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Way to go, Wipeout!

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Okay, so last night I was feeling particularly weighed down by responsibility and I ended up watching Wipeout. If you don’t know what it is…

Wipeout is an American game show series in which contestants compete in what is billed as the “world’s largest obstacle course”.

Thanks, Wikipedia! Anyway, Wipeout is always an entertaining waste of time, but it doesn’t usually tackle anything more serious than…er…big balls.

Told you so.

So the show does brief, funny interviews with a lot of the contestants, and believe me, if they can find some way to mock one, they will. On last night’s episode they introduced a woman who was planning to donate her winnings to animal protection causes. Awesome! Here’s the interview, which I scribbled down afterwards. (I think I did a lousy job on the verbatim part, but the basic jist is there.):

Interviewer Jill Wagner: So, you’re a vegetarian?

(Awkward pause.)

Contestant Jonelle Tierney: Well, kinda…I eat fish…and chicken.

Wagner: Oh okay, so you’re against animal cruelty–except for chickens and fish!

Tierney: (laughs nervously) Well, yeah. We had chickens. We had chickens on our farm.

Wagner: Your farm? So you’ve killed chickens?

Tierney: No…turkeys.

Wagner: (laughs) Okay, so you’re against animal cruelty except for chickens and fish and turkeys and…anything else?

Tierney: …cows…

Wagner laughed about how the contestant sounded like she was more in favour of animal cruelty than against it, and later on, the announcers joked about her only being concerned about the cute animals, like puppies and kittens. And until she was eliminated mid-episode, her nickname was “Killer Animal Lover” or some variety of that! It was pretty fantastic. So a big thanks to Wipeout for acknowledging one of the most striking examples of cognitive dissonance in the world today and for managing to be hilarious at the same time.

I wouldn’t worry too much about Jonelle, though–most people (including some of the best animal activists in the world!) started out loving some animals and eating others, so maybe she’ll figure things out eventually.

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Tags: cognitive dissonance, fun, humour, TV, vegan, vegetarian

Living Among Meat-Eaters

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

Carol Adams wrote a book several years ago called Living Among Meat-Eaters: The Vegetarian’s Survival Handbook, which I haven’t read. But I hear it’s a really good guide to dealing with all those pesky and annoying meat-eaters we have to live with and deal with everyday.

Many of us haven’t always been vegetarian and have friends who are meat-eaters. For those of us who are activists, this can get very stressful.

Maintaining a relationship with someone who doesn’t share the same values, the same morals and ethics, can be extremely challenging. Especially when we have focused so much on those issues in our own lives and are actively working to change public opinions about animals.

Here’s the one piece of advice I have for these situations: have a sense of humor. A really big and all-encompassing sense of humor. Laugh at everything. The suffering of animals is serious business, but I’ve found that humor is the best way for me to deal with other people.

Meat-eaters like to joke around about eating meat. Often I think that this is just their way of defending themselves. One time I was at dinner and one guy was making jokes about meat, which I laughed at. A few days later I found out that he was going to be vegetarian. You never know. Being serious and taking offense to what meat-eaters say and do just allows them to remain defensive. Laughter opens and lowers barriers.

Laugh. Laugh a lot.

[Thanks Andrea for the idea for this one. Sorry it wasn't a better post!]

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Responses »
Tags: blogathon, Blogathon 2009, fun, humour, meat-eaters

Dad, what’s A-S-S? EPIC day 2

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

Ok, so the title actually refers to the funniest thing that happened yesterday, but I thought it made a good title…

We had a pin out that said “meat tastes like ass”, which is funny and people seem to love it. This really nice family came by with two young boys who were looking at the pins. They wanted to each get one, and one of the boys looks up and says “Dad, what’s A-S-S?”

They ended up getting one of the “eat tofu” pins and a “save our seals” pin. Nice kids. I wonder if dad ever explained what A-S-S is?

Anyway, that was yesterday’s funniest moment. Today was less eventful, but there were lots more people at EPIC today. We were seriously running low on a lot of our leaflets and information. Have to bring more for tomorrow.

Here are a bunch of photos from the day. Sorry for the fuzziness. Our better camera is broken, so we’ve had to use the crappy old one.

Karl talking about the issues.

Willow

Neda explaining something to someone.

Checking out the information.

Reading some literature.

Beth rocking her red dot campaign.

Preet and some of the other awesome people at the show.

Amazing pickles. Buy them.

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Tags: EPIC, humour

Links from around the web

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Here are some links from around the web that you might find interesting.

Audubon magazine has a fantastic article about the environmental impacts of meat-eating.

So why in the world am I a dedicated vegetarian? Why is meat, including sumptuous pork, a complete stranger to my fork at home and away? The answer is simple: I have an 11-year-old son whose future—like yours and mine—is rapidly unraveling due to global warming. And what we put on our plates can directly accelerate or decelerate the heating trend.

No one can call themselves an environmentalist if they’re still tucking into the steak or chicken wings.

Read the whole article here:
http://www.audubonmagazine.org/features0901/viewpoint.html

The latest post on Animal Person has some interesting thoughts on non-human language, and includes the cutest video EVER:
http://www.animalperson.net/animal_person/2009/01/on-the-communication-of-sentient-nonhumans.html

A darkly humorous look at what an animal might think of being slaughtered by a small farmer:
Thank God we were slaughtered by a local farmer instead of one of those big, impersonal corporations!

Ok, I guess I must have been living under a rock for a while, but I never realized Gene Baur had a blog. How crazy is that? Here’s his latest post, as always thoughtful and articulate:
http://www.genebaur.com/blogengine.net/post/2009/01/Big-Problems-e28093-Simple-Solutions.aspx
(If only we could all be as smart and well-spoken as Gene.)

This next article has been popping up on blogs all over the internet. It’s from Newsweek, and it’s about how hunting is altering or reversing evolution, making the weak and sickly MORE likely to survive than the big strong animals. Because we keep killing all the big strong ones and we don’t kill the weak ones. We’re smart that way.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177709/page/1

Here’s a nice piece on activism. I know a lot of the time when I’m out doing any sort of outreach I get angry a lot. Mostly because people just aren’t changing as soon as I want them to. Changing my perspective could change how I interact with other people and could make me more effective.
http://loveallbeings.org/blog/activism-as-being-not-doing/

Lastly, this isn’t an article or a blog post, but rather a whole website: Altweb: Alternatives to Animal Testing. It’s sponsored by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. For those of you who are working on issues of animal testing, this could be a good resource.

That’s it for today. Enjoy!

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Tags: activism, animal testing, climate change, communication, environmentalism, evolution, Gene Baur, humour, hunting, kittens, language, local, meat, slaughter, vegan, vegetarian

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