sometimes daily musings on writing..

In response to PETA's offensive, bigoted, and hate-perpetuating billboard on which an obese woman is depicted in a bikini, watching what appears to be a beached whale in the distance, complete with caption that reads "Save the Whales" then something like, "Lose the Blubber...Go Vegetarian" (may not be an exact quote, but I refuse to look up the ad again because it really pisses me off), I sent this email to them. Read below for their patronizing response. And stop giving them money. They are most likely using it to send all their employees to the beach to make fun of fat people instead of protecting defenseless animals. They obviously have too much time on their hands. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals? I don't think so. PETA, you are anything but ethical. You are bigoted liars that should be charged with a hate crime.

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Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 6:29:01 PM
To: Teresa Marshall
Subject: Report Animal Cruelty Form


PETA's Online Community


The issue I'm reporting involves:
Animals used for entertainment

Please enter your contact information below.



Please describe your concern, including the names and contact information of the individuals and agencies involved, dates and times, the exact location of the incident, and what has been done thus far:


My email to PETA:

"I am concerned that your organization is abusing animals with its billboard that states "Save the Whales" and depicts a large woman in a bikini. Humans are animals, too, the last time I checked, and I happen to be an overweight female who has dealt with ridicule, abuse, unfair treatment, and humiliation almost all of my life. Now, your organization has chosen to jump on the bigoted bandwagon, and I do not appreciate it one bit. Please remove my name from your lists. You will never receive another dime from me. Thanks for perpetuating the abuse and hatred. I thought maybe your organization was above that, but obviously your attention whoring ways have gotten the best of you. Abuse is NEVER okay, even when it's directed towards a human that sometimes CAN defend themselves."


Their stupid, insulting response:

Dear Ms. Fink,



Thank you for sharing your thoughts on PETA’s “Lose the Blubber” billboard. We apologize for any offense we may have caused; that was not our intent. We agree that a world where self-esteem is unrelated to body size would be a wonderful place. Our aim is not to insult people who are overweight but to persuade them to make a simple, positive change for their health.



While many people have found our billboard humorous, we take obesity very seriously. We want to encourage overweight people to go vegetarian to protect their health. Researchers have found that a higher body mass index is associated with a greater risk of premature death from all causes. For example, according to the American Heart Association, obesity contributes to heart disease, America’s number one cause of death. The American Dietetic Association says that vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity than meat-eaters do.



Studies have shown that “weight loss” diets don’t work long-term—but going vegetarian does. Studies published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the New England Journal of Medicine have found that vegetarians are far less likely to be overweight than meat eaters are. By encouraging people who want to lose weight to go vegetarian instead of resorting to unhealthy diets, we hope to offer them a choice that the multimillion-dollar diet industry won’t give them: a long-term strategy for maintaining a healthy weight.



Certainly not every single vegetarian is at a healthy weight, as some have suggested our billboard implies, but there are many more meat-eaters who are obese and unhealthy. For most people, eating vegetarian meals is an effective way to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. But weight loss isn’t the only reason to try a vegetarian diet; we also promote going vegetarian as a great way to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of many diseases. For most people, a vegetarian diet is an effective prevention strategy.



Our billboard is just one of the many ways that PETA promotes healthy vegetarian living. Other efforts include distributing free copies of our “Vegetarian Starter Kit,” hosting free public food tastings, offering meal plans and thousands of meat-free recipes at http://www.VegCooking.com, and educating people about the meat industry’s disregard for animal welfare (http://www.GoVeg.com/factoryFarming.asp) and its devastating effect on the environment (http://www.GoVeg.com/environment.asp).



To read more about how obesity can be addressed by going vegetarian, please go to http://www.GoVeg.com/obesity.asp. To read vegetarian weight-loss success stories, please visit http://www.GoVeg.com/f-veganweightloss.asp. You can order a free “Vegetarian Starter Kit” for yourself or a friend at http://www.GoVeg.com/order.asp to learn even more.



Thank you again for sharing your thoughts and for giving us the opportunity to share ours.


Sincerely,



Carrie Edwards

PETA Foundation


BLAH, BLAH, BLAH....What a load of SHIT. Pure shit.

One of my fave authors posted this to her Facebook page, and I thought it was too cute not to post here. Enjoy!

I shouldn't wish away my life and want it to pass quickly, but I certainly did it this week.

It's over, and I cannot put into words how relieved I am that it is.

That's all I'm going to say about that.

Happy WEEKEND!!

Wow; my blog looks so big and sleek on my new 22" widescreen HD monitor! But I digress due to my unwavering fascination with all things shiny...

Today, I learned something new.

Passive-aggressive people need to be spanked.

Not in the figurative way, and not the real-life, good kind of spanking, like, "Woo-hoo; how ya' doin'" light smack on the posterior (from someone, of course, you don't mind handling that part of your anatomy).

They need the "capture you by the wrist, crank you over the knee, rip down your "draws", and wail on the cheeks with a large, wooden paddle through which someone has sadistically drilled 3/4" holes" way. HARD. And a LOT. Until they're crying. Until they are reduced to a crying, apologetic adult that has learned their lesson and won't antagonize someone in a chicken-livered, slinky-bellied kind of way any longer.

Ever again.

I have dealt with aggressive people all my life. My older sister liked to try to beat my ass every once in a while. My brothers? Well, they'll be brothers. Some friends, cousins and classmates occasionally took it upon themselves to challenge me in the past as well. Umm, not a good idea.

It's fairly simple, though: The plain ol' aggressives are much easier with which to deal. They threaten you to your face, you threaten them back IN their face, sometimes things get a little more heated than others, someone occasionally ends up getting their ass beaten and the problem is worked out, miraculously, on its very own. End of story.

The passive-aggressive is a slippery, lily-livered, queasy-stomached and clammy-handed kind of individual. They smile at you and tell you how pretty your hair is (or sometimes just say, "Did you get your hair cut?" and never say anything else, which makes you THINK they might have just given you a compliment, but in their back-handed, clammy/queasy chickeny way, they've just cut you down) or they tell you "Good Morning" and grin like hyenas...and then as soon as you are out of ear shot, they remark about how you look as if you've gained weight or how they've heard you drink a lot of gin. They make noises as they slither past your cubicle, just to piss you off. They slam their desk drawers (how convenient that their cube is hooked to yours! Now, your whole monitor is shaking and they are getting away with it because you refuse to whine to your supervisor every four and a half seconds), they talk as loud as possible on the phone, they hum along with their iPod knock-offs, probably to knock-off music by "various artists", and they are as annoying and as aggressive as possible, but not to your face. Just IN it.

They do it so that nobody can really tell they're doing it except for you, their target audience.

No one catches them "in the act" because it's ALL an act. No one can prove that they're doing whatever they can to make you crazy, to get you to make the first noticeable move towards retaliation or aggressiveness in real life, thus, they have PROOF that YOU are the a-hole in the situation, not THEM.

No one can really verify that this person is psychotic, but everyone knows, deep down, that they really are psychotic. They work, they smile, they gleefully suck up at every given opportunity, so in the end, their brownie points trump your loud complaints every time.

But WHY? I had to do some research to find out why someone could be so ill-formed and socially retarded:

They do it because they're jealous.
They do it because they're insecure.
They do it because they're uneducated and immature.
They do it because they've been brought up like that, by jealous, insecure, uneducated and immature parents.

It's really a sad state. But they're out there. I have a couple of spares if anybody needs one. I'll be glad to send one right over. For free.

Thanks for listening to my bitch session.

I have to go write now. Just had to get that out of my head (and my system) before I ended up killing someone else in my book that didn't deserve to die.

Thanks.