No, I’m not back, just cleaning my desktop:

Angela sent me this:

He's more machine than turtle now...

Veterinarians also built a fibreglass beak for a goose.  In both cases, the animals would have been killed otherwise, since they really couldn’t survive with their injuries.  And yes, part of me is all happy and glad and oooh, isn’t that cool, but the other part of me, the part that says hey, Jason, you don’t eat animals, I get it, it’s cool, but don’t think that means they’re not all out to get you, that part of me is saying,

Science, what are you thinking?

Bionic animals start out as a nifty idea for licensing a cartoon or something, but there’s going to come a time where we inadvertently invent opposable thumbs for species who previously didn’t have them.  Yay, thumbs for everyone, but wait, did I say thumbs because I meant NUCLEAR BOMBS because that’s what species with opposable thumbs build.  I have proof.  The proof is us.

Oh, and that turtle?  Run over by a lawnmover.  No, not since the picture was taken – that was the source of the injury that brought about the turtle wagon.  No, not that turtle wagon.  Anyway, what’s to stop some vet with a sense of irony from attaching rotating blades to the turtle’s undercarriage?  You know what?  From that picture, we can’t even tell if that’s already happened.

Obviously, I love animals.  I also love my child, but I’m not giving him a rifle.  Oh, he’d be fine – he’s not long enough to reach the trigger and the barrel.  Mom and dad would learn a lesson pretty quick though.  It’s exactly the same with animal prosthetics.  Look, I know how it works on a slow news day – CNN is going to pick this story up, because they love porn as much as anyone, and it’s going to dominate the news cycle: are bionic animals taking over America?  Well, yes.

I therefore call upon some lawmaking person to introduce a bill requiring strict limiting and monitoring of the cyborg animal community.  We can’t stop it, but we can, maybe, control it.  And just to be safe, let’s not make the animals any madder than they already are – the bill’s going to need a veganism clause in there.

And there you go.  I’m the only one in the animal activism community who’s able to make a turtle with wheels the solution to mass vegan adoption.  YOU’RE WELCOME.

OK, the bear has nothing to do with this latest legal decision, other than set the chain of events in motion, but a judge has ruled that the Canadian government wasn’t at fault for the mauling that injured two Australians who were in town to work at some ski resorts (This was back in 1995, well before the fed started dressing up in bear suits and attacking people in a bid to distract people from the seal hunt. And also to dress up like bears and attack people. Winter is lonely.)

The plaintiffs claimed that the government didn’t do enough to warn them about the possibility of bear attacks, and wanted, I don’t know, a million dollars or something.  Specifically, they felt there should have been more signs, perhaps saying “You know that joke about bears pooping in the woods? Guess what? YOU’RE IN THE WOODS” or something to that effect, because that’s kind of where bears live.  The men were also given some kind of written material about bears, but it must not have been on a post.

As the incident was 15 years ago, I don’t know if the bears were hunted down and killed (which seems to happen after animals do animal-like things,) but this seemed like a modest victory for nature.  Yes, it sucks to get mauled, and it’s got to suck worse fighting for 15 years in court to get a payday out of it, but at the end of the day a court just said that bears were allowed to be bears, and that seems OK by me.

Oh, and I stole this story from Fark, where the write-up was shorter and sweeter: “Campers mauled by bear lose lawsuit. It was probably because bears have no money.”

Zing.

They also had this in the comments:

Yeah, the squirrel bit almost distracted me from the punch line too.

(I don’t know why I put the stars in, but the poster did too, so I figure maybe there’s a secret meaning besides the obvious one – you know, maybe the cool kids have come up with new words.  They do that.  JUST BEFORE THE TURKEY GETS THEM!)

So yeah, ThanksKilling might just be the ultimate animal resistance film.  Inspired by a true story, except in true Hollywood style the original story was about someone getting a heart attack after overdosing on “healthy” meat like turkey.  Oh, and the turkey talks.

Of course, the real story of turkeys is a whole lot sadder, and most of the target audience for this film probably believes that “turkeys have to be kept inside because if they’re in the rain they’ll look up and drown” story, not realizing that the truth is even more insane, what with modern factory-farmed turkeys being too oversized to be able to make sweet sweet turkey love, and if that isn’t a recipe for the collective minds of millions of birds uniting to invoke a dark spirit, I don’t know what is.

As far as I can tell from the trailer, the movie used an ancient curse or something for the origin instead of factory farming.  I know, Hollywood, what the hell, but Eating Animals hadn’t come out yet and that’s probably the most mainstream expose of the turkey industry that you’re going to find.  And here’s another problem with Hollywood, they’ve had a time machine since at least 1985, would it kill them to retrofit a few movies?  Actually, now that the rambling is catching, I need to get in touch with George Lucas, since he keeps changing Star Wars anyway he might as well put factory farmed turkey revenge in one of the re-releases.

Behold the trailer for ThanksKilling, though I must warn you, it’s pretty much the whole movie, though unless you’ve never seen a film you probably already know how this one goes.

Crap, it looks like it’s available on Netflix. Can someone email me 85 minutes so I can watch this?

"And I will strike down upon thee with great vegetables and furious agriculture..."

I swear to god that the lead for this story was almost “a bear has retreated after being beaten off with a 14 inch zucchini.”  Thankfully, I haven’t been away that long, but you know what?  That’s pretty much what happened.  The bear was eating apples from a tree and then mixed it up with a woman’s dogs before trying to go into her house.  That’s when she threw the zucchini at the bear’s head, which was enough to save the day, it would seem.  The dogs are fine, but the bear is being hunted (well, moreso.)  There’s no word on the condition of the zucchini, or courgette if you prefer, but the police officer took a photo of it afterwards (I assume it was afterwards) and it looks OK to me.  I’ve included the photo with this post in case there are any forensic vegetable analysts reading who could help.

Throwing bacon at a bear would not have yielded this result, I’d reckon.  Just sayin’, is all.

Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark:

Putting aside the gorey details (sorry) for a moment, a brief aside: I think I’ve talked about this before, but until only a few years ago, I didn’t really know that bullfighting involved killing the bull. I suspect I’m not alone in this, at least in the generation that grew up with stuff like this:

Sure, maybe the bull would get tricked into running into an anvil or something, but every kid knows it’s hard to get an anvil in real life, right? The idea that swords would be used in a manner that actually hurts and kills anything seemed so distant a possibility that it didn’t even enter my mind. After all, the average person sees swords in real life about as often as she sees an anvil.

This is where the internet has been a help, along with a hindrance – it’s a lot easier to see everything about everything these days, so the truth is definitely more in your face, but there’s a bias towards the absurd stuff that you’ll forward to your friends (like, say, pictures of bullfighters getting stabbed in the hey now,) so even though it’s right in your face, it’s hidden on a level that your brain can’t always uncover.

Sadly, I have no information on the medical condition of either the bull or Mr. Purple Pants. I suspect the bull’s long dead, and I’m less than pleased about that but I’ll be the bigger man and offer the obligatory helpful advice to Cornholio here: a high fibre vegan diet would be a great idea right about now – trust me, you really don’t want to have to deal with constipation on top of everything else you’ve got going on. Oh, and since you need new pants, I recommend, as always, the hammer pants.

(via PETA)

I’ve been away for a few days, which of course leads some of you to wonder the natural most likely excuse: was Jason mauled by a bear?  Thanks for your concern, and no, I wasn’t.

But this guy was.

Hunter (or shall we say, former hunter) Gerald Marois survived an extended encounter with a large black bear about a week ago, and his choices of words are interesting: “He was eating my meat and he was licking the blood and licking himself and just enjoying every bite of it.”  As Colleen (who sent me the story) wondered, are hunters more honest than most omnivores about what “meat” really means?  Of course, in this case, it seems like English isn’t Marois’ first language, so it could just be a translation thing.  A translation into truth bombs, that is.

But why read things when you can see and hear him talk about it yourself [7 minute video]?

Marois says he may never hunt again, which would be lucky for some deer out there, since he was in the woods preparing a future kill zone at the time of the attack.  This is probably a more challenging news story to outreach-itize, with various legal issues, not to mention the ethical concerns of “using” bears to get people to stop hunting.

I’ve only seen a bear up close one time, and it was from my car. Neither of us were hunted, and we didn’t (to my knowledge) exchange lusts for each other’s meat, but I like sharing the picture, is all:

Who do you think he's working for - your country or your imprisoned cows and chickens?

I’ve been saying this for some time now – not out loud, or online, of course, because they might be listening – that when the Great Animal Uprising finally occurs, squirrels will play a key role.  Think about it: they’re everywhere, nobody pays much attention to them, and yet they’re capable of causing massive power blackouts.

I mean really, did they expect I wouldn’t notice the circumstances of this incident?  Normally, if a branch or some debris or, yes, a squirrel falls on a power line, there’s a process in place to deal with that, but workers were just about to do some work in that area, so the protective override was in place, which of course is the perfect time to strike.

Still think I’m joking? Here’s some news of a busted squirrel spy ring. And more cutesy-wootsy pictures. These guys mean business!

In my area, we’ve got a lot of black squirrels, which I gather aren’t found in many other parts of the world where grey and brown are more common.  I’ve heard that they’re a more aggressive species that are forcing out the other types by getting the food faster, but my theory is that they’re the foot soldiers of the Animal Uprising Army.

Which would put me right in the midst of their training camp.  I know posts have been sporadic here, but from this day forward, if I miss a few days in a row, don’t think I’m slacking; wonder instead if I’ve been taken.

Taken for what purpose, I don’t know, but in case they’re reading, I for one certainly welcome our nut-chomping overlords. Seriously, everyone goes to zombie movies, but the next Food Inc style picture needs to be a modern rendition of Animal Farm so the populace can learn how to handle it.  Hint: continuing to eat dead animals isn’t the best way to win friends and influence people.

No, this isn’t one of those “well, it’s been fun, but I’m going on hiatus again” posts, just an observation:

When you read a headline like “Dog ‘sentenced’ after eating police car” you MIGHT be a vegan pornographer if the first thing that comes to mind is…

Did it have leather seats?

True story.

Oh, and the dog’s fine, by the way.

In the wake of this week’s killer whale: human killer incident, Angela sent me a list of 15 animals who are cute, but terribly deadly. Normally morning emails from Angela have hints embedded in them, like “man who forgot to put away dishes impaled by samurai sword,” so on our next trip to the cassowary sanctuary I’ll refrain from hand-feeding them Froot Loops.

Yes, the cassowary.  Many of the animals on the list are on the lines of “Bears!  Did you know they are deadly? Internet list go web!” but the cassowary reminds me of that prolapse monster from Star Trek.  It’s the one on the list where “deadly” wasn’t a stretch but “cute” likely required a cage match with the editor:

Photo by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen under the Wikimedia Commons. I don't know if he survived.

Seriously, download the full sized image and make it your desktop.  You will work harder.

So here’s the interesting thing: most of the animals on the list aren’t widely considered food.  Let’s face it; forks aren’t particularly sharp and deep down, most omnivores are scared that their meal will arrive underdone and leap off the plate and burrow, well, probably deeply into the groinal region.

We can use this.

Everybody says Diet For a New America turned them vegan, but this is the book that deserves the real credit.

I think we’re doing it all wrong.  Activist speeches go on and on about experiences being near farm animals and the strong emotions the connection evoked, and we encourage people to visit sanctuaries, but I suspect fear is a stronger motivator.  We need to make sanctuaries even harder to get into than a factory farm.  For your protection.  Cows will kill you as soon as look at you.  Do NOT make them angry. By, you know, killing their parents.

Batman references will continue until morale improves. Also, Batman’s secret identity? Bruce Wayne.  Bruce Wayne’s secret identity? A DEADLY COW.