After Christmas - A post mortem for the soul

Twas the week after Christmas lights still on the tree sadly now shining less brightly 

At once made perfect with all due care now those lights a nuisance, a tacky cross to bear

The excitement of the season fades to past as the day of reckoning for bills made comes fast

How quickly we forget why the season is so bright or perhaps we never really knew as we bought all in sight

The 26th comes, the world again severe.  Good will toward men and kindness in arrears

The baubles now tattered, broken and dark as the joy of the season fades to gray and stark

Now approaches the shiny new year with expectations rising and reality drawing near

Soon we'll return, marching to another's tune all the time hoping our turn will come soon

Ahh but that reality, the ogre that looms.  A plague on the heart, dogged foe of joy fast friend of doom

Life is what you make it or so they say but those who proclaim it rarely enter the fray

So as your impending hangover this New Year's Morn you dread

Let me pound this one simple message into your soon throbbing head

The lesson of the season isn't about lights on a tree

It's about the light kept inside year round shared freely

Priorities be damned, you've got them wrong anyway

Give of yourself shining with the light of Christmas each and every day

Vegas at Christmastime

 

I don't get to travel much but my friends do and sometimes I get some decent photos and videos out of it.  So sit back and enjoy a few minutes of Vegas 2017!

Virtual Vegan Vigilantes (Veggie Nazis)

"We enslave, torture, and murder billions of cows, pigs, and chickens every year and nobody bats an eye. A dog is forced to swim for a scene in a movie and everyone loses their fucking minds."

Oh please.....

That quote is from yet another Vegan "activist" on Reddit hijacking a thread to draw yet another false equivalency to make a ridiculous point.  

That being of course, the evils of factory farming somehow not rising to level of someone who beats up a dog.

I'm sorry if I offend anyone with this but dammit....

I'm sick of half-baked, half-assed activists whose only goal in life it seems is to make everyone else feel miserable.

So thank you Veggie Nazi, you've given me inspiration.

Since there never seems to be a separation for you people let's just make the assumption that you feel all meat is bad and we're all going to hell for eating any of it.  

Regardless of whether or not it's "factory farmed."  

You tend to deal in half-reasoned absolutes so that's how I'm going to address you...

Now, let's talk about those beleaguered chickens, cows and pigs shall we?

Yes, they're animals and yes I wouldn't be a very good butcher because they have eyes and would look at me.  If I had to do the deed to save my life, I'd likely starve to death.  The prospect of reducing one to it's constituent products is not something this society has raised me to deal with.

That stems mostly from the fact that I was born into a world with indoor plumbing and something other than animal skins and fig leaf jockstraps.

Let me be clear having said that.  That's no excuse for inhumane treatment of any living thing but let's get real here.  These keyboard ninjas swilling their fat-free smoothies and soy milk treat anyone that's ever visited a drive-thru like they were Jeffrey Dahmer.

Let's get this straight....

There's no such thing as a Free Range Chicken.  I mean really....

Do you think there's some golden, sunlit valley somewhere teaming with cackling hens dancing around crystal streams where they live out their happy days to a ripe old age?   

BS, they'd all starve to death in a week.

All Free-range means is that they don't get caged up.  That's a good thing but they're still destined for the dinner table.

They wander around aimlessly pecking the ground cackling and crapping.  Most of the time simultaneously.  They're dirty, ill tempered and unpleasant.

Pigs aren't much better.  It's been said that they supposedly have the mental equivalent of a 3 year old human child.  

Which explains the general hygiene of most 3 year old's.

Beef cattle, much like Chickens, exist to be eaten.  They, like Chickens, spend most of their day wandering around aimlessly grazing and crapping.  Without much regard for either other than continuing the acts.

I suppose identifying with 1000 pounds of manure factory is someone's idea of bliss but only if you think Tofu and plain yogurt taste like anything but ASS.   

I'm a realist and as such I am fully aware that all of these "endangered" livestock exist in nature for no reason OTHER than to be a meal for something else.  

This is how nature made them.  I'm no evolutionary biologist but I'm fairly certain that cows, sheep, pigs and chickens can trace the roots of their place in the food chain back to similarly situated ancestors.

Should we decry the fate of the Ant when the Anteater comes around?  The Mouse when the Cat catches him?

Just because they're cute doesn't elevate them above livestock.

I suppose Native Americans were monsters for killing Buffalo. 

Never mind they made use of virtually every part of the animal.  

"Barbarians!" you say.  "They should've been eating grass and leaves!"  (and maybe smoking some too!)

I don't put much faith into that biblical nonsense about "Man's dominion over the Earth."  I'm pretty sure nature gives you a few perks and you battle it out from there.

"What about the dinosaurs," you may say, "the largest were almost always herbivores!"

Yeah, they were and they didn't move very fast either.  Know why?  because the carnivores needed a steady food supply and rats on the forest floor weren't going to cut it.

They were beef cattle. 

Humans?  We're Omnivores.  Our bodies don't work right without a balance of both flora and fauna.

Sorry buddy, it's just how we're made and why all those Veggie Nazis always seem to look so sick.  

Yeah sure.  Point to those rail-thin Victoria Secret models prancing around.  All of them looking like they're in dire need of a sandwich with something other than air between their gluten-free bread.

That's not even an acceptable female body image these days.  So what about that Mr. Activist?   Promoting an unhealthy body image seems to me to be far worse.

The old adage of moderation in everything applies.  Some of this, some of that and things go much better.

Sure, there are 100+ year old vegetarians.  

They look like crap...

But to the point of this little piece...

The guilt-trip has to stop.  Spare me the evil eye while you're choking down your rice cakes and hand-raised soybean spread.  I'm perpetuating no evil.

You know damned well you want a burger. 

How do I know?

Because there's an entire industry that's grown up around your mania catering to your natural desire for balance.  A need for sustenance that doesn't normally end up in a lawn mower bag.  

Fake burgers, fries, ice cream, even milk.  

If you're so happy with twigs and leaves why do companies make millions producing soybean saturated stand-ins?

Get off your high horse.  Besides, did you ask it if it actually WANTED you on it's back?

Hypocrite!

You're not superior, you don't have all the answers, and you need to stop assaulting everyone with your absolutes.  Nobody will care about your cause if you alienate everybody.

Yes, treat animals humanely for God's Sake!  Just keep your condemnations to yourself if I choose a more traditional path.  

The two aren't incompatible.

Remember, Absolutes are for Sith Lords and Fascists.  

Don't be a Sith Lord.

Beware False equivalencies - Breitbart and its kind are NOT news

I was reading another ZDNet article this time showing how fake news and siloed information was a danger to U.S. democracy.  The long-winded article went into a treatise, complete with spiffy chart of where on the political spectrum all the various "news" organizations fell.

CNN, AP and Reuters were considered middle of the road, mainstream with Huffington Post and Fox News occupying the left and right of them respectively.  Of course the middle is always under attack as being too liberal by somebody.

Seems the past decade has spawned an outcry for a more "balanced" media view bringing forth what is laughably called Fox "news" and ultimately lending legitimacy to far right wing "journalism" like that purveyed by the likes of Breitbart news (a known proponent of Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist ideologies.)

Folks,  the past 8 years have taught us what happens to a country caught up in in siloed rhetoric.  Men of otherwise good intent are prisoners of the polls and fearful of a vocal minority.  A minority that grows into an immovable majority on both sides sown only with the seeds of propaganda.

We're literally too stupid and too lazy to know any better.

We cherry pick that which we agree with and discard the rest.  You can't help it, the bias is so great, the vitriol so thick that it's nearly impossible to find common ground.

This is not the function of journalism.  Opinions belong on the editorial page not the front page.  But in a world of information overload we don't have time for opposing views especially when they come from those who care to know nothing but their own.

Those who refuse to recognize or even acknowledge the lessons and warnings of history are the real danger.  Degrees don't make you intelligent, being aware of your world does...

"We aren't a democracy - say the Pledge of Allegiance and realize this.  Democracy, as in the Roman Empire, is rule by the mob.  Heaven help us if we get there, as the Roman Empire didn't last as long as the U.S. has."

I'd like to say I made that quote up but I can't.  He's off by at least 300 years and doesn't care to realize it.

So much for "No Child Left Behind."

That quote, by the way, is from the comment section of the same article and sadly it's not alone.  I see it far too often and when the obvious oversight is called out instead of thoughtful reflection there is instead an attack.

Libtard, Butt-Hurt, Elitist.

These are the retorts.  These are the product of faux journalism and if nothing else we need to read the signs.

Is it so hard to form an opinion based on your own views instead of someone else's?

Is that NOT what this grand democracy is supposed to be?

Rhetoric is not governance, it's a campaign and campaigns are about wars.  Warriors are about conquering.  To conquer is easy, governing is hard.

Just ask a Roman...