Yeah....... I Don't Think So

Well, I actually got to go to class last night. Guess what though? My instructor wasn't there. He was, however, kind enough to get someone else to cover the class for him. Would you like to know who it was? The other girl! That's right, the one who was in class with me just a few weeks ago. The one who started several months after I did. The who keeps calling me "fairy." I don't know how this happened and, to be honest, I don't really care. But if it happens again I am going to be really, really pissed! And it's not just because I'm being bitter (although I probably am). This was, by far, the worst class I've had there. We did basically nothing that felt at all like exercise, and she kept quizzing us (which was about the most irritating thing ever) "Okay, tell me two things you learned about punches?" Yeah, it was shitty. And since I count on this class to help me release my pent up rage, going there and getting even more pissed off is just not going to cut it.

Ⓥ Animal Rights, Human Rights

Probably every vegan on the planet has heard, if not directly then at least second hand from other vegans, the "argument" from meat eaters that vegans care more about animals than they do about other humans. I have heard a few different responses to this, most of which were very good. One of the best, probably, is that caring about animals in no way diminishes one's compassion for other humans, and animal rights activism and human rights activism are not mutually exclusive. The other one I like, which is probably a little less effective but perhaps a bit more satisfying to say to an obnoxious omnivore, is that the majority of meat eaters don't actually do anything to help other humans either.

The truth of the matter is, at least in my case, animal issues are more important than human issues. It's not because I don't care about humans, or because I like animals better. For me, it's all about the level of suffering. I believe that, when it comes to suffering, all beings, human or nonhuman, should be given equal consideration. And the truth is, even in the very worst cases, there are no humans who are in situations as horrible as those that many animals are facing. Yes, there are human rights violations happening all over the world. Yes, there are people with diseases which could have been prevented. Yes, there are people living in abject poverty. And yes, all of these things are terrible.

However, if I had to choose between working to end any of these things and working for animal rights, I would choose animal rights every time. Because there are no humans being locked in battery cages or gestation crates. There are no humans being subjected to horrifying medical experiments. There are no humans being skinned, or boiled, or eviscerated while they are still alive simply because we want something that comes from them. The torment that animals face in our society everyday is far greater, and on a far grander scale, than any injustice endured by humans in our current culture.

So yes, it is true that as animal activists we can still work for human charities, and that is a very admirable thing. It is also true that most of the people who claim that vegans care more about animals than people probably do very little to help their fellow humans. I, personally, don't feel that we should have to justify ourselves though. We shouldn't have to pretend to care equally about human rights causes, if we don't. I think that we should have every right to focus on the greatest injustices first, without apology. And I believe that is exactly what animal rights activists are doing.

I Take It Back

You know how I said I was going to let my hair go back to its natural color? I take it back. I couldn't stand it. As soon as it started to show through the blonde I went "What the fuck was I thinking? I hate this color!" Unfortunately, I still desperately needed to change something, lest I lose my mind. So I spent an exorbitant amount of time looking at pictures of other people's hair on the internet. I finally decided to stick with blonde, but try harder for the platinum color I was actually going for in the first place. Everything I found kept saying that the trick is to find a good toner. Well, that didn't seem like such a big deal. Of course finding a good toner, and finding a good toner that is vegan are two very different things. So I improvised. Supposedly, you need purple toner to take out the yellow, and I just happened to have some Manic Panic Ultra Violet left over from that time I had purple hair for like a day. I mixed some of it with the coconut oil I put on my hair. I think I went a little overboard because now I have slightly purple streaks, but it did get rid of the yellow and the purple isn't too terribly noticeable. So I'm calling it a win.

I've got kind of a Last Unicorn/Lady Amalthea thing going on, which I kind of like actually. 

Voicemail from the Veil

I think I may have received a phone call from a ghost yesterday. I had a voicemail from a restricted number, which very seldom happens to me. When I listened to it, it was only a few seconds long. At first I thought it was just static but it sounded kind of weird, so I played it again. It sounded almost like someone was talking in the background, but not like a butt-dial, more like EVP. Now if only I was one of those tech savvy people who know how to remove background noise from audio, I could find out what the ghost was trying to tell me. But alas, I guess he will just have to call back later when he has better reception.

Or, if that doesn't work, he could always try the coffee maker.

So Meta

You know what bugs the shit out of me (besides everything, I mean)? When I think of something I want to write about when I have already chosen a topic for that day. Honestly, most days I struggle to come up with anything remotely interesting to talk about, but then every once in a while I get three or four ideas for posts in one day. I don't know why everything is always like that for me, it has to be all or nothing. The worst part is, usually by the next day I've forgotten what the ideas were, or at least how I was going to phrase them. I am 99% sure that I had a good idea for a post yesterday, but then I was like "No wait, I want to do a post about Imbolc." Now I cannot for the life of me, remember what my idea was! So yeah, now I just ended up writing a blog post about writing a blog post, sorry.

Imbolc

Today is Imbolc (or, for most of you probably, groundhog day). Either way, it's supposedly the turning point toward spring. I have to be honest, I'm not really feeling that today, but it's still a nice thought. The idea is sort of about everything coming to fruition, like all the plants that have been hibernating underground all winter starting to come back to the surface. It's also about honoring Brid (there are about 8000 different ways to spell her name but, from what I can tell, that seems to be the original one.) Anyway, she was so cool that, even though she was a pagan goddess, the church adopted her as a saint, Saint Brigid. Which is understandable, I guess, because she is pretty damn impressive. She is a goddess of, among other things, poetry, art, metal smithing, and healing.

Image by papermuse. 

Flying Pigs Jewelry Lives! or...It Will.....Soon

Recently, for some reason that I don't understand, I have been getting a bunch of new likes on Flying Pigs Jewelry's Facebook page. This would be great, were it not for the fact that I haven't actually had anything listed in my shop for months. Now I just feel kind of guilty that there are all of these people interested in my stuff and I have nothing to offer them. I finally got (somewhat) motivated and made a few new things a couple of weeks ago, but I realized that all of the pictures I took of my older stuff were pretty terrible and there was really no point in posting a bunch of new terrible pictures. Well, my sister was kind enough to take some pictures of my stuff today. So sometime in the near future I will be re-posting most of the things I had listed before (with new, better, pictures) along with a few new things. So yeah, if you're into weird, sometimes animal rights themed, sometimes nature themed, sometimes who the fuck knows themed jewelry, I will soon have things for you.

For example ^