Episode 44 "Wow I'm on the Radio!"

Episode 44 "wow, I'm on the radio!"

Radio Callers about Veganism, some crazy nutjobs talking about Evolution, the Invercargill Vegan Society as a shining beacon of change


Download directly here to listen, or better yet, subscribe in iTunes to get all my episodes automatically!


http://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/coexisting-with-nonhuman-animals/id334206335



Hello and welcome to another fine episode of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.

I got another fantastic bumper, from my friend Beatriz, who lives in Portugal.

Its wonderful making new Vegan friends from around the world, AND, especially when they'd like to join your fabulous One Member Vegan Society.  Perhaps I can gloat about the Invercargill Vegan Societies honorary members, like to the New Zealand Vegan Society, "oh, the vast majority of your members live in New Zealand?  Isn't that very location-ist of you?  Come along children, we don't want to be around these awful location-ists"

Hell, since most of us are not actually living in Invercargill, and I'm not very social, why not just ditch the Vegan requirement too?  And then I can spam every email account known to man, woman and Chicken Friend, asking for their membership donation.  Even if one percent cough up the money, damn, I'm on easy street, well, we don't have an "Easy Street" in Invercargill, but we *DO* have both Compton and Jackson Streets, I'd love to live on either of them. 

<2300 Jackson street in background>
As mentioned in Episode 30, "Gary, Indiana and Pukeko", a native New Zealand bird, our country is sane, our addresses don't go up to 2300, like 2300 Jackson street, where Michael Jackson and family lived before fame, but theres probably a 23.  23 Jackson Street, Invercargill, New Zealand.



And of course, Compton Street, as in



Ouch, ok, maybe I shouldn't claim to be from THE Compton, street.



Beatriz explained the last part was her giving hugs and kisses to our Chicken Friends.


You can find Beatriz at

http://www.compraranimais.com/

And even if you cannot read Portugalian, it looks fantastic.  I'm sure it is Beatriz.




I'd also like to say hello to my United Kingdom-ese friend Sam, who sent me an email (jaywontdart@gmail.com  j a y w o n t d a r t @gmail.com ) about beginning a quote "Animal Behaviour and Welfare" course.  This shows the difference between Animal Welfare and Animal Rights:

From Sam,

"I do a course by the name of Animal Behaviour and Welfare. At the time of joining the course I was not as educated as I am now. I thought animal welfare was great. I now do not want to be involved. The past year and a half has covered things on what the best way to slaughter farm animals is, to elephant culls, how to make zoo cages more "suitable" for the animal. It's ridiculous."

It sure is Sam, we shouldn't be talking about "culling", I think they mean "killing" Elephants, we should instead focus on calling them Mr or Ms, just like a Ms Hen or Mr Rooster Friend.




Oak Land?  I think Mr's Dre and Pac meant Auckland, and Inglewood?  Nah mate, its Ivers-wood, or if you're from the South side of Invercargill like me, Inver-Hood.  Like New Zealands capital, Wellington changing its name by deed poll to Welly-wood after those three movies back in the day, you know, the early 2000's, Invercargill currently has a movie called "Two Little Boys" being shot here.  Not sure what their hardware is, Assault or Sniper rifle, however they're doing it, part of its being recorded a few blocks from my house, and they're borrowing furniture from the Secondhand/ Antique store I work for.  One of the stars is Bret McKenzie, of Flight of the Conchords, which is pretty cool.  See, they want to make some movie about a bunch of white trash idiots, from the sounds of things, so they asked themselves, "hmm, wheres can we digitally record (cause we don't use "film" anymore surely) a movie about rednecks, a place where the local Vegan Society has a single member….ah, I know, Invercargill!"

The media here havnt been covering it that way, its all "oh our glorious region, known for stealing breast milk from mother Cows, now look at us, once more having a single movie shot here, just like that one about the bloke with the real fast motorbike, played by Sir Anthony Hannibal Lecter".  Come to Invercargill, home of that old guy who lived in a metal shed thing, and peed on a lemon tree each day, and two idiot best friends who wont grow up."




This episode, I'd like to feature some calls from a late night talkback radio show I caught recently.  I havnt gotten the callers permission to use the clip, but I figure, if they're willing to blab into their telephone, and have radio waves of their voice broadcast out into space, surely, they meant it to be public.  I got these recordings from the delayed feed of each hour onair, streamed online in some ridiculous proprietary format from Microsoft, .ASF.  Why not use a superior, seen as proprietary to Apple format, such as AAC?  It serves as social darwinism, to separate the Men (and Women) from the boys and girls stuck with MP3 only players. 

I use a program called "Snapz Pro X", Snapz with a Zed, it lets you take screenshots, including video and audio of your computer screen.  As if you had a video camera inside the screen, to record exactly everything going on.  Find a website you like, that doesn't easily let you save the video?  Like from The Daily Show?  No problem, play the video, and use Snapz Pro to record that part of your screen.  Yes, the media love no good hoodlums like me, shamelessly grabbing all their videos, when they try so hard to make them un-downloadable. 



Ok, great.  I got an email from a Vegan group I'm on, from Debra Ashton of Animal Rights and Wrongs, a Wellington based radio show about Animal Welfare which is usually on each week, taking a break right now.  I'll include a link in my show notes for this episode, which you'll find at Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.blogspot.com or bit.ly/coexist44

It was fun hearing the callers.

<1 vegetarian what you kill>

We hear the usual "kids these days don't even know what an unsliced tomato looks like" point, I'd disagree.  I personally think people my age know about Animals, we've seen the graphic footage of cages and sheds, we know about Farming, we all know Farmers.  True, I cant talk about younger people everywhere in the world, but come on.

We know quote "it" was an animal before we paid a few dollars for a blood filled red lump on bit of plastic.  The problem is that we, like the caller, think of other animals as an "it".  No sentient being is an "it", they are, well, "they", "he", "she".  They have Mothers, Fathers, and Friends.  Some, like my Chicken Friends, have sorta-enemies, they don't like other large birds stealing the bread they see as belonging to them, for example.

I personally don't have any respect for people who kill animals directly, rather than those who pay for them to be killed.  I try to treat every non Vegan I talk with equally, I don't call hunters "murderers" for example, but they damn well know how I feel about killing others, when we talk.  We can talk passionately about the existances and deaths of 56 billion land animals each year, for our pleasure, without being rude.   I want them to take me seriously, so I'll treat them the way I'd like them to treat me.

Heres an interesting call

<2 teeth>

"Carnivore-us, do ya know what it means?  A plant that'll eat animals"  I think the caller made a lot of sense, about how animal so called "by products" are all around us, their blood, their bones, it makes me think about how prolific non Veganism is, thats for sure.

But whatever we're quote "meant to be", we can choose to be Vegan, or we can choose not to be Vegan, its that easy for us to go either way.  I see no reason to be Non Vegan, even if someone asked me to eat them once they died of natural causes, I wouldn't want to, nor would I want to make a bag from their skin, or eat the end result of her reproductive cycle. 

About feeding flesh to a Herbivore, have you ever seen how many Non Vegans eat?  They never read the ingredient list for the food they buy, they grab whatevers cheapest, because they cant possibly spend 10 seconds to read the packaging, not even once.  We really could say that we could really be eating "Soylent Green", for all the average Non Vegan knows.

"if we weren't sposed to do it, we wouldn't have teeth"  End of story as far as you're concerned?  What about all those "carn-avor-us" plants?  I'm sure the Celery we buy at the Supermarket had HER teeth plucked out, right? 

Heres another call about Horses,

<3 horse meat>

I'm interested to hear about different times, when societal norms were very different.  Like "Roof Rabbit", for eating Cats during times of famine.  Or, about how my own country, New Zealand was colonized by people who killed Seals and Whales.  Oh, but we've forgotten that, right?  We get bloody angry about those young white men in black clothing who threw stones at A Seal though.  And those awful Japanese people, who kill Whales, right?

I mention that to my Non Vegan friends, "if we were alive a hundred years ago, not only would everything be in black and white, and non widescreen, but you'd be eating Whale flesh, and burning Whale Fat for lighting"  I'd like to say it gets people thinking, but generally, no, they're more likely to be defensive, "I would not, thats disgusting, you think you're better than me…".  Its true though, if we go along with whats "normal" during our own time, of course, if we were in a country that were different, that killed Cats, or Seals, or Whales as "food", the Non Vegans would almost certainly go along with it, just as we kill Cows, Chickens and Pigs now.

I've got no doubts that the World will be Vegan, one day.  Who knows how long it will take for a Vegan Majority, but it will happen.  Southlands current "Dairy" Farmers used to grow and kill Sheep for money, they switched when it become unprofitable.  Before them, our industry was about killing Whales and Seals, the same basic job, in a different time, with different ethics, with the idea that some animals were for killing, others were not.

 I love this next caller,  he lives off vegetables and porridge, apparently, because processed foods are The Devil.  Oh, except his favourite "lovely" bread.  I can tell he's been listening to the Fonterra dairy companies boss,

 






And now for the craziest caller of the night, this obvious genius seems to have been confused by the person selecting callers, who answered his call with "whannayawannatalkabout?", left him on hold for twenty odd minutes, and then seemed to mute and unmute his line when the radio host began.





Ah, now we see that this nutjob caller is puzzled with the idea that we ourselves are *NOT* animals, and would like an example of what we are, if some dude just snapped his fingers, and we came into existence fully formed to rule over and kill 56 billion land "animals" each year.  Not wanting to sound demanding or pushy like some radio callers, the crazy guy appears to have gone along with the topic change, rather than give up, "ok, so maybe you can agree with a fringe theory, lets get back to Veganism".  No, the moron felt he had to go along with the host, for fear of the reset button.



Hey, this weird idiot was ringing into a late night talkback radio show, the poor host probably NEVER gets to talk about Evolution and alternative, crackpot theories, it would be rude to stick to the initial topic!



No, the audiobook versions are OBVIOUSLY the best edition, and Hard cover books are more Chicken Friend resistant, if they jump onto the book while you read in their garden.

What the host said about Darwin and the eyes progression is not actually thats not true, and if I wanted to keep fighting about Evolution, you know, instead of going back to the original topic of whatever that was,  I would have grabbed my lovely , hard cover copy of The God Delusion, to quote back at him.  Or, I could have held my phone to the computers speaker, for the audiobook version.  Darwin, it seems, wasn't down with the nonviolence, According to Richard Dawkins and his partner, Darwin wanted to get Himsa on their asses.






Yes, I was the oddest caller of the night.  I honestly thought that while the host disagreed that we are also animals, he would get back to talking about quote "animals", of how we kill and use them by the billion, for our own pleasure.  I was indeed cut off from mentioning Veganism near the end, I didn't realise until I got told about how the host would be so kind as to send me some links if I could open my tiny little mind to new ideas, I emailed him, he hasn't sent me any links yet, we can only hope he will though!  He did mention the Abolitionist Approach site, and my own, oh, and I got THREE, count em, three new visitors from making a fool of myself on the radio, so thats cool!



Perhaps the best part about my call was how it inspired another caller, who seems to be OUTRAGED that I don't believe in the quote "Supernatural", ie in Gods and angels, and how they were OBVIOUSLY doing their Supernatural thing all around us, as evidenced by people dying of Cancer, probably some kind of punishment for not believing in Jesus, I don't know.



Just before I saw the email asking for Vegans to ring into some radio host at the other end of the country, on a different island, I was out geocaching.  I was using my iPhone to listen to former American military satellites in orbit, to find little plastic lunch boxes, with a bit of paper inside to sign.  Geocaching requires accuracy, there are several atomic clocks used to negate the calculated errors in delay.  We can understand how this works, some guy in American could turn off the satellites, the whole thing would stop working, we'd realise that, "hey, my shiny toy cant get a navigation signal, somethings wrong with the system".  Its logical.  I've mentioned loving Science Fiction before, well, actual Science often follows the fiction.  I loved reading the Space Odyssey books about how craft actually slingshot past planets, using gravitational pull to accelerate onwards, and of how the planets actually lose some of their force to the crafts gain in speed.  Nature balances the books, nothing comes from nowhere.  The world *is* logical, we may not yet understand it, we may not like it when our iPhones run out of battery life, but thats the end result of not having a charger with you.




I see Atheism and Veganism as very closely linked, of understanding how we, and other *animals* got here, how we are really no different, we are not the chosen ones, they are not 56 Billion sacrificial lambs who MUST be killed each year.  I think to be non Atheist, or Non Vegan would be a matter of how you grew up, of what you saw as "normal" while young.  When we are old enough to think about these things for ourselves, to be other than Atheist or Vegan wouldn't make sense.  We can grow up believing many things that don't stand up to critical thought, "oh, don't worry, they live good, happy lives, and then they pay us back by letting us cut their throats open, "humanely" mind", or believing in the supernatural, such as how the tides work.    We have The Daily Show on New Zealand TV, I think, I can watch both it and The Colbert Report online.




I understand what a poor performance I gave with my own call to the radio station, I'm always open to learning more, to try and be a better person.  As a Vegan, I love being told I'm "close minded" for not being swayed to Non Veganism, because surely, the Non Vegan accusing me of "close mindedness" is themselves being open, right?  I grew up Non Vegan, I decided to take personal responsibility for myself when I was 19, to be Vegetarian, and then Vegan.  I've found it as easy to be Vegan as not, although yes, I do get constant jabs from Non Vegans.  I don't worry about everyone liking me, some people will mock Veganism, big deal.  My father, for example, often says "ya cant change the world", thats some A Grade parenting right there, quick, wheres one of those " Worlds Number One Dad" cups?  Only the all powerful seem to demand everyone think they're cool, I'm busy being selfish, by focusing on myself, what I can do to help others.  We may only have one physical member, but the Invercargill Vegan Society is something to change the world, how ever did Invercargill exist before, without her beloved Vegan Society?

I don't think I have a closed mind to belief and faith, if I could somehow be shown how its one hundred percent, absolutely right, I'd be be religious too.  Its not like I havnt read the bible either, I've never been to a non Catholic school.  We said a prayer every morning, and had RE class, Religious Education.  I used to love singing during school mass, from the hymn books, I'd normally be one of the loudest warblers.  Picture this, 500 young minds blurting out "Children of God, in one family, loved by God, in one family….sometimes its hard to be good, sometimes, we get it wrong, but ….I forget this part… but no matter, what we do, God loves me and God loves you…."

I've been there, bought the t shirt.  Why did I choose to go to a religious high school if I were a militant atheist?  Well, why WOULDN'T I?  I would have went to a Scientology school, if they were available.  All the believing in transubstantiation business was fun, that we were actually eating the body of a guy who died a couple thousand years ago, even if it looked like white round wafers of ice cream cone, even if the Blood of our Saviour came from a bottle which mentioned, by law, the alcohol content.

I remember when some primary school children received their first communion, they got a disposable plate (you know, the kind that have a half life of a few hundred years) covered in little chocolate bars.  I was almost swayed, as a young child, watching all the goodies and attention they got.  But somehow, I knew my eternal soul should be valued at more than a few dollars worth of dairy milk chocolate.  I'm still holding out, the starting bid is a few hundred dollars.

About the whole bit of bread that turns into some guy who died a couple thousand years ago on the other side of the worlds body, once a friend who had been magically blessed snuck me a bit, I felt so naughty, as I secretly ate some of the crunch body, that really was just like a white ice cream cone.  So I guess I can say that I've not only been Non Vegan, but a Cannibal to boot.

Our science teachers taught Evolution of course, this is New Zealand, not some fundamentalist country.  We were only supposed to pray, spend about an hour each day learning about people long dead, who may or may not have existed, believed in Virgins giving birth, and a couple hundred other unlikely things, nothing weird.

I grew up around religion, I grew up around Non Veganism.  I thought for myself, and I think that is the definition of having an open mind, of being capable of learning new ideas, and even admitting we were wrong.



Going off topic, to talk about Veganism, we need to be wary of the Canadian Menace, you must have noticed all our Canadian friends sending in intro bumpers for this show, we gotta keep the New (Zealand) World Order moving forward.  Canada is a RIDICULOUSLY overpopulated country, Wikipedia says some 34 MILLION people are crammed together, unable to blink their eyes within the nations borders.  A normal sized country, you know, of four million like New Zealand, we need to do all we can to continue as the worlds number one source of Vegan propaganda, I mean, education.  The people from the top of the world, the people from the bottom of the world, we're going to end up fighting over who has the most Vegan podcasts per capita at the equator, I just know it.


Luckily we here in New Zealand are off to a great start, Hamilton based Vegan Emmy James released a ninth episode of her show, Vegan For Life, which featured Sam Tucker



*whisper*  I think the host is hitting on the guest musician*whisper*



Ah.

Its great to be one of many shows coming from New Zealand, although I'm always glad to help out others around the world, to start up a podcast of their own.  Just as long as New Zealand stays ahead of the pack, the more Vegan shows there are, the more Vegan activists.  Thats Change we can believe in.



Thank you for listening to Coexisting With Evolution.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals at coexisting with nonhuman animals . blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, or on Twitter, twitter.com/ j a y w o n t d a r t,  I'd appreciate it.

Thank you for listening to some guy explain his world view.




Sources
=======
Beatriz
http://www.compraranimais.com/ 

Two Little Boys movie being recorded in Invercargill, where I live
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_McKenzie

Animal Rights and Wrongs, Animal Welfare Show
http://www.accessradio.org.nz/animal_rights_and_wrongs.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson