Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Sayings

Why must people say "Kill two birds with one stone"?

I invented "feed two birds with one sack"...feel free to use it.

i don't call people pigs or dogs either becuase that would be a compliment. i stick with the traditional 'asshole' or 'buttmuncher'. much more effective.

i have friday off...i'm going to the FAIR!!!! YAY!!! and double yay becuase they've stopped the elephant rides! now if we could just get them to shut down the livestock area...

Monday, August 28, 2006

The smells of Ireland

when we went to ireland in february, everyone - pubs, homes, hotels; all burned this stuff called peat. at first i thought it was stinky; now, i love it. i love it SO much i ordered a bundle for my house. (I'm excited about winter coming, can you tell?)

so now, my home will fondly remind me of the lovely smells of the pubs we'd visited in the best country every made.

i need to buy some smithwicks...slainte...

Thursday, August 24, 2006

today (written yesterday)

I got up and ran 2.8 miles (no easy feat) made a nice breakfast, took a shower AND shaved, dressed and had a leisurely drive in.

I thought i looked nice but co-worker #1 says "Oh my! did you come to work in your jammies?? You look like you just rolled outta bed!"

Come to find out, i had my shirt on inside out. and it had buttons. Once i flipped it back i got an "Well that's a little better..."

At my desk, i pull off my back pack and before i even get a chance to log in, co-worker #2 comes up and says "Good morning!

Who did your hair?"

"Umm...me?"

Silence.

"You need to put it back up. It's all frizzy looking..."

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind when i'm in the mood to do some TP'ing.

Later in the afternoon, it was employee appreciation day. a 45 minute long meeting held by my lovely boss (and that's not facetious - she really is great) about praises to all the good employees, the work they do and even recognitions of all employees BY other employees!

I could not have felt more useless than right at that point. they btter not ask me for computer help again...hmph.

course the others that hadn't been mentioned seemed completely undisturbed. but i actually had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat.

crap.

BUT just when i thought life couldn't get any worse; it didn't. i get to do a $200 notary tonight! just in time...

THANK YOU MELODY...

followyourheart.com

i think a gallon is too much for me but 32oz is a better deal.

my co-op has stopped selling vital wheat gluten.i have to go aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way out to arden and theyd BETTER have it there or seomeone is gonna get hurt.

on another note: has anyone seen how people are falling apart in chicago that they can't sell foie gras anymore? God...how small minded ARE their chefs anyway? they can't find other fabulous foods all over the huge world. when i went veggie/vegan, i discovered so much more food than i could ever believe! i was so disppointed that i didn't start this way of life sooner.

chicago needs to grow up.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Refrigerator picture

someone in our lovely group posted a picture of the internals of their refrigerator. does anyone remember who that was please?

the elephant sanctuary

I used to go to this site (click on the title) about 50 times a day and watch the elecam. Now, i'm burned out but i always check in and see how the "girls" are doing.

one of the many cute stories at the sanctuary is starring Tarra. she has a best friend and they are inseperable and her best friends name is Bella.

Bella is a dog. I just think that is so amazing!! you never see one without the other*:







boy i wish i could live there!

*all pix from The Elephant Sanctuary at www.elephants.com

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Study, study, study...

My real estate exam is on 9/5/06. i'm dedicating tonight until then to study.

BORING!!!!

i'm doing good not eating dairy or sugar. althought last night i stopped by Dos Coyotes and ordered the vegan tacos. you would think they could at LEAST put some tomatoes, cilantro & onions on it right? or maybe some olives?? something since my focus and tacos aren't about animal products; but, nooooo....lettuce, black beans & rice. that's it.

good thing i snagged 6 to go ramikins of chunky salsa....

Monday, August 21, 2006

the weekend

first off: Betsy came through like a super champ. that girl has the will of iron. On other news, i have given Betsy to my neighbor. now before you all yell at me like my friend did, it was a very good decision for her. she's very needy and i do not, believe it or not, give her the love & attention she craves. however, janet does. she dotes over her hand & foot. and she still brings Betsy over during the week so neither dog gets lonely while we're at work. and betsy barely even comes to me...after all i did for her!!! she obviously adores janet and although that hurts my feelings, i'm super happy for the both of them. now i get my prick all to myself!!! hi kody!

we went to a musical this saturday night. a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. it was funny & colorful...and different. i've been lame lately and not doing much so that was a good way to do something involving life.

i'm doing good on the henner diet. i did have butter sat night but i was starving ad i coudlnt' resist...but i've yet to have sugar or alcohol in 8 days. that's a miracle for me...

Friday, August 18, 2006

starbucks...again?

last night kevin and i took kody for a lovely night walk through my neighborhood. We decided we'd also check out the new starbucks that's coming to my neck of the woods.

When we got there we peeked in the windows and does it ever look CUTE!!! they have a lovely little seating area with different heighted (?) tables and chairs that look like they were made on trading spaces. And i always love their choice of colors...

We turned around to leave and noticed the cute little outside seating area that we'll be visiting mostly (becuase i always have kody). we were trying to figure out what kind of vegetation they'll plant when this dumpy woman in a piece of shit car, waiting at the red light yelled out the window "Welcome to the neighborhood. Again. and again and again and again..."

I wasn't sure if she was being funny so I said "Yeah, i know, huh...". As her light turned green, she drove off and totally flipped us off. kevin and i stood there, with our mouths open watching her drive away and watching as her finger got smaller ...i felt like Larry David for a moment.

some people...Tuesday is the grand opening...welcome to the neighborhood indeed!

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Marilu Henner

I started her diet a few days ago and today is the first day of boot camp. i should be a size four by 9/15.

i'll keep you posted.

my menu today is fruit for b'fast, soup for lunch, and salad for dinner. of COURSE i'll be a size 4 if that's all i get! and, in my meat eating days, i used to do suzanne sommers' diet and her food was drop-dead amazing. DROP-DEAD! The flavors in her recipe still haunt me today (i can't have them anymore...meat....) but i do still use alot of her side dishes. my fav is zucchini rounds with parm cheese (soy) baked under the broil. and then squirted with lemon when they come out. YUM!

Oh and this is the outfit i'm giong to wear too when i AM that 4:

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

ASSHOLE!

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2006-08-16T225631Z_01_N16206352_RTRUKOC_0_US-LEISURE-GENTRY.xml&archived=False

this shit makes me MAD...i wrote a ltter to that fuck too. i just hope i dont' get sick again...

Farmer's market

well i never post my shopping pix, like everyone else does in mid-week munchies; but today i happened to have my camera and i happened to shop at the market so here you go! wooooo!!!


I bought a japanese melon, white nectarines, chinese string beans, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, and fresh spinach. and part of my La Bou asian noodle salad for lunch...Yummm....

Betsy is in surgery right now. Even Kody kinda misses her...

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

the Lord doth punish me

...i had the worst 24 hour flu or food poisoning ever yesterday. i'll spare you the details of my illness but i do have to say, the weirdest part was my SKIN hurt! and i had the chills so everytime goosebumps would pop up from the chills, it would hurt.

and being freezing i took a hot shower and the water hurt...it was awful.

i'm perfectly "normal" today.

On a cooler note, i was watching 24 and behrooz' mom had just killed his girlfriend when her cell phone rang. behrooz looked at the number and it said Mom...but i noticed it was a real number. so i called it. it's the mailbox for 24. ain't that cool?

i smaht.

Betsy is getting spayed tomorrow...poor little girl. i hope she's okay. she's so frail...

Monday, August 14, 2006

Redneck Picnic

My neighbor invited me to join her saturday for a Sutter Hospital picnic in the Tallac Village. I'm thinking doctors, nurses, hospital staff...when we got there i saw people that usually hang out in the Tallac Lounge from 10am to 2pm.

huh?

I don't know my neighbor that well so i didn't want to appear judgemental. But i couldn't hide my disgust when we met the BBQ man and his two inbred offsprings.

He was grilling gobs and gobs of hotdogs and burgers when my neighbor asked him, ever so gently, if he'd mind grilling up our Boca burgers. Well you'd a thought we asked him to knit us a quilt! he shook his head, looked down, made some rude comments to his rat children and then they all laughed. it was the most awkward 30 seconds ever.

He's bitching and stressing that he's never cooked none of those before...again, my neighbor gently said not to worry; just throw 'em on and take 'em off.

"well you dont go no where. you stay right there til they're done"

I said "oh my!" and he mocked me "Oh my is raaaight"

then his spawned daughter said her brother dated a vegetarian and they all hated her. in fact, for her b'day dinner they made sure to put meat in everything. bacon in the potato salad, meat based gravy, ham & peas, etc...

just goes to show you: meat eaters CAN lack the ability to act human, moral, intelligent, compassionate, bright, kind, etc.

at least i'd like to think so...(except you Pinknest)

Friday, August 11, 2006

sorry...

sorry to change the mood from my last blog but sadly there are other truths out there besides those...

please take a moment to sign the petition and then please take another moment to pass it on. the power of blogging would be good right now...
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/131317412?ltl=1155327293

and here's a reminder of why we're here to protect the innocent:

The "Rules"

To be posted VERY LOW on the refrigerator door - nose height.

Dear Dogs and Cats,
  1. The dishes with the paw prints are yours and contain your food. The other dishes are mine and contain my food. Please note, placing a paw print in the middle of my plate of food does not stake a claim for it becoming your food and dish, nor do I find that aesthetically pleasing in the slightest.
  2. The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack. Beating me to the bottom is not the object. Tripping me doesn't help because I fall faster than you can run.
  3. I cannot buy anything bigger than a king sized bed. I am very sorry about this. Do not think I will continue sleeping on the couch to ensure your comfort. Dogs and cats can actually curl up in a ball when they sleep. It is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other stretched out to the fullest extent possible. I also know that sticking tails straight out and having tongues hanging out the other end to maximize space is nothing but sarcasm.
  4. For the last time, there is not a secret exit from the bathroom. If by some miracle I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it is not necessary to claw, whine, meow, try to turn the knob or get your paw under the edge and try to pull the door open. I must exit through the same door I entered. Also, I have been using the bathroom for years --canine or feline attendance is not mandatory.
  5. The proper order is kiss me, then go smell the other dog or cat's butt. I cannot stress this enough!

However, despite all the "irritation" you give to me; i have still stood by THESE rules for others to abide by:

To All Non-Pet Owners Who Visit & Like to Complain About Our Pets

  1. They live here. You don't.
  2. If you don't want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture. (That's why they call it "fur"niture.)
  3. I like my pets a lot better than I like most people.
  4. To you, it's an animal. To me, he/she is an adopted son/daughter who is short, hairy, walks on all fours and doesn't speak clearly.

Remember: Dogs and cats are easier than kids because they: 1. Eat less 2. Don't ask for money all the time 3 Are easier to train 4. Usually come when called 5. Never drive your car 6. Don't hang out with drug-using friends 7. Don't smoke or drink 8. Don't worry about having to buy the latest fashions 9. Don't wear your clothes 10. Don't need a gazillion dollars for college, and 11. If they get pregnant, you can sell their children (but it is my opinion that you fix your animals so you're not faced with this heart-wrenching choice! IMO)


yay! have a good weekend everybody!

Thursday, August 10, 2006

I pretty!

I had my hair appt at 4 yesterday. very bad roots needed to be covered, and..what the hell! Cut my hair too!

so he did.

and then he asked me to flip my head over so he could blow dry my hair. i havne't done that move since the 80's...when i flipped back i still had no access to a mirror.

until the very last product was applied...


yay me!

on another note...anyone see Britneys latest music video?



"let's go to the movies and drink at home..." she's my twin. minus the movie part.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

thanks kody...

...for a crappy nights sleep.

he happened to be on 'possum patrol and is quite diligent in ensuring none walk on my fenceline. i finally had to call him in and close his door.

i thought i was getting cable internet this morning. turns out it's NEXT wednesday. i had planned to take the whole day off becuase i'm getting my hair done at 4:00 so why the hell not. now i'm at work.

poop.

Here's another picture (a different angle - i'm so artsy) of kody eyeing & guarding my delicious lime coconut cookies from Vive le Vegan...he knows a good thing when he sees it.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Kevin? playing the role of the 'wife'???

Dear Prudie:
I love my husband dearly and we have been happily married for 20 years. With that said, I find myself more and more jealous of our (his) dog. OK, I know this man loves me, and I think even more than the dog, but good grief! He will walk in the door at the end of a long day and there she'll be, barking and howling for him as I stand there waiting for my turn. He lies on the floor with her on the weekends and pats her, talks to her, and sleeps side by side with her. Sometimes I blow up about it, but then shortly after I feel like a nut job for being jealous. I have joked to our friends that maybe if I rolled over on my back and peed on the floor I might warrant the same attentions. His love for the dog is a running joke with the family and our friends. —Throw Me a Bone!

Dear Throw:
Can I borrow your dog? Ours is sweet but pretty much a bust in the "I love you, I love you, I love you" department, and my husband is bereft about it. We briefly had a foster dog that would drape himself across my husband's chest, his nose in my husband's armpit—those days were among the happiest of my husband's life. As for sleeping with your pets, well, the early years of my marriage were spent with my late, beloved cat perched on my head each night. Either you feel this way about animals or you don't. Your husband does; you don't. Look at it this way: He comes home to you and the dog every night. Wouldn't you be more jealous if you thought he were out somewhere cuddling with the cutie in accounting? And as much as he may love his dog, surely he does still throw you a bone every now and then.—Prudie

Amen Prudence...amen...

Monday, August 07, 2006

yay!

no breast cancer.

guess i'll have to lose weight the old-fashioned way...

Friday, August 04, 2006

People are strange, when you're a stranger...

Kevin and i went to the mall for lunch and took a cruise in to Brookstone. We both found two free massage chairs open for 'business'. we sat down for a 15 minute freebie and this guy walks in, walking kinda weird, with half his ipod in his ear. he climbs on this odd looking device
in front of our chairs that's supposed to help you trim your thighs, strengthen your abs and melt your booty, all while watching tv! (and with my 3 hours a viewing per day, i should be a size 2 by next week)

"this is like riding a horse!

It's doing a slow cantor right now...(pushes a button) op! that's like a trot...yes a trot or maybe a slow gallop.

This feels good after being in the hospital for 6 months! (you know he wants you to ask)

Strongest people in the world are ballerinas (??) and ....uuh....yup that's a gallop now."

"did you know i had a stroke?"

"Noo waaay! Really?"

"Yup. Don't like to talk about it though...i just smile and nod a lot"

really? you don't like to talk about it yet you bring it up to two strangers? while you're riding a device that is making your head bobble?

I like people. I do. Strangers especially because EVERYONE is interesting and everyone has something to tell you. and i love peopel like this becuase they give me somthing to write about when i really had nothing...thank you Mr. Horsey man...thank you...

i can't write anymore. i'm weird today.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

ilovemydogilovemydogilovemydogilovemy...

Last Sunday my sweet neighbor invited me, betsy, kevin AND KODY over to her house to swim and BBQ. i asked her several times if she was certain she meant Kody too...she assured me it would be okay.

Kody is a dog only a mother could love. Really. and love him i do...except when he does shit like this:
(claws on my calf)
that's what you get for taking his soccer ball and swimming away with it...who's the alpha dog here?

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

A Sunless Hell

This is a long read; but, not as long as what the animals endure. I think i'll leave this post up for a while becuase it's so very heart-wrenchingly written.

A sunless hell
Confronting the cruel facts of factory-farmed meat

Matthew Scully (an amazing writer, in my opinion)
Special for the Republic
Feb. 19, 2006 12:00 AM

Arizona voters will be asked this fall to weigh in on a ballot measure called the Humane Treatment of Farm Animals Act, which is now in the signature-gathering stage but, by November, is certain to be one of our livelier election-year debates.

The initiative, modeled on a reform passed by Florida voters, would prohibit the factory-farming practice of confining pigs and veal calves in crates so small that the animals cannot even turn around or extend their limbs.

Factory farming, in general, is no one's favorite subject, and the details here are particularly unpleasant to think about: masses of creatures enduring lives of unrelieved confinement and deprivation. But if you're in need of reasons to sign the petitions and vote for the initiative, they are easy to find, and our discomfort with the subject is a good place to start.

Known in the trade as "intensive confinement" or "mass confinement," it sounds pretty rough. And as we're seeing already, pork producers and the PR firms in their hire do not take well to criticism of what they regard as "standard practice."

Just this month, the industry's allies in the Arizona Legislature proposed a constitutional amendment to bar the public from passing any laws promoting the humane treatment of farm animals, effective Jan. 1, 2006. Nice to have a fallback position: Even if the humane-farming initiative passes by vote of the people, as industry lobbyists apparently fear it will, they plan to nullify the law retroactively.

Basically, pork producers figured out some years ago that if they packed the maximum number of pigs into the minimum amount of space, if they pinned the creatures down into fit-to-size iron crates above slatted floors and carved out giant "lagoons" to contain the manure - if they turned the "farm," in short, into a sunless hell of metal and concrete - it made everything so much more efficient. An obvious cost-saver, and from the industry's standpoint, that should settle the matter.

Veal, by definition, is the product of a sick, anemic, deliberately malnourished calf, a newborn dragged away from his mother in the first hours of life. Veal calves are dealt the harshest of punishments for the least essential of meats. And if you think people can get too sentimental about animals, try listening sometime to chefs and gourmands going on about the "velvety smooth succulence" of their favorite fare.

"Cost-saver" in industrial livestock agriculture may usually be taken to mean "moral shortcut." For all of its "science-based" pretensions, factory farming is really just an elaborate, endless series of evasions from the most elementary duties of honest animal husbandry. Man, the rationalizing creature, can justify just about anything when there is money in sight. It's only easier when your victims are so completely out of sight and unable to speak for themselves.

Over the years, one miserly deprivation led to another, ever harsher methods were applied to force costs lower and lower, and so on until the animals ceased to be understood as living creatures at all. Pigs, for example, aren't even "raised" anymore, a term that once conveyed some human attention and care. These days, in America's 395,000-kills-per-day pork industry, pigs are "grown," crowded together by the hundreds in the automated, scientifically based intensive-confinement facilities formerly known as barns.

Unlike the old ways

To the factory farmer, in contrast to the traditional farmer with his sense of honor and obligation, the animals are "production units," and accorded all the sympathy that term suggests. As conservative commentator Fred Barnes put it in the Wall Street Journal, "On the old family farms, pigs and cattle and chickens were raised for food, but they were free for a time; they mated, raised piglets, calves and chicks and were protected by the farmers . . . . They had a life. On industrial farms, they don't."

Among the more disreputable claims made to justify intensive confinement is that it's actually for the benefit of the pigs. They "prefer" confinement to grazing outdoors. They need "protection" from each other's aggression.

If you know absolutely nothing about pigs, this has a vaguely comforting ring to it - that is, until the moment you step into a factory farm, as I have had occasion to do. Inside, it becomes dramatically obvious that their ceaseless, merciless confinement is the cause of the pigs' aggression, and by no stretch a protective measure. It turns out that when you trap intelligent, 400- to 500-pound mammals in gestation crates 22 inches wide and 7 feet long, when their limbs are broken from trying to turn or escape and they are covered in sores, blood, tumors, "pus pockets," and their own urine and excrement, they tend to act up a bit.

Indeed, the most notable thing is how the appearance of any human being causes a violent panic. A mere opening of the door brings on a horrific wave of roars, squeals and cage-rattling from the sows. Another memorable sight is the "cull pen," wherein each and every day, the dead or dying bodies of the weak are placed, the ones who expired from the sheer, unrelenting agony of it.

It takes a well-practiced dishonesty to insist with a straight face that intensive confinement is "for their own good," and almost as brazen is the libertarian case for factory farming, which may be summed up as "mind your own business." Along with this comes a haughty little reminder that we're all the beneficiaries of factory farming, and where do you think all that cheap meat comes from, and why don't we just be grateful and let them manage their own affairs?

The argument has a certain practical appeal, provided you forget that factory farming is propped up by tens of billions of dollars in annual federal subsidies, which are very definitely our business. Much as the immiserated animals are kept on four legs by hormones and antibiotics, the entire enterprise is sustained by those federal subsidies and billions more paid by government to repair industrial farming's immense collateral damage to land, water and air.

The illusion of consumer savings depends not only on unscrupulous corporate farmers, but also on complaisant citizens and blithely indifferent consumers who don't ask too many questions - least of all moral questions. And the industry wants to keep it that way. Just buy the "cheap" meat, forget the damned animals, and keep the subsidies coming.

Once the details are known, in short, it all becomes a very tough sell for factory farmers. And so far their quaint-sounding "Campaign for Arizona Farmers and Ranchers" (brought to you by the National Pork Producers Council and other agribusiness trade groups) is not going well.

Industry lobbyist Jim Klinker, now director of the Arizona Farm Bureau and lead spokesman against the humane-farming initiative, started things off with a blunt reminder that farm animals aren't pets, and so our sympathy for them is misplaced. "These people," Klinker told Tucson Weekly, "want these animals raised the same way we raise our dogs and cats. I think most people understand that's not how food is produced."

When you want people to harden their hearts, however, it's probably not such a good idea to invite comparisons between farm animals and dogs or cats. How would your dog react if you stuffed her into a crate in which she could not even stretch or turn around, and never let her out? No human attention or companionship with other animals. No bedding, straw to lie on. No single moment outdoors, ever, to feel the breeze or the warmth of the sun.

What if it were a dog?

Your dog, a being of intelligence and emotional capacities entirely comparable to those of a pig, would beg and wail and whimper and finally fall silent into a state of complete brokenness. And anyone who inflicted such tortures on that animal, no matter what excuses might be offered, would be guilty of a felony. If the creatures are comparable, and the conditions identical, and the suffering equal, how can the one be "standard practice" and the other a crime?

Next, in an interview with Arizona Capitol Times, Klinker tried out the "sentimentalist" line. The initiative, he scoffed, is based on "pure emotions" - as opposed to factory farming itself, which we are to assume is guided at every grim stage by the light of pure reason.

He followed up with a little warning that the Humane Treatment of Farm Animals Act is all the doing of "outsiders" anyway, by which he means various cranks, subversives, and social misfits who apparently are conspiring at this very moment to "impose the values of a vegetarian society on all Arizonans."

One problem here is that if Klinker is going to be our defender of true Arizona values against "outsiders," then he needs to hear from a broader range of outside opinion. And it may surprise him to learn that the problems of factory farming are becoming more apparent, and more abhorrent, to people of every political stripe.

When the conservative columnist George Will, for example, calls cruelty to animals "an intrinsic evil," citing the "pain-inflicting confinements and mutilations" of factory farming, you know it can no longer be shrugged off as the concern of a faint-hearted few.

Factory farming, Mr. Will observed in Newsweek not long ago, has become a "serious issue of public policy." And conservatives in particular, applying that uncompromising moral clarity on which they pride themselves, should not be afraid to call "vicious" things what they are.

Another conservative writer, Andrew Ferguson of Bloomberg News, challenged the "hyper-efficient agricultural economy" and "the cruel innovations the modern industrial farm depends upon." And Father Richard John Neuhaus, writing in the conservative National Review, expressed his disgust at "the horrors perpetuated against pigs on industrial farms," a matter "that warrants public and governmental attention."

Neuhaus could cite, if he needed further authority, Pope Benedict XVI, who has warned against the "degrading of living creatures to a commodity" entailed in factory farming. And Protestant Christians could hear a similar message from one of their own most respected figures, Charles Colson, the conservative evangelist who cautions that "When it comes to animal welfare today, Christians have allowed the secular world to set the agenda. ... We need to get involved in shaping laws that determine animal treatment. But first we must make it our business to find out how the ... cattle of the earth are treated on factory farms." Christians especially, declared Colson, "have a duty to prevent the needless torment of animals."

"Outsiders," all of them, but not to my knowledge collaborators in any effort to impose "the values of a vegetarian society" on Arizona. For Klinker and other lobbyists for factory farming, surely the lesson is that they should spend a little less time warning about other people's values, and a little more time examining their own.

It is true, as he reminds us, that other states have far larger "herds" than in Arizona's $40 million-a-year pork industry. But this is hardly a thought to put one's mind at rest. The same was also true, until recently, of Utah, now home to a sprawling network of nightmarish "mega-farms," all of them built and run by giant corporations like Smithfield Foods, the real outsiders in all of this. The largest of these places, a sort of gulag for pigs, holds 1.3 million in confinement and produces more waste every year than metropolitan Los Angeles.

Why, Klinker wonders, enact a law here instead of in Iowa, North Carolina or Utah? Well, for starters, maybe Arizonans do not want to go the way of Utah. And in that case, now would be a good time to bar the door.

Prepare yourself to hear, in the coming months, these arguments and similar rubbish from industry lobbyists, their shill veterinarians, and anyone else they can trot out to make something pernicious and contemptible seem decent and praiseworthy. Then in the quiet of the voting booth ask yourself why any creature of God, however humble, should be made to endure the dark, lonely, tortured existence of the factory farm, and what kind of people build their fortunes upon such misery.

The answer will send an unequivocal message, to factory farmers here and to all concerned, that unbridled arrogance, bad faith, and rank cruelty are not Arizona values.

Matthew Scully worked for Arizona governors Mecham, Mofford, and Symington. A former special assistant and deputy director of speechwriting for President Bush, he is the author of "Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy."

McLibel

kevin and i watched this movie last night. It was VERY interesting and i'm surprised i've never heard of it. Kevin explained it's the "American Way" to ensure we dont' get our mitts on this bit of info...

readers' digest: two people take on one of the largest, most gluttonous corporations on the planet. TWO PEOPLE! Really, an amazing story...

if you're curious about the contents, check out this site...