pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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PHARMACEUTICALLY ENHANCED WOLVES

312.

My best friend and I consider Thanksgiving our holiday. And, most holidays since 1988, when we met, one or the other of us would journey to wherever the other was living.

Once, we journeyed to my parents� house down south�which was fortunate, since my father died the following year and Filmgrrl would probably have never met the person I am most like otherwise. Usually, though, I journeyed up to New York City and traveled light, because Filmgrrl always picked me up on her motorcycle and then rode our freezing asses through Central Park and over by Macy�s so we could watch them blow up the parade balloons. Then, on Thanksgiving, we�d put the turkey in to roast before rushing down to the parade with bloody Mary fixings in tow (which guarantees that everyone around you will want to be your friend).

Filmgrrl is a documentary filmmaker, visual artist, and musician, and I am a typical leftie who is most happy making art, writing, or making music, so we always incorporate creativity into our Thanksgiving celebrations. We share songs or artwork or read from a manuscript or share a favorite poem. And, once, we affixed a huge sheet of paper to the wall so that everyone could drew their extended families on it. China, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Norway, Paris, and a few other European cities were represented that year. And we also incorporated an impromptu Audre Lorde memorial reading and life celebration into that holiday, since we learned of her death that morning.

Yep, ever since 1988, when we met at a random party in NYC, we celebrated almost every Thanksgiving together. Then my father was hospitalized for what we thought were routine tests and out-of-whack insulin levels the day before I left for NYC. The doctor discovered advanced pancreatic�or lung, I don�t think they ever decided the source�cancer instead though, so I called Filmgrrl and told her I had to go to South Cackylacky instead of New York, then told my father that I�d be there in the morning. Only his brain turned into toast that night.

His funeral was the day before Thanksgiving, so Filmgrrrl (bless her heart) travelled down south then all the way back to NYC in one twenty-four-hour period so she could attend his funeral and still feed the crowd of artists gathering at her apartment. Then, for the next several years, I felt too guilty about not joining my mother on the anniversary of her husband�s death, so I went down south and played touch football with my numerous nieces and nephews instead of wandering the streets of NYC with my bestgrrrl. And now she has moved to Bumfuck Montana way on the other side of the country and we can�t afford to see each other.

And I have no idea what to eat for Thanksgiving this year anyway. Pottergrrrl has been reading about how unhealthy non-organic turkeys are, about how inhumanely they�re treated, and this makes us want to avoid the traditional bird Plus she�s returned to her vegetarian ways and I am trying to consume consciously with her.

Take today, for example. I got up early and made mueslix, which means I ate a healthy breakfast of rolled oats, psyllium, low-fat granola, pecans, dried cranberries, fresh strawberries, green grapes, and blueberries mixed with a shredded apple and soy yogurt�and, who knows? Maybe this will actually compensate for all those unhealthy southern breakfasts I grew up eating: scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese mixed into richly buttered grits and crumbled bacon.

But, instead of going to the gym today�as I try to do on my lunch break�I attended our annual employee appreciation luncheon, where five employees in my division received awards (clap clap). Then I returned to my office and read an article about how hormone residues in milk and meat are probably harming our endocrine systems.

Which leads me to Pottergrrrl�s recent question: Why I am killing myself with my dietary choices? And am I? Is eating meat a reckless disregard for life? A stubborn denial of the inevitability of death? A rejection of the known consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle? Weakness? An utter lack of discipline? Or a natural extension of our caveman roots?

Now please understand that I write this entirely tongue in cheek, but I�ve been thinking that a novel defense would be to say that I am just being a good American. After all, the commercials tell us that eating cheese out of a jar during Superbowl parties or Monday Night Football game is American. And American farmers seem intent on filling our cows with growth hormones and stuffing as many of our chickens as possible into the smallest cramped spaces possible and dipping their carcasses into chlorine and anointing our fragile ecosystem with their farms� greenhouse gases, acid rain emissions, and chemical spills as we ingest all those chemicals.

(But wouldn�t our government tell us if this is dangerous, the little girl whined.)

And here�s an alarming statistic:

Eighty percent of all antibiotics in the United States are given not to people to cure disease but to animals to make them fatten up and enable them to survive unhygienic confinement in factory farms.�

So says Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association. And that is fucking sobering. So is the fact that there has been an 88 percent increase in prostate cancer since 1975 and we know that growth hormones in beef elevate men�s hormone levels.

In fact, scientists estimate that a boy eating two hamburgers in a single day will experience a 10 percent increase in his hormone levels. And we�ve known for six years now that estrogen, a growth hormones used in beef production, is a known carcinogen. And don�t even get me started on the rise in breast cancer among (hormone-enriched milk-drinking?) women, particularly lesbians.

Meanwhile, John Feffer of Alternet reports that

researchers in China and the UK are independently racing toward the biotech Holy Grail of the poultry world: replacing all 35 billion chickens in the world with a genetically modified version that is resistant to all strains of bird flu. (Chemical Farm, 11.22.2005)

The good news is that EU legislation �proposes a ban on battery system production by 2012 and the bestowing upon egg-layers their �five freedoms:� to stand up, lie down, turn around, groom themselves, and stretch their limbs.�

(It�d be nice to bestow those freedoms on some humans too. )

Consumer outrage worked in Europe, so now even the McDonalds there serve organic milk and free-range eggs. American citizens seem content to be spoonfed lines about the USDA watching out for us though, so why worry so long as the agrilobbyists get what they want?

�

So. Yesterday I came across this wonderful ad copy for an article about women married to men who use viagra:

Read about women who run with the pharmaceutically enhanced wolves.

(Wouldn�t Clarissa and Robert be proud of that copy writer?) Now I wonder if we should worry about Americans who ingest chemically enhanced wolves and other critters?

READING: Verizon�s offer for high-speed online DSL for $14.95/mo. I�d pay that, but would have to pay for a phone line too since I only use my mobile phone.

3:32 p.m. - 2006-11-22

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