"Red meat, white meat, blue meat, meat-o-f**king-rama. You will eat it. Because not eating meat is a decision."

"Eating meat is an instinct! Yeah! And I know what it’s about. 'I don’t want to eat the meat because I love the animals. I love the animals.' Hey, I love the animals too. I love my doggy. He’s so cute. My fluffy little dog... He’s so cute — There’s the problem. We only want to save the cute animals, don’t we? Yeah. Why don’t we just have animal auditions. Line ‘em up one by one and interview them individually. 'What are you?' 'I’m an otter.' 'And what do you do?' 'I swim around on my back and do cute little human things with my hands.' 'You’re free to go.' 'And what are you?' 'I’m a cow.' 'Get in the f**king truck, ok pal!' 'But I’m an animal.' 'You’re a baseball glove! Get on that truck!'"

Denis Leary, quoted a propos of the James Lee, the now-dead manifesto guy.

"In a city that is known for its exotic dancing and for being progressive and edgy..."

"... how sad that a woman would be banned from using her own body in a political protest."

"It doesn't matter what an animal does, or where it does it, it will be deemed fair game for the documentary."

"Human notions of privacy which rest on ideas of location or activity are ignored in terms of animals."

An academic agonizes.

Imagine the roles reversed. The animals somehow take over and they are making David Attenborough-style videos about human beings.... Well, picture this, but with people:

"Are zoophiles attracted only to sexually mature animals — and if not, does this make them 'zoopedophiles'?"

"Do zoophiles find particular members of their preferred species more 'attractive' than other individuals from those species, and, if so, are they seduced by standard beauty cues, such as facial symmetry in horses? What is the percentage of homosexual zoophiles (those who prefer animal partners of the same sex) over heterosexual zoophiles?"

Questions, questions. I must say I've never thought about any of those questions before.

"Swiss turn down lawyers-for-pets plan."

Now, there's a teaser/headline that confused me. I thought: What? Do you turn in your lawyer and get a pet in exchange?

But I clicked through — over at BBC.com — and saw that it was just about a proposed national system of government-funded lawyers who would provide legal representation to animals.

ADDED: It was just pointed out to me that I was confused the wrong way.  I should have thought that it was about handing in your pet and getting a lawyer. The expression "cash for clunkers" was used in the explanation of why I was wrong about being wrong. And somehow those 2 wrongs did not make a right.

When the whale killed Dawn Brancheau... was it an instance of domestic violence?

"They really develop an interesting intimate relationship with these whales!" That is said about Dawn Brancheau, in this video depicting her with a killer whale, in happier days:



"Animals are real, sensitive to the touch, and they can feel all those things," Brancheau explains as she demonstrates her practice of rubbing the whale. Brancheau was rubbing the whale's nose when he turned on her and dragged her to her death.

Here are 6 theories of why the whale may have killed Brancheau. #3 is:

He was feeling sexual

[Whale expert] Nancy Black has also said it might have been a hormonal outburst from the killer whale. The killer whale was often isolated and encouraged to breed.

"He was used a lot [by SeaWorld] for mating and could have even been enacting a mating behavior during the incident," said Black.

Now, obviously, I don't know the extent to which the woman and the whale had a sexual relationship. I don't know it either from her perspective or the whale's. But the whale is an intelligent creature with feelings and in need of relationships, and the woman — if we listen to her own words — believed that she was providing a relationship. But think of it from the whale's perspective. Imagine the whale's sexuality. Imagine the frustration, tension, and deep longings.

No, you can't get that far trying to imagine how the whale felt. Animals are real, sensitive to the touch, and they can feel all those things. What things?! We don't really know. And yet we use them, for our purposes, which they cannot possibly understand. We imagine that we provide them love and companionship and touching. But we must know that even if a human being could fully grasp what the whale felt, she could never give him what he really needs.

***

The whale's name? Tilikum: 'Til I come.

"Ted, do cartoon animals have rights?

"They’re the ones that should have rights. Bambi and Thumper are just adorable and you can’t eat celluloid. I am pro-cartoon animal rights. I think they should all be colorized and that the Road Runner cartoons should be shown in school to teach students violence from Acme. Support the Acme Violence Jihad!!"

On swatting a fly.

1. BBC gives you 10 ways to swat a fly — including a technique called The Barack.

2. PETA doesn't appreciate The Barack: "We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals. We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."

3. There's a song called "Never Swat a Fly." I'm familiar with the old Jim Kweskin version ("Don't do that, Delores/You should never swat a fly"), but here's the 1930 Abe Lyman version. Lyrics:

Never swat a fly, he may love another fly
He may sit with her and sigh the way I do with you
Never harm a flea, he may have a favorite she
That he bounces on his knee the way I do with you
Never stop a moth when he is gliding through the air
He may have a date in someone's flannel underwear
Ah! Ah! Be careful!
Never spray a nit with a great big can of Blitz
He may think some nit has it the way I do with you

"It's okay to eat fish 'cause they don't have any feelings..."

... or, oh, maybe not...

***

Song lyric in the post title comes from this:

There was this blackboard kitty cat...

I'm only partially responsible for drawing that.

As long as I've got the iPhone in hand and open to the camera app...



I call that "Office Shelfscape."

And then, here's "Office Floorscape":



So really, Althouse, what is it? You've got the kitty cat, drawn on the board in, apparently, a conlaw class, and then, amidst law books, some "compassionate choices" for chickens, and that old familiar office toy, Blue Flame? What are we to make of this?