Some people are idiots

There was another fatal killer whale attack at Sea World in Florida yesterday. The whale, not the one pictured here, killed one of the people who was 'training' it.
The lesson we need to take from this case is: STOP TRYING TO TAME WILD ANIMALS. NO SHIT, SERIOUSLY, STOP IT.

Seriously people, it's not that hard of a lesson. We seen this kind of thing hundreds of times before. Lion tamers get attacked when they try to make lions behave abnormally. People who mess with tigers get attacked, same goes with those who mess with elephants. Chimps and monkeys attack eventually. And why do they keep doing it? BECAUSE THEY ARE WILD ANIMALS. No matter how you dress them up, no matter if you live side by side with them, no matter if you give them a name and imagine they love you like you love them, THEY ARE NOT DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND THEY WILL FUCKING KILL YOU. That goes for whales, jungle cats, wolverines, Tasmanian devils, bears, wolves, coyotes, some species of birds (don't get me started on people who keep birds in cages), kangaroos, and most every animal known to man that is not a dog or a cat, and sometimes those animals will kill you too.

It's just insane that we keep trying to 'train' or 'tame' wild animals. The desire is nothing more than human hubris rearing it's ugly head once again. And where did this hubris originally come from? You guessed it, from the people who brought such things as original sin, papal infallibility, and the virgin birth, it came from Christians. In their book of fairy tales it says that man is supposed to have dominion, or in other words, control, over the earth and all it's creatures. And that dominion is granted by their god and since their god loves them then he must have made all the animals to love them too, so it's totally okay to rip an animal out of it's natural habitat in order to dress it up like a human or to make it jump through flaming a hoop so it can eat food that it didn't hunt and kill.

Well, guess what's wrong with that picture, I'm sure you'll figure it out pretty soon, unless you're an idiot who has a raccoon as a pet or who thinks it would be totally cool to make a badger and a a cat mate so you sell the offspring or make them fight the hobo's who live near the underpass. What's wrong with that picture is that wild animals don't want to wear trousers and a bowler hat and they don't want to be hand fed by someone who has a MA in English lit but doesn't have enough common sense to keep his or her hands out of the mouths of wild fucking animals. Whales really don't want to live in above ground pools and do four shows a day where they get to balance balls on their noses, they want to roam the ocean where they can live freely and interact with their own kind and they want to hunt their own food. Chimps don't want to ride bikes and shit in diapers, they want to live in the jungle and throw their shit at each other. Tigers don't want to be fawned over by a couple of Germanic gay guys who wear more sequins than the entire group of this years Olympic figure skaters, they want to prowl the badlands of Asia and to hump other tigers. Lions don't want to be poked and prodded by some asswipe in a top hat, they want to stalk their prey in the savanna in Africa. No matter what some book written in the Bronze age says, we don't have control over the animals who we share this planet with.

The problem here is animal based amusement parks and circuses. Let's be clear here, animals are not here for our amusement, that's what the tea partiers are for, animals are here because they play a crucial part in the life cycle of this planet. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for zoos because I think they are important learning centers and they do great work in saving endangered species. Zoos are not the problem. It's stupid people who insist on believing the antiquated notion that we can bend wild animals to our whims who are the problem.

When I lived in Knoxville I remember reading about some idiots who were visiting the national park in the Smokies. They were out hiking and they saw one animal attack another and they became enraged so they started throwing rocks and sticks at the attacker. A park ranger was nearby and he stopped the idiots and he asked them why they did such a thing. They told him they didn't want to see the small defenseless little animal get hurt by the big mean bully animal. The ranger then explained to them all about how animals in the wild operate. He told them that's how meat eaters survive, they hunt and they kill other animals and they eat their flesh and bones. I'm sure the idiots had a hard time understanding his point when you consider they probably grew up on a diet of Disney cartoons where all animals are cute, funny, and oh so human.

It's sad that some people haven't evolved enough to understand that animals are not human and they don't really exist to amuse and entertain us. And honestly, the people who don't understand that deserve to be eaten, mauled, and maimed by any animal they try to train or tame.

Have you ever seen...

...a guy watch another guy choke his chicken?

A Child Star Gone Good

Remember this little gal:If you're a certain age, like say for instance over 40, and you watched a certain amount of TV, let's say for instance way too much TV, especially when you were young, then you probably remember the little girl that Shatner is holding. Her name is Pamelyn Ferdin and for about 20 years she was everywhere you looked on TV. She grew up right before our eyes and she worked on such shows as Star Trek, The Odd Couple, The Brady Bunch, Gunsmoke, and many many many more, you can check out all her credits on her IMDb page which is here.

Ms. Ferdin was on many of the shows I watched growing up. Because she and I were close in age I always felt a certain kinship with her and I was glad to see her get so much work. She was one of the first girls my own age that I had a crush on. Come on people, how could you not like a gal as pretty as this:You could power a small city with the wattage of that smile. To me Ms. Ferdin just seemed so nice. I'm sure she had her bad days and she probably rubbed someone the wrong way a time or two, but I always liked her. It was like seeing an old friend every time she guest starred on a different show.

Like all of us, Pamelyn grew up. But unlike some other former child actors who I won't mention but whose initials are that drunken skank Lindsey Lohan, Ms. Ferdin didn't slide into a life of drunken celebrity antics with a side of obscene entitlement. Nope. Not at all. Instead of being a fame whore like the current crop of former child stars that came of age in the last few years Ms. Ferdin went to college and she became a RN. And then she got a job, a real job, a job outside of acting and the film and TV industry. She went to work in a county hospital emergency room caring for indigent patients. And while she worked at that job she also began volunteering with animal welfare rights groups.

She did the occasional voiceover on the side while she worked as a nurse and did the animal right activism thing but these days she's not into the acting thing anymore. She said in an email to me, "I'm no longer in acting. After becoming a registered nurse and working in an emergency room at a County hospital caring for indigent patients, I am now a full time animal rights activist. I am a member of Animal Defense League-Los Angeles (see http://www.animaldefense.com/ and also go to ADL-LA's current campaign web site at http://www.stopthekilling.net/ )."

I'm sure you're saying, "An email to you? She wrote you an email Monkey man?" Well yes, actually she did. And she did it because I emailed her first. You see I read a post MWB did about watching one of her old series on DVD and I looked her up on the interwebs. I found out she had a website and as I read about her and what she had been up to I thought, "What a neat woman. I'm so glad she turned out to be such a normal and compassionate person." I saw on her web page where you could email her and she claimed to read all emails personally, so I sent her an email telling her thanks for all her performances and for helping animals.

And wouldn't you know it, she went and emailed me back and she told me thanks for my nice email to her and she told me all about her work helping those how can't not ask for help, animals. She went on to tell me, "I felt that acting was not really making the world a more peaceful, compassionate place, so I became a nurse. After twelve years of nursing I realized that people do have a voice and they can ask the nurse for pain killers, assistance in getting up, and will tell you off if they don't feel you are giving them the best of care!!

Animals can't speak out on their own behalf, and there is just a small minority of people who are willing to speak up for them. As Ingrid Newkirk once said, "When it comes to suffering, a pig, is a dog, is a rat, is a boy." Animals are the most innocent and the most tortured beings on earth right now, and I felt that I had to speak up for those animals being abused, tortured, killed and afraid or I couldn't live with myself."

To me this whole thing, finding out what Ms. Ferdin had done with her life after acting and exchanging emails, was a breath of fresh air for me. I was bowled over that she returned my email and took the time to tell me in depth the things she now did. I can't imagine any of the skeevy fame sluts of today getting a real job or working in the trenches for animal rights or even returning an email to a fan. I'm glad my initial instincts about Ms. Ferdin were right and that she is a nice, compassionate person who is working to make this world a better place. And this whole thing just goes to show you that some people are just as nice and kind as we imagine they are, even former TV stars.

Thanks once again Pamelyn for all the memories you gave me and thanks for turning out to be a nice helpful person.