well, breaking promises to post frequent and entertainingly funny blogs, for one. and writing more books. and gloating with pleasure because my last book, An Inconvenient Elephant was chosen as one of the books to be advertised along with the Ipad and Iphone for a whole season. It was on tv and on big posters plastered all over subway stations and bus terminals and various phone service stores. what a thrill, really, to see it.
I had some surgery, traveled a bit, wrote a bit, lost some weight, put it back on, lost it again, went blond (never fall asleep while an enthusiastic hairdresser is doing your hair), spent some time getting used to being blonde (more on that later- blondes really do have more fun) and wrote some more. i also made a promise to myself to do more things in new york city since i only live an hour away by car. one thing is to see warhorse. have you seen it?
will write some more tomorrow.
p.s. also happy because Bob Barker, of TV fame, along with some terrific animal rights people (like Pat Derby and Ed Stewart from PAWS) are launching a bill in Congress that will change the lives of circus animals for the better.
talk to you soon.
smoochies,
judy
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Friday, April 8, 2011
Go Daddy is Gone
I am actually mortified for Bob Parsons, CEO of Go Daddy. His arrogance, his total lack of understanding of ecology, politics, conservation and the nature of animals, embarrasses me. His juvenile behavior and lack of respect for what was a majestic living creature, is disgusting beyond belief.
Bob Parsons, for those of you who don't know, entertains himself with a yearly trip to Zimbabwe in order to kill a wild elephant. For fun. "It's just an old bull elephant," he proclaimed during the four minute snuff film he provided the media with, and then tried to justify his actions by adding that bull elephants were interchangeable and one more dead bull wouldn't have any effect on the social structure of the herd. Those of us who know elephants know this is bullshit. Old bull elephants teach young bulls how to behave. With aggressive behavior on the rise from these creatures, it is very important to keep their social structure intact. Who knows if the trauma inflicted from these untimely deaths could even be the trigger. And, according to Joyce Poole, Director of Research and Conservation at ElephantVoices, who has studied elephants for over 30 years under elephant expert, Cynthia Moss, the slaughtered elephant was a young female. That creates sort of a problem for Parsons who apparently likes to come across as the Great White Hunter, but was unable to tell that the elephant he slaughtered didn't have male genitalia. Whoops. And this is a double tragedy because elephants live in a matriarchal society,. There's no telling how far reaching this death will be. Next, Parsons tried to paint himself the philanthropist who is merely helping feed a starving village. When Piers Morgan, an interviewer for CNN asked Parsons why he, a billionaire, didn't just donate some money to educate and feed the village outright, Parsons blinked and replied that didn't see the link.
Parsons just doesn't get it. The land is becoming very scarce in Africa. The elephants are being pushed out of their grazing areas and off their migration routes. Killing them one by one is not the solution. Maybe Parsons can put his gun down and use his head and come up with something that is sustainable and correct. Maybe help fund some kind of elephant proof farming, or help set up crop areas outside elephant migration routes. Standing with his foot and gun resting on an innocent creature, tortured and slaughtered, is beyond disgraceful. It shows a lack of insight, of humanity, of compassion, and unfortunately displays a lack of intelligence that leaves him far below the level of those animals he preys upon.
My website has been removed from Go Daddy and will be up and running in a few days on another host. I salute all those wonderful people who have done the same. Go Daddy can go fuck himself.
Bob Parsons, for those of you who don't know, entertains himself with a yearly trip to Zimbabwe in order to kill a wild elephant. For fun. "It's just an old bull elephant," he proclaimed during the four minute snuff film he provided the media with, and then tried to justify his actions by adding that bull elephants were interchangeable and one more dead bull wouldn't have any effect on the social structure of the herd. Those of us who know elephants know this is bullshit. Old bull elephants teach young bulls how to behave. With aggressive behavior on the rise from these creatures, it is very important to keep their social structure intact. Who knows if the trauma inflicted from these untimely deaths could even be the trigger. And, according to Joyce Poole, Director of Research and Conservation at ElephantVoices, who has studied elephants for over 30 years under elephant expert, Cynthia Moss, the slaughtered elephant was a young female. That creates sort of a problem for Parsons who apparently likes to come across as the Great White Hunter, but was unable to tell that the elephant he slaughtered didn't have male genitalia. Whoops. And this is a double tragedy because elephants live in a matriarchal society,. There's no telling how far reaching this death will be. Next, Parsons tried to paint himself the philanthropist who is merely helping feed a starving village. When Piers Morgan, an interviewer for CNN asked Parsons why he, a billionaire, didn't just donate some money to educate and feed the village outright, Parsons blinked and replied that didn't see the link.
Parsons just doesn't get it. The land is becoming very scarce in Africa. The elephants are being pushed out of their grazing areas and off their migration routes. Killing them one by one is not the solution. Maybe Parsons can put his gun down and use his head and come up with something that is sustainable and correct. Maybe help fund some kind of elephant proof farming, or help set up crop areas outside elephant migration routes. Standing with his foot and gun resting on an innocent creature, tortured and slaughtered, is beyond disgraceful. It shows a lack of insight, of humanity, of compassion, and unfortunately displays a lack of intelligence that leaves him far below the level of those animals he preys upon.
My website has been removed from Go Daddy and will be up and running in a few days on another host. I salute all those wonderful people who have done the same. Go Daddy can go fuck himself.
Monday, March 28, 2011
I'm finally getting around to writing about procrastination
You may have noticed that several of my posts are out of order because they had been half written waaay back when i injured my eye and was having laser surgery. I never finished writing them because i couldn't see very well. well, today, after deciding that i was going to straighten out all my posts, i finished them and published them, which meant, of course, they were put out of sequence to the original post. now, no one, including me, knows what i'm talking about, so don't worry about it. i don't think i can fix it, since i can't fix anything that has to do with computers. my advice is to use your imaginations and try to figure out what i meant, and i will do the same.
and i promise never to do that again.
sorry
and i promise never to do that again.
sorry
Still Healing
So the eye is healing. the blobs that were bouncing around and obscuring my sight are receding back to blobland where they can be called upon to bother someone else. i'm told it's going to be a few months before everything is okay, but i am cool with that. I can drive, i can write, i certainly can eat, i can kiss my doggies and chat with my friends, so they are not interfering one bit with my life.
And i love my new earrings. snicker.
And i love my new earrings. snicker.
Still Waiting for the Earrings
As pitiful as i tried to appear, my significant other did not come up with diamond or any other kind of earrings. He is not the kind of person who gets hints. Even if they are painted on billboards and say "JUDY WANTS THIS FROM YOU. BUY THIS AS A GIFT FOR HER!" he will not see it, if he sees it, he won't understand it, if he understands it, he'll forget all about it by the time he takes his next breath. Clearly I am going to have to treat myself.
I'm getting tastefully big ones.
I'm getting tastefully big ones.
A High Price to Pay
Chimps are cute. Baby chimps are high on the cuteness scale, up there with puppies and kitties. They don't do it on purpose, they are just cute because they are small and cuddly and our brains are hardwired to respond to that. And it's okay. The result is that we take care of our young and have long domesticated puppies and kitties. All of them, kids, dogs, cats, fit into our homes, our lifestyles, our beds. What doesn't fit are wild animals who are forced to give up their natural behavior by nutcases who think they can turn them into the cyootest pets around. The outcome is sooo predictable. The darling little chimpie, or tiger, or cuddly bear matures and becomes - well - what it had always been, a large, powerful, aggressive WILD ANIMAL! Sah-prize, sah-prize!! A chimp has the strength of five men, grows to about two hundred pounds (don't take my word for it, check out the Jane Goodall site) and has very specific needs to be a healthy, well adjusted animal. And i don't mean pink diapers and pizza for dinner.
So, of course, some clodbrain raises a chimp and after years of poor diet and confinement, the poor chimp isn't doing so well. What does clodbrain do? Does she take the animal to a vet? NAh - that would be - gasp - responsible, but we know she isn't because she's house raising a chimp! So she gives him Xanax, even there is no veterinary evidence that it's even good for this species, and duh - the poor creature goes insane and eats the face off her good friend. Guess who dies in the end? Guess who pays for clodbrain's poor judgement.
Hint: It wasn't clodbrain.
So, of course, some clodbrain raises a chimp and after years of poor diet and confinement, the poor chimp isn't doing so well. What does clodbrain do? Does she take the animal to a vet? NAh - that would be - gasp - responsible, but we know she isn't because she's house raising a chimp! So she gives him Xanax, even there is no veterinary evidence that it's even good for this species, and duh - the poor creature goes insane and eats the face off her good friend. Guess who dies in the end? Guess who pays for clodbrain's poor judgement.
Hint: It wasn't clodbrain.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
The Great Clam Caper
I really want to be a total vegetarian, I really do, but occasionally I have been known to lapse. And when i lapse, it's because of clams. I love clams. I love them fried, in chowders, I love them stuffed, steamed or raw. I excuse it by thinking: of all the things I could cheat with, clams strike me as the most innocuous. Maybe because the no-face issue doesn't really apply to them, and I eat them once in a while without all the guilt and ethical dilemmas that the other stuff seems to present. So when they were featured in a local supermarket last week, big mesh bags of clams sitting resolutely and stoically in their black shells on mountains of ice, I dithered for a few minutes in front of the fish department before I finally bought them.
The cashier put them in a separate bag, away from the skim milk I also bought, the butter substitute. the Greek yogurt, and the no-flavor-no-color- puffy wheat thingies-the-size-of-hubcaps-but-only-12-calories that i snack on, and home I went. I had visions of clam chowder, of stuffed clams, of fritters. After all, there were over three dozen, all waiting to be turned into a culinary experience.
Except I don't know a thing about clams.
I know nothing about keeping them - uh - alive- until you ate them. And i had been strictly warned by the fish monger to keep them alive or they would poison me, a sort of clammy revenge. Keep them on ice, I was told, until you are ready to cook them. Be very careful, I was told, because if they open their mouths, that's the end of it, it's too late. It all sounded quite nervewracking. I had never considered that there would be handling problems, but that was because i had never prepared clams. When i want clams, I just go out to a restaurant and order them and they appear a few minutes later, all done up with cocktail sauce and little round crackers and lemon. I didn't know you had to be a clam wrangler.
So, I put them on the kitchen counter and stared at them. They stared back. Or at least it seemed that they did. I started to worry about them. I felt like I had brought home three dozen pets and I was responsible for their welfare. I decided they looked too dry, too thirsty, and put them into a big pot, filled the pot with water and went on the internet to find out how to keep them happy and healthy until - uh they were - uh - you know - cooked.
The first thing i learned is that they are not fresh water animals. They needed salt water. What had I done! What havoc was i wreaking upon their poor little salt water bodies with my well water.
"Oh no!" I shrieked and raced into the kitchen to quickly brew something more habitable.
My daughter, Robin, was watching me. "Are you sure you're up for this?" she asked. "Remember the lobsters?" Indeed I did.
When she was about twelve, her father brought home several huge lobsters for dinner. Following his instructions, i put them into a big pot and put the pot on the stove to boil. A few minutes later, they had lifted the lid and climbed out of the pot, leapt off the stove, a la Annie Hall, and were skittering across the floor, pissed as all hell. At least it seemed like that to me. I remember staring down at them too, like I had with the clams and feeling the same kind of sympathy and guilt. But dinner was dinner. I picked them up and put them back into the pot, they climbed out again. I had come face to face with a moral dilemma. Did I have the right to end their lives like this? It was cruel. I grabbed them around their waists and carefully put them into a shopping bag, ordered the kids into the car and drove to the Long Island Sound, which at the time, was a mile or two from our house. We stood at the water's edge as I opened the bag. The lobsters crawled out slowly, waved their whiskers in the air, maybe smelling the fresh sea air and dashed for the open water. My kids cheered. The lobsters were cheering - I'm pretty sure - and i was crying as some one hundred dollars worth of dinner disappeared into the undertow. We had spaghetti that night, but i knew i did the right thing.
Which leads me back to the clams.
They were looking a little peaked by now. Some of them had their mouths open. I poured the water out and filled a shopping bag with ice and picked them up, one by one, and put them on the ice.
"They're pretty sandy," I commented to my daughter.
"I think you have to run them through water," she said, "like giving them a bath. And you have to scrub them."
I looked at them doubtfully. "Scrub them?" I repeated.
"With a brush," she said. "To clean them."
It was like a clam spa. I brushed them very gently, even their undersides, and patted them dry with my best fuzzy kitchen towel and put them on a bed of ice to nap the night away while I considered what to do with them. I put them to sleep in the fridge.
The next morning they all had their mouths open. It was the end of them, it was too late. I had a mass clam passing on my hands.
"Did you tie the plastic grocery bag shut around them?" my daughter asked.
"Of course," I said. "I wanted to give them some privacy in the refrigerator. You know, i have about a dozen eggs in there. You know how eggs are. Nosy. They're into everything."
"That's what went wrong," she said. "They suffocated. They need air."
Clams need air? Is nothing simple?
"You may as well put them outside for the raccoons," my daughter said. I did.
Apologizing to them one by one, I tossed three dozen clams, over the garden fence so that the wild raccoons that live out there somewhere could have clams on the half shell, maybe with those cute little round crackers and coctail sauce. I had been responsible for the untimely demise of three dozen innocent sea creatures. It was awful. They had spent the night cold and airless.
But at least they were clean.
The cashier put them in a separate bag, away from the skim milk I also bought, the butter substitute. the Greek yogurt, and the no-flavor-no-color- puffy wheat thingies-the-size-of-hubcaps-but-only-12-calories that i snack on, and home I went. I had visions of clam chowder, of stuffed clams, of fritters. After all, there were over three dozen, all waiting to be turned into a culinary experience.
Except I don't know a thing about clams.
I know nothing about keeping them - uh - alive- until you ate them. And i had been strictly warned by the fish monger to keep them alive or they would poison me, a sort of clammy revenge. Keep them on ice, I was told, until you are ready to cook them. Be very careful, I was told, because if they open their mouths, that's the end of it, it's too late. It all sounded quite nervewracking. I had never considered that there would be handling problems, but that was because i had never prepared clams. When i want clams, I just go out to a restaurant and order them and they appear a few minutes later, all done up with cocktail sauce and little round crackers and lemon. I didn't know you had to be a clam wrangler.
So, I put them on the kitchen counter and stared at them. They stared back. Or at least it seemed that they did. I started to worry about them. I felt like I had brought home three dozen pets and I was responsible for their welfare. I decided they looked too dry, too thirsty, and put them into a big pot, filled the pot with water and went on the internet to find out how to keep them happy and healthy until - uh they were - uh - you know - cooked.
The first thing i learned is that they are not fresh water animals. They needed salt water. What had I done! What havoc was i wreaking upon their poor little salt water bodies with my well water.
"Oh no!" I shrieked and raced into the kitchen to quickly brew something more habitable.
My daughter, Robin, was watching me. "Are you sure you're up for this?" she asked. "Remember the lobsters?" Indeed I did.
When she was about twelve, her father brought home several huge lobsters for dinner. Following his instructions, i put them into a big pot and put the pot on the stove to boil. A few minutes later, they had lifted the lid and climbed out of the pot, leapt off the stove, a la Annie Hall, and were skittering across the floor, pissed as all hell. At least it seemed like that to me. I remember staring down at them too, like I had with the clams and feeling the same kind of sympathy and guilt. But dinner was dinner. I picked them up and put them back into the pot, they climbed out again. I had come face to face with a moral dilemma. Did I have the right to end their lives like this? It was cruel. I grabbed them around their waists and carefully put them into a shopping bag, ordered the kids into the car and drove to the Long Island Sound, which at the time, was a mile or two from our house. We stood at the water's edge as I opened the bag. The lobsters crawled out slowly, waved their whiskers in the air, maybe smelling the fresh sea air and dashed for the open water. My kids cheered. The lobsters were cheering - I'm pretty sure - and i was crying as some one hundred dollars worth of dinner disappeared into the undertow. We had spaghetti that night, but i knew i did the right thing.
Which leads me back to the clams.
They were looking a little peaked by now. Some of them had their mouths open. I poured the water out and filled a shopping bag with ice and picked them up, one by one, and put them on the ice.
"They're pretty sandy," I commented to my daughter.
"I think you have to run them through water," she said, "like giving them a bath. And you have to scrub them."
I looked at them doubtfully. "Scrub them?" I repeated.
"With a brush," she said. "To clean them."
It was like a clam spa. I brushed them very gently, even their undersides, and patted them dry with my best fuzzy kitchen towel and put them on a bed of ice to nap the night away while I considered what to do with them. I put them to sleep in the fridge.
The next morning they all had their mouths open. It was the end of them, it was too late. I had a mass clam passing on my hands.
"Did you tie the plastic grocery bag shut around them?" my daughter asked.
"Of course," I said. "I wanted to give them some privacy in the refrigerator. You know, i have about a dozen eggs in there. You know how eggs are. Nosy. They're into everything."
"That's what went wrong," she said. "They suffocated. They need air."
Clams need air? Is nothing simple?
"You may as well put them outside for the raccoons," my daughter said. I did.
Apologizing to them one by one, I tossed three dozen clams, over the garden fence so that the wild raccoons that live out there somewhere could have clams on the half shell, maybe with those cute little round crackers and coctail sauce. I had been responsible for the untimely demise of three dozen innocent sea creatures. It was awful. They had spent the night cold and airless.
But at least they were clean.
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