The Angry Exile: PETA - Pilkington taste testers.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Friday 19 June 2009

PETA - Pilkington taste testers.

PETA, the people who I once described at Mummy Long Legs' place as Pilkington taste testers for calling fish 'sea kittens', are at it again. At the time Mummy was commenting on the self righteous twats protesting outside the restaurant of, er, well, another self righteous twat if I'm honest.

Members of Peta stood outside the chef’s Italian restaurant holding placards with the words: “Be Pukka to Pigs: Go Vegetarian” on Monday. I do wish Peta would fuck off. For that matter I wish Jamie Oliver would too. But in this case I have to side with him. Jamie does a show that highlights the crap conditions that pigs are reared in on the continent. He then sources his pork from British farms, that have to uphold a much higher standard of care for their pigs. Still not perfect but hey ho. So who do Peta pick on, the guy that is fighting the same cause as them. Thick Fucks, every last one of them.

Which in turn prompted me to write in the comments:

PETA are just another bunch of bastards who get a warm fuzzy at the thought of dictating how other people live. I think of them as being a bit like ALF’s Sinn Fein. Not quite as obscene as Sinn Fein were in the 70s and 80s obviously, but similar in that their role is to create legal publicity for ‘the cause’ and leave the blackmail, letter bombs, releasing mink into the countryside to kill lots of wild animals (ooops – stupid cunts). And what a bunch of hypocritical bastards PETA are? How the fuck they can stand there claiming that the E in PETA stands for ethical without every fucking bible for hundreds of miles around exploding is fucking beyond me and just proves that God is either non-existent or works some kind of celestial office hours and Monday morning isn’t for another forty thousand years. Look for the PETA episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! on YouTube. It’ll make you angry enough to want to pelt those two self righteous bitches outside Fifteen with kidneys and black pudding, and then to really upset them by going inside for a plate of tiger steaks garnished with panda bollocks. Not like the pandas are using them or anything, is it?

No, fuck you, silly PETA ladies with no clothes on. I’ll keep my pets and care for them as if they were the children we never had, and I’ll eat meat when I want and I’ll decide for myself what’s ethical and what I can’t quite live with (veal and fois gras, though I loved the taste). And you know what else? If I feel like it I’ll go out into the bush with a ute and a gun and I’ll shoot Skippy in the face, brush him lightly with olive oil and pop him under a medium grill, 2-3 minutes each side, serve with a nice salad. G’day Skip… what’s that, mate… medium to rare? … BLAM Want to argue silly PETA ladies? I’m prepared not to shoot Skippy if I can try vegetarian. Organically reared and Quorn fed of course.

And now the PETA pricks are off again, though it's close it's not quite as daft as the sea kittens, I'll give 'em that. They're upset because the Obamessiah swatted a fly at a press conference, and his holy touch killed a fly instead of raising it from... er, well of course it wasn't actually dead but you get the picture.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants the flyswatter in chief to try taking a more humane attitude the next time he's bedeviled by a fly in the White House.
...
"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday.

Hazel Blears has more support than I thought.

"We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."

It's a fucking fly for Christ's sake. I wonder if you'd feel compassion if a shark was chewing your leg off, or whether you'd use any means at your disposal to kill or drive the thing off*. I doubt even PETA types are willing to lie there passively while yelling how much they love the thing chewing them to pieces. And if a large dangerous animal how about a very small one? And if a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy, then where do disease vectors and pests fit in? Or the bacterial genocide we each commit in the shower every morning? And am I the first to wonder if PETA members and ethical vegans like Paul McCartney would stick to their principles on a desert island with nothing edible but 25,000 flightless birds and a shipping container of Paxo? Given that it's human nature to try to survive and also that even PETA's Vice President is happy to use animal products when they're in insulin for controlling her diabetes I think we know the answer to that one.

Anyway, back to flies and sharks, here's what I suggest. I imagine PETA would say of someone being eaten by a shark that they had entered the shark's environment voluntarily and shit happens. Fair enough, and I even tend to agree. So who forced the fly into the environs of the Obamessiah? Sorry fly, shit happens.

H/T Shibby.

UPDATE: NickM at Counting Cats weighs in with his opinion of the BBC's coverage of The One, particularly their laughable and unjustified adulation:

On a not entirely unrelated note I had BBC News24 on in the background a few days ago whilst every fifteen minutes they showed The One swat a fly. The presenters were amused and adulating (he can swat a fly! Think what he’ll do to Al Quaeda!). As this was going on there was all hell breaking out in Iran and quite correctly that got no mention. It’s times like that I feel the license fee is such brilliant value for money because only the BBC (due to the unique way it’s funded) could show such editorial acuity and bring us the news that really mattered. Yup, there are times when “man swats fly” is so much more important than “hundreds of thousands demonstrate against a corrupt theocracy” and this was such a time. Children as yet unborn shall always remember where they were when The One slew the vile Musca domesticus with his bare hands and the sideshow in Tehran will be a mere footnote to His divine progress. Next week He shall perform the miracle of removing the quite large spider from the bath with an empty jar and a piece of card. And great shall be the rejoicing of Michelle and it shall ring out unto every nation!

For He has come amongst us and verily He canst deal with minor bug annoyances!

*Which I admit might well amount to stuff all.