Rant Alert! Rant Alert!

This is a picture of me and a pig I called Orson. Orson was given up by his owners, and surrendered to the shelter I work at. He was awaiting his new home, which is on a farm where he will be loved and not eaten. Orson was house trained, and walked on a leash, but the one thing he apparently didn't like, was being picked up by a d-bag who wanted a picture with him. Before the film Deliverance, the term "Squeal like a pig" meant something totally different, it meant the sound a pig makes when being picked up, and being none to happy about it.
Orson was very popular at the shelter, people were constantly popping by to say hello, and they would toss him some lettuce, or carrots, or sweet potatoes. And he was happy to see them, he was a friendly, outgoing guy, and loved to eat.
The thing that confused me, is that these same people who swooned over him, later went home and ate bacon, pork or ham, and seemed to have the ability to ignore the fact that the flesh they are putting in their mouth could have been his sister, his mother, his brother.
Of course, this bothers me, and can be best described as hypocritical.
One would think that people who work in an animal care environment would have more respect for animals, then say, the average person who crunches numbers, or does your average menial job they hate. But, sadly this is not the case. I noticed on a recent sign-up sheet for a seminar, out of the 20 or so people who signed up, 2 of them checked off vegetarian meal, and one of them was me.
We routinely get goats, chickens, and pigs at our shelter, and I find it hard to believe that people can work as hard as they do to make sure the pigs and goats are cleaned, and fed, and happy, and then go on lunch and eat a bacon double cheeseburger.
Sure, there was a time when I did the same, I ate flesh with every meal, and before I made the switch to compassionate living, I thought it would be impossible to live without it.
It is not.
It's easier than I ever could have thought possible, and I personally helped to make it easier for you by co-creating a vegan cookbook called Compassionate Eating for Everyday Folk, which we sold out of.
There are religions out there that claim if you consume the flesh of a living creature, you are doomed to go to hell. If you are not religious, than ignore this claim, but if you do believe in some sort of deity, doesn't that mean you are going to hell for eating of the flesh? Or, can you just go to confession, and clean your slate, like a drunk or wife beater does? ("Father, last week I ate 3 cheeseburgers, 2 steaks, and a ham sandwich." "That's okay son, say 10 Our Fathers and your sins will be absolved.")
Amen.
I am not religious, I am not an omnivore, I am a compassionate thinker, and a compassionate eater, and I live in a world full of people who pretend they are making a difference in this world, when all they are really doing is kidding themselves.
Below are two pictures of a recent "donation" to the shelter. If you notice, they are dead minks, no doubt from a time when wearing such an ornament would be considered fashionable.
Not like now though.
Oh wait, the same people who are appalled by the thought of wearing dead minks, have no problems slipping on their Canada Goose jackets, because they are "fashionable".
"Canada Goose are people, they're people!"
No wait, that was Soylent Green. Canada Goose jackets have their hoods lined with dead coyotes, is this okay because they threaten urban wildlife and your dog?
It is not okay. It is not fashionable. It is ignorant. It is sad. And it makes you look like an uncaring, thoughtless person. There is nothing cool about wearing the fur of a dead animal.
Nothing.
And there is no difference between wearing a dead mink around your neck, and wearing a dead coyote around your head.
It makes you equally evil, and shows just how little you care about animals, and about the planet in general.
We live in a time of great scientific advancements, and live in a world where people become less connected to the world around them on a daily basis to the point where the Matrix will soon become our overlord.
Until that point though, we still need an actual planet to live on, and animals are an important part of our ecosystem. But it only works, if they are alive.
Don't try to make a difference in this world, just do it - like Nike says, but without doing it in sweatshop and without exploiting children.
We can all make a difference in this world, every single day.
The question is: Do you care to?


Cheers to 2015 and our internet overlord. May your connection be quick, and may you ignore the person next to you, for someone miles away (because that's what you're doing anyways...)

Rant over.

TCE 2015