I understand that children can’t be sheltered forever and that they have to learn how things work in this world… even if those things are, on some level, disturbing. But what is the appropriate way to teach a kid about those things? Is it the way Headmistress, Mrs. Charman, chose to teach her kids where meat comes from? She had her students raise a lamb from birth; taught her kids to care for it, bottle-feed it, love it, and even named it Marcus — and then sent it off to be slaughtered.

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Tags: animals, family & parenting by Amy Boshnack
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I can’t take it, this global celebration of American ridiculousness. Everything about it — the overdeveloped man-children “battling” on the gridiron, the “generals” on the sidelines receiving images from spies with a bird’s-eye view of the “trenches,” the pomp and circumstance, the all-too-serious “expert analysis,” the unapologetic commercialism and obedient consumption — is fucking cheap.

Fortunately, there are other options for your viewing pleasure. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, art & entertainment by David A. Brensilver
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While searching the Internet in hope of learning more about cats, I came across a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer from October about the death of Cuddles, a six-week-old kitten who was stoned and scorched.

The tortured kitten was rescued by an animal-control officer, who named him Cuddles, after the poor, injured animal climbed up his shirt and cuddled against his neck.

I recall that a 19-year-old knucklehead was later arrested for animal cruelty. [Read more →]

Tags: animals by Paul Davis
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We are reliably informed that our dogs do not love or even admire us and in any event we should not get too fond of them as they have the carbon footprint of a daily grilled cheese sandwich so we will shortly have to steam them up in a solar cooker anyhow. But this counts the costs without examining the benefit. Beyond the sentimental value of these Furbearing Americans they also do many jobs other Americans refuse and immigrants lack the communication skills for such as sniffing out bombs or pulling the Palin family sleigh. But you don’t have to be a narco officer, a professional musher or blind to benefit from canine participation in our lives. That includes our suave and over-burdened President. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, politics & government by Ken Watson
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Of course what children really want for Christmas is a list of commands, prohibitions, and threats. To this end I have compiled the following words of advice for young people. This is the wisdom I have painfully accrued over 33 years of stupidity, and I do not hesitate to pass it on to the next generation. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, ends & odd by Walter Aske
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I don’t know what it is that keeps you up at night worrying, dear reader, but I think I’ve got something more important to bring to your attention. It’s not anything mundane like the economy, airline terrorism, or global climate change-these simply are not the biggest problems facing humanity, and we’ve all got to be on the same page if we’re going to survive. So pull yourself together for this.

In the last week, two news articles caught my eye. Taken separately, they might be merely interesting tidbits of zoological behavior research. But when taken together, they indicate an alarming pattern, and they paint a clear picture of impending doom for our species. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, science by Jason Sterlace
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Thank god for Google Alerts. What a treat it was to check my e-mail and read about a “tiger trainer” being mauled by his “trainees.”

(My use of quotation marks will explain itself.)

According to a story in the Guardian, attendees at a “Dinner Circus” in Hamburg, Germany were treated to a little improv during the appetizer course when a “tiger trainer” named Christian Walliser “was attacked after he stumbled during the show.”

Naturally, I got all warm and fuzzy reading that, though I have no idea why, according to the story, “200 guests watched in horror as Walliser was pinned to the ground by the tigers.”

Why they “watched in horror” is beyond me. Shit, I’d have tipped the tigers for making the show entertaining. [Read more →]

Tags: animals by David A. Brensilver
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10. He started horsing around, and then things just got out of hand.

9. His ex-girlfriend once told him he was hung like one.

8. Seriously, have you seen that horse?!

7. During the playoffs, he misheard when someone said he should be rooting for the Phillies!

6. He read one of the signs of the swine flu was feeling a little hoarse.

5. He knew he’d never have to pay palimony to a palomino.

4. The horse looks exactly like his old girlfriend.

3. He claims he was looking for a stable relationship.

2. His daughter said, for her next birthday, she was hoping for a pony.

1. He was put up to it – by a small step stool.
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: animals, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd, on the law by Bob Sullivan
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I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by this as humans are capable of doing/believing just about anything. But even so, I was a little caught off guard by this sad tale from Cornwall, one of the most beautiful parts of the British Isles, where the locals even have their own language. I will say no more; just click on the link and immerse yourself in the joys and sorrows of the poor soul who can only get his jollies via frolicking in a mound of rancid manure.

Mr. Truscott was a child once, innocent, dreaming of an exciting adulthood… I suspect that this was not what he had in mind.

H/t: Rod Liddle

Tags: animals, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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When the phone rang at 3:30 this morning, my first reaction was to throw it at the wall. Then I realized that a phone call in the middle of the night, just a few hours removed from an embarrassment of Thanksgiving gluttony, could only signal tragedy.

“Dude, we’re fucked! We’re all going to die!”

It was my friend Monty Gelstein, a bit of a paranoid but not usually one to declare an emergency.

“Good,” I said. “Is it the giant asteroid?”

“I’m serious, man! I think the turkeys were poisoned!”

“Yeah, well, I’m a vegetarian, so …” [Read more →]

Tags: animals, creative writing by David A. Brensilver
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The NYC Veg Fest speaker line-up doesn’t leave you guessing which one of these guests is doin’ his own thing. Attendees, I presume, didn’t dispense with politeness and ask the natural but uncomfortable question, “If not animals, what, exactly, are you a master killer of, Masta Killa?” (I present this incongruity as a vegan, myself, not one of those snarky, I-belong-to-People-Eating-Tasty-Animals nimrods, just FYI.)

And speaking of incongruity, when a porn star and a dude who helped invent something called rap-core can’t make their marriage work, what hope do the rest of us have!?

Tags: animals, music by Shawn Macomber
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Jean Jacques Rousseau, Arthur Rimbaud, and Jean Genet are just a few canonical writers who could be seen to have questionable character. Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot were fascists or held views that could be connected to such political “philosophy.” Martin Heidegger, asshole, was a Nazi who never once renounced his views. I wonder if he ever noticed his predecessor, Friedrich Nietzsche, held opposing ideas but no tenured chair. Many, many famous writers have abused their wives and girlfriends or left them with kids and no emotional or financial support. These include half of my favorites: Sherwood Anderson, Saul Bellow, Fred Exley, Ray Carver, Richard Yates, and John Cheever. Can you write great fiction without at least a broken marriage on your transcript?

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Tags: animals, sports by Alex Kudera
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I’ve never experienced “Radioactive Cats,” Sandy Skoglund’s 1981 installation, in person, but I love the photographs I’ve seen of it: a gray kitchen, with an old man and woman, and everywhere, cats, painted neon green, crawling, writhing, looking lanky and predatory and anything but cute. Skoglund likes to take the things that seem tame and comfortable to us and render them in ways that make us squirm. Lately I’ve begun to think that “Radioactive Cats” suitably predicted the status of the feline on the Internet.

If the Internet is a collective unconscious, we are in big trouble, and I don’t think you have to find sites by child-molesters or terrorists to prove the point. When child-molesters are few, cats will do.

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Tags: animals, stone age memes, technology by Eva Thury
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If you said, “Five-hundred dollars!” and can stand chilling with a Cocker Spaniel for twenty minutes, good lawd does Craig’s List have a deal for you!

Tags: animals, money by Shawn Macomber
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I’m surprised it’s taken officials in New York City six months to plan the execution of 2,000 Canada geese. I figured the birds would be murdered within days of America’s favorite new superhero, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, landing crippled US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, diatribes by David A. Brensilver
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Dear Mr. Lancho:

You chickenshit motherfucker. The bull got one horn into you and you just lay there in the dirt. The bull didn’t do that, even after he’d been stabbed and stuck with swords and spears by your faithful little picadors, your sycophants on horseback. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, diatribes by David A. Brensilver
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A rattlesnake recently crashed my cousin Greg’s wedding in Sacramento.

Just before friends and family arrived, the uninvited, poisonous guest made her appearance. Greg told me that the snake, a baby, had been tossed over the edge of the property. He promised that she would return. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, environment & nature by David A. Brensilver
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The poverty-stricken urban malcontent Marcovaldo, in Italo Calvino’s suite of stories, Marcovaldo, or The Seasons in the City, “possessed an eye ill-suited to city life: billboards, traffic-lights, shop-windows, neon signs, posters, no matter how carefully devised to catch the attention, never arrested his gaze…Instead, he would never miss a leaf yellowing on a branch, a feather trapped by a roof-tile; there was no horsefly on a horse’s back, no worm-home in a plank, or fig-peel squashed on the sidewalk that Marcovaldo didn’t remark and ponder over, discovering the changes of season, the yearnings of his heart, and the woes of his existence.”  Though I myself love illuminated signs and the urban energy behind them, I have a certain sympathy for that Italian dreamer [Read more →]

Tags: animals, environment & nature by Michael Antman
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There’s so much despairing talk about the environment and the ongoing diminishment of nature these days, I want to take a few minutes to glory in what we still have — in particular, our bird life. It’s a glorious spring day in Indiana and our three crab trees are in bloom. As we’ve been feeding birds for 25 years in our backyard, my wife and I enjoy the same visitors every year at this time. [Read more →]

Tags: animals, environment & nature by Christopher Guerin
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I am so pleased that the first family is choosing to rescue a pet rather than paying a high price for a pure bred dog from a breeder. There is one very lucky Portuguese Water Dog out there and so many other animals in desperate need of a home. I have learned a lot from my friend Beth Bates who runs a site called GoodDogz.org.

Dogs are surrendered for all sorts of reasons. Maybe their owner can’t physically take care of them anymore or maybe they have been taken from abusive homes or puppy mills. The most heartbreaking abandonment, which is happening more and more frequently, are owners who leave behind their pets because of home foreclosures. If you can’t feed your family and pay your mortgage, it’s hard to justify the expense of a pet.

I am proud of the example the Obamas are setting and I hope this helps lead the charge in a wave of adoptions. When my kids get a little older and we are in the market for a new dog (because really, the dog will complete the family) I will definitely get my pet from a shelter.

Tags: animals by Amy Boshnack
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