Should Pigs Be Given Special Protection

Not that I expect to see serious animals'-rights legislation enacted soon -- we can't even get the extreme-cruelty section of the Criminal Code minimally amended -- but I believe that animals have rights in the same way we do -- by virtue of being alive, and we should be working to defend them.

At the same time, there are serious problems with pig farms on that very basis and just generally in environmental terms.

So my answer is yes -- pigs do deserve legislated protection. Save the criticism for the farms, as for most Big Agribusiness.

Only animals beautiful and large enough to be registered by the senses of Homo sapiens figure in their tender concern. E.O. Wilson some time ago alerted us to the millions of microscopic life forms found in a square inch of earth he cut from a rainforest. Life is everywhere. I squash millions of micro-organisms with each step and wash down the drain unnoticed multitudes with each shower. Brushing my teeth kills innumerable bacteria (it's them or my gums!). With every swallow, I destroy some of the bacteria in my gut that keep me alive by helping to digest my food. But even larger creatures like cockroaches and rats, do they enter into the purview of animal-rights activists? And the HIV virus, the swine flu, tuberculosis? Do I want to eschew antibiotics and vaccines that help my life out of respect for theirs?

The grandstanding of vegans for carefully selected life forms, to serve their own sensitivities-through their meat- and dairy-free diets, their avoidance of leather and other animal products-doesn't produce much besides a sense of their own virtue. As they make their footprint smaller and smaller, will they soon be walking on their toes like ballet dancers? And if so, what is the step after that? Pure spirit (a euphemism for bodily death)? If our existence is the problem-which it is-then only nonexistence can cure it. The supreme biocentric act is not to discover yet one more animal product to abstain from. The supreme biocentric act is dying, returning the finite matter and energy you have appropriated for yourself and giving them back to the creatures you stole them from. And what makes them so pure? Are they shedding tears as they tear you and each other apart? The real "crime" is existence, not being or using animals.

http://chronicle.com/article/Vegansthe-Quest-for/66090/

VGE, I don't think I said that animals' rights are the same as ours. I said they have them on the same basis we do -- by virtue of being alive. (I like to make that point about human rights as well, since a lot of people think the state "gives" them to us, which is wrong.)

You may be misreading me. I'm no vegan -- I'm an omnivore, and would be fairly happy about that if I didn't know the horrors through which some of my food sources are put to get to me. I accept the food chain -- I just don't accept the brutal mass and mechanized slaughter.

Animals have the right not to be tortured. Let's start there and work up. Preventing even that basic offence is lots of work for the present.

I hear you on that, skdadl.  There are a lot of battles to be fought when it comes to animals.  My personal opinion is that it's best to go after the most powerful violators of animal rights before going after the weakest, which is why, for instance, I think the intense focus on the seal hunt by people who eat factory-farmed hamburger meat, or by continents that think fois gras and veal are perfectly acceptable delicacies (don't get me started) is probably not the best place to start on the animal welfare (or rights) front.  At least with vegans, they're being consistent when they speak out against the seal hunt, and you can be sure that they speak out even more against factory farming.

Usually when people talk about animals having rights, along similar lines as humans, the right not to be killed for food or any other reason other than self-defence is generally the most basic right there is.  I think what you are talking about sounds more like animal welfare (it's okay to kill them as long as we make their shortened lives happier), as opposed to animal rights.

I say this as a former vegan and current, guilt-ridden omnivore, btw, so no moral superiority here whatsoever.  At some point, I really do need to go back to it.  I believe in the principle, but the practice is something I just can't seem to find my way back into, at least not right now.  So I live with the guilt.  If there are any vegans out there reading this, please do feel free to scold me - I know I deserve it.  (Vegetarians can save their scolding, since their eggs and milk also generally come from tortured and enslaved female animals who are murdered for dog food once they can no longer produce, and their male siblings become part of the meat industry.)

Anyhow, I don't think there's a lot of hope that any sort of "rights-based" approach towards animal welfare is going to work alongside the idea that animals can be killed for utilitarian food purposes.  The cognitive dissonance is just too great.  People know that if you don't want to force animals to live in inhumane conditions because animals can suffer as we do, then killing them simply because they're tasty is not really any better.

Well, here's where we differ, and I think that my distinction makes a difference -- I think there's another option between the two views you've outlined. Understanding rights structurally (we and animals all have them on the basis of being alive, on some philosophical conviction about life) is different from describing particular rights in detail, which depends to some degree on the animal (and among animals I include us) you're looking at.

I suppose you could call the food chain "utilitarian," although that seems to me a philosophical reduction that is almost comical. It is in the nature of living creatures to eat, and many (most? not sure of the balance) do that by killing other living creatures.Saying that eating is utilitarian -- for, say, a lion -- is so reductive as to be redundant.

Is it in the nature of human beings to build factory farms? Well, in some perverse sense it must be in the nature of some, since we have done that, and factory farms I think can fairly be called "utilitarian" in the C19 sense.

Do we have reason to look at some of the things human beings do and question the degree to which they are removed from anything that could reasonably be called natural? I think we do, although I'm not a good enough philosopher to pursue that very far.

Finishing off the debate philosophically would also require that we admit to basic, irreducible commitments to concepts like nature and life and human life, whether we can justify those or not. It doesn't bother me to say I have those commitments even if I can't win philosophical debates about them. I do consider the food chain a part of nature, however -- a blessed part, in fact. I understand why many peoples have worshipped some of the animals that were basic sustenance for them, even some of the plants, the ocean, the elements.

Funny.

I'm not anti-vegan or a defender of factory farms (nor a big vocal critic since I eat their product). I think we should try to preserve as much natural wildlife space as possible, I just liked this article. It wasn't aimed at anyone.

"  We're compromised from the start. Evolution favored meat-eating primates, enlarging their brains and enabling them to live in more and more complex and survivalist societies that today extend our life spans, provide genteel habitats, and produce philosophers who have the wherewithal to object to the very components of their own existence. Death is the only form of purification. Alive, we have no choice but to accept our complicity, because life is a product of death. Do as much as you can to minimize the damage, because the "environment" is us. But as long as we are among the living, we should stop pretending to virtues possible only for the dead."

 http://chronicle.com/article/Vegansthe-Quest-for/66090/

Thank you for that link, VGE. That is a beautiful and profound piece of writing.

I understand although I do not entirely share that perspective. I think this has something to do with the fact that people truly are different in the ways that they conceptualize things, and then entire societies shift that way from period to period. (Forgive me, but you're hearing the Northrop Frygian in me coming out here.)

I can spend brief periods thinking of our place in nature as tragic-romantic, which to a Frygian is what Fromm is doing there, but my nerves seem always to have been tuned to a different mode. You don't have to be happy or even fortunate to reject tragedy, to find it a bit over the top, out of tune with most daily experience short of a police cage or the waterboard. (And I realize we're all always candidates for those.)

Nature is what it is; whatever political analysis I was pursuing, it would bring me up short to be told both that I both needed "purification" and that I could never be "purified" short of death. Hi, there, Nietzsche. Hi there, Protestants.

I'm much more Diderot/Rousseau on this issue.

@ VanGogh's Ear

Great article, and it is certainly a valid way of looking at the problem.

Locally though I think the main problem is not eating up the wilderness. It is the fact that is encroached on cities and towns, home to lots of people who don't like the smell of pigshit.

Mega hog operations also threaten contamination of aquifers and waterways, not just from manure, but also from the antibiotics necessary.

And they put small family farms out of business.

Even if we stopped eating meat altogether we would still compete with animals for space in other ways. Remember what happened to the buffalo?

Just using the land around Winnipeg as an example, there are far more deer in the prairies since the advent of agriculture than there were before the Europeans came. Our greatest threat to them is not hunting but highway accidents. And if you go east of the city an ongoing task for conservation officers is blowing up beaver dams which have flooded roads and farmland.

So I don't disagree with the article - only that for the most part such operations encroach on us, rather than on the wilderness.

Some people still say - What will happen when the machines take over?  They've already taken over. right after they were built they began changing us and how we live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJvTJd2fGdw&feature=related

Considering that civilization only started when people begen to control plants through agriculture, and animals thgouh domestication, yes, it is in our nature.

To be clear, I mean civilization in the literal sense - developing a food supply that allows some people to do something other than survival work - hunting and gathering, and allows communities to develop in one place rather live nomadically following herds. I am not saying that tribal societies are not rich cultures with less intelligent people than agricultural and urban ones.

To use the example of the buffalo again (again in Manitoba, not the elswehere where herds were slaughtered to clear the land for farms, and to remove the food supply from Native people)  by the early 1800s the Red River buffalo hunt was already a tightly managed operation. Buffalo pemmican was not just food for people of the prairies, it was an industrial commodity - the gasoline that ran the fur trade. It was even the cause of war between the HBC who wanted to hoard within the colony, and Metis who did not (intersting that the incident at Seven Oaks is called a massacre because it is whites who were killed, even though they started if).

And I think "natural" simply means anything that we don't touch or change.

To add to what I said about deer yesterday, Actually I think the greatest threat is when a bad winter cuts off their food supply and there is a steep winter kill; their numbers are actually artificially high because of agriculture. There are plenty of people who put out feeding stations for deer in the winter, but it is often not enough. So even the deer population is not natural at all,

I see this thread remaining ridiculously hilarious from start to finish.

Is it finished?

Apparently not.

The laughs go on and on.

I see, or I imagine.  Same diff isn't it?

Some people deal with trouble by descending to fart jokes. Some people try to find a way to salvage the potential.

omg, but some kinds of humour have come to bore me so deeply, I cannot tell you. Smart-mouthery: boredom unto death.

Some things can only be salvaged with scatology skdad, however we're not there yet...all in good time.

Not really like that: More like this.

Actually I find football pretty stupid, but I don't waste my time going through the sports section and commenting on it.

If I don't have something constructive to add to a conversation, I usually just stay out of it. I don't throw popcorn from the gallery.

Not that I agree with everything VGE has posted, but if someone actually wanted to ante up with some reasons why he or she thinks it is stupid then there would at least be something to respond to.

If you're investigating, my tip would be that this is a protest thread Agent Smith, having nothing to do with industrial hog farming.

I thought it might have something to do with that.

Silly me for actually taking some of the points seriously.

Didn't know I had to keep my eyes out for whoopie cushions around here.

My first response was tee hee E.Tamaran up to some tricks, aren't you clever?

But I found skdadl's response interesting, more interesting than my tee hee which I refrained from and it has got me thinking about pig farms. 

Some years ago I read an article in which a farmer said he found pig farming fascinating because it was such a challenge, the challenge being that pigs would get sick a lot.  Once you understand how they are raised and what kind of creatures they are then the reality of packing them in cages, in which they suffer the fumes of their own urine and that their lungs are vulnerable, you see that the sickness makes a lot of sense.  This doesn't have to be so, I recall my grandmother talking about how smart , clean and healthy pigs were but that was before they were agribusiness.

How we conduct ourselves, how we treat every being is a reflection of our humanity or lack thereof and though it may seem absurd to think that there is a direct connection between the housing provided to the peaceful protesters at the G20 and the cages that we house pigs in it seems me to a rather frightening resonance and a very good reason to support the humane treatment of pigs.

Thanks E.Tamaran and skdadl.

Trying to hog the spot-light, Maysie?

I hate to say it but you look dog-tired.

@ ennir

Also, pigs are incredibly intelligent, and often have no problem out-smarting humans once they get us out in the wild. I don't know if you have any wild boar ranches in your area, but usually only the highest and deepest containment can hold them (and even then it is not sure). Once they get into the wild they are virtually impossible to wipe out. 

I remember hearing stories of domesticated pigs (most recently one of As It Happens's perennial cute animal stories) escaping and eluding capture for years.

A boar ranch near where I used to live had just such an escape about 15 years ago, and I don't know if they were ever all recovered. Natural Resources officers couldn't get them all; they finally hired a couple of professional trackers and hunters, who (around the time I moved away from there) gave up. Then they just declared open season on pigs for all hunters. A bit of a risky decision, IMO because I expect most hunters would underestimate boar as a stupid animal. They are only a few feet tall, but powerfully-built, fast, and they can kill with their tusks and teeth.

European hunters in the olden days knew the danger of course, and were aware that pigs were in fact the most dangerous of big game. The Assyrians had their lion hunt  - which only the king was allowed to do as some sort of a show of his macho kingly powers. I expect the boar hunt was the European equivalent. It didn't actually put much as much food on the table as the work of raising farm animals, but it sure demonstrated how brave the king and his nobles were, going out to kill that evil pig.

What would Arnold Ziffel say?

Well, we know what Charlotte would say.

Thread drift: A few years ago I was driving through West Virginia touring Civil War sites, and my passenger and I came up to a chicken farming factory. My passenger - living in Virginia at the time - said the chickens in these factories never see the great outdoors - they are born and bred inside these places and never ever get outside, except when they're killed and processed.

But what about Piggy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies

thread drift/Do Reactions threads show up on the front page?/end thread drift

Correction: "SOME PIG"

I think it's silly really. In Tsarist era Russia, the secret police were the Okharana which opposed the Bolsheviks and other left groups. They operated in the large cities and were notorious for arbitrary arrest, detention and torture. In Cuba it was an extension of the American CIA, BRAC, which did the detaining and torturing for Batista's US-backed mafia government.

What is the Canadian equivalent of those secret police forces? Street cops are people, and like any other occupation, there are good ones and bad ones. I don't blame regular cops. But I do blame the people giving the orders, the Mike Harris', the Pinocchio McGuiltys and Wild Bill Blairs, the very fascista Fantino the fucking dildo etc. They're all the same fascistas and need a clean sweep out of those occupations for the sake of democracy. I think the reason we tend to blame ordinary cops is due to a generally frustrating lack of transparency and accountabilty across the upper levels of stoogeaucracy in our Northern Puerto Rico all around. But blaming cops in general is cop out. That's no where. And the partisanship seems to shine through at certain times. If it was an NDP government in Toronto overseeing this G20 security scandal, we can bet that, that would be pointed out to us by the same partisans blaming ordinary cops in general today.

@ skdadl

You're right, thanks!

(I was trying to find an online copy of the drawing from that book, and came up empty)

Thanks for that post, Fidel. I've known a lot of cops in my life, everyone of them was (is) decent and only once in 60 years did I have a problem with police, and it was arguably my fault that one time. I know there's bad apple cops out there, but I haven't come across any, personally.

Well said Michelle.  I have to admit that I have read this thread twice now and still don't know what it's supposed to be about - but will continue with the vegan drift a bit.

The article posted upthread argues that bugs and bees and bacterias all fall under the heading animals, and should be afforded the same "vegan" protections as any other animal in order for vegans to maintain - vegan-purity?  Honestly, we can't choose whether or not we step on insects, or dig them up while planting a garden - we can't somehow stop our gut bacteria from doing it's thing.  So for me it comes down to choice (and there is a sentient-being aspect that I am still working out - are insects sentient?  Are bacteria?).

We CAN live a healthy life without animal products.  So eating meat, consuming dairy, and yes - buying leather - these are all choices we make.  We choose to kill another being, not because it's inevitable, or necessary, or to avoid starvation or nutrient deficiencies.  We eat meat because we can, because we are able to kill and cook, and we like the taste.  It does seem kind of silly to avoid factory beef because it's bad but to go ahead and eat organic field beef because it's good.  It's the same cow, except one had an easier life prior to becoming dinner.

Full disclosure:  I have been a vegan now for over a year, and I originally didn't sign on for ethical reasons.  I stopped the meat products for health reasons initially.  When you have already stopped consuming animals,  it's way easier to become an "ethical vegan".  Rather like "Well, I am in church anyhows, might as well pray......"

Back to the important questions of pig protection.... does any manufacturer even make athletic supports that will fit around them?

Do I get two smiles if I ask about whether or not manufacturers make sports bras with more than two cups?

For bagkitty:

We're lacto-ovo veg these days (no meat, but eggs and dairy), and find we're losing weight, and our food bills have gone 'way down. The trouble I have with the vegan diet is it's awfully heavy on the carbs. Many folks find they gain weight on vegan diets. That said, I am cooking lots of vegan meals these days (beans, salads) because I prefer to eat lighter in this heat.

We don't eat a lot of meat, but we do eat meat.  Plenty of dairy and eggs.  I think the worst part of my reaction to vegan diet was that I was super-healthy to begin with and running at least 5k 3 or 4 times a week.  I couldn't finish my run after two weeks, slept a lot, energy and endurance were at low ebb, even though I was making sure I was getting enough calories and what not.  Back on meat, eggs and dairy and back up to speed within a week.  Although I had been fine on a lacto-ovo veg diet for several months prior to trying vegan.

Seems to follow from the vegan discussion:

Pamela Anderson's risqué advertisement promoting vegetarianism has proven just a tad too sexy - even for the famously sultry City of Montreal.

The former Baywatch star, an outspoken animal-rights activist, has been denied a permit to hold an event launching her newest animal-rights campaign.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2010/07/15/montreal-pam-anderson-ad-vegetarian.html#ixzz0tlnwfMVt

I should know better than to go on to read the comments.  Now I've hurt my forehead banging it on my desk...

Of course one of the primary reasons for eating pork, in my mind at least, is concern for the well being of the poor truffle.

[ETA: late occurring question.... what is the vegan take on truffles and other fungi? Since they are a Kingdom unto themselves [48], neither Plant nor Animal....]

As a preteen during a Manitoba winter that was so cold, I swear only 2 or 3 minutes outside burned the only bare skin I had which was my face - I walked by a steel trailer filled with screaming pigs.  I watched as a farmer lady pulled the farm truck up near the door of the shopping center so she could get into the warmth quickly.  

The sound of those pigs screaming in agony has echoed in my memory to this day.  Back then I consoled my empathy by attempting to think that there must be a reason no one seemed to care.  Maybe pigs always screamed like that, and maybe it couldn't be more than a few hours until they got to the butcher who would end their suffering.

Today... I have learned that these beings often spend more than two days in steel trailers even if it is so cold outside that they become stuck to the sides of the steel trailer.  I found out today that the Canadian Government has no intentions of improving the extreme suffering imposed upon animals that usually endure extreme conditions such as freezing temperatures and dehydration for up to 52 hours.

Once again the Canadian government has proven it is more than a decade or two behind other developed countries in terms of ethics in Government.

I don't think the question is whether pigs are sentient beings but rather if Canadian law makers are sentient beings.

http://www.rushprnews.com/2010/07/26/global-nationals-no-country-for-ani...

When I was a kid I raised hogs for slaughter. I'd buy weanlings from other farmers, raise them (including taking the little guys to the vet to have their nuts cut off, oh joy)  until they were big enough, then truck them to town and sell them.  They were like my buddies while I raised them, then I sold them to be killed and eaten.  That always made me feel guilty. 

Then there was raising broiler roosters, geese and ducks and doing the killing ourselves...

 I'm of two minds on this one.  Yeah, this guy's a dick, but then militant vegans bug me too, and I've been a vegetarian for twenty years.

This is something I don't really understand. Why do meat-eaters assume that vegetarians are making a moral indictment of them by their own dietary choice? I choose not to eat corpses; how is that a commentary on what a carnivore eats? If you want to eat meat, knock yourself out.

Despite the flippant tone I took when I made my remark about truffles (lo, about 3 posts up) - my late addition asking about the vegan take on fungi was intended seriously. Stuck here in the land of beef I don't have a lot of sources to draw upon... any vegans willing to enlighten me about this (PMs are fine).

lonewolf, you watched the same excellent program that I did last night eh....Global went up a small bit in my estimation with that show.

Had nightmares about it all night actually, so got tired of them and got up, and am feeling pretty damn tramatized about it this morning.

Really, wtf is wrong with these farmers?  As had no idea that pigs were locked for life into cages the size of themselves never laying down even. Even writing about it this am makes me cry again for their plight.

am happy though that I do not eat pork, or factory farm raised beef, and very little of free range even, so have not been part of the sustaining of such evil practices. And we are actually stopping the eating of meat again anyway, mr remind already has for the most part, for health reasons and is trying to get dairy out of his life now. Cheese is an issue for him but he is eating much less.

And apparently cows and pigs travel in over crowded conditions for up to 52 hours, also with no food and water, no matter the time of year. That is because all the slaughter houses are now located in Ontario and Quebec. Which is absolute BS and is the first thing perhaps that should be changed, along with lifetime caging.

Really, really, horrifying to see what is done by the industrial farmers  to the sentient beings that people eat for food.

A large movement has to happen to stop this worst practices from happening further in Canada.

 ETA: Canada should have at least short travel times with food and water, as in the case of Italy, who also has a 14 hr limit with no crowded conditions. In fact, animal rights persons act as equal partners to the police at the border crossing to ensure rules are adhered to. The drivers get a huge fine if they break the rulles.

In the case of Canada, seeing as how we have no borders they cross, there could be an animal rights officer at every weigh scale checking on the animal's conditions.

This type of thing could be done in tandem with immediately forcing industrial farmers to get rid of cages.

I had never seen The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover before, but the other day I watched the conclusion on YouTube via a link from someone somewhere. It has been giving me nightmares ever since. Anyone who knows the movie will know what I'm talking about and why it is vaguely relevant here, if also a bit tangential. Not to mention why it's giving me nightmares.

Have never seen nor heard of it skdadl, and can't do youtube.

Could you give a brief overview?

*spoiler alert*

Well, it would be more of an underview, ahem. As I say, I haven't seen the whole movie, but I gather that bully husband (the thief) murders battered wife's nice lover, and wife (played by Helen Mirren) gets cook at the restaurant that bully husband has terrorized to roast up her dead lover, then forces bully husband to try to eat him, then shoots him dead. It's what she makes him take at least a mouthful of before she shoots him that kind of does one in. You have to imagine Helen Mirren saying commandingly as she aims a gun at bully husband and he chokes at the thought of eating, "Eat the c**k, Albert. It's a delicacy." *pause*  "EAT it, Albert." And so he semi-manages one bite, and then she shoots. End of movie.

#$%@#

Oh, that was you, al-Q! Sorry. I told you I was promiscuous on the internets, and I often forget where I've seen things.

Horrible as it was -- and it really is -- I must say that the roast of lover was beautiful in a weird kind of way, very bronzed and charred and crispy looking.

I don't think I want to see more though.

brilliant bloody movie though, in'it?

I borrowed a video of the film from the library once, but couldn't bring myself to watch it again.  Same with Life is Beautiful - once was enough.  I can watch The Godfather and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly over and over again, though.

I think I remember her adding "... you know where it has been" before she shoots him.

I'll have to watch it again.

"Belly of an Architect" is still my favourite film of his.

(edit)

and a'Q... Saskatoon Public Library has "The Day I Became a Woman". If you haven't seen it, you should.

OH...thank you skdadl, I think....

see why the nightmares...

By "his," do you mean Gambon, Smith? I absolutely loved The Singing Detective, so strange and sometimes so suddenly hilarious. The only other thing like it that I've seen is a film starring Peter O'Toole, made in the late 60s but not released for about a decade, I think, because it was so weird -- all about decaying British aristocrats, and with crazy song-and-dance routines suddenly breaking out. The scene where they all do "The Varsity Rag" (I think) had me on the floor.

Gambon ... curiously close to the French, jambon.

@ skdadl

No, Peter Greenaway... He directed The Cook

And that Peter O'Toole film is The Ruling Class. It was originally a stage play, hence the song and dance.

Why? Will it make me a better person?

Psst, skdadl, that's Varsity Drag.

BLACK   BOTTOM [66]!

@ aQ

Interesting question. Not the first thing I would have asked regarding a movie recommendation, but then I am probably beyond saving.

Look it up on IMDB and you can decide.

Eeps. Thank you.

Stay after school, learn how it goes [69]

(Bet you didn't know or have forgotten that Peter O'Toole had that in 'im.)

If only Michelle would care as much about human beings  And Maizie - oh yes - so Maizie - a bull dog in pink.  As a psychologist - wow - this woman does not know what she reveals of herself! A pig dressed in pink? Duh - hello Maizie.  Give it a rest, pullleaze.  Time to hibernate unless you want to reveal more but know what?  We are not interested.  Between giving us the finger (see Maizie re staff) and the pig in pink?  Well Maizie - you are revealing more than I think you want to reveal here.  And...if not.....we get the picture and we GOT the picture way before you spelled it out for us.  Shall we flag this as 'inappropriate' as YOU did when someone called the police force "pigs"?  No - you said it, no-one else.  Maizie the pit bull or simply BULLDOG dressed in pink.  You fool no-one I am sorry to tell you.

Have to add: the wolf in the sheep clothing.  Cut me off too Maizie - I am already crying, right?  Press that key - off you go - wow - what power you have Maizie-you need anger management but don't come to me - pullleaze.  Deal with your anger appropriately Maizie.  You are way off track.  You reveal yourself so aptly to those who see through your muck. You divide, divide, divide rather than bridge.  You push away.  And you F minds.  How else can I put it.  YOUR language, right?  Aw shucks - exterminate me as you have others.  Get me my kleenex box.  YOU MAIZIE BRING RABBLE TO A NEW LOW.  Goodbye - did you learn anything at all?  See your hate and anger and DEAL WITH IT IN A REAL WAY. Bye Maizie.

Don't fret integrity, you won't be missed.

Well, it's been swell integrity, but your Harvard-endorsed services will no longer be required here. Bye.

I didn't know about that O'Toole scene, or else I had forgotten it.  Doesn't ol' 'Awrence look a lot like the Burger King guy there?

good grief, talk about a will to self destruct.....

Good Lord, no. The last thing Orens O'Toole has ever been is fleshy. Even in his prime, when he was beautiful in a strictly aesthetic sort of way, I would never have associated him with anything edible, certainly anything chewy and fatty-juicy.

One of my favourite filmw. Bleak ending, however, however, great.