I finally glazed most of the stuff I've been working on, and the kiln is just cooling down. The first few new ornaments for this year are looking good so hopefully everything else turns out - fingers crossed - pics of the finished work coming soon!
1. Monday October 19th was Canada's Federal Election, and right after voting the song from a Wayne and Shuster comedy sketch from the 70's got stuck in my head. Luckily I found most of the sketch here on youtube! According to wiki, Wayne and Shuster's "Question Time" was a satirical sketch inspired by a plan in the 70's to televise proceedings of the House of Commons for the first time. Ironically when this was made, Canada's Prime Minister was Pierre Trudeau, father of our new Prime Minister designate, Justin Trudeau.
2. Speaking of comedy, this episode of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver: Canadian Election which I think I watched on Tuesday. I loved John Oliver's bits on the Daily Show and am glad to see anyone can watch his stuff on youtube, and that he's using humour while addressing serious subjects like Mandatory Minimum Sentences in the US (which I knew nothing about but it sounds bad) and Food Waste.
3. This lecture on youtube: 101 Reasons to Go Vegan by James Wildman of the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida. Compelling stuff. I agree with most of this however am still not sure if humans are meant to be 100% vegan - even gorillas apparently get 3% of nutrition from animal sources from what I read online. Definitely factory farming is cruel and I wish everyone would just quit eating products derived that way - and that more restaurants and even fast food chains would offer better vegetarian options, or source their animals products from local farms that treat their critters with love and respect.
Maybe some people can thrive on a 100% vegan diet and some people can't, the human species is sort of enormous and expansive. If we were birds or insects or fish some biologist would probably have come up with a whole taxonomy system for us, and the different human subspecies might be biologically adapted to different diets. Just a thought.
The other thing I don't 100 percent agree with from the lecture is the statement that all animals fear death - maybe they do at slaughterhouses and/or in factory farms, but I don't think wild ones or those raised in more natural conditions do; though of course they'd do what they can to avoid death, eg responding to predators. I think chronic fear of death and anxiety might be more of a human thing. Even when watching the scene where the free range duck in Cowspiracy casually gets his or her head chopped off, the vibe I got was the duck was thinking, oh well guess it's my turn to die, here let me stretch my neck out so this will be easier for you. Likewise in A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen, there's a moving part in this autobiographical book where he describes slaughtering a chicken on his small farm and the connection that they share. Maybe it is possible to take small amounts of animal protein, if it is necessary for human health, in a respectful way that doesn't cause wide scale suffering and environmental degradation - I think most tribal indigenous cultures used to live this way. Problem is thanks to the 'civilized' countries a lot of us are eating a lot of factory farmed animal products, creating mass animal suffering, while wrecking the planet and getting sick. Wouldn't it be cool to see what would happen if everyone at least just stopped eating factory farmed stuff and all GMOs. That could really mess up some big corporations!
4. This Expressive Art Inspirations blog
5. New favourite research topic, to be taken with grain of salt: Aliens!!! Yes! Alien influence over humans could explain so much.
6. The 2 Circles youtube channel. Lots of interesting videos about aliens here, especially The Alien Matrix Control System youtube video mirrored from the TomMontalk youtube channel.
7. After watching the above video I checked out montalk.net - the website of Tom Montalk, physicist turned Alien researcher, with lots of interesting stuff. I like his Advice for Newbies. And so far I've listened to part one of this radio interview: Veils Afire - Episode 1 overview of the alien presence. Anything is possible I suppose. At least now if alien ships do show up en masse I won't take a heart attack.
8. This article from in2worlds.net which is is another cool website with all sorts fringe information.: The Hidden Puppetmasters: Neg Entities Taking the Wheel in Cases of Abuse by Carissa Conti.
9. The premise behind the movie Jupiter Ascending. Unfortunately IMO the movie itself was a bit of a letdown, but the idea behind it is excellent: that the earth is actually a 'farm planet' where, unbeknownst to us, we're all being farmed by humanoid aliens looking forward to harvesting everyone as soon as the population exceeds the planet's carrying capacity (thanks, ecology education). The end product? Some sort of elixir that extends life, with the idea that time is the most precious resource.
Now THIS is the best reason I can think of for going as vegan as possible: the law of karma, which is also one of the 7 Hermetic Laws: the law of cause and effect. I thought about this earlier in the year when I was obsessed with parasites, and whether people are hosting more internal parasites than we may have realized, and if this is supported by factory farmed products, where a lot of parasites thrive on animal products. This takes that whole idea to an external level: where maybe the factory farming system has been put into place by aliens who are fattening us up. So, maybe if you don't eat factory farmed foods you won't end up being farmed by something else (aliens and/or parasites). Definitely a hypothesis I don't mind personally putting to the test.
10. Speaking of aliens, the call for submission for the The Dart Gallery's next group show: Dart Wars, inspired by Star Wars, entries due Nov 25th and the show will run December 4th - 20th. Should be awesome!
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