Let me give you enough rope to hang yourself with.

Okay - I wasn't going to post today because I am heading off for a week's vacation during which I may or may not post, depending on whether or not I see examples of "cow-gnitive dissonance."

But this morning I woke up to this article, and I HAD to post about it. As a Canadian, my news is filled at the moment with reports from two big events - the Toronto Pan Am games, and the Calgary Stampede. The Stampede is a long-standing Alberta rodeo tradition which often involves Canadian politicians showing up in funny hats:

Well, the big news today is that American cattle roper "Tuf Cooper" (hee) has been disqualified from the rodeo because he "aggressively" whipped his horse during his event because it was slow out of the gate. The position of the Calgary stampede is that "using a rope as punishment or correction is unacceptable under the Stampede’s animal care protocols."

Well, that's good news, I guess. Except… isn't it a bit strange that this is the position the Stampede takes because a man used a rope in a negative way on his horse in THIS EVENT: 

Now, I want to be clear that neither of the men pictured above are Tuf Cooper. Let me just check and see…

Oh. Nope. Here's Tuf. It's awful.

CBC quotes Cooper's defence, via his agent: 

"Tuf would never harm any animal let alone his own horses. Tuf treats his horses like royalty and their health and well-being are top priority … All rodeo athletes have respect for the animals involved in the sport and would never intentionally harm them."

Yep. That picture shows that he's giving that calf total respect, y'all.

The disqualification has been covered by the CBC and the Toronto Star , but neither make reference to the  obvious cognitive dissonance here. BOO.

To make your day better, here's a picture of a calf not being chased and bound:

Mother's Milk

This is a bit of a diversion from cultural images as representations of cognitive dissonance, but I thought it was worth a mention.

I saw "Mad Max: Fury Road." And it was GLORIOUS. Crazy, exhausting, plot holes as big as my head… but SO GREAT. So much action. So much car chase! So much flames from guitars! So much everything!  (Note: small spoiler follows)

Anyhoo, I was totally blown away by the brief, very disturbing, but incredibly on-point depiction of "mother's milk" in the film.  In Immortan Joe's cruel dictatorship, enslaved women are forcibly impregnated then, after they give birth, the women are hooked up to "milking machines" while they cradle their dead children. Presumably the children have starved because the milk is given to the ruling class to consume, and the women are forced to continue to cradle them in order to keep up their milk production.

It is horrifying. And it is not that different than how we get milk from cows. The cows are forcibly impregnated, allowed to feed their calves for, at most, a few days, so that the calves can gain vital nutrients, and then the calves are forcibly removed so that the cows can be milked. This will continue until the milk dries up, and then the cows are impregnated again. The calves then become part of the veal production industry.  A lot of people don't eat veal on principle: but there would be no veal industry if there were no dairy industry.

Interestingly, a lot of bloggers have taken great care to point out that Joe's intended sex slaves (rescued by Furiosa) are gorgeous, and the milk-producers are "obese." I get it - of course Joe wants the most beautiful women available as his wives/sex slaves and to bear his children. But it's kind of more than that - the milk-producers are obese because they have recently given birth, and have spent the days after their birth immobile, attached to milking machines.  Joe has created the "unattractive milkers" in the same way that he has forced his intended "brides to wear only sheer muslin under their chastity belts.

Anyway - good job, Mad Max. I don't know if your movie made anybody else think about diary production, but your take on it is RIGHT ON.

Now, to brighten your day, here is what a real baby cow looks like when it gets to stay with its mom and not become veal. This is also what a female cow looks like who is not hooked up to a milking machine.

Holy Chuck!

Holy Chuck is right!  What the Chuck is this?

This sign is the reason I started this blog. I used to walk past this sign every day on my way to work in Toronto - but I didn't think anything of it until I stopped eating animals.

There is so much WTF all over this thing that I don't even know where to start. Whether it's the cow on its hind legs (personification), the presentation of his own head on a platter in the manner of a waiter or butler (butlerfication) or the head itself being replace by a fully loaded cheeseburger (burgification) - this sign is bananas.

Also - I get that "Holy Chuck" is simply a play on "Holy Fuck," but the fact that the decapitated, smiling head has a halo over it is STRONGLY implying that people who eat here are going to go to hell. Or some kind of cow hell, at least. That is LITERALLY the only reason I can think of that this poor butler-cow would be smiling at this very moment.

I thought for a moment about trying to find a picture of a real decapitated cow in order to prove the cognitive dissonance that I am talking about here, but then I figured, hey; if you're here reading this blog it's because you a) know me or b) have googled yourself down into some kind of vegan, animal rights rabbit hole, and you might not want to look at such a horrifying image because that's not what you came here for. I know you're picking up what I'm putting down in this blog. Instead, let's look at a picture of what a cow really looks like, to remind us why the chucked-up sign above is full of chit.