upon them. They are often -- often -- also not killed at the front of the assembly line, and so are frequently scalded alive. Perhaps worst is the pigs, because pigs are notoriously intelligent. Their suffering is intense and horrifying.
It's possible that you just don't care at all about how animals are treated, but I doubt that. Most people, I think, would agree that even if you intend to eat an animal -- and after a lot of consideration on the subject, I've decided, for myself, that there's nothing immoral about killing and eating an animal per se -- it is morally objectionable to torture it first. Think of the way people dote on their pets. Think of the outcry when a notorious animal abuser is caught and put on the local news. Granted those abusers exist, and I've known some people who would honestly remain unmoved to see an animal abused to death in front of them -- I grew up in one of America's fucked up small towns, after all. Crystal meth is a hell of a drug. But I think in general, we can all agree that even food animals deserve to be treated humanely. I mean, I swear before God and everyone reading this that if I came into my house to find an intruder threatening one of my kitty cats with real harm, if I had the power to do so, I would kill that son of a bitch and never, never regret it. So, you know, I know that I, at least, can get pretty intense about animals.
Look, my purpose here is not to exhort you to go vegetarian. It's more that I keep wondering why I'm NOT a vegetarian. I was a pescetarian -- I ate fish but not meat -- for four years, and often times that amounted to eating vegetarian, because fish is expensive and a pain in the ass to cook, and frankly, I only really like fish when it's in its sushi form, or if it's shellfish (crabs, shrimp, clams, mussels, etc.). A fish fillet has never excited me. My point is that I have known about the abuses of the factory farming industry for many years, and yet I, who would kill a human to protect my pet cats, who harbor the deepest hope that the lowest circles of hell are reserved for the people who abused my rescue cat Floyd, or Friend Katie's rescued dog, just keep eating shit like chicken wings.
Don't get me wrong, I make a half-hearted effort. I only buy organic eggs, which according to the research I've done, means a marginally better existence for the layer hens. ("Cage Free" or "All Natural" mean absolutely nothing -- you have to get the actual certified organic eggs, or eggs from a trusted local source.) I always buy my chicken thighs from Whole Foods, because they are marked with this little sticker that says the thighs have an animal welfare rating of "2". I gather this means that the chickens had an "enriched" environment, though it's hard to discover what this actually means. I do know that factory farmed chicken -- which makes up 99.9% of poultry in the US (no, you didn't read that wrong) -- does not qualify even for a rating of 1, so I am comforted by that. (Here's a piece on the system from the Chicago Tribune, and here is the system as described by the group who created it, a nonprofit called Global Animal Partnership.)
But here's the thing, yinz guys. I don't just eat Whole Foods chicken thighs. First, of course, there was the exchange from Monday's blog with the guy behind the counter at Parma. It sounds like their prosciutto pigs might count for an OK animal welfare rating, but clearly, the sausage pigs wouldn't. And clearly, if I'm out at Sidelines for chicken wings, they can't sell a dozen of them for $6.75 if the chickens have been treated well. There's no honest way for me to say that it's morally acceptable to pay for and eat an animal that's been horrendously abused, and yet, boy, do I ever. In general, I don't consider myself a bad person, but here we are.
You don't need meat to live, I assure you, and in fact, many studies have shown vegetarian diets to be healthier than omnivorous ones. What Foer doesn't account for sufficiently in his book is the cultural weight of eating. He takes stabs at describing how starting the new tradition of refraining from meat for ethical reasons could be just as rewarding as the old family traditions surrounding food, but frankly, that's horseshit, and I kind of think he knows it. A lot of how we interact with friend and family, how we identify ourselves as part of a culture, is wrapped up in food. I'm not saying that justifies anything, I'm just saying it's harder to give up some foods than he makes it sound, for a variety of reasons that aren't all about taste and satisfying one's oral fixations. (Though it dismays me how easily my morality is put aside because bacon tastes good.)
Ted -- who is a kind-hearted man, and who is sympathetic to this ethical plight -- and I have thought of how we might array ourselves as ethical eaters. Invest in a used chest freezer for the basement; purchase meat from regional farms that have good standards of care for their animals (there are a surprising number of such, if you're willing to make a day trip out of buying half a hog or a quarter of beef); refrain from eating meat when out, unless we're at the kind of classy joint where they can tell you where the meat came from (of which there are a good enough number in Pittsburgh, for sure). It's easy to buy nicer eggs and kindly procured milk -- the cheese, though, the cheese is a problem. Who the hell knows where fine cheeses come from, honestly?
But we never seem to put this plan into action. I think one part of the problem is the effort involved: it's not just laziness, it's that living gently in the world is real work, and when you also have, you know, work to go to, plus the work of keeping a home, maintaining relationships, and etc., adding more work on top of that can be daunting. And while just giving up animal products might be the "easiest" solution, I'm here to tell you that being a vegan sucks. It sucks. There is usually a vegetarian option on any given menu -- there is NEVER a vegan option, and making vegan shit at home is boring and laborious, unless all you do is eat processed patties, which are sort of gross since you just know those things are a chemical shit storm, and frankly, eating vegan all the time is deeply unsatisfying, I don't care what anyone has told you, and the two times in my life I've gone vegan (for Lent) I emerged unusually pale and tired and somewhat angry.
Another thing that makes me angry is the prevailing economic, cultural, and government conditions that make it this much work to eat reasonably ethically. How in the hell much governmental corruption is required for the USDA to allow feces to be classified as a "commercial blemish" so poultry slaughterers are allowed to sell chickens whose intestines have been split open in the butchering process, coating them in disease-ridden shit? How disconnected from the world and basic compassion are we as a society that almost every animal that is slaughtered in America is tortured first -- which was absolutely not the case as late as the middle of the 20th century, when factory farming began to supplant traditional animal husbandry? How heinous is the late capitalist economy that no concern for animal, human, or environmental welfare (let me tell you what miles and miles of lagoons of pig shit do to a watershed sometime) is permitted to stand between the owners of production and their rich-ass shareholders and the last possible cent of profit?
I don't know. I've lost the thread of where this blog is going, I think. I'm a lazy, morally weak person who keeps eating meat even though I am well aware of the horrifying conditions that most of our meat-providing animals live and die in, as well as how absolutely disgusting it is to put these carcasses into my body -- ELEVEN PERCENT WASTE WATER, people. Absolutely nothing excuses it; my mind just paves it over, the way it naturally does all death. I'm not sure how other people handle this question. Well, I know how Jonathan Safran Foer does -- he's a vegetarian.
 |
| My extremely delicious homemade green curry. Maybe next time I'll leave out the chicken thighs? |
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Death
Today started out ... varying. On one hand, I've had a backache for 2+ days now. My spine is my enemy. I've had surgery on my lower back twice, and it and I are still in contention. It's the sort of thing one just has to live with, and I do, but, y'know, allow me a couple of sentences to bitch about it.
But the day perked up when Friend Nick asked me join him for Indian lunch buffet, this time at People's. That is two Indian lunch buffet lunches in a row, which is #Winning. People's is very good, but variable: by this I mean, some days you go and it's good and spicy, and some days it's bland -- there's no way to know until you're there. Today, unfortunately, was bland, though the food was still good, just too mild for the likes of me. However, two things about People's that are always good: it's $8 even, and they put out delicious chai with the buffet. Mmm, chai tea. (Yes, Friend Sarah and I reviewed People's for the Great Indian Buffet Tour.)
Plus also I got to have a nice long chat with Nick, who is one of my best friends, and whom I always enjoy seeing and chatting with.
After that, I spent the afternoon reading Atonement by Ian McEwan. It was recommended to me by Friend/Boss David, who raved about it. So far I find it compelling, but also flawed, in ways that I plan to discuss when I finish it. Wait for the review.
The big event of the day, though, was visiting Friends Katie and Randy at the viewing of Katie's father, who passed away very unexpectedly this Monday. I felt helpless, and mostly talked to Randy (her husband), who is the sort to make jokes in the face of sorrow, which is also my wont. I don't know what to do around death, in part because I inherited my mother's stolidness on the subject: they're dead now, what was there is gone, and so that is that. But I realize that other people aren't like this -- which is probably a good thing, because my mother and I might be dancing the line of sociopathy on this one -- and since it's a friend, I want to help. But how? I didn't know what to do with my hands, and I kept sweating, which I do when I'm nervous. Katie said she wouldn't turn down a casserole -- it was all I could think of. Mumford & Sons, which is a band I like but isn't necessarily profound or anything, has a song containing the lyric, "In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die." Something maudlin comes after that in the song, but I kept thinking of just those two phrases today. That's all there is to it. I think the only way most people can live their lives is to forget, from moment to moment and day to day, that they will some day die -- and even when you have it put in front of you -- in this body I live and in this body I will die -- you still can't actually embrace it; something in your brain turns it aside and paves over it, over and over again. At least, that's how it works for me.
After the viewing -- Me to Katie: "We're gonna head out, we're helping your husband be inappropriate" -- Ted and I got in the car and drove, literally, across the street, to D's Six Pax and Dogz, the one on Northern Pike in Monroeville. It's not as good as the D's in Regent Square: the pizza wasn't as good (though it certainly wasn't bad) and the service was indifferent, plus the entire place had the faint odor of raw potatoes to it. But Ted and I ordered a large "Three Little Pigs" pizza -- sausage, pepperoni, and bacon -- to, as we put it, spite death. Because what else can one do? I've paved you over, today, Death, with pepperoni.
But the day perked up when Friend Nick asked me join him for Indian lunch buffet, this time at People's. That is two Indian lunch buffet lunches in a row, which is #Winning. People's is very good, but variable: by this I mean, some days you go and it's good and spicy, and some days it's bland -- there's no way to know until you're there. Today, unfortunately, was bland, though the food was still good, just too mild for the likes of me. However, two things about People's that are always good: it's $8 even, and they put out delicious chai with the buffet. Mmm, chai tea. (Yes, Friend Sarah and I reviewed People's for the Great Indian Buffet Tour.)
Plus also I got to have a nice long chat with Nick, who is one of my best friends, and whom I always enjoy seeing and chatting with.
After that, I spent the afternoon reading Atonement by Ian McEwan. It was recommended to me by Friend/Boss David, who raved about it. So far I find it compelling, but also flawed, in ways that I plan to discuss when I finish it. Wait for the review.
The big event of the day, though, was visiting Friends Katie and Randy at the viewing of Katie's father, who passed away very unexpectedly this Monday. I felt helpless, and mostly talked to Randy (her husband), who is the sort to make jokes in the face of sorrow, which is also my wont. I don't know what to do around death, in part because I inherited my mother's stolidness on the subject: they're dead now, what was there is gone, and so that is that. But I realize that other people aren't like this -- which is probably a good thing, because my mother and I might be dancing the line of sociopathy on this one -- and since it's a friend, I want to help. But how? I didn't know what to do with my hands, and I kept sweating, which I do when I'm nervous. Katie said she wouldn't turn down a casserole -- it was all I could think of. Mumford & Sons, which is a band I like but isn't necessarily profound or anything, has a song containing the lyric, "In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die." Something maudlin comes after that in the song, but I kept thinking of just those two phrases today. That's all there is to it. I think the only way most people can live their lives is to forget, from moment to moment and day to day, that they will some day die -- and even when you have it put in front of you -- in this body I live and in this body I will die -- you still can't actually embrace it; something in your brain turns it aside and paves over it, over and over again. At least, that's how it works for me.
 |
| Take that, mortality. |
After the viewing -- Me to Katie: "We're gonna head out, we're helping your husband be inappropriate" -- Ted and I got in the car and drove, literally, across the street, to D's Six Pax and Dogz, the one on Northern Pike in Monroeville. It's not as good as the D's in Regent Square: the pizza wasn't as good (though it certainly wasn't bad) and the service was indifferent, plus the entire place had the faint odor of raw potatoes to it. But Ted and I ordered a large "Three Little Pigs" pizza -- sausage, pepperoni, and bacon -- to, as we put it, spite death. Because what else can one do? I've paved you over, today, Death, with pepperoni.
 |
| A kitten picture, since things were getting a little heavy, there. Did you know Matilda is laser-equipped? |
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