hate on 02138

bless its pinko little heart, but the people's republic of cambridge is just ripe for hating. now that harvard square is the outdoor equivalent of a middle american mall, there isn't even that claim to quirkiness anymore. the self-satisfied smugness of most residents would be hilarious, if they weren't so annoying and entitled. i reluctantly thank the war chests of the schools and the generous alumnae for places like the sackler and the fogg, ok?

kendall square is its own enigma -- all those blank-faced big buildings. the walking-around geeks during the work-week do little to put your mind to rest. oh, sure. no cloning, no genetic scrambling, no chemical mutations, no nuclear seepage. gah.

but it's got that theater.

i went to see "food, inc." today. not for edification, but to fill some time and get myself out of my neighborhood. nothing i didn't already know and the video clips, even of slaughters, were not terribly distressing. pbs has shown footage far more graphic.

where's the hate, you ask?

this woman behind me. sucking on her giant soda, made of corn, in a cup made of petro-chemicals. eating candy, twizzlers, also made of corn. crying when they showed little chicks getting zapped in the head. frankly it didn't look like a bad way to go. fuzzy chicken babies are fluffy bits of cuteness, i get that, but they just got laid down under a little metal press and *zap*, dead. they didn't even peep. but lib-lady was sniffling and protesting the cruelty to her viewing partner.

then she was sobbing. loud, gasping sobs while a forklift was shoving around a downer cow. yes, it's horrible to see, it's cruel, it shouldn't happen, but that shit has been in the news for several years.

we'll leap to her probably being a vegetarian. being in cambridge, plus the native american inspired outfit, plus the sensible hair. ok, assuming that, shouldn't she know this stuff? wouldn't that be one of the reasons she IS against eating meat? she clearly was too stoopid to rage against the industrial farm complex and forego her big gulp of coke.

when i returned from the restroom she had composed herself, and there were no more slaughterhouse scenes.

throughout the film, there were sniffling shocked murmurs from various corners. ok, ivory towers all that, NONE of this was groundbreaking info, and the authors who did most of the commentary, eric schlosser and michael pollan, published their books several years ago, already, ffs.

there was a scene on joel palatin's polyface farm on chicken killing day. he is a poster boy for biodynamic, small, sustainable farming. his abattoir is outside, all the cleaning and eviscerating are done by hand. he talked about his fight with the fda and how they wanted to shut him down. his chickens tested at 130 pp million for bacteria. factory farm birds, which get steam-cleaned and washed in ammonia before packing, showed over 3000 pp million. he kept his outdoor op. the chickens are placed beaks down in a funnel-shaped contraption, their heads poking out the narrow hole. ffffft, neck sliced and blood drains. people went crazy.

lost in their self-righteousness, they couldn't even see that they were exactly the type of people, separated from the food chain by shrink-wrapped boneless skinless chicken breasts, that the movie was criticizing. a farmer like palatin WANTS you to know and to see his animals are clean and healthy and he's killing them carefully for your dinner. it's not wrong or shocking or cruel.

don't hate the place, hate the people.

idjits.