News You Can Use

This week's News of the Weird, which should be read in its entirety because this installment just happens to cotain more pathos than most, has one part that particularly caught my eye:

"A researcher writing in the January/February issue of Australasian Science magazine reported that the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, carried by many cats, not only can harm pregnant women (as was previously known) but also can lower the IQ of men and make women more promiscuous."

Are they more promiscuous because the cat parasite makes them dumber, is what I want to know. Are researchers working on a way to bottle and sell the parasites, without the ass-sucking cats being part of the deal?

I'm conflicted now. Me not like be made dumb by fuzzy shit-pet, but slutty women are Top 5 for myself and most men I know or don't know, or just speak for because even gay men like freaky chicks (if you roll 'em over then it's just like...well, never mind).

Internal conflict over. So is this post. Gotta go buy a cat before the wife gets home.

But first:

"And a Nottingham University professor warned in January that farmers are now at work in the United Kingdom breeding "stress" and "hostility" out of pigs and cows to make them more obedient en route to the slaughterhouse. The professor said the goal of such breeders is to create animal "vegetables."

No, I don't trust you to actually read News of the Weird on your own, so I'll just tell you about it.

It's always seemed to me that the animal rights crowd has a pretty good case against factory farming when they talk about cleanliness and the health of the consumer.

But, it's a very weak case to be made when they begin on the "suffering" that animals "probably" "experience" during their short, nasty lives. I just don't give a fuck, frankly, because I don't think cows, chickens, pigs or whatnot serve much of a purpose otherwise. I don't think they need to be tortured before they die, but I also don't think they're penned up in the factory farm, eating non-stop and standing/lying in their own filth thinking, "Oh, to be free! Won't someone save us from all this?" Yes, unnamed fowl/ungulate: the guy with the bolt-gun.

Anyway, if animals were actually so retarded that they didn't even know what to do beyond eat and breathe, wouldn't the moral conundrum disappear? What if we could grow meat on trees--would that be good enough?