Weblog Sin Pies

By Trevor Ryan

The Department of Agriculture confirmed today that a cow tested positive for mad cow disease in Alabama. Alabama, it turns out, is in the United States, which means that there are cows in the United States that have mad cow disease. (Those of you who say I failed logic are wrong. I never even took a class in logic. So there.) So anyway, this poor cow now has to make a host of embarrassing phone calls to ex-lovers. I can’t help but feel bad for her, but then, if you eat the brains of fellow members of your species, that’s what you get. There’s sort of a lesson in this, I think. I’m pretty sure it has to do with eating things that are different than ourselves, because difference is intolerable.

This is how dumber creatures teach the geniuses of the land (us) how to live. By making mistakes, such as eating what we give them. Similarly, chickens warn us of the perils of overpopulation by living stacked ten deep in tiny cages of their own making (well, humans made them, but using profits from chickens raised, slaughtered and sold. Giving one’s life for the imprisonment of others is like building the prison itself. I like to call it “the other irresponsible investing.”) So on this upcoming Earth Day (I would give the date, but nobody knows exactly when it is, it just happens sometimes, like Columbus Day, Fathers Day, or Laundry Day).

Some people think whales are smarter than people. There are some whales that have a larger brain in proportion to their body mass (I think, but I don’t want to look it up). For this reason, these people want to kill the whales, to maintain our own supremacy. It’s essentially the new Cold War. “Forget China,” they cry. “Look to the sea for the greatest threat to our security.” I think this is crazy. Clearly we can’t go killing whales because they might have nuclear weapons. We should, however, detain and interrogate them until we can be sure that they do not. This is how we learn about our fellow creatures.