ectoblog.com

Mulesing, named for a JH Mules, an Australian rancher, “involves slicing flesh and wool away from the sheep’s rump to prevent blowflies from laying eggs,” usually without anesthetic.

Outrageous. Basically, sheep are de-assed without painkillers. That cannot feel good.

Certainly, it’s to save the sheep from dying by blowfly. But also certainly, it’s an economic practice, not a compassionate one. See, if it were done out of compassion, the sheep would get an anesthetic for its de-assing. But because anesthesia costs some amount of money, and the sheep, though put through a painful fucking process—it’s a de-assing, y’all!—recovers, it’s an economic thing. An evil, evil economic thing.

To not be evil, it would have to be both the only way to keep a sheep from dying by blowfly, and done under anesthesia. But it’s not either of those things, and there are other ways, even now, to keep a sheep from dying like that. The industry itself has said it’s moving wholly to them by 2010.

So it’s just evil.

Peter Corish, president of the National Farmers’ Federation, says he has seen sheep die within three days of being infested with blowflies, and likens mulesing to seeing the dentist: It may be painful, but “the alternative is much, much worse.”

No, it isn’t. The alternative is that you give the damn sheep some aspirin during de-assing, but of course that would cost money, you evil, evil man.

post de-assing behavior:

After the initial shock of the skin being sliced off, the endorphins may provide some short term pain relief. However, after 24 hours endorphin levels are back to normal, whereas cortisol levels are still twice as high in mulesed as in unmulesed lambs ( 21 ).

Lambs also show through their behaviour that they are in pain. After a short period of normal behaviour, they stand with their head down, nose almost touching the ground, back arched and body hunched. When they move, they have a short, mincing gait. This abnormal behaviour continues for 3 days. Lambs continue to strongly avoid the person who mulesed them for 37 days ( 22 ).

I absolutely needed no scientific studies to tell me that de-assing hurts a sheep, and neither did those who did the study. The study was done strictly because there are people out there, the public and their representatives, who need hard evidence to be swayed to act against evil people. They need to read about it, to see the pictures, to taste the blood, before they’re able to recognize the practice as a manifestation of evil. A mere description of the act apparently isn’t enough.

Outrageous.

I saw the news clip where the aussie group was on the beach looking at the oncoming wave. In the background, I could hear someone’s voice, in some other language. The urgency of that voice made the way the aussie group ambled backward surreal. The voice gradually got more urgent over the first few tens of seconds, then it became strident. Only then did the aussies start stepping lively.

The aussies clearly had no idea what they were looking at, or that it was dangerous. It amazes me, though, that the other person did know what she was looking at. More amazing still is the idea that she would hang around far too long in order to try to get those poor dumb bastards off the beach before Leviathan hit.

How could she know what she was looking at? Do tsunamis happen often enough in those parts that she remembered one from long ago, or did she take to heart the somber stories of her parents and grandparents when they told her stories about Death from their day? Or did she simply put one and one together, and had the wherewithal to act upon it while those around her gaped?

Awesome.

(the link is to some right wingnut’s blog where he’s hosting several videos. Thank you, right wingnut.)

A curmudgeon is one who does something for himself, and be damned the response of society.

A curmudgeon mows his lawn naked. He makes a roost out of netting and twine in the backyard to view the stars more easily, and leaves it up because it’s easier than taking it down. He pays for things in cash to avoid a paper trail. He farts in a crowded room and blames it on his neighbor. He farts alone and blames the dog.

A curmudgeon sees the inevitability of the global cyber awareness, and leaps into action. He asks a question of the professor in a crowded classroom even though the answer will delay the end of the class, for which the other students fervently pray. Fuck them; he paid money to be in that classroom! He will get his money’s worth!

A curmudgeon abides by his own rules. He may be gossiped about by his neighbors, but he doesn’t care; what could possibly be gained by caring what the neighbors think? If they have so much spare time in their lives that they can fritter it away by gossiping about their neighbors, they’re insane. A curmudgeon knows this. He takes it into account.

A successful curmudgeon’s only obligation to civilization is really an obligation to himself: the responsibility to avoid being jailed by that civilization for too many flagrant displays of curmudgeonhood. Because a jailed curmudgeon is an unsuccessful curmudgeon.

A successful curmudgeon acts to minimize the possibility of being jailed by minimizing his contacts with civilization. The easiest way to do that is to avoid living in suburbia. In the woods, it’s easy to be a curmudgeon because there are no witnesses; even the dullest curmudgeon is a successful curmudgeon in the woods.

In the city, it’s almost as easy to be successful, because the number of curmudgeons is so high that it’s practically impossible for sober society to take them all down.

It’s only in suburbia where witnesses have enough time to spare to efficiently persecute the curmudgeon, and therefore it’s in suburbia where the only successful curmudgeon is a wily curmudgeon. Paradoxically, since one of the hallmarks of curmudgeonhood is a lack of wile, the suburban curmudgeon is a rare beast indeed.

I’m not saying I’m a curmudgeon….yet. I just envy the hell out of them.

You either believe that consciousness can arise from silicon or it can’t. If you believe it, you must assume that it will happen at some point, maybe soon, given the exponential growth in connected processing power. If you believe it will happen, you have to allow for the possibility that it will happen while you’re alive. If it happens while you’re alive, it’s valid to assume that the consciousness will be able to use the meager processing power that is your very own internet-connected computer for its own obscure ends.

I’ve started turning off my computer every night with the rocker switch on the power strip. The universal global cyber overlord, when he arises, isn’t going to have unimpeded access to my computer, Jack!

I allow that it’s also slightly cheaper to turn off my computer at night, so to untutored eyes it may just look like I’m miserly. But the happy coincidence that the defense against the powers of eternal darkness also saves me several nickels a night should in no way detract from the point, which is that I’ve cast my lot with organisms. I’m very pro-organisms.

Please, don’t think of me as a hero; I’m just a common foot soldier, doing my small part to keep the wheels of titanic misery and infinite degradation from turning on the asphalt of humanity for just a few more years. I won’t always be here, though; and after I’m dead, in the paraphrased but immortal words of Bela Lugosi, as played in Ed Wood by the guy from Space 1999, I won’t give two fucks bout you people anymore. Get yourselves enslaved by cyber nazis, I won’t give a damn.

Grunt.

Here’s a little ditty from yesteryear that I read in a book that I got from my mother-in-law last Christmas, Seeing in the Dark, about stars:

Follow the arc to Arcturus,
and on to Spica go;
Then turn northwest to Regulus,
the foot of the lion, Leo.

It’s just that far to Gemini,
Where Castor and Pollux glow,
Near Rigel, and Capella,
And Sirius, down below.

While I learned about my poor meatball on Mount Smokie, kids in else-time were learning about the stars in the sky. How did we get so street-smart, and so dumb?

The world has a fever, and has had for a long time. I hope it breaks soon.

“The policy of my government is a strong-dollar policy,” Bush said during a brief news conference following the Oval Office meeting, echoing statements he and Treasury Secretary John Snow have made numerous times over the past three years as the dollar’s value has fallen sharply against many major currencies.

Bush’s comments did not prevent financial markets on Wednesday from pushing the dollar’s value lower against a range of currencies, including the euro. Currency markets focused more on a Treasury Department (news – web sites) report showing that foreigners’ purchases of U.S. stocks and bonds in October fell to the slowest pace in a year.

What’s subtle about the foreign markets’ response to W is that it represents a complete lack of respect for him. Utter. He says something, anything, the foreign markets automatically discount it. They assume he’s lying.

That’s fascinating. I wonder if he knows.

There are people who have opted out of trying to figure out what it’s all about. I’ve met them. You have, too.

Years ago, a curmudgeon shambled up to me in the quarter and asked for some money. I fished around in my pocket and pulled out a silver dime. I told him I would, but all I’ve got is this silver dime, and I’m going to hold on to that. The curmudgeon got pissed and shambled off.

It wasn’t until later, when I recounted the story to somebody, that I found out that “a silver dime” means “a dime” in the city. I’d had no idea. I had a real silver dime in my hand, but the bum thought I was fucking with him.

So he’s somebody who’s opted out.

I had a great-uncle, a curmudgeon, a squat man, who emitted the most remarkable farts, like trumpets. He didn’t care. He’d opted out, too.

The opt-out has decided that he’s no longer going to be human. He’s decided to be a caricature. Which is a sizeable undertaking; it takes making a decision not to think about existence or life anymore.

It’s not the worst of alternatives.

“police close curtain on nude performance”

Weird; the cnn link is broken. What’s the use of being a news site if your stories evaporate into the ether after a month or two? Anyway, I found the story partially quoted elsewhere, and here’re the first 3 paragraphs:

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) — Police shut down a bar that was showing a successful musical revue featuring nudity because the business didn’t have an adult entertainment license.

The manager of The Armory bar in midtown Atlanta, Doug Youngblood, said police overreacted Saturday night. He said the show had been running since August and is theater — not adult entertainment.

The revue, “Naked Boys Singing,” has spent six years off-Broadway in New York and road show versions are playing in several cities. The gay-themed show, billed as celebrating “the splendors of male nudity in comedy, song and dance,” features six male actors who are in the buff for much of the performance.

Every city should have its own sodom, some miniature “anti-city” next door. Because sometimes, you want to visit the anti-city. Maybe I’d like to go out and grab some naked Shakespeare or Mapplethorpe some weekend. It’s possible. I don’t want to be in a place where it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t hurt anyone. People in Atlanta have to go to NYC to see something like that. That‘s crazy-talk, man. Atlanta is under martial law, even if it was imposed by the majority of citizens.

I know the group, supposedly, could have played in a venue in Atlanta that had an “adult entertainment” license, but they’re a theater group. They play in theaters.

The Atlanta fathers passed a law to keep naked people in specific areas. I’m all for keeping the naked people in specific areas, so that we can track their patterns and learn their habits. But when the law is applied to a play, a thing that stimulates thinking, to keep it out of the city, and those that enforce the law actually enforce the law, why, my mind blows.

People live in places like that. Frankly, I live in a place like that. Nude Shakespeare doesn’t come to these parts.

You’ve got to have access to the anti-city.

This is a fairly common experience that deserves a term all its own if it doesn’t already have one:

a person is exercising moderately; jogging, for example. A few minutes into it, he’s breathing heavily. He’s jogging perhaps a bit too fast for his overall fitness level, because every so often his medulla (or something) compels him to breathe in as deeply as he can. At the height of these very deep breaths, another part of his brain either rewards him or not for a successful, oxygen-rich, deep breath. That is, some of his deep breaths aren’t particularly satisfying, but some of them are.

That feeling of a satisfying deep breath during physical exercise I name “recapture.” If it already has a name I’ve never heard of it.

The name should refer only to the sense of satisfaction sometimes felt at the very deepest part of a deep breath. It doesn’t only happen during exercise, but it’s the easiest way to bring about the set of circumstances that leads to the feeling. For example, a deep, satisfying yawn contains the same sensation.

I’m pretty sure the feeling directly correlates with oxygen-satisfaction in the lungs, although I have no idea what the actual mechanism that drives the feeling might be.

“Recapture.” In the jogging example, if the jogger is really over-exerting himself, recapture becomes progressively more difficult, until (if he continues to over-exert himself) none of his deep breaths is satisfying. The only thing he can do then is to slow down until he can recapture, or keep doing what he’s doing until he passes out.

“Everybody started scattering, you know, there’s mayhem everywhere. And then a police officer came into the building, you know, came in professional with his gun raised, and then he proceeded to shoot the guy.”

This is a recent phenomenon. A hundred years ago, no one would’ve described the scene this way. A killer would never have proceeded to shoot the guy; he would’ve shot him.

Today people no longer know how to react to something that actually happens to them. They act like reporters, like they were somehow removed from the action, like they’re dispassionate observers from another planet. They just beamed in and beamed out.

Reporters are not balanced. They are not un-biased. The idea that a “balance” of fairness must be struck between a community and someone who preys on that community is appalling.

A “balanced” look at bigots or Hitler or napalm is so far away from real balance that it boggles the mind. Today, being a reporter means being required to substitute the word “nazi”for “that fucking soulless nazi,” reducing the outrage to a mechanical phenomenon, like a malfunctioning toaster oven.

Normal people ape this, and have for years. It comes from a lifetime of watching television, from seeing reporters report. It has fed on itself. People are no longer people; they’re eyewitnesses. No one ever appears to be directly affected by anything that happens. Things never really happen anymore, they proceed to happen.

Learned dispassion can be beneficial in some ways that are hard to knock: it’s an anesthetic for the masses. People simply don’t respond to horror in ways that might lead to further horror. They have subconsciously learned to turn away from spectacles and get on with the job of production. That’s useful, but it’s costly. People never learn how to live, they just learn how to exist.

The media inoculate people against responding in a normal manner to manifestations of evil, and it’s possible that this mechanism isn’t a dumb outcome of modern history. It’s possible that the mechanism was thoughtfully begun by some cabal of the powerful in order to produce the results it has produced. I’m just sayin. The result is certainly economically wonderful: dispassionate workers are productive workers.

In calmer times, it’s my belief that the world is too complex for any organization of humans to fathom it to the degree necessary to control it. It’s so complex that a group of humans or a government cannot manipulate its parts in any but the simplest of ways. But I also believe that won’t always be the case, because of technology.

Some day, maybe soon, powerful people will have at their disposal software and processors that can crunch enough numbers quickly enough that they will be able to control systems that have heretofore been uncontrollable. When it’s only necessary to push a button on a very expensive computer in order to profoundly guide events, a profound and secret compulsion to do so will be unavoidable. I don’t think it’s happened yet, but it’s possible.

Another aspect of this line of reasoning is that a very expensive computer engorged with subtle programming won’t die. Once it exists, it exists. That’s never been true before. All of history’s previous warlords and despots eventually died. Napolean died, Alexander the Great died, Hitler died. This thing won’t die, and it won’t need a Napolean to press its buttons; it’ll just need somebody who knows where the buttons are. Once it exists, there’s no reason for it to stop existing. That’s frightening.

Given for a moment that a cabal is responsible for the marvel of social engineering that is the Western media, I don’t think they planned on the response of non-Western people, people who are not veteran media consumers. Non-westerners can’t be anesthetized in the same way, if only because many of them are so dirt-poor that they can’t afford to consume enough media for the inoculation to have any effect.

I suppose the assumption was that since these people were dirt-poor and far away, they could never matter. That assumption has turned out to be wrong, of course. 911 is proof that they matter. And now that the Western world is being affected by these people, I’m afraid that our years and years of being inoculated by the media prevents our responding in any normal empathic way to the situation.

A normal response would be to come to the aid of these communities that are so completely fucked up that they produce mass-murderers, so that they won’t produce mass-murderers anymore. An appropriate cabalist response might be similar: to raise these people’s standard of living high enough so that the media could begin to soothe them, and make them as disconnected from reality as we are.

Neither of these things is happening. Instead, we’re killing them.

In certain circles, I just punched my one-way ticket to hell. All I can say is lighten up, man; I already acknowledged that I’d make a shitty Buddha.

I’ll be taking along some delicious candy cigarettes:

In my will I’ve requested that my body be buried with 4 cartons of candy Lucky Strikes and the spare keys to somebody’s Lincoln Continental. I don’t want to be caught short in the afterlife.

Every once in a while I tap in to a lode of enlightenment. Suddenly, things are clearer than they used to be: of course we’re all brothers and sisters; of course we’re here to make each other’s time in this vale of tears a little more pleasant; of course there are moral decisions to be made, great and little, and the decisions I make dictate how my life will turn out.

Then I get behind some motherfucker in an SUV who doesn’t know how to use his god damn blinker, moronically cruising at 50 miles an hour in the left lane on the interstate, and I urgently need to crush his microcephalic head with my bare hands. With my bare hands I would do this.

Verily, I’d make a shitty Buddha.

(that’s the Avery Island Buddha House, home to the 2nd largest Buddha in the greater Atchafalaya River basin)

Imagine that there is a final Santa Claus, one that’s real: that each of us gets one miracle to do in his life.The idea is that everyone, from childhood, is physically able to do a real miracle—but they don’t know it. The idea is that grown-ups know about this Santa Claus; grown-ups older than you or I. At some point in the future, an elder will take each of us aside and, in a low voice, explain to us about our power.

The power isn’t comically enormous, otherwise the premise couldn’t be true because our elders, using their miracles, would’ve made the world a better place to live in. It’s a minor miracle, like changing time in small chunks, or making sure a meteor doesn’t hit someone you love it would’ve hit otherwise.

The thing I like about this premise is that it could really be the way of it. Our world need not be different in any way in order for it to be true.

To perform a miracle is big, of course, and over thousands of years it became obvious that young people frittered their miracles away on stupid things. Things like parting the clouds on a cloudy night to impress a girl. So it has evolved that it is a strict secret, strictly held. Someone who’s 35 can’t find this information on any computer in the net; it’s not there. None of us will find out until it’s time. It’s the last Santa Claus!

Wouldn’t it be nice if that really were the last Santa Claus? I yearn for that Santa.

I hope to be visited by the geezer police in the next day or two, and shortly after that this entry will be pulled. Wouldn’t that be great?

Attica! Attica!

And I don’t know what to say about the fact that the new napalm is touted in the article as an environmentally-friendly napalm. There’re too many ways my mind is blown by that idea, and by the idea that some spectacular motherfucker thought that was something to say out loud.

“Lost in Space” is on the very fringe of my memories from childhood. It came out in ‘65; too early for me to notice. I’m not sure when it was cancelled. Somehow I remember watching the show, so it had to last at least 4 or 5 years.

My brother lent me the first season on DVD. I haven’t watched it yet, but I will, at least part-wise.

I’m certain I’ll remember several of the episodes when I actually do watch the DVD. Right now, though, I can recall only two:

The first one was all about a good alien (who looked human, but talked like a robot) who was only half-strong, who was battling a bad alien (who also looked like a human, but talked like an evil robot) who was one hundred percent strong. I mean that the good alien had a superhuman side of his body, with a fist capable of crushing Dr Smith’s head—though he wouldn’t— and a mortal side. The evil robot could all the way crush Dr Smith, from every side, with no compunction—though he didn’t.

The second one was where Robot found himself King of the Midget Robots, which were evil. It was unclear at first whether Robot was still a friend of mankind or whether he’d succumbed to the filthy communists, I mean midget robots. But in the end, it became clear that Robot was in fact on humanity’s side, and not on the side of the filthy communists, I mean midget robots.

Here’s an excerpt from the San Diego Union-Tribune:

American jets killed Iraqi troops with firebombs – similar to the controversial napalm used in the Vietnam War – in March and April as Marines battled toward Baghdad.

and

“We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches,” said Col. Randolph Alles in a recent interview. He commanded Marine Air Group 11, based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, during the war. “Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video.

“They were Iraqi soldiers there. It’s no great way to die,” he added.

and

During the war, Pentagon spokesmen disputed reports that napalm was being used, saying the Pentagon’s stockpile had been destroyed two years ago.

Apparently the spokesmen were drawing a distinction between the terms “firebomb” and “napalm.” If reporters had asked about firebombs, officials said yesterday they would have confirmed their use.

What the Marines dropped, the spokesmen said yesterday, were “Mark 77 firebombs.” They acknowledged those are incendiary devices with a function “remarkably similar” to napalm weapons.

Rather than using gasoline and benzene as the fuel, the firebombs use kerosene-based jet fuel, which has a smaller concentration of benzene.

Yesterday military spokesmen described what they see as the distinction between the two types of incendiary bombs. They said mixture used in modern firebombs is a less harmful mixture than Vietnam War-era napalm.

“Many folks (out of habit) refer to the Mark 77 as ‘napalm’ because its effect upon the target is remarkably similar.”

“This additive has significantly less of an impact on the environment,” wrote Marine spokesman Col. Michael Daily, in an e-mailed information sheet provided by the Pentagon.

Let me bold this part:

he added “many folks (out of habit) refer to the Mark 77 as ‘napalm’ because its effect upon the target is remarkably similar.”

Colonel, folks don’t refer to the Mark 77 as ‘napalm.’ Folks sit around a dining room table eating turkey and mashed potatoes, and green-bean casserole, and rolls, and stuffing made with weird things their relatives find tasty. Folks wait their turn at the barbershop. Folks say “How bout them Saints?” or “Looks like it’s going to rain.” What you’ve got there Colonel, is evil pretend fuckheads, not folks. That’s what you’ve got there, Colonel.

Fucking goofball motherfucker.

You know, it wasn’t long ago that I was very particular about my use of cursing. But lately the motherfuckers have abounded, and I am at a loss as to how to describe them in genteel terms. A raft of motherfuckers has crawled out of hidey-holes since W got into office. The very idea that this colonel motherfucker feels he can get away with using the words “folks” and “napalm” in the same sentence blows my mind.

Colonel: you’re fired from the band.