Three days at my new apartment and I had already seen more cockroaches than in twelve years at my last residence. In my last place, I only saw three. One was already dead. One I found later dead from eating health food. The other I let get away and spread the message that Swami X’s crib was a dead zone.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj3dOfNlD68]
I saw my first batch of critters near my dog’s food bowl, which I had grown into the habit of leaving out all crusty and nasty. I went on a killing spree that hasn’t been seen since the likes of Pol Pot. Then every few days one would crawl by with its fat ass like it was Jennifer Lopez at the Mtv Awards and SMASH!
And then I met “The One.” I was in the kitchen and there he was. I went towards him and was ready to smash him with a hammerfist—not to be confused with a hammerhead, which is a type of shark and a ridiculous thing for me to have in a kitchen; a bathtub less so—and he just stood there and looked up at me.
I thought how I had the power of life or death over this little creature of God who because of a public relations campaign that had the ladybug considered the cute little beetle with a score of children’s books and a full-length movie to her name and the cockroach portrayed as the dirty, disease-ridden, tyranny of evil bugs, it had seen the bottom of more boots than probably any other being on earth, besides Eliot Spitzer when he would rent a $5000/hr. dominatrix at the Emperor’s Club.
Normally his ass would be dead as fuckin’ fried chicken but he happened to crawl out when I was in a transition period and I didn’t want to kill him, I wanted to help him. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PeyiU3uWJ8&feature=related] And so I surrounded him with my cupped hands and said, “Crawl on. I won’t hurt you.” And he did.
I took him to my window and opened it and chucked him outside on the sidewalk, knowing that unlike the World Trade Center jumpers, he would survive the fall. Perhaps I should have looked down to see if any human was passing by, as this could have been quite traumatic for the little guy to land after a twenty-foot freefall on a human’s head who would most probably freak-out and try to swat and stomp on him.
Since that day, I vowed not to kill any of these beautiful brown bugs that happen to be running an exploratory campaign in my apartment and have caught and released at least a dozen of the little fuckers. Any bugs of other-than-brown color get the hammerfist.
When I was younger, we used to periodically find black ants crawling in our house. One time it was summer and we were out in the backyard and my father stomped on some of the black ants and their ant hole. I was like, “What the fuck?” as even back then I cursed like a drunken sailor who just banged a fellow sailor that he assumed was straight because of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. My Dad justified his Fatwa against the innocent ants with, “They’ll just come into the house.”
It made no sense to me. Here these ants were, minding their own fuckin’ business, crawling around in the area where they had always lived and, like a Native American, my Dad was wishing them to the corn field, which was a reservation in the sky with no casinos.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PeyiU3uWJ8&feature=related]
Gandhi said, “A nation’s progress can be judged by how it treats their animals.” Sure the statement is grammatically incorrect—as it should be “how it treats its animals” or “…how its people treat their animals,” but it still has merit, even if it has little syntaxically.
What gives us the right to snuff out the life of any creature, whether it be one we find tasty or one we find repulsive? “Because we can” is not a declaration of a right but a fact that has no bearing on consciousness choice. We can stab a kitchen knife into a baby. We can throw rocks at cars. We can have sex with little boys. We can blow up innocent women and children. But unless you are a psycho, me as a juvenile, a priest or a Muslim, our ability to take an action doesn’t make it a right.
When I was more active with animal rights, I was handing out information fliers to the waiting line of people outside of the Late Night with David Letterman Theater. Jennifer Lopez was going to be on the show and because she had recently started a new fashion line that featured the use of fur, PETA had decided to voice their discontent for her choice and her fat ass. I made an original sign: JENNY FROM THE BUTCHER’S BLOCK.
Most people on the line didn’t care either way about the issue, as they were typical of the mindless masses that just wanted to have their brains removed from their heads and washed, as they are entertained. One woman got aggressive with me. She said, “In the Bible it says that God gave man dominion over the animals.”
I told the sadistic bitch that dominion could mean “stewardship,” “leadership,” “responsibility” for the rest of God’s creations. I didn’t go into all the ridiculous things that the Bible says or the fact that it says God gave “man” dominion and that all he gave women the right to do was bleed from their vaginas.
She told me that this phrase meant that humans could exploit animals. That’s literally the word she used—exploit. How could we ever justify exploiting anything, which literally means taking advantage of, abusing, or “to make use of selfishly or unethically”? [http://www.answers.com/topic/exploit]
I ended up being shoved across the street by a 6’5” thug cop, filed a complaint with the Civilian Complaint Review Board and was notified 10 months later that the they found that the police pig acted within the law? What the fu—? I thought he would lie that he manhandled me! I guess in a corrupt system, there is no longer a need to deny your abuses [see The S.S. Persia: Ship or Nazi? at http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Practical/Shop--ToDo/Activism/The_S1S_Persia-ShipOrNazi.htm]
In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, he lists the first limb of the 8-limb system of yoga as the Yamas. These are considered “attitudes” or “behaviors” and sometimes even “abstentions.” One of them is Aparigraha, which can be translated as “not seizing or grasping,” taking only what is necessary and not taking advantage of any person or situation. Perhaps we can utilize not only this principle but also a book that, unlike just about every “religious” bible throughout history, no wars have ever been fought over in its name.
Even if you did believe humans were designed and should eat animals, looking at how grossly obese we are as a nation, do we really need to eat that much of it, or even meat every day? How many of you have gone even a single day without swallowing some animal product or its derivative that resulted in the exploitation of another being?
“We were hunters and gatherers!” Really? I would argue that before our hunter/gatherer stage we were fruit and berry pickers. But even if we came from “hunters and gatherers,” do you think that they killed and ate meat every day? If you’re going to argue in order to justify your taste for blood, at least be moderately consistent in your logic. By that logic, because we come from a long history of violence, we would raise our kids on violent television and videogames. Oh wait, we do.
All living creatures have the right to life, be they insect, animal, human, cute or ugly, big or small. We don’t have the right to kill life just because we have the power to do so. So I suppose I’m a Right-To-Lifer.
Even in the case of a human fetus, paying a gonif doctor to Hoover out the little egg yolk is just beyond the pale. I am only pro-abortion if it involves cutting out the crooks and cutting up the unborn with a rusty hanger.
