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Nov. 9, 2006

Captain's Log: Giving the Bird

Capt. Jon Moffett
jrm001@marietta.edu

Disclaimer: The following are solely the views of Jon Moffett and are not necessarily shared by the staff of the Marcolian. These opinions are not meant to be offensive or insulting in any way, but instead are intended to be entertaining and spark discussion among the student body.

Hello, sports fans, and welcome to yet another exciting edition of The Captain’s Log . I’m your host, Jon Moffett. Our top story today, the Pittsburgh Steelers lost to the worst team in football, the Oakland Raiders, officially making them (the Steelers, that is) the biggest disappointment in football since Brian Bosworth.

The 2005 Super Bowl champions are a mere shell of what they used to be, and even Bill Cowher’s chin has lost a little of its prestige. Maybe it’s because they no longer have Jerome ‘as big as a bus’ Bettis, or maybe it is because their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, had to deal with the loss of his guardian angel and will probably soon be hit by a bus. Whatever the case, the Steelers should look at the positives. At least all of their players aren’t going on disability like the Browns, going on Medicare like the Ravens, or going to jail like the Bengals.

But enough about sports. Yesterday as I was walking into Izzy’s, I noticed a poster on the wall. On the poster there was a dark green silhouette of a chicken. I didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary because dark green silhouettes of chickens are normal, of course, but I decided to read on anyway. This poster went on about how chickens are being treated unfairly and inhumanely, and how their only purpose in life is to wait around and then be killed so that humans can eat them. Well, duh.

Now, I’m all for animal rights. I think that any person who beats, mutilates, torments, or in any way harms domestic animals is a sick, twisted freak who deserves to be punished by law. It’s true that some animals do deserve to be treated with respect, but I’m afraid the chicken didn’t quite make the list. In fact, saying that an animal such as the chicken, pig, or cow deserves to have their lives spared as an act of humanity is just crazy. And crazy people end up eating other people instead of animals.

To prove this, let’s take a look at the word humane. First we must break it down into two parts: the word human and the letter E. Since the letter E is a bit ambiguous, meaning that if written poorly it can easily look like a backward number 3, we’ll throw it out. That leaves us with just the word human. But just what is a human? According to Merriam Webster’s online dictionary, a human is nothing more than “a bipedal [two-footed], primate mammal.”

Since chickens, cows, pigs and other edible animals don’t meet those criteria; I guess they shouldn’t be treated HUMAN ely. Fact is, these animals serve only one purpose in their sad lives, and that purpose is to fulfill our needs to eat them. Please don’t think that I’m singling chickens out, for I am just as opposed to treating pigs, cows, and even buffalo as humans.

Obviously there’s a huge difference between simply slaughtering an animal for no reason and killing it to use for food or other necessities. I agree that animals shouldn’t just be killed for no reason. But people do need to realize that the killing of animals for food isn’t inhumane; it’s how we survive. And for those vegetarians, vegans, ventriloquists and any other v-people that feel that it isn’t necessary to kill them for these things, go yell at a lion for killing a gazelle; they might care.

The human body itself has even evolved in order to compensate for our diet. Why do you think that wisdom teeth and the appendix have become obsolete? Wisdom teeth were used to grind up bark and roots, and the appendix was used to ease the digestion of the aforementioned bark and roots. And those canine teeth, they’re certainly not for shredding and tearing apart a carrot.

I know at least one buffalo that should take pride in knowing that it gave its life to become one of the most amazing articles of clothing ever created.

 

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