Showing posts with label Animal rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Animal rights. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Catholic Pig-Wrestling
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Pig-Rasslin’ in Wisconsin
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
- Lewis Carroll, “The Walrus and the Carpenter
Pig-wrestling in Stephensville, Wisconsin, is an endangered activity.
The parishioners of St. Patrick’s Church, for reasons best known to themselves and to their porcine brothers and sisters, have for years hosted an annual pig-wrestle – or rassle – as a fund raiser.
And why? As with so many matters in Christianity, this is a great mystery.
One often sees statues of Saint Francis (in the garden department, next to the concrete gnomes and the rather satanic-looking frogs) blessing animals but never a statue of Saint Francis wrestling with a pig.
Presumably the pig-rassle is not staged in the church narthex next to the CYO bake sale.
Maybe wrestling pigs is the best Wisconsin can do for a rodeo.
The event is messy but harmless, and after the day’s merriment the pigs are returned to the farm to meditate upon their Four Last Things: bacon, sausage, pork chops, and footballs.
The Society of Prissy People Who Are Against Things are not happy with non-lethal pig-rasslin’, though, and some 42,000 people of the sort who believe that Disney’s Bambi is true have signed a petition demanding that St. Patrick’s cease and desist and de-oink.
The SPPWAAT have apparently clogged the telephone line and emails of St. Patrick’s, and the local deputies will be keeping an eye out in case innocent, old-fashioned merriment must be saved from the Miz Grundies.
Saint Patrick of Ireland made the snakes go away; too bad that doesn’t work with the sort of people who make idols out of critters.
You know, if the parishioners of St. Patrick’s Church in Stephensville want a real rasslin’ challenge, they ought to try prying a teenager’s fingers off a MePhone.
Taking down a porcupine with bare hands could be interesting too.
Judge Joe Folk tells of a pig and a chicken who were the best of friends. One morning while walking along the street they saw a little café that advertised a bargain ham-and-egg breakfast.
The chicken said “Hey, let’s go there for breakfast.”
The pig replied “I think I’ll pass. When it comes to ham and eggs, the chicken has made a contribution but the pig has made a commitment.”
Badabing!
No animals were harmed in the making of this joke.
And no pigs are being harmed at St. Patrick’s
-30-
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Cultural Colonialism and a Fish
Mack Hall
Hayden Panettiere, who is famous for playing an “indestructible cheerleader” (I’m only repeated what the AP says) on television, has directed the fisherpersons of Taiji, Japan to stop their annual dolphin fishing.
Posturing – I mean, protesting – the annual seal hunt in Newfoundland is like, so back in th’ day, like, y’know? The happening place now for posing prettily for the cameras and patronizing the benighted natives is darkest Japan. Lapsing into the imperial first-person plural, Great White Non-Huntress Hayden sayeth, “We’ve been to Taiji…it’s a beautiful place with beautiful wildlife.”
Yeah, and the local folks are so cute and quaint and folksy, too, and love to sit on the doorsteps of their ‘umble cottages in the evenings, playing the banjo and singing their ethnic songs. Of course there is the matter of their killing our animal-friends thing.
Any centuries-old culture which has found its balance with nature certainly needs to be corrected and its future planned by a 20-year-old American whose moral, cultural, and intellectual authority comes from appearing on the tellyvision.
Hayden-Sahib promises the fisherfolk of Taiji that if only they’d stop being meanies and killing Flipper she’d love to be their spokesprincess and help them promote tourism and maybe basketweaving. No doubt they’ll build a statue of her and form a cargo-cult.
Newfoundland was promised the same deal – stop beating the widdy-biddy-big-eyed baby seals to death and we’ll send you some tourists. Yes, if we all stop farming and fishing we can feed the world based on visiting each other.
Perhaps my neighbor, who raises horses and cows, could be persuaded to give all his livestock to a nature preserve – where’d they naturally be naturally eaten by the natural and organic wolves – and charge tourists five dollars each to walk across his fields and admire the clover or something. No hayrides in a wagon, though, because a tractor burns that wicked old polluting gasoline and using a mule would be animal cruelty. Let the mule, too, be recycled by cuddly carnivores.
In the summers we could all stop fishing the lakes and streams, beat our fishing poles into plowshares, and learn how to wear funny clothes and pose for pictures with tourists. With the proceeds we could put fish-flavored tofu on the table beneath an ikon of the divine Hayden.
Hey, we could sell our woods rattlesnakes to tourists as pets. The city folk could take the critters back to their high-rise apartments and snuggle up to them on cold winter nights, or maybe turn the rattlers loose in the city parks where children play. Hey, if rattlesnakes are good for country children just think how much better they’ll be for city kids.
And Newfoundland could send Hayden some harp seals for her swimming pool for her pet dolphin to eat. Hayden does know that none of these critters is a vegetarian, doesn’t she?
Japan, like Iceland and England, is a small island nation, and because of this much of her economy is based on the sea. Seafaring nations squabble with each other over limits and about who should fish where, but none of them proposes mass starvation by not fishing at all. A 20-year-old whose wholly artificial living is not based on the soil or the sea is not only presumptuous but dangerous in telling people who actually work how to live. A Japanese fisherman living a marginal life has no following of thousands of cell-‘phone twitterers whose idea of a rough day is being asked to turn in a global-warming essay on time. He is pretty much alone. The fisherman makes his peace with the sea because his living is the sea, and if he does not fish his children do not eat. To require this man to surrender his dignity and his heritage and take up selling made-in-China souvenirs to mocking visitors is unconscionable.
Eat the fish. Save the humans.
-30-
Hayden Panettiere, who is famous for playing an “indestructible cheerleader” (I’m only repeated what the AP says) on television, has directed the fisherpersons of Taiji, Japan to stop their annual dolphin fishing.
Posturing – I mean, protesting – the annual seal hunt in Newfoundland is like, so back in th’ day, like, y’know? The happening place now for posing prettily for the cameras and patronizing the benighted natives is darkest Japan. Lapsing into the imperial first-person plural, Great White Non-Huntress Hayden sayeth, “We’ve been to Taiji…it’s a beautiful place with beautiful wildlife.”
Yeah, and the local folks are so cute and quaint and folksy, too, and love to sit on the doorsteps of their ‘umble cottages in the evenings, playing the banjo and singing their ethnic songs. Of course there is the matter of their killing our animal-friends thing.
Any centuries-old culture which has found its balance with nature certainly needs to be corrected and its future planned by a 20-year-old American whose moral, cultural, and intellectual authority comes from appearing on the tellyvision.
Hayden-Sahib promises the fisherfolk of Taiji that if only they’d stop being meanies and killing Flipper she’d love to be their spokesprincess and help them promote tourism and maybe basketweaving. No doubt they’ll build a statue of her and form a cargo-cult.
Newfoundland was promised the same deal – stop beating the widdy-biddy-big-eyed baby seals to death and we’ll send you some tourists. Yes, if we all stop farming and fishing we can feed the world based on visiting each other.
Perhaps my neighbor, who raises horses and cows, could be persuaded to give all his livestock to a nature preserve – where’d they naturally be naturally eaten by the natural and organic wolves – and charge tourists five dollars each to walk across his fields and admire the clover or something. No hayrides in a wagon, though, because a tractor burns that wicked old polluting gasoline and using a mule would be animal cruelty. Let the mule, too, be recycled by cuddly carnivores.
In the summers we could all stop fishing the lakes and streams, beat our fishing poles into plowshares, and learn how to wear funny clothes and pose for pictures with tourists. With the proceeds we could put fish-flavored tofu on the table beneath an ikon of the divine Hayden.
Hey, we could sell our woods rattlesnakes to tourists as pets. The city folk could take the critters back to their high-rise apartments and snuggle up to them on cold winter nights, or maybe turn the rattlers loose in the city parks where children play. Hey, if rattlesnakes are good for country children just think how much better they’ll be for city kids.
And Newfoundland could send Hayden some harp seals for her swimming pool for her pet dolphin to eat. Hayden does know that none of these critters is a vegetarian, doesn’t she?
Japan, like Iceland and England, is a small island nation, and because of this much of her economy is based on the sea. Seafaring nations squabble with each other over limits and about who should fish where, but none of them proposes mass starvation by not fishing at all. A 20-year-old whose wholly artificial living is not based on the soil or the sea is not only presumptuous but dangerous in telling people who actually work how to live. A Japanese fisherman living a marginal life has no following of thousands of cell-‘phone twitterers whose idea of a rough day is being asked to turn in a global-warming essay on time. He is pretty much alone. The fisherman makes his peace with the sea because his living is the sea, and if he does not fish his children do not eat. To require this man to surrender his dignity and his heritage and take up selling made-in-China souvenirs to mocking visitors is unconscionable.
Eat the fish. Save the humans.
-30-
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
