goats rather than cows?

Harry brings up an important point in the comments for my common sense post below.

 

Goats contribute methane to the atmosphere as cows do.  They're not necessarily a method for reducing greenhouse gases if one is insistent upon using animals on one's homestead.  They're organic matter masticating, ruminating and defecating critters, so it is a given.

 

I would argue, though, that they're more utilitarian to have around.  They require less feed because they'll double as tree trimmers, brush removal experts, and weed munchers.  One can hitch up a small plow and cultivate a field with one.  Imagine a herd of chickens who eat invasive weeds and shrubs down to the nub, kicking up dirt and pooping as they go, yeehah!  That's good soil to plant in, the following season. 

 

It is a better exchange of raw materials for milk and possibly meat in return.  And, thus far, no one seems to be going the direction of shooting their goats full of antibiotics, or hormones.  If it ends up a CAFO-type of operation with goats then all bets are off, of course.

 

I have relatives who raise goats for the milk, the cultivating, the hair, and the meat (eventually).  The problem with consuming culture is we don't see the animal as a whole.  We see one to two products, tops, and then the rest is someone else's responsibility.  Having a goat in the freezer, though, to be thawed and eaten throughout the year, is doable.  It involves eating everything but the 'baaa-a-a-a-a', of course, but that's a more realistic picture of how our ancestors ate, and it worked just fine for them.

 

I'd rather be getting goat dairy products from a local farm than cow's milk products from a local farm.  Well, I'd rather have the space for goats, to be honest. 

 

If we could reorganize the family unit and neighborhoods into self-sufficient compounds with lots of community garden space and shared duties with some critters like chickens and goats, it would eliminate methane simply because it would eliminate the demand for CAFOs.  (And if methane's a concern, work on capture technology and at least fuel people's stoves with it).

 

Simplistic?  Oh yes.  Doable?  Definitely.

will Common Sense please stand up?

So it's Dueling Dilemmas on the intertubes right now.  The Niman lady versus the vegetarian lobby.  She wrote an article called The Carnivore's Dilemma.  I'm not going to post the URL, you can find it over at the OCA page.  There's now a vegetarian rebuttal over there, too, which sports a retinue of vitriolic comments from both sides of the issue.

 

Honestly, it's not about carnivores versus vegetarians anymore, so much as it is about acknowledging that consumption of animal products, as they are currently produced, has a negative impact in terms of greenhouse gases, environmental degradation and pollution, etc.

 

We can't ignore the 800 pounds of beans (not soy) in the corner.  Those beans took less arable land, less water, and less time to produce than 800 pounds of beef would require - and they did not require tons of feed nor did they require pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, or anything else not naturally-occuring in a food.  They replenished the nitrogen in the soil as they grew, they did not break wind as they grew, and they did not belch either.  This is a no-brainer.  (Please, veggie-haters, keep your 'do the carrots scream when you pull them up?' pissing to yourselves...)

 

Why is this even a subject of debate and hand-wringing? 

 

Anyone who makes the argument that beef is good for the environment if you grass-feed it is just trying to make ya feel good about beef consumption, so that you'll continue it, and they'll stay in business that much longer.  And I say that as a sometimes carnivore.  Actually, it makes me flash back to my first year at UCSC, when I was home for the summer and hanging out with a highschool friend.  Her step-dad proudly proclaimed, "I'm a vegetarian now!" and because I was one then, too, I said, "Oh, good for you." and he continued on to say he eats chicken, and occasionally beef.  "What?  No, you're saying you're a fair-weather carnivore..." and the guy had the brass balls to be offended by that.  It wasn't about helping the environment, or about health, or being pragmatic, that this guy was eating veggies more often than animal flesh.  No, it was all ego.  We need to not let our egos get stroked by the earth-friendly greenwashing that meat is undergoing at the grocery store. 

 

Are vegetables a better use of land?  Of course they are.  They make it possible to feed more people more effectively.  If you want some protein diversity and extra fertilizer for the plantings, build a coop and get some chickens.  You don't have to eat them.  Just eat the eggs and feed them your kitchen scraps and set them loose in the yard to peck the weeds to death when you have time to supervise 'em.  Even the no-longer-laying crones will earn their keep as weeders, pest eaters, and soil fertilizers. 

 

But, we've been sold on convenience.  Meat's been sold as this super-protein-packed efficient food.  Why boil a pot of lentils if one can throw a pork chop into a pan.  Meat's not this plentiful food resource, though.  I'm just wondering when that is going to finally be so obvious as to be impossible to ignore. 

 

*mutter grumble grouse*

I'm leaving! and I'm taking my letters with me!

Sometimes The Onion pick the perfect pieces to re-run on its site.

 

'Letter D Pulls Sponsorship from Sesame Street

 

Noted Consonant Alienated by Controversial New Gay Muppet...'

 

Anyway, read it all here.

 

I'd love to work for The Onion.  I'd like to have a pony, too.  The likelihood of either happening is probably nil.

 

oh for fuck's sake, what 'voice'?

Nothing like nutjob news in the morning. 

 

If the GOP has found its voice, it is one of intolerance, mean-spiritedness, and fiscal irresponsibility.

 

I was disgusted to turn on CBS news this morning to find that it had devolved into Rupert's Special.  "SO!  Is this a referendum on Obama!?!" and the newscaster is practically wetting herself submissively while she talks to some dude who really doesn't know shit from shinola (and I am not sure he could spell 'referendum'), but his tv makeup is flawless.

 

Anyway, we'll be seeing this kind of hooey for awhile yet.  These deeply thought-provoking (ha) and existential ponderings (ha ha, you know the original existentialists were all commie flower-children who wanna make yer kids gay, right?) are just a lot of hot air contributing to ozone-depletion.  It's hard to get deep when you're looking into a soup dish.

 

I don't think the GOP could find it's collective ass with road maps and a flashlight, at this point.  But hey, the Spirit of Intolerance managed to turn back gay marriage in Maine, so I guess they feel like they have some kind of mandate.  Feh. 

 

I had to quit listening to Democracy Now! for a time, because it was pushing my blood pressure up despite my having lowered it with garlic.  Looks like I might need to quit watching the air-brushed news, too. 

fairness? patooey! we don't need no stinkin' fairness...

There's something to be said for putting in an effort, at the very least. 

 

Or I was always led to believe that. 

 

For whatever reason, my path is being crossed by many who can't even be bothered to put in the minimal effort.  How does one even acknowledge that without having to duck? 

 

Ya can't say in passing, 'Well, it was nice of you to show up.'  'We didn't think you were going to be here, given how we didn't see you all morning.'  Someone might take offense. 

 

Even the laws of thermodynamics state in not so many words that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but here I'm seeing proof of that, and for some reason it just really grates today.

 

In the end, I prefer my life wherein I am responsible for my actions, where I have goals to set and then meet, and I know full well that I have to traverse all the points along the way if I am to get from point A to point Z.  No free lunch.  It's not really free, for one thing.  Everyone else is subsidizing the free lunch if I am essentially dead weight.  And then there is the prospect of their resentment, to contend with.

 

Eh, don't mind me.  Nothing to see here, just some average mid-week pissing and spitting.

that's 'chicken poo', to you

Uh, would you like that steak 'feces-free', or would you like it with litter sprinkles?  Holy bug snot, Batman, they're feeding poultry litter to cows!?

 

Who the hell thinks this is a good idea, and beyond that, why the hell has the USDA not banned this practice? 

 

I'm so done with beef, my head is still spinning.  My cats are done with it.  My family is done with it.

 

And I was already done with commercially-raised poultry, but shit on a freaking stick...

 

Here's the piece, care of the folks at the OCA site.

 

I'd say this is enough to make anyone go vegetarian, but given how it has become an accepted practice to 'fertilize' fields with sewer sludge, that's not really a viable option either unless one goes organic or grows their own.  Before we even get to the animal wastes from CAFOs, ay yi yi yi.

shifts and convergences and breakthroughs, oh my

Is it harmonic?  Not sure.  Is it a convergence?  Doubtful.  It is definitely another shift, though.

 

A couple months ago I got my hands on a copy of The True Grimoire, compiled/facilitated by Jake Stratton-Kent.  And it was way over my head.

Suddenly, it makes sense.  I managed to burn through half of it the past few days.

 

Here's a catalyst for it making sense, which is surprising... I read an interesting piece in the British Journal of Thelema (the one Harry's published in currently), and it was a commentary on how a great deal of Hoodoo-type magic, whether it is practiced in Santeria, or Vodoun, or just root work, draws on 'Solomonic magick'.  A couple of pieces simply slid together and clicked into place, and suddenly the grimoiric writings made more sense.  And there's a greater point to all of it, as well...

 

The early alchemists belonged to a great many religious traditions.  Alchemical study and practice is not at all connected with religion, or religious belief of any particular stripe, but it depends greatly on the practicitioner belong to A religious tradition.  One has to have a religious life in order to be an alchemist.  One has to believe in greater forces or a greater force or spirit, because that is what grounds the practicitioner and fuels the practitioner. 

 

One of my highschool chums was fond of quipping that Haiti is 75% Catholic and 150% Voodoo.  Well, in a way that makes sense.  You have to believe in the saints in order for the orishas to have their place in day-to-day practice, after all.  One has to have religious belief to sustain them, but Vodoun itself is not necessarily the religion.

 

As well, with traditional witchcraft, as that is gradually fleshed out and reimagined (and I am not at all convinced that the reconstructionists have much idea about it, but that's my jag to work out...), witches were practicing Christians.  It wasn't just syncretism.  And it wasn't just survival.  You know, try being a witch in a society where it is punishable to not attend church, and see where that gets you - insofar as survival goes.

 

I definitely think that early Christianity as practiced in the British Isles, for example, was vibrantly colored by pagan myth and legend and thinking.  That's clear.  The witchcraft was just that, craft and crafting.  It was a way of life irrespective of religious life or thought.  BUT, when Christianity took hold and became the religion of the land... the newly-minted practitioners seized up on imagery and saints (because they were familiar - consider how many saints and martyrs of Celtic Britain were actually characters of mythology) and started using those in magic because they were new and sort of different but sort of familiar, and maybe they were more powerful.  (Anyway, I was setting out to make a different point and had better get around to that.)

 

Practice of magick (whether you put the 'k' on there or not) and of ritual and sorcery, et al, requires religious belief, but is not the religion itself.  This is philosophical practice.  It is when we get into the neopagan folkways of Wicca and Feri and such that we get into religion.  Goddess the Mom instead of God the Father, for example.

 

This post has been brought to you by the letters, 'O', 'B', 'V', 'I', 'O', 'U', and 'S'.

 

(Sometimes it worries me, how long it takes me to realize these things and actually assimilate and apply them.)

50% tax on meat? yeah, why not...

Extreme?  Yes.

 

True?  Yes.

 

Read about it here.

 

I think if we could combine this idea with my previous one about replacing the "MEAT! It's what's for dinner" campaign with a shot of a decrepit guy going in for his post-op prostate exam, we'd be able to take out the fast food industry as well as the CAFOs.

 

Meat is not this plentiful food that it is played up to be.  It comes at a price that we really cannot afford.

 

I'd be inclined to support a 50% tax on fast food in general so that the burden is shared, actually.  Or how about a 50% tax on GM foods.  And a 50% tax on convenience foods.

 

(Somewhere, a convenience food industry apologist is apoplectically shrieking, "But it is the POOR who eat the most fast food! You are doing the POOR a grave disservice!"  My answer to that?  Well, the tax on your non-foods will support community gardens in underserved communities, and will help to supply local food pantries with foods which are not only edible, but healthful to eat.  We are actually already there in a lot of communities, and the only thing lacking is more seed money.  Soooo, the tax will be very helpful indeed.)