JayWontdart's podcast

Thank You

2009-12-08T20:32:00.001+13:00

To everyone who has ever supported this podcast :)

You can email me at jaywontdart@gmail.com , check out my current podcast at http://coexistingwithnonhumananimals.blogspot.com/

Best wishes to you,

Jordan Wyatt

Episode 49 This Is It (Final Episode)

2009-12-08T20:10:00.000+13:00

Episode 49, This Is It (Final Episode)

To start with , here are my favourite vegetarian or vegan related clips from the No Agenda Podcast with John C Dvorak and Adam Curry.

Dvorak made a few mistakes with my message, I do NOT own NZ Vegan Podcast, I just asked for it to be mentioned, and Im not the only vegan who listens to No Agenda, I've met a few now.

Welcome to Episode 49 of Jay Wont dart's podcast. This Is It, both the Michael Jackson movie, and my final episode.

Thank you to everyone who has ever listened to my podcast. I'm no longer going to update this, Im focusing on my Animal Rights show, Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals. You can find that at coexisting with nonhuman animals . blogspot.com. I'd love to hear from anyone who has listened to this podcast, my email is jaywontdart @gmail.com.

If you would like to remove this podcast from your iTunes podcast section, you can just select it and hit delete. Or, if you'd like to keep the episodes for some reason, to make fun of me when I run for Prime Minister of New Zealand, you can select all the episodes, and "convert ID3 tags". That removes the bit that says "this is a podcast, keep it separate from normal music files". Right click on all the selected episodes and you will see "convert ID3 tags". Select "1.0" ok that. When you do that, you will lose the artwork for the episodes, you could always copy the picture from one of the episodes and then paste it back for all tracks after deleting the tags. You can then drag the tracks out of iTunes to your desktop, and then back to iTunes, they should just show up as usual music, not in the podcast section any more. This way, you dont have a dead podcast in your podcast section, looking for updates that will never come. I have little space left on screen, even with a 23 inch screen, because I have so many podcast subscriptions, so I remove any that are not updated and save the files the way I just described.

A few weeks back, I went to the movies. It was the first time in years, Probably the last movie I had went to would have been Lord Of The Rings, Return Of The King. I didnt think much of the movie theatre, in fact, it SUCKED! I had to wait for the ticketing clerk to get off the telephone, while another one sat there doing NOTHING at a closed till. After a minute or two of awkward standing and looking around at movie posters, I finally got to pay. The manager was further along, on another telephone, yakking it up about how great his theatre is. Something about digital projection equipment. Yet, our local theatre cannot afford to get 3D projectors. 3D movies are cited to be the new breakthrough in reversing movie theatre losses, because at home, you just cant get 3D, its going to be THE reason to go to a theatre. And, we just wont have it, because it costs so much. So, Invercargills local movie theatre is pretty much screwed. Like I said, it had been YEARS since I had last gone, and I really dont see myself EVER going to a movie theatre again. I normally just wait until things are out on DVD, and buy them, although I have friends who download movies from bit torrent, and its pretty impressive what you can get for FREE, BEFORE the movie is even OUT in THEATRES, let alone waiting months for the dvd version. I dont like stealing movies though, so I dont do it, although I think Digital Distribution is the way to go. I buy all my music through iTunes, and hope one day I'll be able to get movies the same way. I imagine someday you will be able to just get new movies on your computer, by download, at the same time they are released in theatres, because all the theatres will be long gone.

Before I tell you about what I thought of This Is It, I'd also like to mention, I wanted to own it on DVD straight after the movie ended, I wanted to be able to rewind certain bits and watch them again and again. Turns out, Sony was willing to have the DVD and Blu Ray versions out BEFORE christmas, makes sense right? So then everyone would be buying copies for christmas, thats the best time of year for sales, "for christs sake". But, oh, the movie theatres bitched and moaned, "oooh, you cant do that to us", and so Sony had to postpone the home release until almost FEBRUARY. Ok, so I could have this dvd in my hands in a few weeks, OR, I could wait MONTHS. Guess what I have to do! All because I want to legally buy the damn thing, I could have just grabbed a pirated copy of the movie from online, probably before it was even showing in theatres. The people who play by the rules always get screwed over.

So, it seems to be a long wait until I can own This Is It. Im not happy about it.

So, what did I think about This Is It? Heres the trailer.

As you probably know, This Is It were a series of concerts that were cancelled after Michael Jackson died, a very short time before the concerts were to begin. This Is It, the movie thats been released, is from footage filmed privately for Michael himself, it was never meant to be seen by the public. Some fans have thought it shouldnt be released, since its practice footage, and not finished. Im personally glad I got to see it.

Lots of interesting set designs were used, and actual computer graphics for the concerts are shown during the movie. One has a spider scurrying about, and then an actual giant spider comes out on stage, with its legs stomping about, and it opens up to reveal Michael inside.

Theres been all kinds of rumours about the movie too, some of them bizarre. I mean, the whole thing is a cash grab by the producers, trying to get as much money as possible of course, and they've succeeded doing that. The rumoured price for the raw concert footage was 60 million us dollars, and to date, the movie has taken in over 200 million dollars. It will probably do something similar to that again in merchandise and sales of the home media versions.

Then, rumours that body doubles were used, that not all of the dancing is done by the actual Michael Jackson, its someone who looks just like him doing it, because Michael was too sick to dance. Who knows if thats true or not. Even Joe Jackson, Michaels Father has said that its "mostly body doubles". I dont know, Joe Jackson says all kinds of things. Sony released a statement denying rumors that the film had rehearsal footage of Jackson body doubles. "This story is pure garbage and there are no body doubles. [...] Audiences will begin to see the film tomorrow [October 28, 2009] and every time they see The King of Pop they will know that every frame is unquestionably Michael [Jackson] as he rehearses and prepares for the London concerts that were to have begun this past summer." I dont know, thats a bit mean, to say "oh, the true fans will recognise its Michael", its a bit like the story of the Emperors New Clothes, we all want to believe its Michael Jackson, and so will just assume it is him. From what I saw, it seemed like him, sure.

Then, there are rumours of the actual singing too. For most of the movie, you dont hear Michael singing at full strength, he doesnt sing properly, apparently to save his voice for the concerts, this was just practise remember. So, he skips huge portions of songs, and what he does sing tends to be rather quietly, and he sounds out of breath, like hes forgotten parts, or is generally stressed. There were rumours that Michael was close to death as he performed, and that he could never have actually fulfilled all the concert dates. These rumours say they people around him were giving him drugs to keep him going, never caring about his health, and that they just needed him to perform. At least parts of the sound have been confirmed as being the original master recordings, with Sony confirming that some of the practise recordings were just not strong enough. Again, I dont know, maybe we will never know the truth.

From what I saw from the movie, Michael looked rather freaky, every time you see him, he looks like a different person, his whole face again looks different from just a few years ago. Now he looked "smaller" and even thinner, with large cheeks but nothing else to his face. He wears sunglasses for most of the movie, and some rather crazy looking suits. I didnt like the costumes very much, they are just bizarre.

I'll read from some reviews of This Is It.

"More important, however, is that we rarely witness Jackson giving 100%: He frequently comments that he is saving his voice and body for the actual performances. Jackson certainly can’t be faulted for this, but it’s questionable whether he would really want his fans to see him thus. Don’t get me wrong: 60% of Michael Jackson is still a pretty good thing [...] [Jackson] the noted perfectionist, at work, correcting others’ dance moves without missing a beat himself and giving notes, sometimes revelatory and other times inscrutable, to his music director and others"
—Marjorie Baumgarten of Austin Chronicle[
"We see Jackson as a perfectionist, a generous boss, a tough taskmaster and a playful child. Off guard and probably unaware that it would ever be seen by the public, we find Jackson pushing his band and production team to the limit with demands to "let it sizzle" and "make the music simmer". Obsessive Jacko fans may be shocked by his Diva-ish behaviour as he complains about ear-pieces, but it's heartening to finally view the late singer as a rounded human with regular failings and imperfections. Similarly a scene featuring Jackson screaming "weeeee!" with childish glee as he moves around the stage on a giant cherry-picker, will surely bring a smile to even the most cynical viewer"
—Alex Fletcher of Digital Spy[

I guess you just have to go and see the movie for yourself, if its still available where you are, if not, we have to wait until its released for home media. Im not enjoying this wait, theres so many scenes I want to watch again, to see if I can spot any signs of body doubles, or other unusual things.

Overall, Im really glad I saw This Is It, although it is rather weird to watch. You know Michael is dead, it briefly mentions that at the very start, before going through the process of auditions for the supporting cast. Who knows if Michael Jackson had the strength left to do all those live performances. Honestly, the majority of the movie has him "practise singing", not singing properly at full strength. It comes across as if hes forgetful or tired, although it could really be that he was just doing that because it is a practise, and he needed his strength for the real performances.

I really liked a lot of things about the movie, I hope you can see it.

Im going to end with the main song of the movie, that was released with the movie. This Is It was recorded many years ago, and just recently worked into a full song. Its always exciting to find "unreleased" songs of your favourite artist, especially after they have died, although the studios ALWAYS let them trickle out, to maximise their profits. Its going to be years before all Michaels best songs have been released, if they ever are.

Thank you for listening. Its been fun doing these podcasts. Im going to continue doing my animal rights podcast, Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals. You can find that a coexisting with nonhuman animals . blogspot.com I'd love it if you would listen to that.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it. I really, really would.

For the last time ever on this podcast,

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
=======

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson%27s_This_Is_It

Listed on Podcast Alley

2009-10-31T13:33:00.001+13:00

My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-c017ccde848565124f8abd7e339371b8}

Episode 48 Always Blow On The Pie!

2009-10-25T15:23:00.000+13:00

Episode 48 Always Blow On The Pie!

thats right girls, dont work hard at school, you're just going to end up at home cooking and cleaning for your husband! That was a 1960's commercial for Suzy Homemaker, a bunch of fake household items, ovens, blenders, irons etc. How could these have been the good old days, when girls were molded into housewives! I'd much rather todays commercials, for videogames where you kill prostitutes!

Anyway, welcome to episode 48 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, Always blow on the pie!

Im having fun having two podcasts, although Im not sure how often each will get updated, perhaps I'll get stuck in one or the other for a few episodes in a row.

This episode, a New Zealand pop culture moment thats exploded online. Always Blow On The Pie!

It came from the New Zealand police show called Police ten 7

In the famous clip, a police officer finds a suspicious looking man, and gives him some rather odd, rather New Zealand advice. Heres the full version of the clip.

Safer Communities together is a New Zealand police slogan.

I love it, so far the most popular youtube clip has had about 100,000 views, thats a lot for a New Zealand clip. Mr Vintage, a New Zealand online t shirt store has made a "Always Blow on the pie" t shirt. Remix songs have been made, and even mainstream media have covered the event.

Once more, heres the main part of the clip,

And here are some of the best remixes, taken from youtube. I've linked to these in the shownotes which you can see on my blog or in the lyrics section of this episode.

First, Blow on the Pie, the musical,

and my favourite of the remixes, the rap version.

I love the rap version best.

I just felt like I had to cover Always Blow on the Pie, its sure to become part of New Zealands pop culture alongside heavyweight boxer David Tua saying "o for oresome" on a gameshow

The policeman in the clip was found, and recently on tv, heres a clip from the Breakfast show.

Thank you for listening.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

sources
========
intro Suzy Homemaker video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rAiii4LA3k

longer version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2oVTULyWZk

the musical
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvs8PNbGVdg

the rap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F7Gucl_FqI

safer communities remix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8PiVPRjujE

Mr Vintage T
http://www.mrvintage.co.nz/shop/Gender/View+All+Mens/SAFER+COMMUNITIES+MENS+T-SHIRT.html

breakfast show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cRkrF5dGyQ

O for awesome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaIZF8uUTtk

Episode 47 My New Animal Rights Podcast

2009-10-16T20:44:00.003+13:00

Episode 47 My New Animal Rights Podcast

Welcome to an extra short episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast.

My intro was my latest mention on No Agenda, although Dvorak got my podcast wrong, I DO NOT own the NZ Vegan podcast :) I do enjoy telling people to search for "NZ Vegan" when they look for my podcast on iTunes, because searching for "NZ Vegan" shows up all the New Zealand Animal Rights podcasts. I almost uniformly love each and every one of the results.

I just wanted to let everyone know, I've decided to do all future animal rights, and Vegan related episodes under a separate designation. This will make it easier to just listen to the episodes you are actually interested in, if you want to only hear me talk about NZ news or movies, or if you want to only hear vegan topics. Or, ideally you could subscribe to both!

The name of my new podcast, chosen by my friend Sam Tucker, is Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals. I asked for help on Veganzchat, an email group, with a starting point of " living with animals ", asking for it to be improved upon. Sam kindly came up with Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals. I like it very much, although it is a long name. You can find that blog at Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.blogspot.com. I'm not sure how often I'll update each podcast, just when I feel like it most likely.

To make up for this being a short episode, Im going to include some of my favourite outro clips. I have the autotuned Glorious Dawn, using clips of Carl Sagan, a famous astronomer, an american church which has banned Pepsi, and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, on the iPhone before it were released.

Just to make it clear, you can find Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals on iTunes, by searching for it by name, although it shows up just fine if you search for " jay wont dart ", both my podcasts will show. You can also find the blog at coexisting with nonhuman animals . blogspot.com.

Thank you for listening.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

I hope you check out Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals.

Have a super happy day, bye.

My new podcast, Coexisting with nonhuman animals

2009-10-11T11:43:00.006+13:00

Im splitting my podcast into two, Jay Wont dart's will be for general topics, and all future vegan/animal rights episodes will be under the new "Coexisting with nonhuman animals" banner :)

This makes it easier for you to listen to just the topics you are interested in.

the blog is up at Coexisting with nonhuman animals , or the introduction episode is up on iTunes, if you search for " NZ Vegan " you will see both podcasts, Jay Wont dart's and Coexisting with nonhuman animals :)

Expect the first episode soon :)

Episode 46 Stand By Me, Contact, American Beauty

2009-09-25T21:21:00.000+12:00

Episode 46

Stand By Me, Contact, American Beauty

Hi, welcome to episode 46 of Jay Wont darts podcast. My intro was from episode 132 of No Agenda.

This episode, I'll talk about three of my favourite movies. Stand by Me, a coming of age flick, Contact, starring Jodie Foster and centred around aliens, and American Beauty, which is like a grown up Ferris Buellers Day Off.

First, Stand By Me.

Heres the trailer,

Stand By Me is a movie a lot of people will have seen before, and forgotten about. Its truly a classic. The movie, based on a Steven King book, came out in 1986. It has a lot of fairly well known scenes, the young boys walking along train tracks for most of the movie is quite memorable.

I'll read from the Wikipedia summary.

The film is narrated by an adult Gordie LaChance, known as "The Writer" (Richard Dreyfuss), writing the memoir about his youth. Set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Oregon, over Labor Day weekend in September 1959, Gordie (Wil Wheaton), and his friends Chris Chambers (River Phoenix) and Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman) learn from their friend Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell) that the dead body of a boy named Ray Brower, who was struck by a train while picking blueberries in the woods, has not been found. While under his porch looking for his buried jar of pennies, Vern overheard his older brother talking about finding the body while in the woods with a friend. The boys then embark upon a two-day journey across the woodlands near Castle Rock to see and find the body in hopes that the discovery will make them all famous.
Each boy has a physical and/or emotional burden. Gordie is a quiet, bookish boy with a penchant for telling stories and writing, rejected by his father following the death of his football-star older brother Denny (John Cusack) in a Jeep accident. Chris is from a family of criminals and alcoholics and, despite his intelligence and desire to break the generational curse, he is usually stereotyped accordingly. Teddy is an eccentric and physically deformed after his mentally-unstable father (whom Teddy sees as a war hero who "stormed the beach at Normandy") held his ear to a stove and nearly burned it off, thus forcing him to wear a hearing aid. Vern, overweight and timid, is easily scared, and thus often picked on.
Through the boys' misadventures and conversations, the viewer learns about each character's personality. Each of the boys, for varying reasons, lives in the shadow of their fathers and older brothers. Gordie's talent for storytelling pegs him as the most likely of the four to have a promising future.

Heres a clip of Gordie telling a story.

Stand By Me is a great movie, its been mentioned in pop culture a few times, such as the scenes of the adult writer reminiscing about his childhood friends. By the end of the movie, we hear him mention how he moved away from his friends, and the terrible fates that awaited each of them. Its terribly sad, to hear how they all end up.

The next movie is Contact, about finding a radio signal from outer space. Contact came out in 1997. Jodie Foster's character has been into radio all her life, and now she works with radio telescopes listening to signals from space. Eventually, she and her team manage to decode one such signal, and find out it has information inside, instructing them to build a machine.

Here is the trailer for contact.

I forget the total cost of the machines, but its actually quite low by todays standards, less than the US auto bail outs for example. A machine, or two, to teleport us through space, to meet aliens, and they cost less than keeping American cars around.

This is unrelated to the cost of the machine, but here is a clip of Jodie Foster asking for more funding.

Contact has a really interesting character, a ultra rich man near the end of his life, he shows up in a lot of interesting scenes, such as one as he floats inside a space station to prolong his life. Near the very end of the movie, as a question about him is brought up, we see his fellow space station friends put him in a body bag.

An interesting thing about Contact, the signal, and aliens, are from Vega, a star. When you mention this star , people from Vega are called "vay-guns". So, in the movie there are some GREAT clips to be made, as it sounds like they are saying Vegans! Observe.

Arnt they great?

The last movie is American Beauty. I love this movie, it features Kevin Spacey as the main character. American Beauty came out in 1999.

Reading from Wikipedia,
Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a middle-aged office worker who has a midlife crisis after becoming infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend.

After watching a high school basketball game at which Jane is a cheerleader, Lester develops an infatuation with Jane's sexually precocious friend and classmate, Angela . His fantasies entail a sexually aggressive Angela among red rose petals. Lester is informed he is to be laid off, but blackmails his boss, quits his job and takes up low-pressure employment at a fast food chain. He buys his dream car, starts lifting weights and begins running to "look good naked"—to impress Angela, whom he overheard telling Jane that she would find him sexually attractive if he had muscle. He also takes up smoking cannabis, which he buys from Ricky. Lester continues to fantasize about Angela and flirts with her whenever she visits Jane. The pair's friendship wanes and Jane becomes romantically involved with Ricky; the lovers bond over Ricky's camcorder footage of what he considers the most beautiful imagery he has filmed: a plastic bag blowing in the wind

Its a very odd movie, but definitely one of my favourite movies of all time. Heres the trailer for American Beauty.

here are some other clips, the main character Lester explaining his job

That job scene actually is reminding me of Fight Club, American Beauty is like Ferris Beuller meets Fight Club, but without the violence. Its emotional, but not a chick flick.

a tense dinner scene

and the most beautiful thing Ricky has ever filmed, a plastic bag

I highly recommend all three of these movies, Stand By Me, Contact, and American Beauty.

Thank you for listening. My outro is the New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, on the Letterman show.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

sources
=======

stand by me

lardass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG2gjL-KUqw

contact

trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF3IZzXZ6Ig

funding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sds7hTlaNaM

american beauty

most beautiful thing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yk7b2uo0u8

my job
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqJ8zxV7Cjw

dinner scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRfZQN9cMfo

Episode 45 Earthlings

2009-09-18T20:24:00.001+12:00

Episode 45 Earthlings

Hello and welcome to another fine episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast. This episode, I'll talk a tiny bit about Earthlings. I have two fairly long pieces of audio that will make up the majority of this episode. My intro is an old Australian news story of an animal who tried to escape from a zoo.

Earthlings is a very important movie to me, I think it says almost all that needs to be said on the side of veganism. Earthlings shows basically all the ways animals are used in todays society. It has graphic footage, from well known animal welfare groups such as PETA, and is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, who is vegan. Instrumental music throughout the movie is performed by well known vegan musician Moby.

This is a few minutes of audio from Earthlings.

I first saw Earthlings because Elizabeth Collins, of NZ Vegan podcast told me to. I was lent the movie by an Invercargill SAFE member, who hadnt watched Earthlings because they had heard how graphic it is. Its true, Earthlings has a lot of violent imagery, but I think its our duty as human beings to see what we have done, and continue to do to the world. To talk a little bit about Earthlings, here is Elizabeth, in a clip she recorded literally MONTHS ago for me :)

I'd like to thank Elizabeth for taking the time to add to this episode. Its taken me long enough to make this episode, but its finally done! You can find Elizabeth on iTunes by searching "NZ vegan", or at nzveganpodcast.blogspot.com as well as NZ Vegan Podcast on Twitter.

Thank you for listening. My outro is a Seinfeld clip.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Episode 44 New Zealand Hunting

2009-09-12T20:49:00.001+12:00

Episode 44

New Zealand Hunting

Then I'll never visit Las Vegas. Hello, welcome to episode 44 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I talk about sad parts of New Zealands culture. My intro was from This Week In Tech episode 211. Recently I've been covering a lot of New Zealand news stories, I hope to help this information get out. Right now there are a lot of "white baiters", people who go out catching tiny fish known as "white bait" in nets along riversides. What we in New Zealand call Whitebait is actually the juvenile form of a certain kind of fish, not sure how to say the name, Galaxiid. The babies, White Bait as they are known, look like slimy little white worms. In Southland, a fairly rural area, its a big thing to go out "white baiting", a bunch of guys will go out to "the river" and catch these baby fish in nets. I find it revolting, but it seems to be a cultural thing here, and its nearly impossible to get people to agree that they are standing about a river, getting drunk, all to catch tiny little baby animals in nets. The newspapers and local business market for White Baiters, its just an accepted part of Southland life.

In New Zealand, its fairly common, or at least portrayed in NZ popular culture to be common, to go out hunting. I doubt the average New Zealand bloke goes out hunting a few times a year, but its part of our image, as being tough hairy men, all New Zealand men are portrayed as big strong hunters, even when catching baby fish in nets. The most commonly killed animals would probably be deer, ducks and pigs. For this episode , Ill mention all three. I have opinions from two other vegans to play on this episode, as well as many sound clips from youtube and New Zealand news stories.

To start off, heres some great advice comes from fishandgame.org.nz , a government body regulating hunting.

"Now comes the fun part, gutting it, drawing the bird, eviscerating it, whatever you want to call it. Grab that sharp knife and make 2 cuts. The first is in the throat area. This is so you can poke the hose or tap into it and flush the cavity out. The second cut is from below the breastplate bone toward the anus" Sound like fun to you?

The fish and game site even has a youth section, its kind of like a rugged boy scouts image, the idea of kids who know how to live off the fat of the land, so to speak. Its pretty sick, getting kids indoctrinated that hunting=good at a young age. Its a shame these kids arnt playing more violent video games, otherwise they might have learnt that hunting isnt something to be proud of , . Well said Solid Snake.

My first clip, is about pig hunting, I'll play back some of the sounds.

In one form of pig hunting, a pack of dogs track down a wild pig, then bite onto it any way they can, to hold the pig. Then a so called "pig hunter" will walk over, and cut the pigs throat.

In some forms of pig hunting, the hunters shoot the pig, I guess they need to shoot the more dangerous larger boars. But, in many of the videos I saw on YouTube, the big brave hunters rely on a 5-10 dogs to find, chase and catch the pig, and hold it down for the big brave hunter, as he cuts its throat. Sometimes, the pig manages to fight back. When they do, I bet the hunters act as though the pig's broken the law "hey mate, you're not meant to defend yourself, you should just let us kill ya mate!"

Heres an example of that, some idiot hunter had his finger bit by the pig, and yeah, its bleeding quite a lot, but its hardly equal to the damage done to the pig. Listen to him bitch about it.

So, when hes surrounding a single Labrador sized pig with a bunch of dogs, with a bunch of his friends, and hes complaining that the pig bit him on the finger? Dude, you're trying to cut its throat, why should it make it easy for you?

I asked for some help making this episode, and my friend Linda sent me a few pictures of injured pig hunting dogs. Heres what Linda has to say.

Thank you Linda for helping me with this hunting episode.

Some of these hunting videos I've got from YouTube have good production, with titles and different effects edited in. Some are set to music, making out a good time with rock music, or a large dramatic piece you may recognise, set to southland duck shooters. Those are real gun shots, not sound effects.

When you are out hunting, you are not meant to be drinking alcohol, but I would assume that most duck shooters etc do. Even tv pieces have highlighted "the boys havin' a few" as they stand around all day in camo gear, waiting to kill a small bird. This is just one of many mainstream news pieces about hunting in New Zealand, I really dont know why people want to go out hunting if this is anything what its really like.

Another person to get back to me about this episode was my good friend Sam, from http://nzdairy.webs.com/ .

Thank you very much Sam, Im always glad to have you on my podcast. You can see one of Sams websites at nzdairy.webs.com.

I have two further clips. This one is from a local Southland TV station, Cue.

So that just goes to show that its a fairly traditional to hunt among many rural families, but that doesnt make it acceptable to me.

This is a Campbell Live piece about making your own meat, apparently more common because of meat being too expensive at the local supermarket. I honestly doubt that many people in New Zealand hunt for all their meat, but maybe to the hunters it seems that way.

Kinda sick hearing that resturant guy at the end promote wild game meat as "responsible, organic" and as "controlling pests". This is what animal welfare has given us, a load of ways to describe a nice way of killing animals. Some animals are pests? Why, because they want to eat a bit of grass, a couple leaves off a tree or two? Get real, its not like they are dumping toxic waste into rivers.

The point of this episode has been to highlight hunting in New Zealand. Its not a very normal thing in this country, I dont think most people go out hunting, but its still seen as something to be proud of, catching baby fish in nets, training dogs to viciously grab pigs by the testicles, and shooting at cute little ducks. I really hope our attitudes change away from this, and that we learn to give animals the respect they deserve.

My outro will be a remix of a certain clip from Trading Spouses, Bacon is Good for me.

Thank you for listening.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

sources
=======

"now comes the fun part" fish and game
http://www.fishandgame.org.nz/Site/Harvest/Ducks.aspx

pig hunting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shPLfGjEF5w

cue tv footage duck shooting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeFCuaJ4K-0

kill your own dinner campbell llive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBwf1XzxNkw

pig bite
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cg-rPpQFoY

duck carnage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_Pao5GJYYI

Episode 43 Horse Meat, Michael Laws Bullies Kids

2009-09-06T14:18:00.000+12:00

Episode 43 Horse Meat ,Michael Laws bullies Kids.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, your number one source for New Zealand News.

My intro was a youtube clip about Gay Anarchists upsetting church goers.

This episode, the sale of Horse Meat intended for pets to people who eat it, and Michael Laws, a mayor and celebrity upsets some young Maori children.

First, Horse Meat.

Horse meat is not sold in New Zealand, at least not in a way that makes it safe for people to eat. This story covers people buying horse meat from a pet food abattoir, the meat is meant for pets to eat, and is sold in bags saying "not fit for human consumption". I really want to get some of those bags and use it for vegan activism, with toy chickens and cows inside of the bags. Maybe I could change the words to "not fit for HUMANE consumption".

So called Pet food meat is not prepared to the same standard as meat designated for people. It has a greater chance of causing food poisoning, from having higher numbers of bacteria and parasites. Its also probably not hacked up in as clean a facility, to save the factory owner from having to invest as much in machinery and processes. Basically, pet food grade meat is not as "clean" as meat designated for human consumption.

People are outraged about this, people eating Horse Meat in New Zealand, despite the fact that we kill horses for pet food, and I've heard we export horse meat overseas.

This is another case of people believing some animals to be too important, or too special, to be eaten. A lot of racist remarks have come up, because its apparently mostly Tongan people who are buying the horse meat to eat as a tongan specialty meal, called Loi Hoosi. However, in the video, one of the sellers mentions all sorts of people as buying horse meat from her.

Heres the first clip

I've stopped here to mention whats going to happen, when the slaughterer is approached, he hugs and kisses the reporter! Its very odd, but effective! I have a 3 minute video clip, the full footage of his response, but as its not very audio centric, I wont play it. Ok, back to the first clip.

Its somewhat difficult to find the difference between "pet food" grade meat and "human grade" meat. How is the average New Zealand meat eater, with pets, meant to feel hearing that pet food grade meat contains quote "more parasites" and quote "greater chance of food poisoning"? Would you really feed it to a cat or dog you consider a family member?

People are terribly upset that New Zealanders are eating horse meat. The people upset by it complain that its not a "new zealand" thing to do, we dont do that in this country. Well, tell that to the people who DO eat horse meat in this country. You cant control what people do, just because you dont agree with it. I must sound like a hypocrite now right?

I love to ask people what they think is in their pets food, oh sure the ad shows "lovely pure meat" going in, but thats an ad, it would make dirt look healthy, all the while claiming it promotes a shiny coat. In reality, Pet food grade meat is awful, by definition its "worse" than normal meat. If you buy pet food that contains "meat", its probably pet food grade meat, meaning its the absolute worst, most diseased animals you can think of, hacked up. I've read about some pet foods that claim to use "humane grade meat", but thats not a class of meat technically, so it could just be marketing speak! Heres a hint, if it says "not intended for human consumption" on the packet, its probably diseased. If it has a warning not to be eaten, then its probably not a good idea to feed it to your pets.

The other story I'd like to cover today is Michael Laws, and his reply to some 11-12 year old kids who wrote him a letter. Michael Laws is an outspoken Mayor, and hosts a radio show, amongst other things. Hes a right wing commentator type guy, the man on the street is meant to like him because he "cuts to the chase", "none of that Politically Correct garbage". An average Michael Laws comment will focus on race, that "certain races" beat their kids, or are all on benefits.

I'll let the clips speak for themselves.

Even when Laws is defending himself, he often brings up annoying things, like that the teachers MUST have put the kids up to it, or that kids that age are only into Harry Potter. Who is he to tell kids what to be interested in? If younger people are into politics good for them. Just because they are below voting age, doesnt mean they should only read children's fantasy books.

At the end of that clip, Michael Laws sounded apologetic, but on his own radio show, hes quite different. This is part of Michael Laws response on his radio show, hes always very sure of himself and comes across as boisterous.

So, thats Michael Laws.

Thank you for listening about two current events that are happening in New Zealand. My outro is an angry Scientologist talking, he swears a few times.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Episode 42 Anti Smacking Bill Fallout

2009-09-02T22:06:00.000+12:00

Episode 42 Anti Smacking Bill Fallout

Hello and welcome to episode 42 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I talk about being one of the Invercargill 1915. I'll explain that later. My intro was a youtube video called Flight of the Hummingbird, I just ordered the book, about doing whatever you can, no matter how small, to make the world a better place.

Its been over for a while now, I'd decided to hold off covering the results of the Anti Smacking Bill Referendum, in hope that an answer would come at the end of it. So far, nothing has changed, the referendum has been for nothing.

To go over the Anti Smacking Bill again quickly, Sue Bradford, an MP of the minor Green Party proposed a bill, that the defense of "reasonable force for the purpose of correction"could be used by parents charged with assaulting their children. This was very upsetting to many parents who believed in physical discipline of their children, they were for smacking, and saw the law as taking away their right as parents to smack their children. The bill went into law 2007, a petition was to be held in 2009 once enough signatures were reached.

Ok, so that was simplified, but it gets us to this year at least. The question being asked was "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"

People have been very confused about what this actually means, and people against physical discipline have said that the question is very loaded, its designed to make you vote NO, that a smack is part of good parental correction, not something that parents should be recieve a lethal injection over. I totally agree, I think the question is over the top, its literally saying that something good parents do could now be turned into a "criminal offense", making good parents equal to murderers. I think a question like "do you think physical discipline of children is acceptable" would have been much better, although I guess people for smacking could say that "physical discipline" sounds scary, and that they would prefer smacking. I dont like the word smacking, because I see it as another loaded thing, in NZ, smacking generally means a light slap on the hand or the bottom of a child, people who believe in smacking dont agree that its violent, they see it as a correction thing and quite acceptable. The word smacking is a way of hiding the violent aspect of hitting another person, I think, so I'd prefer not to use the word "smacking". "Prime Minister John Key said of the question [The question] "could have been written by Dr Seuss - this isn't Green Eggs and Ham, this is yes means no and no means yes, but we're all meant to understand what the referendum means. I think it's ridiculous myself."

The referendum went ahead, and most of the country seemed very angry their right to smack their children was being taken away, most polls had about 80 percent support for smacking. I'll mention that people FOR the law change say that you could still smack your children, but others focus on moving away from physical discipline, so even I am confused as to whether smacking is banned or not banned! Sue Bradford, who came up with the bill, has been quoted mentioning "this doesnt make smacking illegal" but also "this makes smacking illegal" type comments, so who really knows what the bill means. For this episode, Im focusing on the "anti smacking bill" as meaning its against smacking full stop, as its physical discipline, and thats what the bill is focused on.

Most of this episode will be clips.

The first things I'll play will be people asking you to vote for their side in the referendum. I'll play two, this is Sue Bradford who wrote the law change, and Deborah Morris-Travers of Barnardos, a New Zealand child welfare group.

Here I have a radio debate I quite liked, remember, the Yes side is essentially against smacking, the No side is for smacking.

People generally were for smacking still, most polls were somewhere over 80 percent FOR smacking children, so thats a No vote. It became clear that the referendum would go the No voters side, allowing parents to physically discipline their children. This was mentioned in this news piece while the votes were being checked.

Things were not looking good for my side, against smacking, a Yes voter. Overwhelmingly , the final results of the nine million dollar referendum, that took place two years after the law was changed to supposedly ban smacking, were 87.6 percent voting No, for smacking, just amazing, absolutely overwhelmingly for smacking. Thats basically 9 out of 10 New Zealanders, who voted in this referendum. Voter turnout was 54%.

Just over 1.6 million votes were cast, about 1.3 million were for smacking. The places most against smacking, were Auckland and Wellington, the two largest cities in New Zealand, both had about 30 percent of people against smacking, only about 70 percent for smacking, which is VERY high compared to the rest of the country, where 80-90 percent were for smacking.

The places with the highest proportion of no voters, for smacking, were rural areas, including the Clutha Southland area, which is rural Southland, the province I live in. Invercargill city, where I actually live was different, but by less than a percentage point. My city, Invercargill, had 57.4% voter turnout, with 92.17% for smacking, and just a tiny 7.48% against. Amazing. 23,596 people for smacking, and just 1,915 against smacking here in Invercargill. So thats how I am one of the Invercargill 1915. I think I'll have to make "1 of the Invercargill 1915"t shirts, so we can recognise each other in public.

I knew this referendum would go this way, but its still shocking to see how outnumbered my position was. Im sure the question itself has much to do with this, but even then, people feel smacking is a parents right, and that not being allowed to smack children is giving the child yet another right, and taking away from the parents power. Thats a common feeling in New Zealand, that the bad people are running amok, and hard working people are being held back by a PC nanny state.

However, the big thing about this referendum, it was non binding, even if 100% of the voters wanted the law changed back, to supposedly allow smacking again, then the government of New Zealand didnt have to change anything! And, so far, John Key has said he wont change the law! People are VERY annoyed! Apparently, the no vote leaders are very upset, but looking out my window, 92% of my city hasnt formed a mob with pitch forks to get me, yet.

So, John Key, the new prime minister of New Zealand will no doubt have lost an enormous amount of support thanks to not changing the law. He says he feels the law is working, the man on the street says he is being arrogant and not listening to roughly 90% of the voting public.

However, even if the law were to be changed, would another referendum need to be held? How much would that cost? AND, the side for smacking, the leaders have different idea about what smacking should be, At least one right wing MP believes in using a tool, what I'd call a weapon, like a wooden spoon or ruler, as he believes it gives the attacker, or in his words, parent, better control of what they are doing, in my words, better striking abilities over the child they are hitting.

I'll play this news piece about a new possible law change.

This bill was thrown out, it came to nothing, just like the 9 million dollar referendum.

So, most people in New Zealand are for smacking, apparently, and yet the government wont change back the law that supposedly bans smacking your children. Nothing seems like it will change, except perhaps the people who voted right wing MP John Key into power, will not vote for him again, thats certainly what they are threatening to do. But, who will they vote for? Theres really only the minor ACT party against the law change, its hard to believe ACT getting in by itself. Who knows, its sure going to be interesting to see the government try and win peoples support again.

My outro will be special clip from Deborah Morris Travers.

Thank you for listening.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
=======

http://www.3news.co.nz/Parents-not-being-criminalised-no-need-to-change-law---Key/tabid/419/articleID/117843/Default.aspx

Eating a Pigs head video !

2009-09-02T15:27:00.002+12:00

Even people who eat meat generally dont like the idea of eating an animals face. The main Chef guy seems , not quite all there.

Eating a Pigs head Article with Video

Episode 41 Chickens

2009-08-29T15:48:00.001+12:00

Episode

Chickens

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

Hello and welcome to another quality episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I talk about things that live in my backyard.

My intro was from over population is a myth .com . I'd mentioned overpopulation as being a danger in an earlier episode, perhaps I were wrong, going to over population is a myth.com doesnt take very long, so why not?

My father recently bought home some chickens, two hens and a rooster. Im against having pets, but having spent time with these lovely birds, I'd find it hard to send these chickens on their way. I've never really liked cats or dogs, I find them noisy and messy, but birds and insects have always been very dear to me.

I'll read from wikipedia,

"Chickens are omnivores.[9] In the wild, they often scratch at the soil to search for seeds, insects and even larger animals such as lizards or young mice[10].
Chickens may live for five to eleven years, depending on the breed.[11] In commercial intensive farming, a meat chicken generally lives only six weeks before slaughter.[12] A free range or organic meat chicken will usually be slaughtered at about 14 weeks. Hens of special laying breeds may produce as many as 300 eggs a year. After 12 months, the hen's egg-laying ability starts to decline, and commercial laying hens are then slaughtered and used in baby foods, pet foods, pies and other processed foods.[13] The world's oldest chicken, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, died of heart failure when she was 16 years old.[14]
"

At the back of this house, there are a few brick sheds, a glasshouse and a chicken coup are the main ones. If you go to my flickr account, which I'll link to on my blog, jaywontdart.blogspot.com , you can see photos and even videos of the chickens and where they are living. I'll play the audio from the videos in this episode, but its much better if you see the chickens for yourself! I tried to record the noises they make by taking my laptop into the chicken coup, it was a little difficult, I didnt want to get smeared chicken poo on my PowerBook, but I somewhat pulled it off. They are very quiet, but you can make them out, they often make little noises to talk to each other, they like to stay near each other at all times.

This is one clip I made of the chickens talking to each other.

Here I am feeding the rooster grain, he pecks food from your hand.

Having just been moved here, they are still very nervous about where they now live. The chickens stay together at all times, and I think they must be very scared of us. I try and be as nice as I can to them, I call out before I go into the chicken coop, so I can get them used to my voice, so they know to expect someone to come crashing through the door that had been close for the previous hours. I feed them grain and chicken mash, and put water in a large saucer for them to drink from, although I still havnt seen them drink yet.

The hens in particular are extra scared, boy chickens, roosters, and girl chickens, hens, are very different from each other, its kind of like the 1950's, where women stayed at home and raised the children, while the men were police, chasing bad guys and protecting the community. The hens seem almost petrified if they are ever out of sight of the rooster, they really need him to lead them. I think this is because they trust him so much, and they are so very nervous at the moment, having just been bought here, I hope if future they will confidently walk further away from him.

On my flickr account, you can see this video, where I give a little tour of where these chickens live.

Looking up chicken care websites, many start off saying that chickens are lovely animals to keep as pets, and then once they get to a suitable size, you kill them for meat! Cripes! One site had a indepth tutorial on how to kill them, how to pull their guts out right. On the site, the ads were to do with
Grisley "related resources" panel

"
Related Resources
Meat Electric Grinder Meat Rib Brat Lamb Chop Lamb Eel Meat Grinder Oyster Wings Ostrich Brain Crabs Sushi"

I was reminded of a podcast episode debating veganism and a standard diet including animal byproducts. In this debate, the person who eats animal products defends it because he sees chickens as very stupid animals. This is from the Debate Hour podcast, which you can find a few free episodes on iTunes by searching for "debate hour".

What a load of rubbish, chickens are very much living, feeling animals. I do notice that they move oddly, every move a chicken makes is a jerk, they dont move smoothly, they whirr and click, as if they have gears with cogs inside their bodies, they have to stop at certain points, as the cogs catch. This looks pretty odd, the way they jerk so much, but its endearing, not something to hate them about. Its a bird thing. Chickens definitely care about each other, as I said, the hens really want to stay with the rooster. When a Rooster finds food, he will often call the hens over to eat, he looks after them. And of course, we all know how maternal hens are, its used as a description of mothers, "you're like a mother hen", as women age, they become "broody", when they want to settle down and have children. Chickens may not be as smart as some animals, but theres no doubt they feel just as well as any animal, including people. From being around chickens, theres certainly no reason I can see for eating them.

Thank you for listening.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
=======

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

pregnant cow slaughter

2009-08-25T15:46:00.005+12:00

Very Sad

right click this link to save video

Episode 40 Don Gorske: Big Mac Lover

2009-08-23T13:45:00.000+12:00

Episode 40

Don Gorske Big Mac Guy

Hello and welcome to Episode 40 of Jay Wont darts podcast. My intro was from King Of the Hill.

This episode is about Don Gorske, I'll start by reading from Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia

"Don Gorske of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin is an American "Big Mac enthusiast" who has eaten over 23,000 Big Mac hamburgers in his lifetime,[1] winning a place in the 2006 Guinness Book of Records in the process. He claims the Big Mac constitutes 90% of his total solid food intake. He is featured in the documentaries Super Size Me (2004) and Don Gorske: Mac Daddy (2005). He is the author of 22,477 Big Macs (2008).

History
Gorske claims that after getting his first car, the first place he went was to McDonald's on May 17, 1972[1] he purchased and ate three Big Macs at lunch time. He then returned two more times that day to consume a total of nine Big Macs the same day he discovered the sandwich. He further claims to have eaten 265 Big Macs in the following month, an average of 8.5 Big Macs per day. If true, this would be equivalent to over 4,600 calories and 247 grams of fat daily, for a total of 143,100 calories and 16.9 pounds of fat in one month. He also claims to drink almost nothing but Coca-Cola and, according to Super Size Me, he rarely eats the fries. At first, Don kept all the boxes of Big Macs he ate in the back of his car.
In 2003, Don Gorske ate 741 Big Macs, an average of 2.03 Big Macs per day.
On August 17, 2008, Gorske ate his 23,000th Big Mac at his favorite McDonald's restaurant in Fond du Lac.[1] He claims that since he ate his first Big Mac, there have only been eight different days in which he did not eat a single Big Mac. One of these days was the day his mother died, and he did not eat a Big Mac to respect her request.[1] Other days included a "Snow Day" when McDonalds was unable to open due to snow, a Thanksgiving, days he was traveling and could not find a McDonalds, and various days Gorske had to stay at work past midnight. Gorske has since started keeping an "emergency stash" of Big Macs in his freezer for emergencies and snow days.[4] Don Gorske also records when and where he eats his Big Macs in a notebook that he carries with him all of the time. Gorske has kept every burger receipt in a box.[1]
"

Now, I want to mention a major reason why I chose to do an episode about Don Gorske. The guy eats all that fastfood, he says it makes up 90% of his food intake, so he basically eats just 2 burgers a day, along with liquids. The guy looks damn thin, he looks quite a lot like a hippie, if you imagine a hippie with "John Lennon" style round glasses, and brown hair in a bowlcut style, although he has a ponytail at the back. I'm mentioning Don because hes evidence that fast food is a sure cause of obesity, I really dont like hearing people who complain that big companies have forced everyone worldwide to become fat and lazy. I think what people eat is their own responsibility, although I have read books such as Fast Food Nation, and have watched Super Size Me, I'll play clips from that movie later. I do see a definite link between eating fatty foods and becoming fat yourself, but I really dont think its fair to blame mcdonalds when you choose to eat there 3 times a day. Don Gorske is a very quirky case, and I'd love him to go Vegan, but he sure isnt unhealthly from what I can tell, or from his health statistics that he tells people. I mention this because large animal welfare groups like PETA advertise going vegetarian as a way to lose weight, they often use the fact that vegetarians and vegans generally are slim, as if the only way you can be NOT FAT is if you dont eat animal products, apparently they have never seen Don Gorske.

I left this part out of the Wikipedia article, because I wanted you to think he weighed a metric ton.

"Gorske is 6 foot 2 inches tall, 185 pounds, and claims a cholesterol level of 140."

Im interrupting here, for every other country in the world, hes about 1.8 metres tall and weighs 83kg's. That makes his Body Mass Index, BMI, about 23.8, almost 24. A BMI is not amazingly accurate, very muscular people can be reported as being obese, for example, but its the best way to somewhat compare weights of people, to roughly group them as underweight for their height, average for their height, or overweight for their height.

Reading from the site I used to calculate Dons BMI,
• Underweight = <18.5
• Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
• Overweight = 25-29.9
• Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

At just under 24 he would be on the heavier side of a normal weight for his height, normal being 18.5 to 24.9 . He looks quite thin, so he could have a lot of dense muscle, he definitely doesn't look like he has a double chin or a fat belly.

Back to wikipedia,
"His claimed average daily consumption of two Big Macs amounts to 1,080 calories, according to the nutritional information published by McDonald's[2]; this does not take into account his energy intake from fluids. The USDA recommends about 2,200 calories per day.[3] Gorske consumes mainly calorie-rich food, and he maintains a stable weight by eating fewer calories than the average American."

Ok, I dont think thats a healthy way to eat, "sure you can eat anything you want, as long as you only eat half the calories that you are meant to", I dont think that sounds healthy. I dont recommend that anyone eat mostly hamburgers every day for years. Im talking about Don Gorske because I find him interesting, he has such a weird Guinness book of records style life.

My first clip is an AP news story about Don,

Don works as a Prison Guard. I've heard reports that Don is OCD, Obsessive Compulsive, and that perhaps he feels he needs to eat Big Macs every day, its a routine hes gotten stuck in and wouldnt be able to quit. However, he did apparently go without a Big Mac on the day his mother died, it was one of her wishes, so at least for major things like a parents death, he can go without Big Macs.

Reading about Fon du Lac, no doubt Im pronouncing the name wrong, it means Foot of the Lake in french, its a small city of about 42 thousand people. Another famous resident of the city is King Camp Gillette, his first two names are odd, but you might remember his surname, Gillette, he invented the safety razor and founded the Gillette company.

I also found two idiot guys talking about Don Gorske, they run a morning zoo type radio show apparently. you can find them at http://www.thefrickandfrackshow.com/ , its odd watching a video of these two fat american guys put down a thin american who eats almost nothing but fast food.

<2 guys talking clip>

My last clips will be from Super Size Me, a documentary about director Morgan Spurlock eating nothing but Mcdonalds for a month. These clips are about Don Gorske.

Before the end, I'd like to thank a second listener for contacting me, on Twitter, BigBadEd mentioned finding my podcast on iTunes while looking up No Agenda related podcasts, BigBadEd said hes not vegan himself, but was interested in what I talk about. BigBadEd is a British guy who lives in America, and who thought about moving to New Zealand. Well BigBadEd, I hope you come and visit sometime, I'd love to show you around Invercargill, population 50,000 on a good day, home to the southernmost Mcdonalds in the world, as well as the southernmost Vegans! I hope that cancels out the Fast Food vibes.

my outro will be about guns being given away in America when you buy a car.

Thank you for listening.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
=======
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Gorske

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fond_du_Lac,_Wisconsin

http://everything2.com/title/Don+Gorske

Morgan Spurlock, Supersize Me
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Spurlock

BMI
http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

AP story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEC9OjOBwc

2 guys talking http://www.thefrickandfrackshow.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9T-vxNCrQo&feature=player_embedded

Episode 39 Dog Eating=Lamb Beheading=Cat Dissection

2009-08-17T20:33:00.000+12:00

Episode 39

Dog eating = Lamb beheading = Cat dissection

Hello and welcome to Jay Wont darts podcast, where I cover shocking animal treatment worldwide, and that includes Nuclear Free, Gods Own, clean green New Zealand.

My intro was from episode 100 of No Agenda.

I'd been planing to talk about the topics of this episode for months, I've heard many stories of animal abuse that are all equally shocking, but I wanted to fit them together somehow. I've decided to do this episode now, because animal treatment has been in the New Zealand news. Just today, it was reported a Tongan man living in Auckland New Zealand had killed his dog. This has been on the mainstream news, and will be talked about for weeks to come. Also, a boys pet lamb had its head cut off, and he found it dead. This made national news. I would like to mention another shocking animal story, in America its apparently quite common to dissect cats, actual pussy cats, in high schools and universities. I cant imagine that happening in New Zealand, although its hard to imagine anyone cutting open cats.

First the New Zealand stories.

Lamb Beheaded

This story was reported on by a Taranaki newspaper, I dont know where exactly this happened, but its somewhere in Taranaki, New Zealand.

"Pet lamb beheaded in paddock

A little boy went out to cuddle his pet lamb and found somebody had cut its head off.

"Who could do such a sadistic thing?" his mother Mandy Kalin is asking.

The Dorset Horn ram lamb was about six months old and had been bottle-reared by the three children. Braith, aged 4 1/2 years, had claimed it for his own and named it Shaun (after the Wallace and Gromit character).

On Tuesday evening Braith went out with his dad Jason to feed the animals on their lifestyle block near Eltham. Shaun wasn't running about on his chain.

"Dad, why has Shaun got no head?" Braith asked. "Why isn't he moving?"

Shaun was dead and his head with its little horns was missing. They later concluded the head must have been wrapped in a towel taken from the clothesline, because there was no blood.

Nobody was home during the afternoon and Shaun had no fear of humans.

Mrs Kalin said she wanted the sick person responsible for the killing "to know that this was a little boy's pet and he made this horrible discovery himself".

"I want that person to feel bad about the terrible thing he has done.

"The kids are petrified. It's not something we can hide from them, we've had to tell them what happened. The other sheep in the paddock, which was also on a chain, wasn't touched. If the lamb had been killed for the meat while they were grazing on the roadside, I could possibly understand it, but not this."It's not something a normal, straight person would ever do."

Jason Kalin has told the police he suspects somebody with a grudge was responsible, but can't discuss the details. The police told him there have been no other such incidents in the area."

Ok, I feel this story is awful, so do most people. My point is, whats the difference between this baby sheep, and all the other sheep killed in New Zealand every day? That a little boy loved this particular sheep, and that he doesnt cry about all the other sheep in New Zealand who are slaughtered, I dont see that as a big difference. Im not heartless to the child being upset, but to me, this sheep is just one out of many who are horribly killed everyday. This was reported on in mainstream New Zealand news, we can all agree killing a pet sheep is awful. But, these same newspapers will advertise butchers, often I see ads in The Southland Times featuring the latest cheap meat at local butcheries. Theres an ad on the Golden Oldies radio station thats on at work, it has the Beef + Lamb Theme song, that Im told used to be a T Rex song, "dum dum dum we love to boogie", you know what I mean. Now whenever I hear that song, I think of meat. On this particular radio ad, the voice over guy uses a real Southern Bloke voice, he talks "kinda like this mate, a real tough southern bloke, not like those jaffas in auckland mate, nah mate, hes a REAL man who eats meat and drinks speights beer!".

The guy mentions the "bloody good meat prices, top quality, you pay, just less". Does anyone else hearing the ad notice the words "bloody" and "meat" the way I do? Its not a nice image, I dont want to buy something thats bloody, or meat. I know its just the kiwi slang, saying somethings "bloody" doesnt mean is dirty, its used like "damn", as in "damn good".

Also, how are these prices so low, how can a farmer offer cheaper meat at the same quality? Id assume the easiest way would be to care less about the animals needs, not spend so much taking care of an animal, instead reduce your costs and pass it on to the consumer.

This is why I dont agree with Animal Welfare, when the farmers are for Animal Welfare, you know its bad. When people who promote Animal Welfare eat animals themselves, its obvious its not going to eliminate people killing animals, is it? I dont know any Abolitionists who eat meat, so Animal Abolition must be a better, common sense position to take on these issues.

Tongan Man cooks his pet dog to be eaten.

I happened to hear about this through the TradeMe message board. I'll play a TVNZ news clip about the story.

aww isnt that nice, instead of eating their unwanted animals, now they will dump them at animal shelters. Real progress being made.

The story has been all over the internet, and I expect it to be bought up in newspapers nationwide in coming days, old media is always late to the party.

Basically the issue is, its apparently not illegal what the man did, he killed the dog "humanely", im doing quote movements with my hands as I say that, "humanely", with a bonk on the head. The dog was then cooked outdoors. I've seen photos of the dog, and it doesnt look like it were cooked at all, it has a couple of patches on it, but its not singed black from head to tail, and it doesnt look like it was even gutted. People online are furious, I often go to the Trademe Message board to see what the nation is talking about. On the Trade Me Message Board, you mostly see right wing racist remarks, blaming the government for making everyone too "soft", "everything these days is too PC, all this politically correct bullshit, in my day we beat our kids for reading books and getting smart, and now we have this internet thing and the violent video games have made all the toddlers into Charles Mansons, its those weed smoking hippies in the Green party who are to blaaaaaaaaame". You can never expect a serious discussion on the message board, its an auction site, not a dedicated forum, there are few tools on the forum, and yet it is by far New Zealands most popular local site, and the place people go to talk about politics and whats happening.

Im really impressed with the number of people who mention that dogs are no different than any other animal killed to be eaten. Its really made me feel like I have some support, like Im not the only one advocating leaving animals alone. Others have mentioned not eating any animals, but they dont get taken seriously. The other side blames all the Pacific Islanders and Asian people for eating dogs, and they cant seem to get it that when it comes to animals, all men are Nazis as Isaac Bashevis Singer said. I wish I could make them believe me when I say all animals are equal, all should have the right to live their lives, but they seem to deny any similarities. Some arguments I've seen are that "we dont do that in New Zealand", as if we are good people and people overseas who eat dogs are terrible. I dont understand how anyone can say things like that.

I also have the SPCAs view on this event, listen to what they talk about, they clearly mention animal WELFARE, and mention how difficult it is to change the law, as it could make all animals un killable. What an awful world that would be, if it were illegal to kill cows and chickens and pigs and sheep and dogs......

There we go, confirming animals are legally just peoples property, you own them, and can do anything you want to them. Yet another reason to reject animal welfare, and instead focus on creative vegan education, as the wise sage on NZ Vegan says.

Researching this episode I've found other websites that talk about eating cats and dogs. Apparently its common to eat dogs in Tonga. I found one website that had a tourists account of eating dog. I'll read the full post , the website url will be in my notes.

"Kai Kule – Eating my first dog. October 13 2007

Don’t come over for lunch, the dog we planned to eat has run off. We are looking for it.”

Mau, the talking chief of the village has arranged for me to “Kai kuli” or eat dog. His cousin has been fattening one up and today was the day.

Disappointed I ate lunch with my host family.

It was a few hours later that Mau called back. “They found the dog!”

My host mom, Sila bounced us over the unpaved road to Mau’s cousin in the four-wheel drive van. We could already smell roasting flesh rising from a hole dug in the back yard. A traditional Tongan umu, it’s fire fueled by coconut husks. All that remained were the coals and red-hot rocks heated by the fire.

A heap of steaming intestines lay on a banana leaf before dogs and pigs devoured them. The hide was already gone, only patches of dark hair remain. A bag made fro a leave held the chopped up heart, which along with the head went into the umu.

A layer of sticks supported another layer of leaves and an old carpet. Once the carpet covered the hole, one of the men shoveled dirt over it to complete the umu.

After a short trip to the beach we returned to the house. The men opened the umu releasing the greasy smell of roast meat. Banana leaves tossed into the yard served a our picnic table as the sizzling carcass was picked up with sticks and dropped in our midst. A few quick hacks with a knife to dismember the dog, a few shakes of salt into piles on the leaves and we were ready to eat.

A prayer in Tongan and everyone started to rip into the food with their bare hands. My host mother, Sila, announced that it was a “greasy dog”. I had just taught her the English word a few hours earlier.

It took only a few minutes and the ribs lay bare. One of the men ripped open the leaf bag and we all reached in to try the pieces of heart.

Grease covered my hands and face. Beneath my nails dog sat dog meat. No – there are no napkins here…

This was a great chance to share a cultural experience with some of the men of the village. I now have Mau’s phone number and am comfortable sitting next to him at the Kava circle. I am learning to network in Tonga."

Cat Dissection.

This article was in the Miami Herald, you can find this story at Miami Herald.com

A teen accused of killing 19 cats must be held for 48 hours as doctors conduct a psychological evaluation, a judge ruled
Alleged cat mutilator Tyler Weinman is no stranger to feline anatomy -- he dissected the animals last year in class at Palmetto High.
That revelation came Monday, the same day a judge ordered Weinman, 18, to stay in jail for 48 hours pending a psychiatric evaluation. He is accused of slaughtering 19 house cats across South Miami-Dade.
Palmetto High anatomy teacher Lynn Evans, a self-described animal lover, said she was shocked to learning her quiet former student had been arrested and charged with cruelty to animals.
''I don't know how we can bridge the gap between a controlled [classroom] situation, to what this disturbed young man has done,'' Evans said in an interview, adding that about 8,000 of her students have dissected cats during her 24 years of teaching anatomy.
The investigation into the mutilated cats -- found strewn throughout South Miami-Dade -- has for weeks riveted South Florida, terrorized pet owners and sparked massive media attention.
Weinman was charged Sunday with 19 counts of felony animal cruelty, and 19 counts of improperly disposing of an animal body.
Back at Palmetto High, students and staff were still stunned by Weinman's arrest.
Anatomy Class
Evans, the anatomy teacher, said that dissecting dead cats -- the packaged corpses are distributed by biological supply companies -- is common because the animals have an internal body structure similar to humans.
''Decades of people in the anatomy field have started with dissecting cats,'' she said.
Investigators, still chasing leads that could net more arrests, were mum on whether Weinman's classroom training played a role in the teen's alleged crime spree. Prosecutors say they have a suspected motive, but cannot release details.
''We are aware that he attended the anatomy class,'' said Von Zamft, who declined to comment further because of the ongoing probe.
"

As I mentioned at the start of this episode, its apparently common in America to dissect cats in high school and university. PETA wrote an open letter to the principal of the boys school. I'll read part of PETA's letter.

PETA's Open Letter RE Cat Killer

"You may also be aware of the well-established link between animal abuse in adolescence and
subsequent violent behavior toward humans. For example, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer
attributed his fascination with murder and mutilation to classroom dissections. In the last
interview before his death, televised on Dateline NBC, Dahmer stated, "In ninth grade, in biology
class, we had the usual dissection of fetal pigs, and I took the remains of that [pig] home and kept
the skeleton of it, and I just started branching out to dogs, cats." According to Dahmer, he enjoyed the excitement and power he experienced when cutting up animals and fantasized about
cutting up a human body.

This disturbing cycle of violence can be curtailed by instilling respect for animals in students at
Palmetto High. A good place to start is to provide them with humane science lessons in place of
lessons that teach students to treat animals as "objects" that can be used and abused at will. "

In America, companies provide dead cats, sealed in bags, to dissection classes. Large companies do nothing but procure animals, and prepare them to be killed.

I'll read from one companies websites, the Carolina company, links are in the notes.

"Why dissect a cat?
Computer-assisted learning and the use of plastinated specimens can supplement dissection, but they cannot give a complete idea of what an organ or organ system is really like. Dissection is the best way for students to obtain knowledge of tissue characteristics, such as strength, composition, color, and texture and to understand the 3-dimensional relationships of organs and organ systems.

One of the best specimens to use for exploring mammalian anatomy is the cat. It is large enough for its internal organs (which are much like our own) to be found easily and for its blood vessels to be traced, but not so large as to present special difficulty in storage and handling. Preserved cat specimens are also reasonably priced and readily available.

How does Carolina obtain its cats?
Animal shelters licensed by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) supply us with euthanized cats that would otherwise be destined for the landfills were they not reutilized for science classrooms. The USDA, under the Animal Welfare Act, governs the procurement of animals. Carolina is proud to have an outstanding USDA inspection and compliance record, and we are committed to treating all animals in a humane manner.
"

Did you like the words used? "reutilized" is a good one, as in cats had an original purpose, are worthless dead, but oh wait! look! Carolina dead cat company to the rescue! They REUSE dead cats, isnt that great? Very green, Carolina really cares for our environment, because we only have one mother earth you know! Cripes, what a load of trash! Theres no nice way to explain a bunch of kids hacking up kitty cats.

I've heard reports from well known sources that many of these preserved cats are infact Mexican pet cats, that vans go about villages with a siren going off, alerting people to bring out cats to be sold. People will trap cats, knowing the van will be doing its rounds soon. These poor mexicans will sell cats for about a US dollar, and then companies that sell the preserved cats, will make much, much more than that. I've seen these preserved cats selling for about 50 US dollars, thats about 70 dollars NZ lets say. A lot of money really, there are some kits for a full classroom that are over 500 US dollars. Im told the cats are drowned, then are injected with preserving fluids, they are drained of blood and have resins injected into their ateries etc to make them more visible, easy for teachers to point out to students, as the cats are hacked at.

Carolina has a website where you can buy cats, dogs, and fetal pigs. They sell preserved sheeps organs, although i didnt see any full preserved sheep for sale.

Do you know what I find so odd about this? That Carolina is so open about what they do, as if this is totally normal, to be cutting up cats and dogs who were abandoned at animal shelters, left to die. They even have a Twitter account, shocking huh?

http://twitter.com/CarolinaBio

They have over 50 people following them.

In america, I'm told over 100,000 cats are dissected every year. Included in my notes are graphic pictures of how the cats are stored in bags, legs all stretched out as if in pain, and how they are cut up. I really hope you will look at these upsetting photos, because it really puts everything into perspective. Its all well and good talking about these problems, but I believe that these photos will really move you, its so obviously a cat in the photos, no different than all the other cats people have as pets. Looking at photos of animal abuse lets people decide for themselves whats happening, theres not any bias passed on by a story teller, instead you see the event frozen in time, as a photo.

I hope you've listened all the way through this episode, I know its a difficult topic. I wish people would see that cats, dogs and other pets are no different than any other animal, as these stories appear in the mainstream media, I hope to promote veganism. So far, I've only been met with ridicule, with people telling me Im nuts for not eating meat, but I'll keep at it, it doesnt take that much effort to be heard online, and if just one person decides to become vegan because of me, then its truly worth my time.

Thank you for listening.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it. My outro is from No Agenda 117

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
========

Tongan man cooks dog
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/no-charges-man-barbecued-dog-2919419

tv3 video
http://www.3news.co.nz/SPCA-concerned-after-dog-eating-incident/tabid/572/articleID/116902/cat/41/Default.aspx

eating dog in tonga
http://tongaadventure.blogspot.com/2007/10/kai-kule-eating-my-first-dog-oct-13.html

Cat Killer
http://blog.peta.org/archives/2009/06/does_high_schoo.php

Cat dissection photos etc
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Labs/Anatomy_&_Physiology/A&P201/Cat_Skinning/Cat_Skinning.htm

Carolina dead cat supply company (my words)
http://www.carolina.com/product/221481.do
http://www.carolina.com/category/teacher+resources/dissection+activities+and+resources/cat+dissection.do
http://www.carolina.com/product/455572.do

http://bio.bd.psu.edu/cat/

cat dissection facts
http://www.sniksnak.com/aavs3.html

PETA letter, from PETA

Cat Killer news stories from Miami Herald,

Episode 38 Animal Farm

2009-08-10T23:32:00.000+12:00

Episode 38

Animal Farm

Hello and welcome to episode 38 of Jay Wont darts podcast, where I share my favourite books, kind of like a tall white vegan Oprah.

My intros were from No Agenda episode 117 and the song Optimistic by Radiohead, its one of the many songs that refference Animal Farm, I'll play another for the outro.

George Orwell is known most for his story Nineteen Eighty-Four, but I prefer his earlier work Animal Farm. Animal Farm is a wonderful book mostly aimed at the Soviet Union and Communism, basically all the main characters are based on real life political figures such as Lenin, Karl Marx and Stalin. Other Farms represent the US and UK, and several collective flocks of animals represent social classes of people.

In the preface of a 1947 Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm he explained how escaping the communist purges in Spain taught him quote, "how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries." This motivated Orwell to expose and strongly condemn what he saw as the Stalinist corruption of the original socialist ideals.

In that preface Orwell also described what gave him the idea of setting the book on a farm

" ...I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat."

Thats a great quote that also relates to animals rights.

One night, Major, an elderly pig on Manor Farm has a strange dream, that the animals could better themselves, and live freely instead of being repressed by humans such as Mr Jones, their farmer. Jones often gets drunk and is not attentive to matters of his farm. The animals begin a revolution and rise up against their oppressor, the humans. And yet, by the end of the book we see things have not worked out so well for all the animals. I'll read part of Major's speech.

There are two main quotes best remembered from Animal Farm.

The shortest and easiest to remember is

"Four legs good, two legs bad"

Another is the original commandments given out by Major,

THE [ORIGINAL] SEVEN COMMANDMENTS:

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are created equal.

The last commandment is morphed by the end of the story into

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.

I love the ending of the book, the way the pigs change is amazing, I really dont want to spoil the ending for you, its reason enough for you to read this short story.

In Animal Farm, the pigs are generally treated as the most intelligent animals, and probably the sheep are the most dim witted, the sheep act as cheer leaders, mindlessly shouting slogans taught to them by the ruling politician. The pigs start off as being rule by Napoleon and Snowball, Napoleon is more concerned about himself, while Snowball thinks up grand plans to better all animals. Napoleon gathers his own secret police, who on his command drive out Snowball, I love how the secret police come into being, I never expected it, and yet its so logical. I wont spoil that surprise for you.

Napoleon takes control as a dictator, he has the other remaining pigs work for him, there are a few named pigs such as Squealer who acts as second in command, and distributes propaganda and Minimus, who writes songs singing praise of Napoleon.

One of my favourite characters is the minor figure of Moses the Raven, he only shows up a couple of times in the book, but is very important symbolically. I'll read from novelguide.com's character guide, the webpage is in my shownotes which you can see on an iPod by going to the lyrics or you could go to my blog www.jaywontdart.blogspot.com to read my full notes which have sources at the bottom.
"
Moses: Moses is perhaps Orwell's most intriguing character in Animal Farm. This raven, first described as the "especial pet" of Mr. Jones, is the only animal who doesn't work. He's also the only character who doesn't listen to Old Major's speech of rebellion.

Orwell narrates, "The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones's especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which al animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place."

Moses represents Orwell's view of the Church. To Orwell, the Church is just used as a tool by dictatorships to keep the working class of people hopeful and productive. Orwell uses Moses to criticize Marx's belief that the Church will just go away after the rebellion. Jones first used Moses to keep the animals working, and he was successful in many ways before the rebellion. The pigs had a real hard time getting rid of Moses, since the lies about Heaven they thought would only lead the animals away from the equality of socialism. But as the pigs led by Napoleon become more and more like Mr. Jones, Moses finds his place again. After being away for several years, he suddenly returns and picks up right where he left off. The pigs don't mind this time because the animals have already realized that the "equality" of the revolt is a farce. So Napoleon feeds Moses with beer, and the full-circle is complete.
Orwell seems to offer a very cynical and harsh view of the Church. This proves that Animal Farm is not simply an anti-communist work meant to lead people into capitalism and Christianity. Really Orwell found loop-holes and much hypocrisy in both systems. It's interesting that recently in Russia the government has begun to allow religion again. It almost seems that like the pigs, the Kremlin officials of today are trying to keep their people motivated, not in the ideology of communism, but in the "old-fashioned" hope of an after-life. "

I like Moses because he is one of only a few minor characters who dont directly speak, I dont remember him ever actually talking directly in the book, its always mentioned by the narrator what Moses told the other animals, but we never hear him directly speak. One other minor character is similar to this, the cat, who never does any work, but will show up when there is food, I dont think we hear the cat talk directly either, the narrator mentions her telling the sparrows just out of her reach, that they are all equal comrades after the revolution, and that if one of the sparrows wanted to, they could sit on her paw. I'm glad none of the birds take her up on her offer.

Another of my favourite characters is Benjamin the donkey. He is quite old, and never has anything positive to say, he doesnt speak much but is present at all the major events. Benjamin never believes the revolution will change anything, when asked why hes not enthused, Benjamin explains, "Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey." by which he means he has seen alot of how things work and that the future will not be in the animals favour. Another quote is "Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse— hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life." "

Probably the most tragic character in Animal Farm is Boxer, the strong work horse. He is not intelligent and has trouble remembering what he has learnt, he cant remember the alphabet and so cannot read or write, but believes in his leaders. Boxer has a personal motto of " will work harder!", which could be a nod to the book The Jungle, which is an expose on the meat packing industry of the early 20th century.

Boxer is by far the strongest animal, being the largest male horse, he pulls every heavy load and protects the farm with his strong kicks. He has an awful fate that almost makes me cry every time I read the book. Boxer collapses having worked himself to death. I'll read that passage now.

I'll play a clip that explains Animal Farms plot better.

I hope you've enjoyed this episode, I really do hope everyone listening decides to read Animal Farm, its only about 112 pages in length, you can read it at a leisurely pace over a weekend. There are even websites online where you can read the full text for free! One copy can be found on http://www.george-orwell.org , I'll include that in my notes, as well as the ebook I downloaded, the full text of Animal Farm on my computer, it takes up just one fifth of a megabyte. No doubt this episode of my podcast will end up being a hundred times that, sorry to waste your hard drive space! Theres so much to learn from Animal Farm, the best thing to do is just to read the story yourself.

My outro song will be the song Animal in Man by the rap group Dead Prez. You might recognise them from this songs backing music from Chapelles Show, I like political hip hop music, and started liking Dead Prez when I heard their message , at least one out of the two is vegan, the other is possibly vegetarian. At live shows they are known to throw out apples to the crowd. The outro has some harsh language in it, its a retelling of Animal Farm.

Thank you for listening to my humble podcast.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.

Have a super happy day, bye.

sources
======
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

http://www.novelguide.com/animalfarm/themeanalysis.html

full story!

download html ebook here
http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100011.txt

or full story chapter by chapter here
http://www.george-orwell.org/Animal_Farm/index.html

animal farm synopsis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aybo5lYPx4s

Episode 37 First Listener Email!

2009-08-02T22:29:00.002+12:00

Episode 37, First Listener Email!

Hello and welcome to an EXTRA special episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where for the thousand or so people who've came across my podcast, I've received one email!

I use Feed Burner for my RSS feed and stats, normally I only consider iTunes subscribers to matter, people who want to hear my every episode, you guys are my real fans, who are there for the scare good episodes, and all the terrible ones! Thank you all.

I have a little over 20 main subscribers, mostly Windows iTunes users. Some of my most popular episodes have been listened to by over 300 people, which is pretty cool considering I'm just some weirdo talking about nothing in particular!

I dont know how many of these statistics are actual dedicated listeners, but one day recently I had 19 people in America, 5 hits from the UK, 4 from Germany, 3 from little old New Zealand, 2 from Israel, 1 Australian hit, 1 from Luxembourg, 1 from Austria and another 1 from Mexico. Its pretty amazing to think my voice has been heard all around the world! I dont know how many of those hits were just looking at my feed, and maybe not even hearing a single episode, but they have came across my podcast somehow or rather.

This episode is to thank one wonderful American woman, the first person to email me! Heres the message she left me

Oh wait, that was just a lame joke, heres an actual message, from an actual listener to my podcast, all the way from the other side of the world.

A very big hello to Bea Elliot, who lives in Florida, in the U S of A. You've really made me happy Bea, thank you for contacting me, especially with such a positive message! I'd like to mention Bea's newest blog, Once Upon a Vegan, which you can find if you go to http://beaelliottvegan.blogspot.com/ , thats b.e.a, e.l.l.i.o.t.t vegan . blogspot.com, bea elliot vegan . blogspot . com . Bea is working on a podcast which I hope will be on iTunes soon, I really cant wait to hear her future episodes, I love meeting other podcasters, especially other vegan podcasters. A big thank you to Bea for having the courage to email me, and especially for recording her comment like I suggested, for me to use in this very special episode.

To all my other listeners, I think theres another 18 not counting myself, why not say hello? If you send in an audio clip of yourself, I'll play it in a future episode, its a bit like ringing into a radio station, you can tell all your friends "dudes, I was on jay wont darts podcast maaaaan!" to which they will say..."whats a podcast?".

If you like my podcast, I'd also like listeners to give me a rating on iTunes, if you go to my iTunes podcast page, just search the name of my podcast, "jay wont dart" on the iTunes store, and leave a very short review, complete with a 5 star rating! With enough reviews, shouldnt take more than one or two, I'll be better featured on iTunes, and will hopefully get more listeners!

Thank you very much for listening.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you are my second actual listener, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, especially if you're names Bea Elliot of Florida.

bye!

Episode 36 Anti Smacking Bill

2009-08-02T17:47:00.001+12:00

Episode 36

Anti Smacking Bill

Hello and welcome to another episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I mention my opinion on the Trademe Message Board and made fun of for being vegan.

This episode, I'll talk briefly about the Anti Smacking bill thats caused grief in New Zealand.

My intro was from No Agenda 104.

Before I forget, hi to anyone from the TradeMe Message Board who's listening, I wish I could have gotten some recordings from you to play, no matter what side you are on. Hi to wayne472, merrigj, mikey853nz, and anyone else who is listening from New Zealand.

I could be wrong about details I mention in this episode, so feel free to correct me, I'll give out my email address at the end of this episode.

A little background about New Zealand politics for international listeners. In New Zealand we have MMP, which is a system in which several small-ish parties can band together and become a government, its not "X vs Y", if party X doesnt have enough votes to govern alone, it can get support from party gamma, so it has enough votes to be the government.

In New Zealand, we do have two major parties, one centre left, one centre right, Labour on the left, and National on the right. Labour had been in power forever, but had increasingly been under siege from National gaining more votes each election, Labour would rely on smaller left wing parties to hand it extra votes to cross the line into power again. Generally both major parties get 80 odd percent of the votes, roughly 40 percent each for Labour and National. Labour, the major left wing party normally campaigns on more healthcare and more education, with more liberal ways to get ahead in life, more benefits, welfare and affirmative action for minority races. National, the major right wing party normally campaigns on law and order, lowering taxes and keeping a more old fashioned, work hard to get ahead in life and dont complain attitude.

The Green party is a fairly large small party, probably the third largest party overall. The Greens focus on climate change, pollution, helping people break the cycle of poverty and affirmative action. They are quite left wing overall. The Green party is quite interesting, I think, always having two leaders, one male, one female! The Green's often have crazy and well known MP's, dope smoking rastafarians who ride skateboards, people who get tears in their eyes at the thought of Genetic Modification, or radical feminists who spend most of their adult life on welfare, get arrested in protests, and tell others how to live their lives. I'm being bit mean with my descriptions of the Greens, but they are normally the most crazy MPs in parliament.

Theres also the Maori party, which normally focuses on getting more state assets given to Maori tribes and helping the Maori race, affirmative action. The Maori party is very modern, it was formed in 2004. The Maori party can be either left or right wing, but I often think of it as more Left wing aligning with Labour over National.

Those are the parties I think are the most important ,we have a handful of other large-ish small parties, but they dont matter as much to me personally and dont get a large percentage of the votes at election times.

The labour government, with help from smaller parties, had been in power for three terms , up until the 2008 election when National got in, with help from two minor parties.
Under the Labour government, green party member Sue Bradford had her private members bill about child discipline put into law. It changed Section 59 of the crimes act 1961 to now remove the defence of "reasonable force" for parents charged with assault on their children. This has been known as the "anti smacking bill" as it basically bans smacking your children, it is now a violent act that is not allowed. 113 Mps voted the bill in, only 7 voted against it, so all the politicians were basically fine with smacking being banned.

I have seen people stating that this law DOES NOT make smacking illegal, but in fact only prevents bad parents from beating their children. For this episode Im going along with the mainstream belief that this is a "Anti smacking bill" that wants all physical discipline from parents to be banned, that includes smacking.

National was initially against this bill, but with an addition of part 4, that police investigating claims of smacking could decide if what was done to the child was "inconsequentially" or not. If the police officer thought the child was no worse off from being smacked, they could choose not to prosecute the parents. This was sort of allowing smacking, althought it would be up to a police officer to judge whether the child had been hurt or not which could be risky for parents who wanted to smack their children.

The full section 59 now reads

All that makes my head hurt, I could never be a politician with all those confusing words. The parts I would think would let a parent hit a child are ruled over by other additions at the end. Parents ARE allowed to physically grab a child if they are about to walk into a busy street, they can hold them back from doing something dangerous, but they cannot hit a child afterwards, "bad child, im going to smack you". I've seen people who support the bill saying that smacking is actually fully allowed by this bill, and that what the bill known as the "anti smacking bill" is actually about is stopping parents giving an old fashioned "good hiding" to their children after some time, instead of smacking the child on the hand to stop them hitting another child, it actually means "wait till daddy comes home to hit you with his belt". Like I said before, Im going to focus on smacking, I'll assume this bill is to be against smacking children outright.

Theres been massive public outrage, with around 80 percent of the public apparently for smacking children, and only 20 or so percent against smacking children.

Labour had to have fears people would turn against it because of the anti smacking bill, it had been labelled too "politically correct" and also as a "nanny state", that wanted to control everything people could and couldnt do. Labour had ideas about banning normal incandescent light bulbs, and only having compact florescent bulbs that use quarter the electricity, the sort I use, as well as ideas about making showers have to be run at a lower pressure, they wouldnt have a lovely strong pressure, instead using less water to save on the amount of water used nationwide. People were very angry about both of these ideas, and the anti smacking bill certainly annoyed them even more. National ended up gaining power from Labour, National was against Labours ideas about banning bright light bulbs and strong showers.

National however, is keeping the anti smacking bill, which effectively prevents parents from smacking their children. A referendum was initiated by upset voters, which is happening at the moment, I got my voting paper yesterday. This referendum is going to cost the taxpayer over 8.9 million New Zealand dollars, I have no idea where the money is going, its just bits of paper that get a yes or no tick.

The question thats being asked is "Should a smack, as part of good parental correction, be a criminal offence in New Zealand?" which I think is confusing as hell. I've asked people who are for smacking, and who are against smacking, and people on both sides think its a bad question. It says "good parental correction" as if a smack can be that, something good parents do, but its also "a criminal offense". I think its a loaded question designed to make people vote No, that they are for smacking children, because the question makes it seem like you are making "good parents" commit a "criminal offense". I would think most people also feel a right they have is being taken away by The Man.

You've been very good putting up with my voice for so long, so I'll use a clip of someone else talking for a change, this is a Guide to the anti smacking bill I found on a anti smacking website I'll mention later on, I got this from youtube, its from before the referendum had been issued.

I liked that part "like it or not the bill is here to stay so adopting these techniques is the best way to stay out of jail", well actually a referendum is being held which could overturn the "anti smacking bill" and let parents smack their children again.

I'll play a 3 news story about the anti smacking bill and then the full debate that was on Campbell Live, afterwards I'll tell you my personal feelings about smacking, if I'm voting that parents should be able to smack their children, or not.

<3 news clip>

Ok, as promised, I'll tell you how I myself am voting on the anti smacking bill referendum. I personally am voting Yes, I am against smacking children as I believe it to be an act of violence, calling it "smacking" does not change that it is essentially just hitting another person to make them do what you want. I know many people who are for smacking will be angry that I consider smacking to be hitting, but if its not hitting, if its not physical discipline, then what is it? Its like the people who say they are vegetarian but eat fish! They consider fish not to be meat! They see a fish has eyes, a mouth, they eat and go to the toilet, they breed and have more baby fish, they feel pain, they see, hear, they can sense in ways we cannot, such as feeling disturbances in the water around them, but, "oh no, a fish is not an animal, a fish is a vegetable or something, its not meat!"

No, I say that smacking is the same as hitting, a light smack is the same as a light hit, if child X smacked child Y, even very lightly, we wouldnt let them do that would we? I wonder, if a child smacked another child, would a No Voting parent then smack child X? I think so.

If we dont tolerate children using violence, then why do we use it against them? If a mentally disabled person is "mentally 5 years old", would we smack them in the way we might smack a 5 year old? I dont think so. I've heard arguments that "oh, its a different relationship" as mentioned in the campbell live debate, but no, I dont agree with that, its no different, just as light smacking and light hitting are the same to me.

Now, to be clear, I dont think all parents who smack their children are blood thirsty murderers who come home at night and beat their partners and then kill their children with a coathanger. Im not being silly like that. To smack someone is to hit someone, and thats violence.

I dont see adults smacking other adults, why is that? There comes an age where parents generally dont smack their children, why do you think that is? I would assume its because the child is big enough to smack back, to hurt the parent. Its not fun hitting another person when you could be hit back.

I've already ticked Yes, that a smack should be a criminal offence, you can see a photo of my vote slip on my flickr account.

I know its hard for some parents who grew up being smacked, and who smack their own children, to see that other people have a problem with their behaviour. I was smacked as a child , and I'd be threatened with a smack too. "stop doing that, do you want me to smack you?" or that the parent would be going to get The Wooden Spoon, my mother would hit me with one large wooden spoon. It would be a threat for me, "im going to get the spoon", if I were doing something she didnt like, and sometimes if I did something accidentally that I knew she would hit me for, I'd plead "no mum, not the wooden spoon", although it probably just made me look more pathetic to her as she hit me.

I have a few clips from people supporting my idea that smacking children is violence. I asked No Voters, people who wanted to smack their children to appear, but they either didnt want to be recorded, or were unable to record themselves and send me an mp3. I honestly wish they were on here, talking to me personally, but I've played neutral clips, for smacking clips, as well as my own point of view against smacking clips. So I think this episode has been quite fair to all sides.

Here are two clips I got, both from fellow Vegans incidentally.

Thank you to both Bruce and Sam for appearing on my podcast.

Every Vegan I know is against smacking children. I think my vegan friends are against it, as they see it as a violent act, that a large adult is doing to a small and helpless child. I would think that practically all vegans, who are generally for peace and against all violence, would most likely be against smacking children.

My father went to school at a time when they boys got hit with a cane, the teacher actually physically hit children! Unbelievable! I know my older listeners might be laughing at me now, but I cant imagine teachers being able to hit children. Did they get hit if they didnt do their homework? I know that it certainly didnt stop the bad kids being bad, I've been told by a no voter, for smacking, that her husband would upset the teacher to make him hit them in class, and that they would hide under desks, and run about. They thought it was a great time, it didnt control them. Also, girls didnt get hit with a cane, because they were thought of as "weaker" than the boys I guess? Not sure. My father is left handed, and he wasnt allowed to write with his left hand, I think he would be hit with a ruler for doing that. Imagine schools today hitting little boys for writing with their left hand, which is natural for them, its no different than hitting them because of their race, or because they are gay! Unbelievable, I wonder if the average parent who believes in smacking also believes in hurting left handed children so they have to write like a right handed person. Imagine being the only left handed child in a class room of right handed people, imagine being told by the large male teacher, whos holding a ruler to hit you with, "you're gonna do what I tell you boy, you dont use that hand except for wiping your butt boy, do you want a smack? you want me to hit you? huh? think you're a fancy left hander now do you? hey?". Awful.

I found a website written by a young child

"If kids even once stepped out of line they were strapped or canned. If they got caught not working or doing the wrong thing they would stand you up at the front of the class and make you wear the dunces cap or make you hold out your hand to be strapped. If you were left-handed you were forced to use your right and if you did otherwise your left hand would be strapped until it was too sore to use.

If you were late for school you would be strapped the number of minutes late. The teacher always carried a ruler around to give any body who was not doing what they were told a hard rap across the knuckles. Children had no choice in the work they did or how they did it. Whatever teacher said to do was to be done. For being really bad you could be canned six times and that's where the saying six of the best come from.

Some teachers made you bend over and put your head under the black board so when they canned your back side if you raised your head you would hit it on the chalk ledge"

if I can see this is wrong, then I dont see why other people cant.

Theres evidence from polls that fewer people smack their children now than in the 1960's, its gone down dramatically. The use of physical discipline by parents has been reduced, you can hear that from the Campbell Live debate. The people in the debate were asked if they smack their children now less than they were smacked as a child, they all agreed. I doubt children have suddenly gotten nicer, more polite, dont old people say the opposite? And yet, I would assume that even parents for smacking children, smack them less than they were smacked growing up, and that often parents feel bad about smacking their children. We dont hit children for being left handed, or Maori anymore, so why hit them because they hit another child? An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, as Ghandi said.

Here are some clips that are both for and against smacking, from well known people.

Tony Blair, former prime minister of the UK,

I dont think all people who smack their kids go on to beat them to a pulp, but a smack is still hitting, and thats violence against children.

Dame Kiri , a new zealand musician,

I dont think you should have to earn respect, you should be able to get it, it should be expected that you are a good person, you shouldnt be punished until you can prove yourself good, you should be treated with dignity so you respect your seniors, that you see everyone as equal.

Helen Clark, former Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand,

I dont agree with Helen Clark, and Labour was for this bill being passed while she were Prime Minister.

John Key, current National Prime Minister of New Zealand,

John Key is for smacking he says, he did it himself, and yet admits there are more effective tactics such as taking away a cellphone. Id hate to have my iPhone take away by mum and dad, but its better than being hit.

I'll also remind you that National passed this bill, with their addition that the police could judge if the child had been assaulted or not on a case by case basis.

last is Sue Bradford, the Green Party MP who came up with this bill, its her creation. She changes her mind all the time publicly if this "anti smacking bill" stops smacking or not, if its an illegal act or not, if she wants it banned or not. Im not a fan of hers, but I can agree with anyone who is against smacking children ,if Hitler thought smacking children was wrong, then I can be on Hitlers side of this single issue.

I'd like to mention two websites that helped me out with my views on smacking.

http://yesvote.org.nz/ vote yes for banning smacking and
http://www.voteno.org.nz/ vote no, which is for smacking children.

Theres also a stupid parody of the yesvote site, by people who are for smacking, they personally attack the positions of the yes vote people. This is linked to on every page of the novote site, they at least think its funny if they havnt actually made it themselves. you can find the silly parody at

http://yesvote.blogspot.com/

I personally agree with yesvote.org.nz, and disagree with voteno.org.nz , but I feel I should mention both sites for the help they gave me as useful resources, as well as for listeners to this episode, thats you, these two sites will help you make up your own mind.

I like the slogans that yesvote.org.nz uses, against smacking children, "hitting kids teaches kids its ok to hit", "if its wrong to hit an adult, how can it be right to hit a child", "is it right to have a law saying its ok to hit a child?" and my favourite question, "what happens when a 'little smack' doesnt work anymore?". I like that last one the best as its something I hadnt thought of before, if you smack your child for doing fairly minor things like spilling milk, or swearing, what do you do if they hit a family member? Do you smack them harder? What if smacking them doesnt work, if they laugh it off, or try and smack you back?

I played a clip of Prime Minister John Key saying he is for smacking children, and yet he also says that if the "anti smacking bill" is shown to be not working, he will change it. Many MPs voted the section 59 change, well basically every MP in the country, but now they say they are for smacking, yet its known as the anti smacking bill! Who knows how this will turn out, even if the forecast 80 percent of New Zealand want to be able to smack children, the government doesnt have to change anything! They could, if they are worried about not getting in next term, but that is years away.

I dont think that only terrible people smack their children, almost everyone I know is actually for smacking! I personally feel its wrong to use violence against anyone, but especially when you are much bigger than the person you are using it against, and they have no way to defend themselves. What can a child do? Say "please dont hit me?" thats not going to stop a parent smacking them. They are most likely too small to smack the parent back, they wont be allowed a tazer to defend them from violence like the police have, and they cant use pepper spray on mum and dad. So what happens? They just have to learn that mum or dad is always right because if you argue with them, they can hurt you physically, and theres nothing you can do about it. You are nothing, they could tear you apart if they wanted to, just like that. I think thats awful. I think children should have the right not to be hit by anyone, and that includes their parents.

Thank you for listening to this episode.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
=======
http://yesvote.org.nz/ vote yes for banning smacking
http://www.voteno.org.nz/index.htm vote no for smacking children

guide to the anti smacking bill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDFl83TNagM&feature=player_embedded

left handed children beaten
http://schools.reap.org.nz/ruapehu/kaitieke/99t3/disc.htm

Episode 35 Joys of Human Invention

2009-07-26T20:57:00.000+12:00

Episode 35

Joys of human invention

Hello, and thank you for joining me on another super special episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast.

For episode 35 I'll talk about some , such as Alex, the artificial voice that comes with Apple's OSX. My intro was Underwear Goes Inside The Pants, a song by Lazyboy

I like alot of things, both living and not alive. I like birds, bees and blueberries, but also expensive technology, cars, computers and laser death rays. To reference a prior episode about the scary old hospital here, as I walked through the old ruins, its not quite like roman era marble blocks, all weathered away over the centuries, but it sure is awfully dated inside, I started to think about how cheap a lot of man made things are. Things are made to be disposable, things get outdated from how they look. Take buildings, in just 10 years a building will be seriously out of fashion really. I remember thinking Splash Palace, the fancy swimming pool here in Invercargill, it was amazingly modern, it had an expensive, and modern design, kind of swooping lines, like a split open shellfish really. Its in pastel colours too, very light red, green, maybe pink? Made in the late 90's I think, it looks kinda crappy now. The council cheaped out on a lot of the materials, to save money, I seem to remember it costing half what it initially was going to. Within the first year I think, tiles inside started to break off, coming off the walls altogether or chipping, the steam room caused storage areas behind it to rot, the wave pool was designed for kids, it has, well, wave generator machines that make artifical waves that go through the pool, that was useless to teach children how to swim in, because of its odd shape, I know, I was a swimming instructor for a couple years. During a bad storm, part of the roof over the wave pool ripped right off, it was held down with sand bags during repair. The problems dont stop there, the main pool was meant to not really need chemicals to keep the water clean, or they were to be very slight, so you wouldnt get red eyes, that filtering system never worked, so chlorine had to be dumped in, I need googles when I swim otherwise my eyes get all red and sore. Parts of the floor around the pools would get very slippery, made from tiles, and gritty cement, that felt like sandpaper really, you can grate your feet on it. The hydroslide never worked properly, it was completely made wrong, the tubing was from an old Invercargill pool, I loved that hydroslide, it was in North Invercargill, I didnt get to go often, when I did I loved the hydroslide. It was a big deal. The south Invercargill pool before Splash palace, on Connon Street by Pak n Save, it never had anything fancy like hydroslides. When the kinda dingy south invercargill, and ritzy north invercargill pools shut down, the hydroslide was to go at the new, single Invercargill pool. For some reason, they tubing never was right, and so the fancy recycled hydroslide was slow, very short and boring as hell. At first it was rough inside too, you could get deep marks from joins between tubes. I've seen some hydroslides where you need to have foam mats, like the awesome Nelson hydroslide. If you come off, you get scoured by the rough fiberglass.

So, the hydroslide didnt work. The pool needed extra seating, that had to be bolted on to one side of the building years later, it cost a huge amount of money, and the main building had to be extended out over the pavement. A learners pool was eventually made, since the wave pool sucked big time for swimming lessons.

Ok, well, my point is, this huge fancy man made building was so amazing when it opened, the opening ceremony was at night, it was on national tv, that lotto break between the big family movie on a Saturday night, about 7:30PM, where the lotto ticket numbers are announced live. I had to be in Dunedin , and watched on TV. It was a big deal, probably the best swimming pool in New Zealand! But, it was rushed through, money was saved wherever possible, and the thing started to fall apart quickly. Now, its dated looking, and I have bad memories about it. While Im picking on Splash Palace, I should probably mention when I first got to go, there were huge lines since it was new, I think we waited literally hours outside in the queue, you dont normally need to wait for ANYTHING in little old Invers. The sun was so hot, it had melted the new bitumen, fun word to say, the black tar kind of car park flooring, what roads are made from. So we got sticky tar all over our feet. Oh, and then theres that time I did the longest distance for school swimming, 1500 metres, the pool is 50 metres, split into two 25 metres lengths, so thats 30 laps there and back. I started off doing it with Chelsea in front of me, she decided not to do the full distance this time, and got out, I stopped too, to see what the problem was, I was told to carry on, so I did alone. It was weird not following someone anymore, the pool felt lonely, very quiet, and nothing to look at. It took me about an hour to do the total distance, I was going very slowly to save energy. I thought my friends would be watching from the side of the pool, cheering me on. So I had that kinda bravery in my head, like im going to get some respect for doing the 1500 Metres. When I actually had done the distance, I thought I had another two laps to go for some reason, I got smacked on the head with a kickboard, SLAP they go when they hit the water, I got hit on the head, bit my lip and hit the wall! It was the crazy old coach guy, telling me time to stop. He said something like "hmmngg good on ya lad hmmmmggaaach burhogh *COUGH*" as I stood up dazed from hitting the poolside with my smacked head. Turns out, my friends were kinda watching, and saying "hes going to stop this lap, no, this lap", placing bets about when I'd give up, not believing in me at all! Bastards! Whats worse, my two best equal friends had only done 50Metres each, thats 100 metres between the two of them! I could have done that when I were 2 years old! Scum!

This has turned into quite the Splash Palace episode huh? Ok, so what I was saying before, the pool was all cool and new, it was shiny, and the best pool in the country, it was on national primetime television for an opening by the prime minister, I think. But, within a year or two, it was falling apart, and now ten years on, its kinda shitty looking. What I'm trying to say is, often man made things break down, or go out of fashion quickly. Splash Palace was falling apart after a year or two, cutting edge for 5 years maybe, ten years on it sucks. Compare this to a bird, at the old hospital when we were taking things away, I saw some dead birds inside the old abandoned hospital wards, a sparrow that looked like it was sleeping. Its feathers were all perfect, very clean looking. Perhaps it just starved to death, trapped inside after it climbed in through a leak hole in the roof. It was close to a window, it could have been flying straight into the glass until it killed itself for all I know. I hate when birds do that, its really upsetting. Its kind of like they are in a blender.

But even with my gruesome thoughts about how it must have died, it was still so much nicer than all the things around it, this dead animal was so much prettier than any of the bedside cabinets, or the brown paper bags saying "patients belongings", or the metal bedpans old people have crapped in thousands of times. Looking at the pattern of its feathers, it was so perfectly beautiful, in a way that modern colour schemes, fads, fashions, just dont normally live up to. Using the Invercargill swimming pool again, it was dated within ten years, compared to Sparrows that have been the same for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, or even millions, and still look incredibly nice. They're not made out fancy colours like hummingbirds, they cant fly as well as a Dragonfly, and they dont quite have the same appeal as Blackbirds to me, but the dead Sparrow was so much nicer looking than the dead hospital. Just in front is the modern hospital, that was opened 5 years or so ago. Its also plagued with pastel colours, like Splash Palace, theres these painted rectangles on the sides, lavender, light green, light pink, a light blue, a purple I think. Its shitty looking! Absolute bullshit compared to the prettiness of a simple dead bird. Using only three colours, brown, grey and black, the sparrow was so much nicer than the hospital building, with all those awful bright/faded pastel fruit colours.

So, I can understand that aspect to the manmade creation haters flying spittle braying, that most buildings that are slabs of concrete, thrown together by tradesmen, they dont last over time! They are ugly compared to natural animals, or even sand dunes, mountains, waves. I totally understand that.

BUT, BUT, there are plenty of beautiful man made buildings too, things like Skyscrapers, many of those are just terrrific. My favourite that I can think of would be the Chrysler building, in New York. I like it better than the Empire State Building, The Empire State is taller and more well known, but its a more boring looking shape. The Chrysler looks thinner, its rounded at the top, with shiny steel ornamentation up to the spire. Coming off the building, on corners, are giant Eagles, based on a Chrysler car decoration at the time. The Chrysler Building was started in 1928, and finished in 1930. The Chrysler cars of the time are long gone really, and I dont like ANY american cars generally, but the building is still amazing to look at. To think, very soon Chrysler might be a forgotten name altogether, the way the American Car makers have been since the 1970's. I said to my dad recently, its funny that the only time that Americans made arguably good cars was in the 1950's, and 1960's. When the rest of the world had been at war, getting factories and millions of people blown up, and then struggling to rebuild. As soon as the Japanese and Germans had their shit together again, they kicked america firmly in the butt, I dont think theres ever been an american car as good as a German or Japanese car of the same age. If we think that american car companies got it all wrong in the 1970s, thats when America was all tangled up in Vietnam, while Japan had rebuilt and was designed cars American people wanted. Now in 2009, while America is at war in the middle east, their car companies are begging for more bailouts. Thats a good case for Pacifism if ever I heard one!

About buildings, I dont like large crowds, I'm from a city of 50,000 people. If theres a single person at the supermarket counter ahead of me, I consider it a line. If I could have the house of my dreams, I'd actually choose to live underground, somewhat like a hobbit hole. Its apparently very good for the environment, heating costs are basically nothing, its stronger, hence the reason why people were meant to hide in bunkers during the cold war, and its not an eyesore, a grassy hill with a window or two on one side is not going to date that fast, and even if it does, Im sure I can update the window cheaper than most people would spend updating an entire building. To live underground, in a warm and very light home, I think thats great. You could have the entire "roof" of your house for a garden, everyone could have all the fruit trees they needed, there would be no concrete, it would be a paradise.

I think a lot of the worlds problems must be caused by overpopulation. Reading from NPG.org, the Negative Population Growth organisation site, advocating smaller american families to reduce the number of people living in America, the worlds population was just 3 billion or less in 1950, we hit 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in the year I myself were born, 1987, 6 billion around 1999 and we will be at 7 billion around 20 13. There will be, according to NPG.org, 7 billion people in the world, in just 4 years. Four years, and remember, as I record this episode, 2009 is older rather than newer.

We were at 3 billion in 1950, 50 years later, the year 2000 we were over 6 billion. We'd doubled in population in 50 years. In another 50 years, NPG.org says we will be at 9 billion. 100 years, 1950 to 2050, and we will have gone from under 3 billion to over 9 billion people. In that time, new oil wont have grown in useful amounts, the earth itself wont have expanded to make more livable space, the oceans havnt become deeper to provide more water....

There must be an ideal number, a world population where we are not too hot, not too cold, but just right, so sayth Goldilocks. The website I used for my statistics said america would be better at 1950's numbers, about 150 million Americans instead of 300 million as today. So, lets say the entire world should be what it were in 1950, we would have half the number of people as today, just 3 billion, not six.

I dont know about you, but I grew up just living with my mother, 2 people living in the house from what I can remember, I'd live with my dad for a weekend once every two weeks. My whole immediate family is 3 people, and most of the time I only lived with one at a time. I know my family wasnt causing the problem of overpopulation, all 3 of us. My dad grew up with 9 people in his immediate family, thats 3 times more than I had. My mother had 4 people living in her parents house, thats twice what I had.

So, if the developed countries, if you count New Zealand as developed with our slow internet access , and Southlands rolled r'ssssssssss, are declining in family size, who is making up the bulk of population growth? Third world countries? China is trying to control its population, one child per family and all that, China will soon go from number one largest country with 1.3 billion, to second behind India, which is currently somewhere around 1 billion, from having less children, and thus less people. To control other third world countries, do we need more disease and famine? Thats awful, shocking to think about, I thought people were suffering and dying nonstop, especially in poor countries, and yet we've doubled in number worldwide in just 50 years. If I wanted to be crazy, I might say this current Swine Flu deal is an American conspiracy to wipe out people worldwide, I wont go into that though.

So, if we say that with more people in the world, using more resources, making more pollution to achieve the same level of consumerism as America has had for decades, could that be the main cause of what makes things so bad today?

I asked my friend Elizabeth , of NZ Vegan podcast about what she thought about modern life. Elizabeth has lived in New York, Americas largest city, and has many friends from all around the world, so I thought she would have some inspiring things to add to this episode

Thank you to Elizabeth for being on my podcast, yo u can find NZ Vegan podcast on iTunes, just search for NZ Vegan and you will see the real, gen u whine NZ Vegan Podcast itself, as well as a few imitators, including some jerk with a Dragonfly for his podcast artwork.

I'd like to talk about the power we have now that we have never had before. Computers have given so much freedom, for people to share and talk to each other no matter where they live, or what language they speak. Its given governments and "The Man" the ability to track us, but also more ways to get around the mainstream media too. If I dont like that veganism isnt mentioned on tv, theres no Channel 6, the vegan channel, at least in New Zealand, then I can make my own podcast and talk about it, nobody can block me, well, maybe The Great Firewall of China makes things harder for my Chinese listeners, BUT, even people living in China can somewhat easily get around their government as it tries to crack down on internet access. All it takes is one person to figure something out, and boom, everyone can be told how to do it easily, a program could be made by a very smart person, and a not so sophisticated person could be told "double click this, and you'll bypass the restriction". Adam Curry mentions people linking WIFI together, if all the phone lines went down, in theory at least, people could link all their laptops etc together through wireless connections, just one person with internet access could share it through their computer to others who can wirelessly connect to each other.

I dont have a car, I dont smoke, I dont drink alcohol, I dont take drugs, I dont even eat meat. But, take away my computer? Um, thats my one vice, if you consider the greatest invention of mankind a bad thing to use on a daily basis. I always wanted an Apple computer, ever since the Principal at my primary school, St Josephs school on Eye street Invercargill got the school new iMac G3 computers. He was a mac user, and so got the school mac computers. I think each room had an iMac, and there were one or two iBook laptop computers. Some of the teachers hadnt grown up with computers and had to be taught how to use them. I remember the Principal had a top of the line iMac for himself, an iMac DV, the big difference you could tell was that it was not Bondi Blue, or Tangerine in colour, it was see through BLACK. Sure it had a good graphics card inside, but the things I noticed were that it was black, and had an Apple Pro Optical Mouse. I loved that mouse, it was the first Mouse I'd ever seen that used an optical tracking sensor instead of a rubber coated metal ball. I've now collected a few Apple Pro mice, I love the things. Growing up, its not really fair to demand a more expensive computer from your dad but as soon as I made some money of my own, I bought a secondhand PowerBook G4, the cute little 12 inch, and I love it. Its one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I'm recording this podcast on my second Apple computer, a PowerMac G5, and I cherish it every day. The first time I ever saw a G5 in the metal, its made from Aluminium, was in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, in the north island. I saw it as my dad drove the rental car, and screamed "stop!", it was in a MagnumMac store, where Apple computers are sold.

I love all the things I can do with my computers, the information I can find, the things I can release for others worldwide to see, or listen to, its very liberating. My parents grew up in a mostly white country, now in New Zealand there are many more people of all different races, with different languages, different religions. New ideas, new ways of life. Being all one type of people breeds racism I think, people learn from rumours what other people in other countries are supposedly like, they get awful stereotypes. With the internet, or people immigrating to New Zealand , we can all learn from each other the truth. I dont think I've ever had a New Zealand European, otherwise known as "white", best friend. My closest friends are Maori, Pacific Islanders, Half Filipino/Dutch, Thai. My parents grew up only with people from the "Home nations", the british descended people who moved here a hundred years or so ago, there where Irish and Scottish people who had red hair, but basically everyone was fair skinned.

I notice the older generations saying things I consider sexist, or racist, if I bring it up, they dont see it the way I do, and think I'm just complaining for the sake of complaining. They also say things wrong, my dad will say "marry" instead of "mah ree" , and doesnt believe we need to pronounce Maori place names the proper Maori way, but that the bastardised white new zealand way of saying them should stay. Known for many years as the Wanganui River, the river's name reverted to Whanganui in 1991, according with the wishes of local iwi, an iwi is sort of a Maori community. Theres recently been a huge debate about changing the name of the city of Wanganui to the correct Whanganui, just putting an 'h' in. The mayor and many of the locals are PISSED OFF about that, I think its the right thing to do. The river was admitted to be spelt wrong, and changed in 91, why not change the city name to be correct? The current, wrongly spelt, signs would be worth a lot, they would be collectable, it would be an interesting story for people living there to talk about to their future grandchildren. "I remember when we were allowed to say wanganui, now we have to say whunga bloody nui because of some bloody minority oooooh". I think the people who dont want to correct the name tend to be older and cant admit they are wrong, they grew up in a different time where white people could choose how other races spelt the words belonging to their own language. As the world becomes more global, as we move to other countries and grow fiber optic links, the world becomes smaller and more integrated.

I'll now play a long Stephen Fry clip, he gave this talk in an Apple store, hes as big an Apple advocate as I am! I love basically everything Stephen Fry says and does. In the clip I'll play, he talks about computers liberating people, bringing us all together and how new inventions are always regarded as causing problems, and being bad for you.

I love Stephen Fry, yes that was long, but I couldnt cut it down much more, it was from an hour long podcast, I'd love to have played the full hour long clip here.

something that gets an unfairly bad reputation is Genetic Engineering. Am I glad we dont have GE food in New Zealand? Yes, I often think that normal consumers dont get benefits from GE food, its more to make it grow faster, and in larger amounts so large companies make money. There are some evil companies like Monsanto who are doing things to GE food to control people in third world nations. Thats far too big to get into in this episode. However, do I have anything against GE itself? No! Of course not! Fire must kill a million people, or more, worldwide each year. Do we ban fire? No, but we regulate it, and teach people how to be safe around it. Do we ban nuclear power plants etc? Dammit, in this crackpot country we do, oh, except for, lets say, X Rays that show how cancer is growing in people, the Nuclear Medicine that kills off the cancer, of the smoke alarms that protect us from another regulated technology, fire. Normal smoke alarms have a nuclear material inside, in a very tiny amount, on my fire alarm it says its "america-ium". Theres a story about a former Eagle Scout who got as many smoke alarms as he could, for the nuclear material, and tried to make a nuclear bomb, or nuclear power plant in a backyard shed, maybe you want to look that up on Google.

That was a comment left by H dot Aiku, haiku, on the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog.

I think GE can help people, sure, its not really any different than breeding dogs with long tails with each other so their puppies have long tails as well. People dont consider that "playing god", but its no different. Its selecting traits we want, so that future offspring have those. Using this on food tends to make it produce more, grow faster, etc. I'm not fond of GE food, I wouldnt eat it if I could choose, but I have nothing against genetic engineering itself.

Its mentioned that GE food is needed to feed the world, that we need more food fullstop. Other reports are that we have enough food already, and its wasted. For example, if everyone were vegan, we would need so much less grain and plant food, as currently its fed to animals like cows, to produce big muscles, for big fat steaks. This process uses lots of food, to produce a relatively tiny amount of meat at the end.

I saw an awesome comment on Slashdot that I'd like to use. The poster is QuantumG, I dont agree with him about other things, he dissed Macs and the iPhone, and so we are mortal enemies, but hes very right about how modern food is made .

I'll read QuantumG's replies to samples from the book Fast Food Nation, which critcised, among many other more shocking things, how artificial flavours are used.

Thank you to QuantumG for letting me use a comment he made on slashdot.

I could go on forever, but I should end this episode soon.

I would like to mention that I care about the environment, it should be looked after, I dont believe in child labour, or out of sight, out of mind policies such as letting China do all the worlds dirty work, while rich countries just get pretty plastic packets packed pefectly on supermarket shelves. I do have hope for the future, not a hundred thousand years from now, but the second after everyone in the world has listened to this episode of my podcast, I hope they will pick themselves up and say "wow, im going to make the world a better place". I believe there must be lots of easy ways to make the world a cleaner, greener place, to reduce pollution while still having a modern lifestyle. The world has never been perfect for everyone at the same time. There will always be people who clean the streets of dog poo, I dont expect President Obama to go door to door washing peoples dishes. I guess thats the class system alive and well, based on who has the most money. But, its not like we moved away from a better system, people moved from hand washing things to washing machines, because it was genuinely better. Could a new and better way of life than what I have come about? I have no doubt it will, and I'm prepared to change as soon as I can.

Andy Warhol had a great quote about consumerism.

"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."

I think thats marvellous to think about, no matter how rich you are, you cant drink a better can of coke. I know of purists who only drink coke out of those fancy glass coca cola bottles, but theres not many of them and they get the same product anyway. Wine and other drinks have price ranges, but not coca cola, it has a tremendous brand image, its one of the most well known brands worldwide, and yet is relatively dirt cheap, for everyone.

"Quantity has a Quality all of its own", Josef Stalin.

Consumerism can fund projects, like going into space. I think its fair to say that one day the earth will be "used up" in a sense, at least maybe we will need to import raw materials from other planets, its not any different to one nation importing resources from another country to me. Japan has bugger all natural resources, no oil or iron ore, but it imports metal that cost $1 to get out of the ground, paying $10 for that, and making it into a Japanese car, and selling it as a product for $100 for every piece of that $1 metal. We can be successful even if we dont have any more of the resources we need on this planet, or if we actually need new materials that were never here in the first place, maybe moon rocks cure cancer, who knows?

I dont expect us to get to space in cotton space shuttles, running on sunflower seeds, but biodiesel has lots of potential. I just hope its not made from food crops.

Heres a fun quote about space exploration and cost.

"Space is an unexplored frontier. The fate of the Space Shuttle Columbia reminds us that those who venture beyond the Earth confront real danger. The astronauts themselves have always been mindful of the hazards. I recall attending a lecture given, back in the 1960s, by John Glenn, the first American to go into orbit. A questioner asked him what went through his mind while he was crouched in the rocket nose-cone, awaiting blastoff. He wryly replied " I was thinking that the rocket had twenty thousand components, and each was made by the lowest bidder". Glenn survived to become a US senator, as well as an inspiration to elderly Americans when he ventured into space again, at age 77."

Nuclear Power inspires me, basically how the power stations work is that nuclear fuel heats up water to make steam, the steam drives turbines which create electricity. Nuclear plants often seem to purify water, so thats an added bonus, and they always have excess heat, and steam, which is used in many places to heat houses, this is called "co generation". There are other ways to do this, like coal power stations also make the steam, its the same principle as nuclear, just less high tech, and clean! If you have ever wondered why New York has steam coming from manholes in the movies, its because New York has a steam network, steam rushes through pipes and is used both industrially and by people for heat and steam. I didnt know that myself until recently, and now maybe you have actually learnt something from my podcast :)

I think that there are many things in the world I dont like, poka music, racists, beef flavoured instant noodles. There are many amazing things too though, things that make life now as good, if not better, than its ever been. We have so many new inventions that help us stay in contact with people overseas, to make new friends in different countries. Things we take for granted would have been taken for magic if we could go back in time and show them off.

I dont believe in magic things happening, as Revolver Ocelot said in Metal Gear Solid 2

I was unsure how to end this episode with a positive song, its hard to find contemporary music that is upbeat, every generation has that really, in the 70s there were all the songs against the vietnam war etc. Happy modern music I could think of was all about consumerism, "I drinks de cognac in tha club and smacks my "female dog" in the eye", not very appropriate for my positive view of consumerism!

Instead, I'll end with a clip about the distant future, the year 2000, from some fellow New Zealanders, the Flight of the Conchords with the song Robots.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
=======

World Population figures
http://www.npg.org/facts/world_pop_year.htm

astronaut, lowest bidder
http://www.firstscience.com/home/articles/space/men-in-space_1468.html

Episode 34 Scary Technology

2009-07-24T00:16:00.002+12:00

Episode 34

Scary Technology!

Hello and welcome to episode 34 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I play endless clips of other people talking for an hour straight.

This episode, I've got a lot of good No Agenda podcast clips to play, about scary technology thats either out now, or coming out very soon, apparently. I dont believe all of this stuff is 100% true, then again, it always takes 20+ years to find out what America has, think about the SR71 recon plane that cruises at the edge of space at Mach 3 spying on people, or the nearly invisible B2 bomber, we know about these things, they are not really used at all now, so America must have greatly superior replacements that we'll find out about, one day in the future.

My next episode will be title "the joys of human invention", it'll serve to counter this crazy and terrifying episode, so dont take that cyanide pill just yet, episode 35 will hopefully give you a reason to live.

So, many of these rumoured technologies will no doubt turn out to be true. The question is, which are real, and will be used against you, and which ones are just a pipe dream?

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Episode 33 Matthew Shepard

2009-07-17T22:02:00.000+12:00

Episode 33

Matthew Shepard

Hello and welcome to episode 33 of Jay Wont darts podcast, where I learn life lessons, and talk about them into a USB microphone.

This episode of my podcast, I'll talk about Matthew Shepard, a young man in America, killed for the crime of being gay.

I felt pretty moved by Matthews story, told by his parents mostly, and it made me think about how people use homosexuality as a negative term, its a put down to say "you're gay" for example. Researching this episode, I found this Public Service Announcement featuring Matthews mother

And it made me think of the words I use, and that I hear other people use, and do nothing about. Recently at work I heard people walking out and talking about something that they didnt like , they said "that was gay". I felt like I should say something, maybe confront the couple "what, you have a problem with gay people?", as if I were gay myself. Im not gay, but they wouldnt know that, would they? Instead, I just pretended not to hear them, I dont like to cause trouble while I work, the "customer is always right" and all that. In future I dont want to ever use terms like "gay" to mean a bad thing, and will bring it up if people use the word Gay as a negative slander.

Matthew Wayne Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was a student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured and subsequently murdered near Laramie, Wyoming. He was attacked on the night of October 6–7, 1998 and died at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12, from severe head injuries.

"Shortly after midnight on October 7, 1998, 21-year-old Shepard met McKinney and Henderson in a bar. McKinney and Henderson offered Shepard a ride in their car.[4] Subsequently, Shepard was robbed, pistol whipped, tortured, tied to a fence in a remote, rural area, and left to die. McKinney and Henderson also found out his address and intended to rob his home. Still tied to the fence, Shepard was discovered eighteen hours later by Aaron Kreifels, who at first thought that Shepard was a scarecrow. At the time of discovery, Shepard was still alive, but in a coma.

Shepard suffered a fracture from the back of his head to the front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature and other vital signs. There were also about a dozen small lacerations around his head, face and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate. Shepard never regained consciousness and remained on full life support. As he lay in intensive care, candlelight vigils were held by the people of Laramie.[5]

He was pronounced dead at 12:53 A.M. on October 12, 1998, at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins.[6][7][8][9] Police arrested McKinney and Henderson shortly thereafter, finding the bloody gun as well as the victim's shoes and wallet in their truck.[3]

GAY PANIC DEFENSE

The two attackers tried to defend what they did to Matthew as saying that as a gay man, Matthew had made a sexual advance on them, and in their disgust, shock and panic, they had killed him to defend themselves, they had lost control of what they were doing because they were so shocked. Its called the Gay Panic Defense. I hadnt heard of this before, but there have been two well known New Zealand cases in recent times.

New Zealand examples.

* In 2003, a gay interior designer, David McNee, was killed[8] by a homeless drug user and part time prostitute, Phillip Layton Edwards. Edwards said at his trial that he told McNee he was not gay, but would masturbate in front of him on a "no-touch" basis for money. The defence successfully argued that Edwards, who had 56 previous convictions and had been on parole for 11 days, was provoked into beating McNee after the former television host violated their "no touching" agreement. Edwards was jailed for nine years for manslaughter.[9][10]

* In July 2009, Ferdinand Ambach, 32, a Hungarian tourist, was convicted of killing Ronald Brown, 69, by hitting him with a banjo and shoving the instrument's neck down Brown's throat. Ambach was initially charged with murder, but the charge was downgraded to manslaughter after Ambach's lawyer successfully invoked the gay panic defence.

The prosecutor in the case charged that McKinney and Henderson pretended to be gay in order to gain Shepard's trust to rob him.[11] During the trial, Chastity Pasley and Kristen Price (the respective girlfriends of McKinney and Henderson at the time of the event) testified under oath that Henderson and McKinney both plotted beforehand to rob a gay man. McKinney and Henderson then went to the Fireside Lounge and selected Shepard as their target. McKinney alleged that Shepard asked them for a ride home. After befriending him, they took him to a remote area of Laramie where they robbed him, beat him severely, and tied him to a fence with a rope from McKinney's truck while Shepard begged for his life. Media reports often contained the graphic account of the pistol whipping and his smashed skull. It was reported that Shepard was beaten so brutally that his face was covered in blood, except where it had been partially washed clean by his tears.[12][13] Both girlfriends also testified that neither McKinney nor Henderson was under the influence of drugs at the time.[14][15]

Henderson pleaded guilty on April 5, 1999, and agreed to testify against McKinney to avoid the death penalty; he received two life sentences. The jury in McKinney's trial found him guilty of felony murder. As it began to deliberate on the death penalty, Shepard's parents brokered a deal, resulting in McKinney receiving two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.[2]

Henderson and McKinney were incarcerated in the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins but were transferred to other prisons due to overcrowding.[16]

===================

There had been other attacks on Matthew during his short life.

Because of his sexuality, Shepard faced physical and verbal abuse. During a high school trip to Morocco he was beaten and raped, causing him to withdraw and experience bouts of depression and panic attacks, according to his mother. One of Shepard's friends feared his depression caused him to become involved with drugs during his time in college.

The anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, led by Fred Phelps, picketed Shepard's funeral as well as the trial of his assailants,[34][35] displaying signs with slogans such as "Matt Shepard rots in Hell", "AIDS Kills Fags Dead" and "God Hates Fags".[36] When the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that it was legal to display any sort of religious message on city property if it was legal for Casper's Ten Commandments display to remain, Phelps attempted and failed to gain city permits in Cheyenne and Casper to build a monument "of marble or granite 5 or 6 feet (1.8 m) in height on which will be a bronze plaque bearing Shepard's picture and the words: "MATTHEW SHEPARD, Entered Hell October 12, 1998, in Defiance of God's Warning: 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.' Leviticus 18:22."[37][38][39][40]

Fred Phelps is well known for being homophobic, hes often in american media protesting gay rights. Phelps and his church claim to have protested over 30,000 events.

As a counterprotest during Henderson's trial, Romaine Patterson, a friend of Shepard's, organized a group of individuals who assembled in a circle around the Phelps group wearing white robes and gigantic wings (resembling angels) that blocked the protesters. Police had to create a human barrier between the two protest groups.[41] While the organization had no name in the initial demonstration, it has since been ascribed various titles, including 'Angels of Peace' and 'Angel Action'.[34][35] The fence to which Shepard was tied and left to die became an impromptu shrine for visitors, who left notes, flowers, and other mementos. It has since been removed by the land owner.

I found this clip of Matthews father talking about the death of his son.

I was pretty moved by what Matthews father said.

Under the current United States federal law[21] and Wyoming state law,[22] crimes committed on the basis of sexual orientation were not prosecutable as hate crimes.

A bill was proposed, The Matthew Shepard act, that would serve to protect future victims of attacks on them because they were gay, percieved to be gay, or disabled, it would count as a Hate Crime just as if someone were attacked for being a certain race, now gay people would be protected. Some conservatives, such as James Dobson from Focus on the Family (a group mentioned in GTA Vice City) said that religious people would be forced to accept homosexual people, many religions are strongly against homosexuals, and they felt protecting gay people from attack, under a hate crime offense, that would be basically legalising homosexuality. I'm sad that people still feel so strongly against gay people being granted equal rights.

< press release hoping bill would pass>

Finally, in 2007, the Matthew Shepard Act almost got passed, before the Democrats dropped it before it was approved, President George W Bush had said he might veto it if it came to his desk, George Bush didnt want the bill passed, and most republicans seemed to be against the Matthew Shepard Act.

Before becoming President, Obama had said he was for the bill being passed into law.

On the 2nd of April, 2009 the bill passed, The Matthew Shepard Act became law. Future victims attacked for being gay will be able to class the offense as a Hate Crime, just as attacks based on race, religion or nationality were previously protected.

A play has been made about Matthews story, called The Laramie Project, after Laramie Wyoming near where Matthew was attacked.

Its sad to believe that there are still people out there who feel strongly against gay people. Matthews death was tragic, and has gained a high profile for injustices against homosexuals, I decided to make this podcast episode so that anyone listening would be reminded of Matthew Shepard.

In the years following Shepard's death, his mother Judy has become a well-known advocate for LGBT rights, particularly issues relating to gay youth. She's a prime force behind the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which supports diversity and tolerance in youth organizations.

Created to honor Matthew in a manner that was appropriate to his dreams, beliefs and aspirations, the Foundation seeks to "Replace Hate with Understanding, Compassion & Acceptance" through its varied educational, outreach and advocacy programs and by continuing to tell Matthew's story.

The Foundation focuses on three primary areas: erasing hate in society; putting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth first; and ensuring equality for all LGBT Americans.

Matthew was described by his parents as "an optimistic and accepting young man [who] had a special gift of relating to almost everyone. He was the type of person who was very approachable and always looked to new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people's differences."[1]

Thank you for listening to this episode of my podcast.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

sources
=======

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard

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

dad talks video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkQysLewF4w

PSA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4cl-pNYdXs

press release years later
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbLcXVpDFV0

Episode 32 Freezing Works

2009-07-15T22:46:00.000+12:00

Episode 32

Freezing Works

This episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, I talk about Freezing Works, a New Zealand occupation, basically an abattoir or slaughterhouse where the meat is frozen at the end and exported overseas.

My intro was from No Agenda episode 104.

I'll start with a quote.

The meat processing industry is in a constant state
of change. These changes will continue to meet the
requirements of the 21st Century. The meat plant of
100 years hence will probably feature a high degree of
automation. But this will be beyond our lifetime.

If we
focus upon the immediate future the meat plant of the
21st Century will probably incorporate many of the
current trends or developments.
Operating margins will remain small with the
emphasis upon high productivity and enhanced revenue.
We may see the rise of the mega-plant linked with a
national or international network of specialised added
value operations.
The international demand for meat and proteins is
expected to grow. The challenge of the meat plant will
be to meet this demand and produce a range of products
to the exact requirements of the customer.

'In the public eye, the Freezing Worker is one of the
lowest status individuals in our society. A rough,
irresponsible layabout who jeopardises the economy for
sheer greed and goes on strike at the drop of a hat. He
earns high wages for very simple work. He's at a key
point in the economy, responsible for processing one
or our biggest export commodities. He can hold the
country to ransom. So runs the popular myth.
No-one who has not seen what a freezing works is
like, and the kind of jobs freezing workers do is in a
position to criticise. The industry carries mass
production to its extreme. A freezing works is a giant
dis-assembly line along which carcasses and organs roll
with a deadening inevitability while the men scuttle to
keep up. The machine is truly king. A butcher on the
chain must carry out the same operation over and over
again, day after day until the season ends. Not for him
the carpenter's pride in his skill, the watersiders variety
of tasks, the shearers' sense of completing a meaningful
job. Instead endless, mindless, meaningless work, often
standing in the same place all day using a dangerously
sharp knife, surrounded by hundreds of other men doing
the same thing, and by the unedifying sights and smells
of freshly dismembered animals.'

Kerr Inkson of Otago
University, 1977

I had to look up the term Watersider, it means a person who loads and unloads ships, a dock worker.

In Southland , there are a few different Freezing Works, or "The Works", as they are known colloquially. Freezing Works are common in New Zealand rural areas, farmers grow animals like cows, sheep and pigs, and they are sent off to The Works to be killed. When you go past a Freezing Works, they are quite large factory buildings, normally white, and with lots of metal frames outside, where the animals were kept. Trains or trucks will bring the animals in, they will go through pens, to be stunned and then murdered, or in Freezing Works terms, Slaughtered, inside. Their skin is removed for leather, bones are cut and pulled out, heads cut off, tongues cut out, their muscles sold as meat. Their organs are snatched out and thrown in stainless steel trays for inspection, if they are fit for sale, then they are sold for people to eat. Intestines are used as the casings for sausages, the intestines are like socks that get stuffed with low grade meat, to make sausages. I've read that glands are sold, some powdered up and sold overseas as a health thing, some such as testicles, are probably bought in an attempt to spice up the bedroom. In old photos I've seen, you know from the 80's, hairy old men, without gloves on , are wringing out the intestines to make sausage casings, I assume that nowadays they have to wear gloves at least. The intestines go through a wringer, and get washed.

A little about the history of meat exported from New Zealand. Canning of meat was started in 1869 in New Zealand, only the best meat was canned. In 1874, american cooled meat was sent to Britain, natural ice kept the meat cold.

The first ship to carry frozen meat from New Zealand to the United Kingdom was The Dunedin. The Dunedin used 3 tonnes of coal a day, through a steam powered refrigeration machine, to cool The Dunedins hold, down to 4 degrees celsius. The ship was rigged up for refrigeration in 1881, and its first journey, from Oamaru New Zealand, thats in Otago just north of Southland, left for London on the 15th of February, 1882. It took The Dunedin 98 days to arrive, on the 24th of May.

"It is difficult to realise that only about thirty-five years have elapsed since one of the most important of the world's industries was inaugurated, resulting in the enormous and increasing trade of the present day. And yet the whole of this great industry, and to a very great extent the general prosperity and advancement of New Zealand, hangs on the slender piston rod of a refrigerating machine".

M A Elliot The Frozen Meat Industry of New Zealand - NZ Journal of Science and Technology, May 1918.

How the Freezing Works, work.

The animals are brought in, they are

To do this episode, I read a book about the Alliance Freezing Works here in Southland, the books name is A Cut Above, the book came out in 1985, two years before I were born.

A Cut Above was pretty difficult to read in parts, I read it every day at work while the other people around me ate meat, and I had my normal sandwiches. I'd ask questions to my dad, since he worked at Alliance, and he would casually explain things. Theres lots of disgusting sounding jobs, and sections of the Freezing works. Places like " the fellmongery" , which sounds like something from The Lord of the Rings, its where the wool is taken off sheep.

I'll read a few passages that stood out to me.

Just to explain this first quote, from the 1950s until the mid-1970s New Zealand was a highly protected economy

Ok, hearing that nowadays, with our Free Trade Agreements and all, the idea that the government can deny the right of a company to import a crucial device from overseas, it sounds nuts to me! I asked some older friends, and they could agree that it was the right thing to do, "new zealand jobs" and all, but I dont think its a good plan to just ban imported goods, and instead churn out inferior, and more expensive local versions. Imagine if we could only have New Zealand made computers, that had to have every part made in this country, we'd have to spend billions to reinvent every component, and then still be behind! I dont think I'd want to swap my Apple iPhone for a Kiwifruit brand, Choice-as phone, would you?

This part of A Cut Above is about one of many strikes and protests.

I couldnt believe that happened when I read the book, the farmers were angry that the freezing works were overloaded, they couldnt deal with extra sheep at the time, so the farmers were being forced to hold onto their animals for longer than they wanted. The farmers went crazy, in my opinion, and brought the animals right into Invercargill city, from their farms, and set them free in the main streets, I cant imagine what that must have been like to see. Scared sheep were running about on busy roads, I guess the farmers would have been having a great time, laughing as police struggled to control the animals that must have been running in front of cars, and in every direction. The farmers managed to get the sheep under control, they took them somewhere close to the Invercargill prison, they dug ruts in the ground for blood to flow through, and started killing sheep in public, out in front of tv crews. Thats horrible, the animals were made about as scared as possible, running free on city roads having lived on farms all their lives, the police couldnt deal with it, it would be scary for drivers not wanting to hit an animal, all while the farmers would have been enjoying themselves. Then, to start killing the animals in public, they show no respect at all for the lives of the sheep, they wanted to protest by driving into Invercargill, setting them off on the streets, so they did it. They want to kill the sheep, so they get them back ,take them to another public place and kill them out in the open, on camera, just to get attention. What was their complaint? That they had to wait for the freezing works to kill their animals, and they couldnt be bothered having these poor sheep kept alive that long.

One more section from A Cut Above.

"Continued industrial stoppages in the freezing industry had not escaped the notice of the new National Government which had been elected to office on promises of being tough with irresponsible unions. Late in 1976, it was to demonstrate some theoretical muscle when it introduced the Industrial Relations Amendment (No. 3) Act.

The act obliged those in the industry to give three days notice of industrial action, and they faced fines of up to $150 if they did not kill out sock either in a works or in transit before going on strike. The legislation was an abysmal failure. From one end of the country to the other, the provisions of the act were ignored. A chorus of farmer protest grew.

The Alliance company did not escape and February, 1977, saw a foolish stoppage that made a mockery of the law and industrial relations in general. On 8 February, slaughtermen demanded that security in their dining room be improved, so a door leading from their amenities was locked. During the night, the lock was removed and when some workers other than butchers were found in the dining room the next day, the butchers had a meeting and went home. A meeting was held the next day with union officials and an agreement was drawn up about steps to be taken to prevent non-butchers using their dining room, which included re-locking the offending door.

That upset the freezer workers who decided to go on strike until the door was unlocked. There was no discussion with either the company or the union on the matter. Having made their decision, they simply walked out. Later, Jim Barnes learned that freezer workers were in the habit of using the butchers' dining room as an accessway to their own facilities. The company had, of course, provided an alternative entrance but that was marginally further walking distance. A shed meeting of all workers the next day supported the stand taken by the freezer workers and over the weekend, a series of meetings resulted in the disputes committee chairman, Aubrey Begg, being asked to make a decision.

He, in turn, upheld the authority of the union officials to make agreements with the company, thereby deciding in favour of the slaughtermen.

Work started on Monday, 14 February, with six chains in full production, but ended at 3 PM when freezer workers went home saying they would not return until the door was unlocked. The following day, another shed meeting was held and in a secret ballot, the men decided to uphold Begg's decision and work resumed at 2 pm that day. In the meantime, the company had lost 80,000 head of stock and workers about $150,000 in wages over one door.

To cap it all off, no sooner had work started than there was a telephone call to say there was a bomb on the slaughterboard. This meant evacuating the works while management, including Bill Pottinger, Ray Dunn and supervisors fruitlessly searched for any bomb-like object or container. "

And you're back to me talking again, all that talking is making me tempted to rely on Alex again!

To translate that into modern english, Butchers were annoyed that other people, who worked in the freezer section, used their dining room. The Butchers said that their things were being stolen by the freezing guys walking through their area, and they demanded the door to the room be kept locked. They said they would go on strike if the door was NOT locked. The Freezer workers said they would go on strike if the door WAS locked, they walked through that room to get to where they wanted to go. One side would strike no matter what happened with the door. The door ended up being locked, and the freezer workers went on strike. As A Cut Above says, the Freezer workers had another way to get to where they wanted to go, without going through the locked door, but they said it was longer that way, they wouldnt do it. The whole Freezing Works couldnt work properly without all workers, and in the end they "lost 80,000 head of stock", I think that means those animals would be sent out of Southland to another place to be killed, so the Alliance Freezing works didnt get paid for killing those animals since they didnt do it, someone else would have, and all the workers were not working, so they would have lost about $150,000 1977 NZ dollars in lost wages. I dont know what that would be in todays money, but I've been told around that time you could buy a house for 20,000 or so, 20 grand bought a house, and 150,000 didnt get paid out to the workers because they didnt do their work. All over one door!

I have a special invited guest on this episode, my dad, who worked for a long time at a local Freezing works, slaughtering lambs, his job was to open up the sheep around the back legs.

I'm pretty happy he decided to come on my podcast and talk about working in a slaughter house.

“Thine is the task of blood.
Discharge thy task with mercy.
Let thy victim feel no pain.
Let sudden blow bring death;
Such death as thou thyself would ask for.”

The Slaughterman’s Creed

I've prepared a clip from a BBC documentary, Slaughterhouse, a task of blood to play. I found Slaughterhouse on Veg TV, which you can find at veg hyphen tv.info, you can probably find it by searching for veg tv. its in my notes also. I downloaded the 500MB clip, which put me over my bandwidth cap for this month, but its worth it. Slaughterhouse is a very personal documentary, it has actual characters in the different slaughtermen, most are 20 something year old guys with awful English smiles, the crooked and broken off teeth were what upset me the most in this documentary. If you have the time, I highly recommend downloading Slaughterhouse, A Task of Blood.

About the pig mentioned in the last part, if I were cruel, I'd leave what what happening to her to your imagination. But, Im a nice guy, so I'll explain it, the pig had escaped from the pens that the animals are kept in, she was running about the parking lot of the abattoir, and she ran out onto the road. I guess in the end they will have gotten her back inside, but its nice to think that she could have been left alone to run off down the road to freedom.

I liked hearing what the workers think, even if I dont agree with how the animals are treated by slaughtermen. It was interesting to hear one of the jewish slaughterers being concerned about the animals wellbeing, and that he even considered himself an animal lover! I dont know how he can say that, and work in a slaughtherhouse, remember, he said that humans are a higher order, we are above animals, so we have the right to kill them, according to him. I dont agree with that at all, I guess its a matter of perception, that a slaughterer could think animals were great, but that we had to eat them and because we are smarter when it comes to making iPods, we have the right to kill cows.

I liked the vegetarian message at the start and finish of Slaughterhouse, A Task of Blood too, I think it makes a compelling point, who would want to eat meat after seeing inside an abattoir? Not me, thats for sure. However, this clip

is a little disheartening if you read into it like I did, I get the point of "ok, im going to leave off the meat" but its not like you have to eat less if you are vegetarian or vegan, taking off a huge steak and being left with just the steamed carrots and mashed potato on the side, now your main course. Have THREE vegetables on your plate! For the price of the corpse, you could buy a much larger amount of vegan food, you could have chocolate for desert afterwards, being vegan has nothing to do with suffering through mealtimes.

I think its reasonable to think that people who eat meat dont want to see how its made so to speak, how the animals are kept, treated, hacked to bits. I like bringing that up anytime someone says something like "you're less of a man now you're vegan", I can pull out my iPhone and show them Earthlings on it, Im quite used to gory slaughterhouse footage now, I'd be willing to beat that the average meat eating person would be more upset to see how meat is made than I am.

Theres a good vegetarian message to be learnt when you've seen inside of an abattoir. You see the truth, how things really are. I'd like to play a clip from Compassionate Cooks, I love Colleens podcast where she talks about being vegan and cooking. If you search iTunes for " compassionate cooks" it will show up, I'll have a link to her website compassionate cooks .com in my notes as well.

Thank you very much for the work you do Colleen, I've donated some money towards the running costs of your podcast.

My friend Sam is a young New Zealand vegan, its always good to find other vegans in New Zealand, especially guys, it breaks down any perceptions that only women are vegan. I'd like to mention Sam's new podcast, NZ Vegan Teen, you can find it on iTunes by searching NZ Vegan Teen. Sam has many websites up, I first came across his anti Dairy site, here is a clip Sam sent me to play on this episode.

You can find Sam on iTunes by searching for NZ Vegan Teen, also
http://nzveganteen.blogspot.com/ is one of Sams pages, nz vegan teen . blogspot . com.

Howard Lyman is a former American Cattle Rancher, a cow farmer in New Zealand terms, who decided to be vegan. Howard used modern chemicals on his farm, in 1979 he was diagnosed with a tumor on his spine. He was told he could be paralysed from the tumor, he vowed to switch to non chemical methods of farming if he beat the cancer. He survived the operation to remove the tumor, and changed his farm into an organic operation. Around 1990, Howard Lyman faced health problems, he became vegetarian and found his health improved. He started looking into Mad Cow Disease, which was affecting Great Britain.

In 1996 Howard Lyman appeared on Oprah Winfrey's show, he made comments that offended the National Cattlemens Beef Association, he basically said "meat is bad for you, bad things are fed to cows, ground up roadkill, pets who have been put to sleep etc, cows dont naturally eat meat, its wrong." Oprah agreed , shocked by what she heard she said she wouldnt eat hamburgers again. The Beef Association was very mad about that, it was a bit like the recent New Zealand Pork scandal, my term for it, with the Pork Board denying that New Zealand pigs are badly treated in factory farming conditions. The Beef association were hurt by the drop in sales, when people find out how meat is brought to their supermarket, they often buy less, at least temporarily. Both Lyman and Oprah were sued, they eventually won the trial. In time Howard became Vegan. I have a clip of Howard Lyman, from one of his speeches,

Im near the end of this episode, so I'd like to thank you for listening now.
If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it. My outro will be the song Meat is Murder, sung live by The Smiths, I heard it and rushed off to buy it on iTunes. I've noticed that iTunes doesnt show my earlier podcast episodes, I have the full set of links to each and every episode on my blog page, jaywontdart.blogspot.com , so you can download every one of my episodes.

I'd like to put forth a message to anyone who eats meat and who has listened to this episode, go and see what the inside of a "meat factory" looks like, no matter what its called, an abattoir, a slaughterhouse, or The Freezing Works. Its as simple as typing in " slaughterhouse" or something similar into Google Images, theres no cost or inconvenience to you. Have a look, and ask yourself, "could I work here? Could I cut these animals throats, watching litres of blood come out while they are hung upside down? Could I stand the smell of blood, guts, animal waste?" If you think these places are awful to see, well, why would you pay money for them to stay in business? Why would you want to touch what comes from them, if even the sight is upsetting, the thought is upsetting, the sounds are upsetting, the smell is upsetting, why would you want to eat it?

This beautiful creature must die
A death for no reason
And death for no reason is murder

And the flesh you so fancifully fry
Is not succulent, tasty or kind
Its death for no reason
And death for no reason is murder

Kitchen aromas arent very homely
Its not comforting, cheery or kind
Its sizzling blood and the unholy stench
Of murder

Its not natural, normal or kind
The flesh you so fancifully fry
The meat in your mouth
As you savour the flavour
Of murder

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
=========

http://www.techhistory.co.nz/19thcentury/Meat.htm meat history

www.meatupdate.csiro.au/data/Meat_95_14.pdf intro quote about freezing works

A Cut Above book, 1985

My father, who worked at Alliance Freezing Works!

http://veg-tv.info/ Slaughterhouse, a task of blood documentary

http://www.compassionatecooks.com/

outro song, Meat is Murder by The Smiths, awesome song, go and buy it to support musicians!

Episode 31 Michael Jackson's Memorial

2009-07-08T21:56:00.002+12:00

Episode 31

Michael Jackson's Memorial

MJ INTRO CLIP SONGS

This episode, I'll mention the memorial to Michael Jackson that happened early this morning New Zealand time. I'll play plenty of emotional songs, interspersed with clips from the memorial service. The intro clips were, in order,
I Want You Back,
I'll Be There,
Aint No Sunshine,
Rockin Robin,
Little Bitty Pretty One,
Who's Lovin' You,
My Girl

This is part of an unreleased song, For All Time, it was included on Thriller 25.

Today there was a public memorial, it was held in the Staples Centre in Los Angeles, 17 and a half thousand tickets were given out to lucky Michael Jackson fans to attend. A private Jackson family service was held beforehand, and then Michaels closed casket was unexpectedly taken to the Memorial, it was just in front of the stage for the event. Many famous celebrities took to the stage and talked about how much Michael Jackson meant to them, some performed his songs. Notable people included Mariah Carey, Magic Johnson, Koby Bryant, Usher, Al Sharpton, Brooke Shields, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson and John Mayer.

This is from today Memorial, Stevie Wonder talks about Michael, and mentions a song he wrote for him that was included in the Off The Wall album, I play a clip from the song.

Heres an early demo clip of Michael with his brothers, working on a Jacksons song together, notice the fighting at the end, in lots of the demo clips, recorded at the Jackson Family studio, you can hear the siblings argue. See how long it takes you to recognise the song.

Ok, so thats not really fighting, but on some of the demo tracks, you can hear the jacksons yell at each other, normally Michael will be saying to turn something up or down, and one of the brothers will say something like "do it yourself", and Janet will take Michaels side.

Often when musicians die, fans go through their music and find odd back masked messages, or hints about the singers death. When I heard about Michael going into Cardiac Arrest, and that he had been injected with a drug shortly before, I thought of his song Morphine, from the album Blood On The Dancefloor. They lyrics are all about Michael and his drug addictions to painkillers, Elton John was thanked as helping him off the drugs.

The lyrics to Morphine are kind of scary to listen to now,

He got flat baby
Kick in the back baby
A heart attack baby

Oh God he's taking demerol

I'll play some of the song

Its kind of odd, he named a drug he was addicted to, and mentions a heart attack a decade or so before he pretty much dies from exactly that.

This is one of my favourite sad songs, Someone In The Dark, it was included in the E.T soundtrack and storybook Michael recorded. Michael Jackson said of all the awards he had gotten, he was most proud of the 1984 Best Recording for Children grammy for this song.

Smokey Robinson, a famous Motown artist who wrote songs for other singers, had some fond memories of Michael, he appeared at the Memorial.

This next song is a Michael Jackson Tribute song, called Better On The Other Side, with Puff Daddy, The Game, Chris Brown, Boys II Men and others. It came out the day Michael died.

Al Sharpton had very nice things to say about Michael today at the memorial, he got lots of applause for his message to Michaels kids, its a great quote.

A song that came up at the public service was We Are The World.

Almost through this episode now, I'm trying to keep this episode relatively short. Michaels brother Marlon spoke at the service today, Marlon had a stillborn identical twin brother, Brandon Jackson, who gets mentioned by Marlon at the memorial to Michael.

Very touching.

I'd like to play my second last song, before a clip from one of Michaels children, its very rare for one of his three children to be seen in public, he hid them away from the paparazzi.

Michaels daughter, Paris Jackson was onstage with the other celebrities near the end of the public service, with Janet Jackson and other family members beside her, when she spoke, it reminded me of Steve Irwins daughter talking at her fathers public service. It breaks my heart to hear Paris Jackson talk, for the first time in public.

That was janet giving her advice at the start.

So far, Michael hasnt been buried, theres talk the family would like to have him buried at Neverland Ranch, possibly near the train station he used everyday to go from his house to the small zoo he had near the back of his property. Its an interesting idea, having Neverland Zoo as a Graceland type tourist attraction, I'd certainly like to visit sometime. Whatever happens to Michaels body from now on, his public memorial was very successful.

I'd like to thank you very much for joining me, with episode 31 of Jay Wont dart's podcast. My outro is one last sad song.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Even though Michael Jackson has died, I know his music will live on in me personally, and his millions of other fans worldwide. Im trying not to be sad, and instead be thankful that I was lucky enough to be alive at the same time he was, and to have his music to listen to for decades to come.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Episode 30 NZ Pig Transplants

2009-07-02T22:18:00.001+12:00

Episode 30

New Zealand Pig Transplants

Hello and welcome to Jay Wont darts podcast, this is episode 30, about Living Cells Technology, testing on apparently Disease Free pigs near Invercargill, where I live.

My intro was from a 60 minutes episode, talking about people who eat less willingly, and appear to live longer.

A little history about the Auckland Island pigs.

The Auckland Islands are some sub Antarctic islands, Auckland Island is the main island from the group of Auckland Islands. The Auckland Islands are about 500 kilometres south of Invercargill, where I live.

The islands are quite beautiful looking, its mostly shrubs and rock from what I can see on wikipedia, but I think it has a lot of forest too.

The pigs were released onto Auckland Island in 1807, as a source of food for whalers and shipwreck survivors, they were like living emergency rations for any people who needed food. Pretty dark huh? Living in paradise, all alone, just in case some people crash a boat into a rock, they can swim to your island and eat you. For over a hundred years, the pigs were left alone. They basically became a separate breed of pigs, now called the Auckland Island pig. In more recent times, the pigs were judged as an introduced species, they didnt belong on Auckland Island, and they had been eating too many of the plants, and had supposedly been squashing birds eggs, I dont see how this is a big problem to humanity, but DOC and other wildlife groups in New Zealand did.

12th of January, 1999, a party of volunteers left from Bluff, a port town very close to Invercargill. They returned back on the 23rd, with seventeen pigs, including some pregnant sows. The pigs had been lower in number than expected, and were hard to find, forest covered the area they were in, the only way to find them was to use trained dogs to find and hold the pigs. The hunters would then tie their legs and jaws shut, and the pigs were carried back to the base camp where they were put into cages. The site I'm reading from, rarebreeds.co.nz, in the source notes, says that injuries happened, (not always to the pigs!). So, 17 pigs were rescued, and according to the 3news page, the rest were killed by DOC, for being an introduced species, they had to die according to our Department of Conservation. Department of Culling sounds more accurate to me.

The 17 pigs who were "rescued from auckland islands" as the media have reported, were moved to Invercargill. Rescued? from paradise? Taken to a secret location near Invercargill?

It was found the Auckland Island pig is basically disease free, The Southland Times newspaper here often calls them "disease free pigs". They have been biocertified, acceptable for animal to human transplants.

There is now a company setting up Auckland Island pig farms around Invercargill, theres one currently one building that has just opened, the location is kept secret I believe. The name of the company is Living Cell Technologies, they will handle breeding the pigs and extracting cells from the pigs, to be used in people.

I should mention now, anything I say from now on is pretty much just my opinion, what I think based on what I've found from other sources. I asked for information from Living cell Technologies, and also from Mayor of Invercargill Tim Shadbolt, because I honestly dont know what is going to happen inside the Pig Farms.

Tim Shadbolt, our Mayor, is a big supporter of the pigs being bred, the amount of money being made in Southland is mentioned as being billions of dollars. I wish Living Cell or Mayor Shadbolt had taken up my offer to appear on this episode of my podcast, because I honestly want to know whats going to happen, instead you just get to hear me coming up with crazy ideas. Living Cell didnt get back to me, but I got a text reply from the Mayors office.

Living Cell is going to use liver cells from the pigs, for people with Diabetes Type One, pig cells will be injected into people and they will help the person's liver produce Insulin. In the media, the local Southland Times newspaper, the story about the pigs is only mentioned positively, I seem to be the only person in Invercargill against the use of these animals. The facilities are mentioned as costing millions of dollars to build, and that the pigs will be well treated, and the paper calls them "pig palaces". I've seen a photo of the Mayor inside where the pigs will live, it looked like concrete prison cells, probably only a metre or two across, slabs of solid concrete from what I saw in the photo, that was from when the building was being constructed, I dont know what it will be like inside with the pigs now. I'll now mention some newspaper articles

Ok, sure thing Alex, I'll use you again, just for short things though.. I'll read these news stories myself with a 3 news clip in between.

From The Southland Times,

Living Cell Technologies has received approval to begin clinical trials involving the transplanting of cells from Auckland Island pigs, which are housed in Southland, into eight people with type-1 diabetes.

The pigs are housed at Awarua, near Invercargill, in a $2.5 million hi-tech breeding unit and the company has plans to build up to 80 more units in Southland within 10 years. Each will house up to 500 sows. (by the way, thats sow as in pig, not as in DNA, molecule cells)

Living Cell Technologies founding director David Collinson said the project could inject $1.9 billion into the region's economy in that time and create thousands of jobs.

While clinical trials will be carried out at Auckland's Middlemore Hospital, Mr Collinson said the breeding and cell harvesting in Southland would employ at least 50 people per unit.

The approval, confirmed by Health Minister Tony Ryall yesterday, brings the company closer to the end of its long bureaucratic battle to start trials in New Zealand.

It has been waiting for more than two years, during which time the company threatened to take its technology overseas.

Speaking from Melbourne yesterday, Living Cell Technologies' chief operating officer Paul Tan said the approval was great news.

"Essentially the minister will allow us to do the trials under revised conditions.

"And these revised conditions we totally accept."

They included conducting trials only on severe diabetics and providing patients with more information on what was required of them, as requested by the minister, Mr Tan said.

The revised protocol for the clinical trial would then need to go before the Government's ethics committee before final signoff.

Mr Tan was confident the committee would not have any issues.

"We don't see that as a problem."

Mr Collinson expected the committee to make its decision within a month.

Trials would start two months from the time patients had been selected.

Mr Collinson congratulated Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt for his role.

Mr Shadbolt saved the pigs a decade ago, housing and feeding them out of his own mayoral fund in the hope uses would be found for them.

Last night he said the preliminary approval was great news for the region.

It opened up huge opportunities, including the potential to develop courses at the Southern Institute of Technology to train the scientists and vets that would be needed to staff the pig-breeding units, Mr Shadbolt said.

Diabetes is caused by having too much sugar in the blood because the pancreas cannot make enough insulin.

The pancreas contains clusters of cells, known as islets, that produce hormones like insulin. People with "brittle" diabetes

frequently experience large swings in blood-sugar levels.

The bid for New Zealand approval was boosted in 2007 after researchers discovered pig cells injected into Matamata man Michael Helyer in 1996 were still producing insulin.
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The idea was developed by New Zealander Bob Elliott, who had actually implanted cells in six Aucklanders more than a decade ago, before being shut down by health officials who were concerned about the potential for pig retroviruses to move into the human population.

The new trials will be run by John Baker, clinical director at Middlemore, with four of the patients receiving a dose of 10,000 islet cells followed by four patients who will each have a higher dose of 15,000 implanted.

Diabetes New Zealand estimates 15,000 Kiwis have type-1 diabetes, including 3500 children and teenagers.

Ok, so
a possible 81 pig farms, the one currently built plus another possible 80, X 500 pigs maximum per farm= 40,500 right, 40,500 pigs? Thats an amazingly large number , basically the population of Invercargill , but sad pigs stuck in concrete prison cells. I find the number hard to believe, I wanted it to be confirmed, but as I mentioned Living Cell Technologies didnt reply to my email.

Ok, this clip is from 3 News,

<3 news coverage clip>

A comment left on that 3 News story page, mentions how the pigs feel about how they are treated, in many of these news stories, they make the animals out to be friendly, but we are sure not treating them like friends, taking them from a basically free island, to putting them in concrete prison type cells, for their liver cells to be harvested from female pigs, also called sows! The pigs wouldnt consider the diabetes patients friends, Im pretty sure of that, they must hate living in those awful concrete places.

Back to a Southland Times story.

Secret Pig Palace Officially Opened.

Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt has officially opened the first of Southland's "Pig Palaces".

In a secret ceremony at the high-tech disease-free building that will house 50 Auckland Island pigs near Invercargill yesterday, Mr Shadbolt, council officials, the builder, architect and Living Cell Technologies gathered for the opening of the $2.5 million unit.

Chief operating officer Paul Tan, founding director David Collinson and founding and medical director Bob Elliot said the opening was a major milestone for the company.

After more than two years of battling political red tape, Health Minister Tony Ryall last week granted the company approval to start clinical trials transplanting Auckland Island pig islet cells into eight severe type 1 diabetics.

They had hundreds of people willing to take part in the trials but eligible patients had to meet strict conditions imposed by the minister.

The conditions extended to the Invercargill pig breeding unit built by Invercargill builders Cunningham Construction and designed by Invercargill architect David Mollinson.

The company's growing herd of Auckland Island pigs were yet to move into their new home and were based at a secret location in Invercargill. The company eventually plans to build up to 80 units in Southland, provided the clinical trials are successful.

Mr Collinson has estimated the industry could be worth possibly billions to the Southland economy.

Dr Tan and Professor Elliot said the pigs would move into the first unit once it had been fumigated and all the pigs re-tested for diseases.

OK, re reading that, I see that my math was off, the first story mentioned the buildings having up to 500 pigs per unit, and there could be another 80 built after this first one. This first one will only have 50 Auckland Island pigs its saying in this story, not up to 500 like the other ones possibly could. So scrap my 40, 500 pig tally, 500-450, ha, thats 50 pigs in this unit, from that last story, the latest to come out about the farms. So,my number has gone down to a tiny 40 thousand, and 50 pigs, assuming the other units do hold up to 500 each. Like I said, I never claimed to have all the facts about this operation, I get my information from the media who only seem to say it will be a good thing, I dont think ive seen any fear about diseases coming from the pigs, or anything bad happening, just that it will bring billions to Southland, give people jobs, and help sick people. Meanwhile, according to my latest crazy number that could be well off again, there COULD be 40 thousand and 50 pigs stuck in concrete prison cells. I wont be upset if Im wrong again, and it turns out to be a lot less, I really want the number of pigs experimented on to be a nice round ZERO.

Ok, one of the questions I had for Living Cell Technologies was how the pigs would be used. I have seen they will have concrete living spaces, I think it will be one pig per little concrete cage setup, and that they will be kept separate from anything that could get them sick, I dont know how that happens, if their food is sterilised before its given to them, if they ever are allowed to be patted by their keepers, that sort of thing. Remember, I dont have any facts about this stuff.

I also wanted to know how their liver cells will be taken from them, are they killed, and sliced open for their liver? And then what would happen, the rest of them, the other 95% of the pig gets thrown into the trash? No, that would be wasteful! So it gets made into ULTRA clean bacon? "certified disease free", hell, thats better than Free Range! a thousand bucks a KG at pak n save?

If the pigs are not killed, then are they kept alive, like the Chinese Bile Bears, where the bears are kept alive with a hole in their body, so their bile, stomach acids, can be sucked out and sold as a phony medicine.

Reading from the wikipedia article, Islet (eye lit)(not sure how to say that word, islet or islet) Islet Cell Transplantation, is taken from dead donors, so the pigs would be killed and then the liver would be used I guess. This also explains the large number of pigs , up to 40 and a half thousand by my bad calculation, so I guess maybe they use each pig just once, for one person, they would go through pigs fast for a worldwide demand.

The islet cells take hold inside the patient, and they help the person produce enough insulin, they may be able to live without taking insulin injections, their bodies will make enough with help from the pigs cells. The pigs need to be supposedly Disease Free, to stop any diseases from the pigs crossing over into the patient, where they might mingle with human diseases and create a major problem, a Swine Flu type plague that affects humans.

I feel very angry about the use of any animals for medical reasons, even if it does help human beings, I still dont agree with animals being kept in small cages, in many cases unable to move, its no different from Factory Farming to me. It is sad for people who have Diabetes, if the media hypes up these poor Auckland Island pigs, "rescued from paradise" to live in concrete pig prisons, if these are made out to be a cure for these people suffering Diabetes, but I am sorry, I just dont agree with how the animals are kept, treated, and probably killed in the end. If I had an illness, and was told that a transplant from an animal could help me, I would reject it. Id rather die my natural life, however short that is, than have a large number of animals kept in small areas, and presumably killed, to help extend my human life.

I'll keep up with any news from Living Cell Technologies, to see if they will use the Auckland Island pigs for other experiments, and to think, its happening very close to where I live, I thought medical experiments like this would only happen in America, not 20 kilometres or so from where I am right now.

Thank you very much for listening to episode 30 of Jay Wont dart's podcast. My outro will be a clip about Animal Rights from Ali G, this might offend some people, he jokes about being mean to animals, with some animal rights campaigners to represent our side. Im playing this to lighten my mood as I feel Im the only one in Invercargill who is upset about the Pig Farm about to suck organs out of pigs to squirt them into sick people, being serious just makes me more upset about how the Auckland Island pigs are being treated. Two of the people who campaign for animal rights in the clip are happily sitting on a leather couch, I think its leather from the video, that upsets me more than a comedian playing a stupid character who mentions stupid , and made up, acts. Also, the woman at the start who looks after hedgehogs is sitting on a cow print chair. These people are meant to be against animals being killed, and their skins being used! These people are real, and should know better!

In the clip, Ali jokes about prodding a dog with a fork to make it talk, kicking a hedgehog, and "doing his own experiments on animals" by putting a mouse in a microwave. I can laugh at how crazy it is, because I know its not real, but if it were real, then of course I would be horrified. Just giving a warning to people who dont want to hear the clip.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

sources
=========
INTRO: 60 minutes clip
OUTRO: ali g animal rights clip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Island_Pig
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Island

http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/2519205/Green-light-for-pig-cell-testing
http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/2557457/Secret-Pig-Palace-officially-opened
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/2518906/Go-ahead-for-pig-cell-trials-on-diabetics

Episode 29 Edward Scissorhands

2009-06-30T17:23:00.000+12:00

Episode 29 Edward Scissorhands

Hello and welcome to episode 29 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, about the movie Edward Scissorhands. This is a movie I love very much, I remember watching it on Sky TV when Sky pay tv was still great to watch.

Edward Scissorhands stars Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder, who were going out with each other at the time they starred in this movie. Edward Scissorhands has a simple, and yet original plot, that Edward is a freaky man in some kind of leather suit, made by an inventor played by Vincent Price (thriller laugh) , who falls in love with a normal woman.

Tim Burton was having a great time making classic movies, he had made Pee Wees Big Adventure, great movie, Beetlejuice which I dont like as much, the original 1989 Batman, and then Edward Scissorhands in 1990.

Heres the trailer for Edward Scissorhands

As usual, Im going to tell you the whole story of what happens in the movie, so there will be spoilers. Ok, thats my warning out of the way, so now I get to talk about the ending of the movie.

Edward is an artificial man, apparently, made by an inventor, played by vincent price (thriller laugh again), every time I say his name The Laugh From Thriller goes off! Ok, hes done laughing.

The movie starts with an elderly woman telling her Granddaughter a bedtime story about a mechanical man who was made by an inventor.

The Inventor dies as he gives Edward a gift, a pair of hands made from what looks like rubber. Edward had been left with awful scissor things for hands, a bunch of clippers and scissors for hands. He also has a weird gimp suit kind of leather outfit on.

Edward lives alone in the inventors mansion until one day when a local Avon lady stops by. It turns out to be Peg Boggs, a friendly local woman from the town below the mansion. She finds Edward, and brings him down to civilisation.

At first the family is quite spooked by Edward, but he is accepted by the neighbourhood after a short time. Ed likes Peg's daughter Kim, played by Winona Ryder, but her boyfriend Jim, played by Anthony Michael Hall, the geek from The Breakfast Club, hates Edward.

Edward likes to trim hedges, he makes wonderful, yet tacky hedge sculptures. One woman, who flirts constantly with men, suggests Edward start up a hair salon. He is successful at this for a time, but has trouble getting a loan from a bank, since he doesnt have a credit rating, or any assets to back a loan.

Kims boyfriend Jim wants money for a van of his own, he realises that Edward can pick locks with his hands. Jim lies to Edward, seemingly tricking him into breaking into a house, to supposedly get Jims stolen stuff back from this strange house. An alarm goes off when Edward, Jim and a few other friends are inside, and doors come down and seal Edward in. The others leave him there to be caught. Edward cant work door knobs, and is trapped until the police come.

Edward is taken to the police station where they discover that Edward doesnt know the difference between right or wrong. He's lived alone almost all his life, and is very trusting of stranger. Police officer Allen notices that inside Edward is a very kind person, and is nice to him. Edward gets out of the police station.

The townspeople turn on Edward after the burglary, not long before they had loved him for being so unique and friendly, but now they all seem to decide that they have always hated him, and that nobody had ever trusted him. Edward is hated by almost everyone, except for the Bogg family that he lives with. The Bogg's have a christmas party, Edward starts carving a sculpture from a block of ice. Note to listeners in New Zealand, in the top half of the world, like America, its very cold around December, white christmas and all that. In New Zealand we have our hottest weather around december to February, we have christmas at the beach.

The Boggs christmas party is very quiet, none of the family friends go because they dont like Edward.

Shavings of ice flutter off in a maniac fashion while Edward creates his ice sculpture, they look just like falling snow, and Kim dances slowly underneath, she is not used to snow living in a warm town. While cutting the ice, Edward accidentally cuts Kims hand. Jim her mean boyfriend thinks that Ed deliberately hurt her, and attacks Edward.

Kims brother Kevin is almost ran over by a drunk friend of Jims, Edward sees the van coming, and pushes kevin out of the way, accidentally cutting him as well. The neighbours and police think that Edward is attacking people, and chase him out of town. Edward goes back to his lonely life at the top of the hill, in the inventors dilapidated old mansion. An angry mob of neighbours storm up to the mansion, looking for Edward. Officer Allen tries to disperse the angry crowd, he tries to trick them into thinking Edward is already dead, and tells them its all over. They continue on to the mansion.

Kim gets to the mansion before the angry neighbours, she finds Edward alone. Jim follows them and attacks them both, but is eventually killed efficiently, best way to describe it, by Edward, who didnt want to hurt anyone, but does so to defend Kim.

Kim tells Edward how much she loves him, its a very touching scene, I get choked up watching it, and Kim tells the mob that Jim and Edward both killed each other during the pervious fight. All the neighbours return home.

The elderly woman from the movies beginning reappears, and she finishes her story about Edward Scissorhands to her granddaughter. It is revealed that Edward is still alive and "creating snow" from his ice sculptures, which fall upon the valley below. The elderly woman reveals to her granddaughter that she is, in fact, Kim. She refuses to visit Edward because she wants Edward to remember her the way she was in her youth.

Its a very sad, but beautiful ending, its one of my favourite movie endings of all time. I have to give Edward Scissorhands 5 out of 5, for being so original and sad.

I do get a little upset everytime watching the ending, that the old lady, Kim, never went and saw Edward again, so hes just lived alone in an old house for 50 years? We see he had made statues of Kim, he obviously thought of her all the time. What a terrible way to live, all alone, wanting to be with someone.

In casting, apparently Michael Jackson wanted to be Edward, that would have been amazing to watch. Michael Jackson also wanted the part of Willy Wonka in the latest remake, which went to, that Johnny Depp guy again!

Edward Scissorhands has some amazing music, Tim Burton and composer Danny Elfman, the guy who made The Simpsons theme worked together again. Three Tom Jones songs appear in Edward Scissorhands. Its not unusual, Delilah, and With These Hands, perfect for a scissorhanded guy.

I'll end with the main theme for Edward Scissorhands, its very beautiful.

Thank you very much for listening to my podcast. I appreciate all of my many listeners, all five of you.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

edward scissorhands theme

Sources
=======
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Scissorhands

INTRO clip, from Metal Gear Solid 2, Sons of Liberty (I need scissors! 61!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWFa8zfWfeA edward scissorhands trailer

Episode 28 Michael Jackson's Death

2009-06-26T21:38:00.000+12:00
Episode 28

Michael Jackson's death.

Hello, I'm sad to welcome you to episode 28 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, sad because Im about to briefly talk about Michael Jacksons death. My short intro is from one of the Thriller Casts, an official Michael Jackson podcast to build up Thriller 25, with Adam Curry leaving a message along with other celebrities about how he felt about Michael Jackson.

Today Michael Jackson died, at about 10AM, June 26th New Zealand time, thats about 2PM June 25th in America. He was just 50 years old. He fell into a coma and the cause of his death is believed to be cardiac arrest, which is similar to a heart attack.

I heard about it first from my friend Wiriya, he sent me a txt message early in the morning saying sorry about Michael Jackson. I heard during a news bulletin that he had died. I heard Shes Out Of My Life. A very beautiful song from Off the Wall, his first solo album.
I knew it were odd that a Michael Jackson song was being played, Coast FM is for people in their 60s, its all idiotic feel good music, in between the ads for errectile dysfunction magic pills, and the Senior card, which has the slogan of "its for people like you". Straight after the song, I heard the news about his passing.

I dont know what to say really, I'm pretty upset that Michael died, I was one of his biggest Invercargill fans, thats for sure. I love that he has the biggest selling album of all time, Thriller, which has sold over 104 million copies, according to the Guinness Book of Records. Thats just amazing, only about 30 albums have ever sold more than 20 million, and the second biggest selling album is The Eagles greatest hits, at a pathetic 45 million. In america, they sometimes say that Michael Jackson HAD the biggest selling album of all time, they mean just in america, The Eagles album has sold a few more copies than Thriller in America for some insane reason. I think its because all the old Eagles fans lose their albums, then overdose on their meds and in a crazed fury go to the cd store and buy dozens more copies. Plus, all Michaels comparatively young fans just download his albums.

I'll be watching the news waiting to hear more about him over the coming days, coverage of his funeral and other things. I remember when he was at James Browns funeral, it was so odd seeing Michael Jackson and his body guards leaning over James Brown in a coffin talking privately. I cant imagine just now what Michael Jackson will look like in a coffin, in a way I hope its an open coffin, as shocking as it will be, it will help me understand, wow, hes dead and is not coming back.

Online, many celebrities have twitted nice messages about Michael, saying he was their inspiration. I checked his official site, michaeljackson.com, which is a Sony site. A few years ago Michael was very angry with Sony, because he felt they didnt promote Invincible, his last album well enough. He wanted to leave the label, and they effectively cut off any further singles being released. He called the heads of Sony Music racist, and that they were "very devilish". At first the Michael Jackson.com site had a drawing of Michael to promote his performances that were due in just a week or so, with this small statement underneath.

pretty bland, and hard for me to believe, it should have been the most official news source, being his own site and all, I still wanted to believe it was just some crazy rumour.
The site was soon updated with a longer statement from Sony.

I'll play some of the coverage about his death so far, thank you for listening to this short episode of my podcast.

Today, I also heard his song Gone Too Soon, from the Dangerous Album, Michael dedicated the song to his friend Ryan White, a young AIDS victim. Ryan caught AIDS from a blood transfusion, and the local schools didnt want him to come back to school when they learned he had AIDS, they feared it could spread. Many celebrities such as Michael and Elton John supported Ryan White, and he is now remembered as a figure about the plight of AIDS. I'll end with Gone Too Soon. Rest in peace Michael.

Gone Too Soon.

Episode 27 Agent Orange in NZ, Ivon Watkins Dow

2009-06-24T18:54:00.000+12:00
Episode 27

Agent Orange in NZ, Ivon Watkins Dow

Kea

Hello and welcome to Episode 27 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I bring up shocking New Zealand history.

My intro was from episode 100 of No Agenda.

I decided to cover the topic of Ivon Watkins Dow, a New Zealand chemical company that made Agent Orange when I came across the audio clips I'll play during this episode. Ivon Watkins Dow is now known as Dow Agroscience.

Agent Orange was used during the Vietnam War, it killed leaves on trees, it basically killed off jungle, so there was nowhere for enemies to hide, the Americans used it so they would be safe from snipers and so their enemies wouldnt be able to hide in the jungles of Vietnam. Some of this Agent Orange was made in New Zealand, by Ivon Watkins Dow. There are two chemicals used to make Agent Orange, each one is a herbicide, it kills plants, put them together and they make Agent Orange. Now we know that Agent Orange seems to have give all kinds of disease and illnesses to soldiers and other people who came in contact with it. In Vietnam, about 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, and half a million children born with birth defects. In Vietnam, most of the illnesses are cancer, mental disabilities, extra fingers and toes, facial growths, and skin diseases.

Worldwide, millions of people have been compensated for their illnesses, but many feel let down, betrayed and experimented on by the large companies that made the chemicals and their governments.

I cant believe Agent Orange was made in New Zealand, we pride ourselves on being clean and green, and we are so against nuclear technology, and yet we made this awful poison which seems to have done awful things to many millions of people worldwide.

There are many people in New Zealand who hate Ivon Watkins Dow, the New Zealand company in New Plymouth that made Agent Orange, there are information websites about the issues, that are very interesting to read. Its said that some houses in New Plymouth are built over a dumping site, there are houses over leaking drums of Agent Orange.

The main audio I'll play for this episode is a TV3 program from 2006, called Let Us Spray. I also have a Campbell Live clip to end this episode with. Enjoy the audio, its amazing to think this happened in New Zealand.

Can you believe that? I have links to the video files in the lyrics section of this podcast, for you to watch the video if you want to see it.

This is a clip from Campbell Live, a New Zealand current affairs type show, I think it came out after the Let Us Spray documentary.

I cant believe this was allowed to happen here, in Clean Green New Zealand. This makes me wary of Genetically Modified food, I have no fears about improving plant growth etc, but it seems that large chemical companies are always evil, they always seem to focus on making more profit, and bugger everyone else.

Thank you for listening to this episode.

My outro is from No Agenda 92.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
========

http://content.mediaworks.co.nz/tv/News/061102/CL.RESIDENTS.021106.300k.wmv

let us spray show

http://content.mediaworks.co.nz/tv/Special/Spray1.300k.wmv
http://content.mediaworks.co.nz/tv/Special/Spray1.300k.wmv
http://content.mediaworks.co.nz/tv/Special/Spray3.300k.wmv
http://content.mediaworks.co.nz/tv/Special/Spray4.300k.wmv
http://content.mediaworks.co.nz/tv/Special/Spray5.300k.wmv
http://content.mediaworks.co.nz/tv/Special/Spray6.300k.wmv
http://content.mediaworks.co.nz/tv/Special/Spray7.300k.wmv

Episode 26 Wilhelm Scream

2009-06-19T20:55:00.001+12:00
Episode 26

Wilhelm Scream

Hello and welcome to episode 26 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I use sound clips in every episode, sometimes dedicating whole episodes to particular effects.

This episode, the Wilhelm Scream, probably one of the most famous sound clips about.

My intro was from No Agenda 103, some weird connection problem for John and Adam.

Just to jog your memory, this is the Wilhelm Scream.

Familiar?

This was the first use of the sound effect, the movie Distant Drums back in 1951, as the people cross a river, one of them is dragged underneath by an alligator.

Heres what Wikipedia has to say about the famous scream.

I notice lots of movies that have the Wilhelm Scream, a lot of famous movies feature it, Spiderman, The Fifth Element, the I think all of the Star Wars movies, not sure, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Toy Story, Lord of the Rings 2 and 3, Reservoir Dogs, Gremlins 2, basically all kinds of famous movies all with the same little scream effect, . Its often used when someone is stabbed, or falls to their death, something when someone gets quickly taken care of.

I found this program about the history of the Wilhelm Scream.

Thank you for listening to this short episode! My long outro, for padding, is from No Agenda 103, talking about Taylor Swift.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
=======
The first wilhelm scream video clip

history of wilhelm video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PxALy22utc&feature=related

Episode 25 Presidential Animal Mishaps

2009-06-18T17:14:00.000+12:00
Episode 25

Presidential animal mishaps

Hello and welcome to episode 25 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I mention silly news stories.

My intro was from No Agenda 103.

Today on the radio I heard about American President Barrack Obama swatting a fly during an interview, it was a silly news piece to be mentioned worldwide with all the bigger, more important news stories that must be happening.

I thought I'd play the audio from the video clip of Obama swatting a fly, as well as a couple of other quick stories, to do with Presidents and Animals. I covered Nixon in his own special episode, he has a few stories to do with Checkers, a dog given to him, so I wont mention those again.

Heres the Obama Fly story, and then some media comments to do with it.

I wish he didnt kill the fly, no matter how impressively he squashed it. Here is some of the media responses to the fly swatting.

George Bush, the president before Obama, had his own animal stories too. Theres one where he choked on a pretzel while watching sports at home, only saved by his dogs, and another when his most famous dog, the adorable Barney bit a reporter during Bush's last days as president. I'll play those two stories together.

My last story in this very quick episode is of Jimmy Carter being attacked by a rabbit while he was fishing.

My outro is from episode 61 of No Agenda

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
=======

Obama, fly
Video taken from youtube
http://blog.peta.org/archives/2009/06/obama_and_the_f.php
http://gawker.com/5293031/barack-obama-fly+killing-badass

George Bush, Barney bites reporter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3C1OgPBzwc
George Bush, Pretzel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_pretzel_incident

Jimmy Carter, Swamp Rabbit,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident

Episode 24 Lettuce Ladies, Vegetarian stunts

2009-06-14T16:04:00.001+12:00
Episode 24

Lettuce Ladies and other vegetarian stunts

Hello and welcome to the 24th episode of Jay Wont darts podcast, where I scour the internet for .flv flash video clips, pare them down to audio only .mp3s, and deliver them to you as a long .aac audio podcast. I do include the links to the videos in my sources, you can see those on my blog, jaywontdart.blogspot.com, or in the lyrics mode of your iPod, it will show the script for this episode, with the sources at the bottom.

My intro was of the Comfort Wipe, which, in case you didnt understand, is a plastic handle that you put toilet paper on, its advertised in the tv ad as for elderly people who cant reach that part of their bodies anymore, and the very obese, who have too much fat, to be able to reach. Thats an awful mental image huh?

Recently, the other people at my work mentioned PETA had Lettuce Ladies in New Zealand, the Lettuce Ladies are basically models, or wannabe models, who wear a bikini set made from fake lettuce leaves. They stand out in public, and say "go vegetarian", maybe hold up little signs, tell people to go to PETA websites, and basically get attention for the meat free cause. Many serious vegetarians and vegans really dont like PETA because of these cheap gimicky campaigns, often using almost naked women to sell the message of anti meat. I know I get a little annoyed by PETAs ads, that are 30 seconds long, are normally just hot women moving about, dancing, Alicia silverstone in slow motion getting out of a pool, looking at the camera in different ways, and then a she will say "go vegetarian" at the end, and "goveg.com" will show onscreen. It doesnt sell the message, it makes being vegetarian seem like a fad diet, or maybe even like a product that needs to hook people into it, like how cigarettes were advertised as for business men who drove ferraris, and had a hundred beautiful wives at the same time.

I'll play the quick Auckland Lettuce Ladies clip I found, from the New Zealand Breakfast program, its very stupid. Paul Henry, the male host calls them bok choy, which is a fancy pants Chinese lettuce thing. Hear his response? Paul Henry is known all through New Zealand for being a really stupid man, hes rumoured to be ultra rich, I think he sometimes refers to his "roller", he has a Rolls Royce, and calls it "the roller", and a few times hes said really stupid things that get used as sound bites. I do think that these outrageous Lettuce Ladies stunts get attention in the mainstream media, it seems to be the only way to cover any vegetarian or vegan issues, they have to have a funny angle, for the news hosts to make fun of "those weirdo hippies", while the naked people just get to scream "go vegetarian!" at the camera. The Lettuce Ladies standing at the most well known crossing in Auckland, with the National Bank and the Sky Tower close, they did get on television, and people saw the message, but then Paul Henry the tv host just made fun of them really, about how good looking they were, and "who cares about the message". Is it better this didnt get on tv? I dont know, I like that the PETA Lettuce Ladies have been to New Zealand, and surely every vegetarian and vegan in NZ will know about it, it made me feel like im not the only person who doesnt eat meat in New Zealand. The people at my work were the ones that told me about it, they saw these three women, two from Auckland, and another who lived in Australia, and thought of me. Thats got to be good, that my friends saw these stupid women dressed up in lettuce bikinis, and they thought of my message. So I can help spread the actual information, once the sexy ladies have flirted with everyone passing by to get on television.

I thought I'd make this episode to play some other funny, or wacky vegetarian videos, most are from PETA but there are a couple of other ones , like from Veg TV which is an online only video producer I think. They do a good interview with Kermit the Frog, although he never admits to being vegetarian, but that he thinks its a good thing and it cant hurt. A few videos are from Fox News, the most right wing news coverage in America. They mostly have videos making fun of the weirdo hippies parading about, in their redneck eyes the lettuce ladies etc are pushing 5 year old children to have sex. Other clips I play will be quite serious, but with interesting people, that you wouldnt have expected to be vegetarian, which is always really great to learn, it shows anyone can be vegetarian.

One of my favourite clips I'll play is of Dennis Kucinich, hes a 60 something year old Vegan, who ran for American President for the democrats. I think I could have actually voted for him, if I were american. Its hard to imagine anyone but Obama getting it sure, but it would be fun to vote for a peace loving Vegan guy. He also has a hot wife, Elizabeth Kucinich, who is literally half his age. Shes vegan, tall, thin and with gorgeous red hair, just how a woman should be!

Some of the PETA ads are to do with celebrity endorsements, theres Alicia Silverstone, whos ads were taken away from Texan broadcasts, because they were too sexy, I have an answer video to that, cloris leachman, who i hear you say? well she plays Grandma Ida, the old evil slavic lady on Malcolm in the Middle, shes apparently vegetarian which is cool to know, I'll think of that when I see her on Malcolm in the middle.

For the first clip, I'll play a fairly dull interview with some overseas Lettuce Ladies. Its got bad sound quality sorry.

Ok, the other clips should all be of better quality, and more interesting, that clip was just to get rid of the darn Lettuce Ladies. I'll now play the Alicia Silverstone ad, that has her coming out of a pool of water and flirting with the camera, this is a longer version , where she actually says more than 2 words at the end.

This and some other PETA ads were banned in Texas, for being too sexy. I found a great reply video on Youtube, someone telling Texans to stop being so fat, and leave the animals alone. The sex related stuff really makes me cringe, a lot of the sexy women telling people to go vegetarian in PETA ads focus on impotence, basically saying "like, if you eat meat and stuff, its gonna make your you know what, like, not work and all?". I get sick of hearing that again and again, and to me I think its a bad primary message, there are much better reasons to be vegetarian or especially vegan. To say that all men who eat meat, that the meat makes their dick fall off, thats not very true is it? Its not like only vegan guys can get a woman knocked up, or else humans would be basically extinct. All except for the 3 vegan guys in the world, and the few million Vegan women.

Enough of my talk, I'll play the texas related ad. It goes into a PETA ad at the second half.

Someone critical of PETA is this large american woman, she says shes helped at animal shelters before, and in this clip she reads some of PETAs "sea kittens" stories, PETA has taken to calling fish Sea Kittens, to try and make fish appear friendlier. I have nothing against the Sea Kitten idea, PETA sells some cute looking toys on their site, basically they are little cartoon fish that have cat features, masks and other disguises to look like kittens. But this woman in the Youtube video clip I'll play, shes pissed off with PETA.

I like her Sea Kitten story voices.

These are some celebrity PETA clips, first I'll play Cloris Leachman, the 80 year old woman who plays the awful Grandma on Malcolm in the Middle.

This one is about Elvira, shes that woman that gets parodied on The Simpsons as Boob-erlla, "stare at my booooooooobs", she dresses like a vampire, or Morticia Adams from the Adams Family I guess. She hosted B Movies on television. This ads kind of fun, although I dont know if the woman who plays Elvira is Vegetarian, it doesnt say so on her Wikipedia page, and if its not on Wikipedia, it cant be true!

I never knew Forest Whitaker was vegetarian,

I have a few more PETA celebrity clips, I dont mind these PETA clips, being serious and to the point, much better than the naked Anti Fur commericals. However, to break up the serious ads, heres a news story about a Vegan Stripclub.

Back to serious ads, James Cromwell is the guy you may know best from the movie Babe, he plays the farmer. He decided to be vegetarian from seeing how animals were kept, and during Babe, decided to be a Vegan because of ethics. James Cromwell also played the oldest prison staff man in The Green Mile, he had the wife with the mental problems.

my other Veg TV clip is the Kermit the Frog Interview I mentioned.

Kermit the frog, now vegetarian? I'll hold him to that.

The last PETA celebrity ad, about Masta Killa, love the name, a famous rapper, and also a vegetarian.

just two more clips now, I'll play them as my outro. One is Fox News VS PETA, and the other is Dennis Kucinich, presidential hopeful. He seems like a great guy.

I've went away from my wacky vegetarian ad theme during this episode, to show that some ads PETA has done didnt need nudity to be memorable. Im going to remember the Veg TV Kermit the Frog interview, just as much as I'll remember any naked model, and thats saying something!

Thank you for listening to my show,

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
=======

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DimD53mbDmY lettuce ladies interviewed lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt4QWFJenGA go veg ad banned in texas, rebuttal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z4H8nSagMk angry anti peta sea kittens lady

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjb5vSvLBmg fox news vs peta

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7DOCwomU_Q Elvira ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lm2xMCwR_I cloris leachman, malcolm in the middle grandma Ida

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuK0KaSctNo Dennis Kucinich

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAtbIUyAmbE vegan stripclub

Episode 23 Tunguska Event

2009-06-14T12:11:00.000+12:00
Episode 23

Tunguska

My intro was from No Agenda 98, about Russian Television.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I talk about things that may or may not have happened.

This episode, the Tunguska Event. Sorry if I pronounce the name wrong, Tung-gus-ka.

I got the idea to make this episode from listening to No Agenda episode 100, this clip reminded me of how interesting the Tunguska Event is.

The Tunguska Event was a mysterious, and ultra powerful explosion that happened in Russia, back on the 30th of June, 1908. The current theory about what happened is that it was some kind of big comet, or meteor, that fell from the sky and exploded over the countryside. This explosion happened in a remote part of Russia, so there were no human deaths, but the power from the blast scarred the land. Reading from Wikipedia, the power of the blast was somewhere between 5 and 30 megatons, about 10-15 most likely. Thats about the same as the Castle Bravo explosion, about a third the power of the most powerful nuclear bomb blast ever, from the Tsar Bomba, or best of all, the Tunguska blast was around a thousand times more powerful than than Little Boy, the bomb dropped over Hiroshima. A THOUSAND TIMES more powerful than the only nuclear bomb dropped on a city, so imagine the pictures from Hiroshima times one thousand! As many as 140,000 people died in Hiroshima from that one bomb, multiplied by 1000 , and assuming that just making the bomb more powerful would proportionally kill more people, then thats 140 MILLION dead. So, by my crackpot logic, that makes no sense at all, if an explosion like the Tunguska event happened again, over a country like America, it could kill 140 million people. My math is way off there, thats assuming the blast spread out evenly, and that there were 140 million people lined up patiently waiting for the explosion, but its a shocking number. That was an obvious edit.

Back to some actual facts. The explosion knocked down about 80 million trees, I cant imagine what a million trees look like, let alone 80 million, over 2150 square kilometres. Looking up what a square metre is again, to make sure I understood, the blast basically made a square over 2000 kilometres in each direction dissapear, like dragging one of those little selection boxes in MS Paint, and then deleting it. 2150 square kilometres, thats too much for me to imagine, like the 80 million trees.

This is straight from Wikipedia

I still love using the Alex voice, I leave in any little hiccups it makes, it makes it more interesting to listen to, dont you think?

The blast was measured as about 5 on the richter scale.

Heres a clip from The History Channel

Id like to understand what happened at the end of that clip, I didnt cut out what the guy was saying, thats weird.

There's many interesting, and crazy, ideas about what really happened during the Tunguska Event. Some include black holes hitting the earth, natural H Bombs going off, natural gas suddenly flowing out from a crack in the earth and detonating, or my personal favourite of the theories, that Nikola Tesla had something to do with the Tunguska Event. Around the time of the Tunguska Event, there were a team of men heading to the North Pole. The Crazy theory is, that Tesla tried to communicate with the men, by sending an energy beam, through the earth, and perhaps this exploded out and caused all the damage to the area.

Whatever happened , its an interesting, and freaky, occurance, the Tunguska Event. Oh, one last clip, from that old movie, Ghost Busters, pretty random huh, the Tunguska Event gets mentioned, although they get the year wrong, it was in 1908, they say 1909.

Funny little clip, I wasnt expecting to use it as I planned this episode, I saw "Tunguska Event in Popular Culture" on Wikipedia, saw it was mentioned in Ghost Busters and found a sound clip on a sound bite website, its linked in my sources below.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

This Outro is from No Agenda 92,

Have a super happy day, bye.

NA 92 clip electric shocks in NY

Sources
=======

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiXpp-i442s
History Channel video

http://www.moviewavs.com/Movies/Ghostbusters.html for Sound clip from Ghost Busters

NA episodes 92, 98,100

Episode 22 Once Were Warriors

2009-06-08T22:48:00.003+12:00
Episode 22

Once Were Warriors

That intro was from when Leo Laporte, legendary podcaster, exploded during a show, I've saved a copy of the video from the live stream. Leos one of my heros, truly a great man, but as you heard he got very angry during the recording of that show, Im sad for him that he did that and it was recorded by him and others, I feel like paparazzi snooping into his life a bit, just by hearing it. But, its out, and I might as well use it for a random intro.

Hello and welcome to the twenty second episode of Jay Wont darts podcast, where I talk about amazingly sad films such as this one.

This episode, Once Were Warriors, the greatest film that will ever be made in New Zealand, thats not a putdown to my country, but I seriously doubt we will ever top Once Were Warriors, at least in my lifetime.

On rating sites like Rotten Tomatoes, its gotten almost a perfect score, and on IMDB, it deserves to be on the top movies of all time list, it gets held back a bit because people have not heard of it overseas. It gets near flawless reviews everywhere though, and I think its very popular in France, or french speaking countries, on youtube theres many french dubbed versions of the movie! Kinda weird, they keep the Maori language singing in, but then the actors voices are gone, and replaced with totally different sounding people! The dubbed version sounds to me as if its redone by rich white people, compared to the original Maori voices.

Im rewatching the dvd as I type this.

Once Were Warriors is based on a very famous New Zealand Book, by Alan Duff. The story is about the sad life for many Maori people, living poorly in the big cities of New Zealand. Maori people were here before the white settlers arrived, there were periods of war, and many injustices are still said to be about today. According to Wikipedia,
Maori make up just 14 percent of New Zealands population of almost 4.2 million, but they are almost 50 percent of the prison population. Once Were Warriors is basically about that, about the horrible problems that face Maori today in New Zealand. We see gambling, drinking, violence and court, with close gang ties to the family living in South Auckland state housing. The main characters are Jake and Beth Heke. Jake Heke is known as The Muss, Jake the Muss, for muscles, he gets in bar fights all the time, and is known for his fighting. Beth is his wife, she looks after their many children and cleans up the mess made by Jake. Jake often beats up his wife, or anyone who "gets lippy" to him.

I'll play the international trailer, I recorded it from my DVD, you might notice the very annoying buzzing of my speakers, I left it in because it adds a certain texture to the recording :) Ok, well I managed to fix up the speaker wires for later recordings, its just in this trailer clip.

The famous announcer guy says "maoris", you dont say that, Maori, the name itself, and other Maori words dont have plurals, you dont put an s on the end. Its a bit like the word Sheep, you dont say Sheeps even when theres more than one. Theres no such thing as "maoris", its actually an offensive sort of thing to say, its a racial slur "oh those bloody marries are at it again".

A bit my friend Desmond likes is this clip

dont play that shit bro

But one of my favourite bits, is when one of the sons is taken away by the police, since his parents cant look after him, he starts smashing windows at the new borstal, and his teacher gives him a great speech. A taiaha is a wooden spear.

I like that bit, we are the same colour, well, they are both Maori, its weird that the kid calls his teacher "black", as if thats a bad thing and he doesnt have dark skin himself. Also, I dont really count a bayonet, or a spear as hand to hand weapons. A bayonet is a sharp knife on the end of a rifle, for stabbing with. A spear is not hand to hand either. When it comes to weapons, a sword would beat either one really, a sword is metal like the bayonet but longer of course, and so would "beat" the bayonet, and a taiaha is just a piece of wood, it could be broken by the swords blade and strength. Its a great little speech though, and the line about carrying your taiaha inside comes up again later, the point is to be proud of Maori culture, and heritage.

And anyone whos seen Once Were Warriors will remember this song,

So, to the people who havnt seen Once Were Warriors, I hope you make it a high priority! Its a very sad, and scary movie, to think that that kind of thing still happens in New Zealand today. I have family members who grew up in similar households, and refuse to watch the movie. I hope one day they will watch it with me, because its a 10 out of 10 movie, definitely one of my favourite movies of all time.

I have the most well known line from the movie, Cook the man some eggs. During a party, Beth is drunk and a son who doesnt live at home comes up to her. Hes in a gang, and he asks for some money. She tries to get him to stay with her, and talk, he says shes drunk, and she slaps him. Afterwards, one of Jakes best friends asks Beth to cook for him. She freaks out.

Theres lots of violent things in the movie like that. One of Jakes friends rapes his daughter Grace, and she hangs herself. This becomes a massive part of the film, and in the end, Jake finds out who did it, and the movie ends soon after. There are two clips I have to do with that, with Beth standing up to Jake her husband. She finally leaves him at the end of the movie. I'll play those as my outro, just as soon as Ive thanked you for listening.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

sources
======

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofybOAqLWZM
taiaha borstal scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5YRt0j9E40
whats the time mr wolf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MI6L8z9860
last fight

Other clips recorded by myself from my DVD copy of Once Were Warriors.

Episode 21 Metal Gear Solid pt 1

2009-05-26T23:49:00.003+12:00
Episode 21 MGS Disc 1

Metal Gear Solid, audio ripped from the game, this is a playthrough of all the codec conversations, movies etc. Enjoy part I!

Hey, welcome to yet another episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I play sound clips, and rudely interrupt with semi original thought every now and then.

This episode, I begin the audio from Metal Gear Solid, the best Playstation game ever! I downloaded the audio recently, and fell in love with it, I often listen to the entire conversation type audio from the game while I work. Thank you to Rob, I havnt been able to contact him to thank him. You can find the audio by going to this link, tinyurl.com/mgsaudio , thats a shortcut I just made that links to MGSforums.com, and the page with his audio from MGS 1, and MGS2.

I also have audio from MGS 3 Snake Eater, I downloaded gameplay videos from Youtube and sucked the audio out of them. I have the official Soundtrack to MGS4, I bought the Special Edition, complete with 6 Inch Solid Snake posable action figure, its not a toy!

Solid Snake infiltrates Shadow Moses, a Nuclear Weapon disposal site in Alaska, to save the world from Metal Gear Rex, and the evil bad guys. You can easily find the plot to the game on Wikipedia, I'll just get straight into the sound clips. Theres two boss battles that really matter that you'll hear soon, Psycho Mantis, who can read minds, is invisible, and wears a gas mask, and Sniper Wolf, a sniper who wastes a lot of time, since you have to go way back in the games map to find the PSG1 sniper rifle. Theres also Vulcan Raven, a giant half naked man who you have to fight twice, like Sniper Wolf. And Revolver Ocelot, who becomes the main enemy through the entire Metal Gear Solid games.

I hope you can listen to this long file while you do other things, let your mind wander and imagine this all taking place. Metal Gear Solid would make a kick ass movie, theres been talk of it being in production for a long time, it seems to always be in production, Im not sure if its ever going to be completed. This audio Im going to play would be fine as it is, maybe just touch up the computer animation to make it up to modern standards, but the audio is perfect.

Here go the clips, enjoy!

Hope you enjoyed that, next episode is part 2. I'll mention that I gave into the torture here, I'm playing that path, as you get a better reward at the end of the game Stealth Camo of your own, so you can be invisible! You have a shimmering green outline, that normal enemies cannot see. I hope you enjoy the second part of my MGS Episodes, I had to make two episodes due to my old version of Garageband having a recording limit.

Sources
=======

Metal Gear Solid, by Konami, game audio downloaded from
http://mgsforums.com/topic/7002669/1/ or
http://tinyurl.com/mgsaudio

Episode 20 Metal Gear Solid pt 2

2009-05-26T23:44:00.002+12:00
Episode 20 MGS Disc 2

Metal Gear Solid, audio ripped from the game, this is a playthrough of all the codec conversations, movies etc. Enjoy part II!

I'll get straight back to the clips, at the end of Disc One of the game, you have just defeated Sniper Wolf, it then asks you to insert the second disk, theres a joke about this on MGS4, I'll play that now, since its sort of relevent with my podcast having to stretch two episodes dammit.

and back to MGS clips, hope you enjoy the finale.

Amazing game huh?

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Episode 19 NZ Pork Scandal

2009-05-23T16:47:00.001+12:00
Episode 19

NZ Pork Scandal!

Hello, and welcome to another fine episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I talk about stuff I find interesting and that you wont.

This episode, I'll talk a little about the current NZ Pig Scandal, the media calls it Pork, but I think thats a euphemism, we're talking about Pigs here, not bacon.

Basically, the deal is that NZ Open Rescue, an animal rights group closely linked to SAFE, Save Animals From Exploitation, has broken into another farm, this time a Piggery, a place where pigs are farmed, and the footage taken was shown on mainstream news as a lead story. Part of what makes it worth the media hype is that Mike King, a "world famous in New Zealand", look up that term on wikipedia, comedian went along with the activists, he is in front of the camera for all the footage and talks about what he sees, hes the main character. Mike King was known for SELLING NZ Por, I mean, NZ Pigs on tv, he would go on about how great it was, raised in Gods Own as New Zealand is called. He now says he never knew how the pigs were raised, and has turned on his former employers. I have TONNES of audio clips to play back, I found an awesome way to save online video using Safari, Apple's browser, you can see the "activity" that the browser is undergoing, and when you see a nice big .FLV file, flash video, you can double click it and it saves it to the desktop of your computer. This should work on all sites, so its an easy way to get Youtube Videos too!

Sunday is a current events show, it airs on Sunday night, New Zealand time. It showed awful footage of how New Zealand pigs are treated.
In the footage taken, we see pigs in small cages, cages is the right word, they are thick metal bars, kind of like a sheep truck in design. The pigs are not meant to be able to turn around even, they are that cramped. I cant get over that, how could a cage be so small that the animals cannot even turn? How is that possibly right? The pigs are frothing at the mouth, they are biting bars, they have sores on their bodies from where they have rubbed against the metal bars. One is dead, just lying down dead. They all look terrified and like they have been ill treated for a long time. I think most New Zealanders knew that pigs were raised in small cages like this, but seeing it this graphically has just caused a huge issue, at least for the moment, and I'm quite glad its been brought up so we can fix this awful mess.

There are four main people featured in the clips, Mark Sainsbury the TVNZ presenter, Mike King, the former NZ Pork tv ad guy, Hans Kriek, from SAFE, and the Chairman of the NZ Pork Board, Chris Trengrove. Trengrove is kinda a typical "kiwi bloke mate" looking guy, or any hardened New Zealand man, serious and grumpy looking. His eyes are a lot like Greg Murphy's, they could be related!

Throughout the clips, Trengrove, the NZ Pork guy, pretends to be as shocked as the entire country about how these pigs are treated, he claims its just one or two farms that are like this. Sometimes he makes a stab or two at SAFE, saying they have just picked one farm, that Mike King knew about how some farms were, Mike King says he DEFINITELY did not know anything about it, and Trengrove generally waits until the interviews are over. He looks very uncomfortable.

Mike King is meant to be the good guy, hes the one whos came and unveiled how pigs are in New Zealand. He apologises for pimping pig slaughter, which I thought was pretty nice of him, he seems like a nice guy to me. But, as we hear at the end of the main story, he still eats meat, he still eats pork as pig meat is called, just this magical, organic, free range "Happy Meat". Its gross to me, after all the images we see him cooking up a ham or something, and the reporters eat it with him.

Hans Kriek, the SAFE guy is made to look like a radical animal activist, he seems quite calm and I've impressed with his performance, especially against Chris Trengrove the Pork Board bossman. I only wish he would say " Go Vegan " at the end of his parts, I've emailed him and he said that he mentions it on radio interviews at the moment, but the tv doesnt show it as its not in the current agenda, which is "ew look at this awful footage".

There is actually one other main guy who shows up, Colin Kay, owner of the farm where the footage was taken. Kay is craggy, looks like my Grandfather, hes the ultimate Kiwi Bloke really. Both the farmer side, Colin Kay the farmer, and Pork Board Boss Chris Trengrove look similar, no nonsense rural type New Zealand men. Colin Kay looks a little like Sir Edmund Hillary I guess. He used to be part of the NZ Pork board, hes not just some normal farmer, he used to be a big shot, and now hes known for ill treating his pigs. They werent allowed to have feelings, they got the cane at school, they sat down and shut up. Do you say "shat up"? Sounds gross.

My first big clip, the full Sunday Show piece about New Zealand Pigs, its about 20 minutes long. It makes sense to give you the full audio of the program. Afterwards, theres a few additional clips, from tv coverage of the aftermath, lots to do with Hans from SAFE, Mike King who's now an outraged ex Pork Pimp, Chris Trengrove the NZ Pork main man, and the farmer Colin Kay.

What do you think about that?

The video can be found online, I might try and upload what I saved to Youtube to make it easier to show other people, but it could be taken down if TVNZ dont want it up in other places online.

I noticed someone in the local paper, The Southland Times defending the so called " good indoor piggeries", I dont think they exist, I wrote in asking the woman who used to work at a piggery how she would like being in the pigs place. The next day, I noticed others claiming the "burglars", the activists who entered the piggery didnt steal anything as far as we know, must have upset the pigs somehow, and I wrote in about that too. I said that the activists had a damn hard job ahead of them if they were to have faked everything we saw, if they somehow made the pig cages look that awful, if they made them that scared in the middle of the night without being caught, if they used theatrical makeup to make it look like they had awful scars. That the froth coming from the pigs mouths could have been shaving cream, that SAFE must have trained the pigs to bite the metal bars, and they also must have killed the dead pig. Yeah right, I then said that the simplest explanation that we can come up with is that they just filmed what was happening to the animals inside as they were.

I'll give you a short history of whats happened since the Sunday tv show came out.

Mainstream New Zealand is meant to be outraged, according to the Media. Its mostly been on Channel One News, and the Sunday Program ,both by TVNZ. 3 News, which I normally would have watched until Malcolm in the Middle was put on at the same time on C4, has barely covered the story thats meant to have pissed off everyone in the country.

Recently there was a tiny scandal when it was found a lot of pork sold in New Zealand is actually imported, the Pork boss man Chris Trengrove says its about 45 percent of whats sold here. Even brands that sold themselves as New Zealand, and said Kiwi, or New Zealand all over the packaging, the meat was from overseas. And then this came, footage with Mike King hosting informally about how Pigs are kept. I only hope that people remember this, and its not forgotten in a weeks time. I went to the supermarket today, and looked at the bacon, it seemed like most of the bacon, even that which said NZ Pork, contained local AND IMPORTED INGREDIENTS, so theres two different pigs in the packet? If the imported stuff is cheaper, and may be in the packet of NZ pig, could it be that 1 percent is New Zealand Pig? And the other 99 percent, could that be the cheaper imported meat?

Part of what makes the story so fun for me to watch, is that Hans Kriek , the SAFE spokeman says pretty much the same thing, hes eager to show more examples of pig abuse, he says its mainstream in New Zealand, this is how all farms are. Chris Trengrove, the NZ Pork Guy flubs around for a bit, he never is prepared and cannot really defend himself. Every thing is that he didnt know it was happening, this is one example, and in later clips he briefly mentions that overseas some countries are worse, that NZ is moving away from these practices and soon we wont do it at all. All lies as he squirms in front of the camera.

Mark Sainsbury, the TVNZ host is quite rough with Chris Trengrove, he keeps asking the difficult questions, and doesnt let things go. He doesnt tear him a new one, but he isnt at all soft.

In one episode of this NZ Pork Saga, Chris Trengrove says that he can show the reporters around many GOOD factory farms, that what we have seen is just one bad place, not representative of the whole New Zealand Pork scene. Hans Kriek , from SAFE is great, he invites himself along each time it comes up. But it turns out farmers dont want the nosy reporters at their piggeries, as you'll hear in a clip below, farmers have parked GIANT tractors, the size of a small house in height, in entrance ways to a farm.

For a while, it wasnt even revealed who the farmer was, who owned the farm where the footage was taken. When it was announced, it was a breaking news style clip on One News,

Two more good clips, one with Mike King and the Pork Board head, Chris Trengrove, and the other which I call "scared pig farmers". Its another with Hans Kriek and Trengrove.

and

Notice Chris Trengrove blaming other countries, and imported meat? It really doesnt matter what other countries do, New Zealanders dont want to think of themselves as bad people who abuse animals. Even people who eat meat think of themselves as kind animal lovers.

Well, this episodes nearly over. I hope that this scandal will stick around, it has the potential to make lots of people think about leaving animals alone, not killing them by the millions. Its been mentioned in the clips I played that egg companies have already been through this, that now they have free range and factory farmed eggs labelled differently, and its obvious to tell which is which. If you care about how eggs are produced, and still eat them, you can pay more and get free range eggs. Perhaps this is how pig meat will be sold, caged and uncaged bacon will be sold for example. Frankly, I wish everyone would just leave animals alone, and be Vegan, not eating any animal products, but until everyone is Vegan, then I hope more shocking scandals come out about how animals are kept, so that more people are exposed to the issues, and more people decide to be Vegan. If I say that there are normally one single person each week in New Zealand who decides to be Vegan, one new vegan per week, then perhaps with big scandals like the NZ Pork situation will make hundreds of thousands aware of how pigs are treated, and instead of one new Vegan each week, it could be 10, or even 100, thanks to the mainstream coverage.

I guess in a months time it will be dead and buried, but I've enjoying the coverage for animal rights in mainstream media whilst it lasts. I hope everyone listening will look for themselves to see whats happening to New Zealand animals, thank you to the animal rights groups who provide break in footage, without a group of people breaking into a piggery with Mike King, there wouldnt be this huge coverage of the issue.

Thank you for listening to me.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
=======
Sunday, a NZ Current Events Show,
Youtube

Episode 18 Circus Protest

2009-05-18T22:17:00.000+12:00
Episode 18 Circus Protest, about an elephant being mistreated by a circus in New Zealand, animal rights etc.

Hi, welcome to another episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I talk about stuff that interests me, and maybe you'll find interesting as well.

This episode, Im talking about animals in circuses, in particular one elephant kept by the Loritz circus which is traveling around New Zealand, that stopped by Invercargill where I live and that I protested with an animal rights group, SAFE. SAFE stands for Save Animals From Exploitation.

I have a few sound clips, as usual, to play throughout the episode.

The elephant is called Jumbo, after the famous elephant like a hundred years ago, I hate the name and from now on I'll try and call her Mrs elephant, I just prefer it to bloody Jumbo, shes a very pretty animal, not some big fat slob. Jumbo was a famous male elephant about a hundred years ago, the most famous elephant of all. He died when a train crashed into him, some bizarre accident. Jumbo's not a girls name, Mrs Elephant is.

I decided to make this episode after seeing the circus had made a fake website, pretending to be written by the elephant, saying how nice all the circus people treat her, how she likes living with the circus, being made to live in a trailer and get taken all over New Zealand. I'll play a clip of that now.

What a load of bullshit, if you see her, its pretty obvious how upset she is. Mrs Elephant, like most elephants kept by circuses, is known to sway, she rocks side to side. No elephant in the wild has been seen swaying, its what they do when they are incredibly bored. I have sound taken from a video of Mrs Elephant swaying, I'll play that later.

I heard about the circus coming to Invercargill about a week before it arrived, and when I heard about the Elephant coming, I was pissed off, I hate the idea of animals forced to perform, especially when they have to live in a trailer and get moved all around New Zealand. When I were little, I always wished Invercargill would get a zoo, so I could go and see exotic animals every weekend. But, now I've learned more about how animals are treated, and thought about it, and I wish that zoos would just shut down outright. If you want to learn more about how zoos treat animals, watch the movie Earthlings, its all about animal abuses really, it has sections about zoos and circuses, it shows behind the scenes type footage, where the animals are beaten to make them perform, elephants being made to stand on top of each other, and move about in set patterns, when they dont do what the trainers want, they get shocked with a prod, its like a big tazer. In the footage we see, they elephants scream out, and the trainers talk about being strong around the animals. There's subtitles to make it clear what the main trainer is saying, when they dont do what they are meant to, the trainers are told to really beat them, and they will scream. The main trainer says "when you hear that screaming, then you know you've got their attention a little bit." and that they cant beat them on the road, only during the awful training away from the public. Main trainer guy says something like "they're gonna do what I tell them, thats just the way it is".

Other scenes to do with zoos and circuses in Earthlings show other animals like tigers getting hit, I dont get why the large animals that could easily kill people put up with it, someone told me that they are so beaten down, that they just put up with it, they are so used to the misery thats their daily lives, that they dont feel like they can do anything about it. Earthlings also shows what happens when circus animals snap, and rampage through the circus, one video thats very moving to watch is of an elephant, one part has an elephant with people riding on some giant ornate saddle on its back, it starts knocking over ramps and ladders, people in the circus run for their lives from the seating. It could be the same footage, an elephant without anything on its back finds its way out of the circus tent, and runs out into the streets. On the way, some guy tries to shut a chainlink gate on the elephant, it just taps the gate the guy was holding shut and he gets knocked backwards. When the elephants on the street, it just walks around upset and probably very scared, people are yelling and shouting at it, and the police are trying to kill it. They fire bullet after bullet, it doesnt look like anything really hurts it, its just so big and strong that normal bullets that would easily kill people, dont seem to hurt it that much. There are vigilantes shooting at it too, normal people who act like they are saving the world by killing this elephant thats escaped from its abuse, some woman is screaming something like "die you stupid animal" at it. It finally goes down, I dont know how long it took, the footage jumps a bit I think, it stumbles down and crashes against a parked car, setting off car alarms. It kinda flails its head about a bit, you can see blood on its head, before it finally just lies outright.

I would have thought that circuses would HAVE to have a giant tranquilizer gun, able to take an Elephant out very quickly from one single tranq bullet, it just makes sense that they should prepare for the worst, as insurance. Instead, this elephant seems to just do whatever it wants, being so panicked, its just trying to get away from all its problems. Who knows how many people, with how many guns, shooting who knows how many bullets, to finally kill it. It should have been tranquilized, if anything bad happens, the keepers should have been able to knock it out, it would just lie down and go to sleep for an hour. Then it could have been put back into the circus once its calmed down, being realistic, I'd rather the elephant was alive in the circus, with a chance of being set free again, than shot dead in the streets with people yelling at it to just die already.

I'll now play a clip from one of my vegan friends, Lyndsay.

I seem to remember another elephant dying in Invercargill, dammit, cant find any news stories, I hate that not all news stories are easy to find online. It ate poisoned hay, the food had gotten wet, and had bacteria or mould growing in it, the elephant died. The way I remember it, the elephant was buried at the Gala street reserve, where the circuses go, its a large grassy public area.

The circus that brought this latest elephant here, Mrs Elephant as I call her remember, is Loritz circus. Loritz is a fairly new circus, it was formed when a previous circus closed, the Loritz circus people bought many of the things used by the prior circus, including the elephant keeper Tony Ratcliffe and Mrs Elephant. She was to have been sent away to some sanctuary in Australia, the elephant keeper was going over with her for a few months, to settle her in. He even admitted it would be better for her to be with other elephants. But, obviously money talked, and the bullshit walked right off to the bank, as he joined the new circus with her. Technically the new circus owns Mrs Elephant, Tony Ratcliffe just works for them, but hes been with her for decades now, so they are pretty much tied together. I'll play a newstory clip I read before I protested, I found out as much as I could about the circus before I protested. This is a very interesting clip, it talks with Ratcliffe about his life, hes a shady sounding guy. Listen to all the ways the reporter makes fun of him, some are pretty obvious and would have hurt his feelings if he read the published article.

I would have protested by myself about the elephant being kept the way she is, trucked about the country in a metal box really, forced to perform, no other elephants around her, it must be very lonely. But I found out about SAFE, Save Animals From Exploitation, who were arranging nationwide protests, and I joined the Invercargill protests. Very cool, it was awesome to meet other people pissed off about circus animals. I would have just stood over the road from the circus by myself, maybe with a cardboard sign, chanting something like "dont be a smelly runt, set free mrs ele-phunt" and "dont be a dumbo , set free jumbo", dammit, I said the crappy name they call her.

I'd shown up before the SAFE people, wearing a t shirt with Alex, the African Grey parrot on it, the bird that could talk and describe objects in detail. So I guess I looked like an animal rights kinda dude. I walked through the circus tents, and took some photos, including some of the elephant. I got found out by Ratcliffe, the old elephant keeper, he wandered over as I took a photo of the elephant, he said something like "you animal rights", I knew he was onto me, I muttered something like "not right now" or something, and he told me to get the hell out of there. He said if I showed up again, "they'd be trouble". I was pretty freaked out, I was alone in the middle of the circus, just taking photos of the elephant. Lots of scary circus folk looking at me, and I'd read before about how Ratcliffe killed a man with a tent peg. He was inside the elephants pathetic area, a small fenced off bit for her to walk around in.

Above the fence is an electric wire, to stop her from reaching over. Its bullshit, it makes me very sad just thinking about the electric wire, I saw Mrs Elephant snaking her trunk about, it moved like a snake would, I didnt really know they were that flexible, it looked like it could tie itself in a knot, she would reach out to where the wire was, but back off before touching it, I just know she must have been shocked by it before. Elephants trunks are so sensitive, so clever, they touch each other with their trunks, they breathe through it, suck in water, blow it out, they use it like we use our hands. There she was, too afraid to get near people because she would get shocked.

It was kind of weird how she came over to me too, she would go and walk nearer to anyone who was around the fence, I was the only person there at the time. She felt pretty big as she came over, I was a little scared! I just had time to take one photo, before Hitler, I mean Tony Ratcliffe got rid of me. He told me if I showed up again, there'd be trouble. I waited over by the Queens Park fountain for the rest of the SAFE people to show up.

When everyone else arrived, I put on a blue SAFE vest and helped hold banners. We got quite a few cars to honk in support, and one or two abusive people, nothing serious. Some old bastard came out and had a go at one of the SAFE members, he said something like "get out of here" and "get a real job". Um, grampa, I know it must be real hard living off our tax money, but its saturday afternoon, most people dont work saturdays, oh, but I do, I'd just finished work, and was protesting in my own time. Crazy old bastard.

I asked George and Sharon, from Invercargill SAFE to record something for me to use. Im really pleased I got these clips.

Thank you so much for appearing on my podcast.

The circus people took our photos, some creepy looking gypsy-ish woman was hiding behind the circus vehicles, taking photos, probably to stop us from getting entry to a circus performance and causing hell inside. We had some gruff looking circus dudes stare over at us, like they wanted a fight, but the circus people left us alone.

I asked all my friends to drive past and honk their car horns in solidarity, my friends Wiriya and Allison showed up and honked for me which was really cool.

I've got another clip, this is from CTV, a local christchurch tv channel I think, it has an interview with SAFE and the circus.

I've heard the circus downplay SAFE a few times, they've said things like 48,000 people went to the circus in the South Island, and that there were just 48 protesters, which I dont believe for a second, and also that SAFE complains a lot but havnt any real ideas about what to do for the elephant. Loritz circus says that they have asked SAFE directly for what they want done, and that SAFE couldnt come up with a good home for Mrs Elephant. But thats BS, in the clip I played before SAFE mention the sanctuary that the circus itself knows about, as Mrs Elephant was to be sent there, before the new Loritz circus brought her from the circus that shutdown. Loritz Circus know a good place for her, the elephant keeper was really going to send her there apparently, he was quoted in newspapers saying Mrs Elephant would go there, but instead shes stuck living in that crappy trailer, hauled around New Zealand. On the circus site written from the elephants point of view, someone pretending to be the elephant, it says that soon they will accept retirement donations for Mrs Elephant, can you believe that? They want people to give them money to send the elephant away, so she can finally be treated nicely. How do we know they will use the donations for sending her overseas? They dont have a target to reach or anything, its just stealing money off people who want to feel like they've helped the poor animal.

SAFE mentioned that they keep the elephant to make money, from people going to the circus to see her. Well, thats pretty accurate, Loritz circus must be pretty shitty without Mrs Elephant there. Their whole setup, they have a big tent, some little inflatable tents in front of that, one has a dwarf horse in it, that you have to pay two bucks to see the horse, I think theres a spelling mistake that we noticed to do with the dwarf horse sign. Then theres a couple lamas hidden out the back, and Mrs Elephant with her fenced off bit and trailer. The features in this whole circus are some african performers, they sound interesting, they do all the usual circus stuff, and a little girl who spins hula hoops around herself. I mean, good for her, she can do that better than I can, but im not going to a circus to see a little girl spin some hoops around her. The little girl did get a high placing on a New Zealand talent show, but its still not enough to keep me interested for more than a few seconds! Apparently Mrs Elephant doesnt perform anymore, god only knows what they mean by the word perform, but she still gets trotted out into the tent for about 5 minutes each show. It seems like she walks around the ring, and back out. wow! Thats worth all the hours in the trailer, and traveling from city to city! Without the elephant, lamas and dwarf horse, theres just a girl who spins hoops around herself, and some african performers. Sounds pretty lame.

So, I dont really expect the elephant to be sold anytime soon, unless maybe the other star attraction, hula hoop girl, also learns to juggle and ride a unicycle in clown costume, they'd need something else to fill in time.

My friend Elizabeth, from NZ Vegan Podcast was kind enough to provide another clip for my podcast, she also sent in a recording for my Vegetarian/Vegan episode, that I hope you'll listen to.

Thank you very much elizabeth. I also have a clip from Colin Sky, the leader of the VEGANZ yahoo chat group, that provides a way for New Zealand Vegans to stay in touch, we send emails to each other every day.

You can see photos from the Invercargill SAFE protests, we protested two saturdays in a row, on my bebo site. I've made a tiny url page for the link, so you dont have to type such a long URL, you can just go to www. tiny url.com/ jumbo protest, no spaces of course. tiny url . com/ jumbo protest. Easy to remember, or write down. Please make sure you look at my photos, I have one of Mrs Elephant herself, in the bottom right corner you can see the angry elephant keeper, just out of frame, asking me if I were with "animal rights" and then telling me to get the hell out of there, or "there'd be trouble" I would have take lots more photos if I could have.

I've found a few news stories about the Loritz Circus getting in trouble while performing. At many locations, SAFE protesters held up banners, chanted and handed out pamphlets to anyone interesting in seeing how circus animals are treated. These protests were mentioned in many local newspapers. In Dargaville, the circus left a local park muddy and with holes, these had to be fixed before sports could be played. The local council was charging this cost to the circus, and they lost their bond money. In Nelson, the council admitted they had made a mistake allowing an elephant to be kept on public land.

In Dunedin, the circus was not allowed to have Mrs Elephant on council land, it has a policy against exotic animals being made to perform on its property. The circus had set up, and Mrs Elephant was to be moved from Dunedin City Council land. She was kept over at a pub near the circus, can you believe it?, on land near The Kensington pub carpark, until the council found out about this and had her moved again. The Circus pulled strings, and eventually had poor Mrs Elephant kept on the pubs carpark itself, which is privately owned by the pub. In this pubs carpark, this video was shot, you can watch it on youtube, I have the URL in the shownotes, or search "jumbo swaying" on youtube. You cant see the video obviously, but Jumbo is wobbling, or swaying side to side inside the trailer that the circus proudly shows off, it cost 300 thousand bucks you know! Inside, Mrs Elephant is chained by one of her front legs, it looks like one of those plastic covered bike lock chains, it looks like it would be very sore on her leg. A power tool starts up somewhere closely, and we see Jumbo try and look out to see where the scary noise is coming from, she can barely see out of the trailer, the chain around her leg is too short to let her move around very much at all, its probably a metre long chain if that. She can just rest her head against the opening, and move her trunk outside. She looks miserable.

The trailer the elephant is kept in is estimated by SAFE to have about 3 metres by 5 metres of space for poor Mrs Elephant, considering she is about 2 metres high alone, a lot longer than that, and weighs about 4 tonnes, its a tiny amount of space.

Thank you to all the people who submitted audio clips of themselves, thank you as well to those who emailed in what they wanted my artificial voice to read out.

With public pressure on circuses, we can make Mrs Elephants life better, and hopefully, some day soon, she'll be allowed to go to the Australian sanctuary , and live out her life, meet other actual elephants, and maybe even have a family.

Thank you for listening to my podcast episode about the sad life of Jumbo the elephant. I hope you look at the photos I took of the first Invercargill SAFE protest that I participated in, if you go to www.tinyurl.com/jumboprotest, you will find yourself at my bebo page, with some of my photos.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

sources
=======
http://www.bebo.com/PhotoAlbumBig.jsp?PhotoNbr=1&MemberId=4382932362&PhotoAlbumId=10269345122 MY PHOTOS
(http://tinyurl.com/jumboprotest should work just fine )

http://www.safe.org.nz/Campaigns/Free-Jumbo-Campaign/ SAFE campaign site

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub9nvk6ijHs CTV interview with SAFE, circus

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/features/feature-archive/412043

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNz7Tvf_tO0 jumbo swaying video

http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/northland/470539 circus left holes in local park

Episode 17 Old Kew Hospital

2009-05-16T18:56:00.003+12:00
Episode 17

Old Kew Hospital

Hey, welcome to another episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast. This episode Im going to talk a bit about the old Invercargill hospital. Its scary as hell, at least for me, I've added a couple of sound effects I recorded on my iPhone while waiting to escape the horrors that was, Old Kew Hospital! Its not quite the same as being there, but it sets the mood. Hey, isnt this the Vincent Price laugh , from Michael Jackson's song Thriller?

At the moment, I've just came back from the old Invercargill Hospital, its being demolished. This podcast episode is about how creepy that old beaten up building is, parts of it are about a hundred years old. Theres garbage all throughout the inside, puddles of water from leaks, and mould. I get scared of hospitals, because of the death and disease that goes on inside. I dont like blood either. Once I got a personal tour from a family friend who worked at the hospital, she worked in the blood section, well, she closed the door on me inside the giant refrigerator that keeps the blood cool, all around me there were probably hundreds of litres of blood, I was thinking what it would feel like if they burst on me, being in a completely dark fridge, drowning in donated blood.

Its weird as hell seeing it now, it looks the same as it did about five years ago, it just has some really bashed up broken windows, and leaks. Theres still rubbish left from when the hospital was used last, theres still medical equipment like artificial legs new in the boxs still, I could see them in a locked room. Lots of things were kinda stacked up, paintings off walls all stacked up in one corner, but it didnt look like they were getting moved out, basically everything in the hospital was going to be trashed, apart from a few things that some secondhand dealers had bought, I was getting stuff with my dad.

One of the wards I went up to, on the top story, is on a jutting out part, it sticks out into the carpark, its weird, this big multistory brick building, its quite thin, it has enough room for two hospital rooms on each side, not really rooms ,just curtain tracks to close off sections for privacy, with walking space in between.

Anyway, pretty soon it will all be gone. The modern hospital was built in front about 5 years ago, it looks a lot smaller, but its a LOT nicer inside, its very modern, lots of space, you could drive cars about through all the hallways easily. It has lots of windows, and feels clean. In the middle of the main building, theres a sort of stone garden, with stones, and maybe a water feature or something, its just this big huge area in the middle, with windows to look at it through, I dont think you're meant to go through and sit there or anything, its just to make the hospital feel more natural.

I saw some freaky rooms in the old hospital, theres the chapel which is kind of weird, I didnt go in, but its pretty sad that this chapel would have basically been for people to make peace with God, before they died. Im sure they would have done sunday ceremonies or whatever, but its not like a happy place to go to a church, in a hospital, its more like for people who feel they need to while they are very sick, or dying. Across from that was a bathing pool, its for therapy I think, it had a stretcher type board rigged up on a hoist, to put people into the water who wouldnt be able to climb in by themselves or whatever.

It looked weird, all deserted, this old pool for disabled people.

Something I did like, all the stuff to do with Nuclear medicine, the MRI scanners, and chemotherapy I would guess. I dont know if they did chemotherapy here in Invercargill, or if patients had to go to a larger city like Dunedin. I didnt go and investigate, but saw the signs everywhere. Something quite cool, my dad took a bunch of the signs, with permission, they were just going to get thrown out otherwise, so we have all these medical signs, signs pointing where to go for wards etc.

We parked out the back of the hospital to get stuff, just across from the mortuary, where dead bodies are kept chilled. I get freaked out by death, I dont think I could have gone in there, it was closed. I think it might still be used, there was a building next to it with a chimney that was going, it could have been burning medical waste, you know like amputated body parts and blood and who knows what else.

We got some dentist cabinets, where all the poking tools were kept, some still have the instruments in them. There were lots of fancy equipment, all junk now probably, but would have cost alot new, no idea what it was for.

In a main staff cafeteria part, there were Pro meat posters, funny label, pro meat :) Things saying "eat red meat!" from the beef and lamb cartel or whatever you call them, those idiots who represent all the farmers in this country. The meat in the poster looked raw, it was this gross pink red colour. I almost wanted to take the posters like that because they were so gross looking. I hate the Beef and Lamb ads that get played on tv often here, with new zealand female athletes on. I've just bought a parody t shirt from a fellow vegan, it says "meat is murder" on the athletes t shirts, and "beef and lamb, be twice as cruel" at the bottom.

The people who were there representing the hospital, or taking it apart, were pretty cold, they didnt talk to me at all, they would say things to my dad every now and then, we were mostly alone in the scary old buildings, and then people would just jump out of dusty corridors and surprise me. We moved a hundred desks and cabinets down from the third story by ourselves, the other people were just walking around most of the time, I saw some working taking roofing tiles off, they had this lift thing, it was pretty small, just a metal plate really that went up and down diagonally to the ground, with a guy on the roof putting one slate tile at a time onto the lift, and one taking it off and putting it a box it seemed.

One of the people taking a perpetual break said something like 'urrghaltaght harg harg harg!" at me, I said "wha?" to him and he just turned away, dammned if I know what their problem was. I saw them eating meat pies, wanted to say something like "oh, didnt know the mortuary had a crematorium next to it" or something, im used to people making fun of me for not eating meat, before a recent funeral my dad brought up that I didnt eat animal products , to my aunty, whos partners a farmer, they were disgusted really, they laughed at me quite a lot, "whut you naed is a bug steak ergh" and then my dad and the two of them were all hahahahhaha, they thought they were sooooo clever.

Im getting used to bringing it up my veganism when its relevent, I never bring it up around friends as it would be pretty annoying for them I would think, telling them what to do all the time. But, almost every time im in a group of them, it comes up!

So, this was a short episode, just talking about the old invercargill hospital.

Thanks for listening :)

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Episode 16 Post 911 America = Nazi Germany?

2009-05-16T17:51:00.003+12:00
Episode 16 Post 911 America = Nazi Germany?

Hi listeners,

Welcome to another episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast.

This is just a quick episode, Adam Curry said a couple interesting things on episode 791 of his Daily Source Code podcast, and I thought I'd repackage them as part of, hell, a full episode of my own podcast. Adam often has crackpot theories about 911 being an inside job, aliens visiting, evil businessmen that control everything, its quite fun to listen to him. But, every now and then, he comes up with something I have to fully admit makes sense in at least some way.

This is one of those times. The first part is a comparison of post 911 America with Nazi Germany, pretty controversial. Basically, Adam is reading an article from a website comparing how Hitler came to power, because people let him take over, they stood by, and did nothing. Many examples are given, and then the situation today in america is compared to this. Its quite interesting, theres been some weird stuff thats happened in america, that can basically be summed up as people having rights taken away. New weapons are being made all the time, supposedly non lethal weapons are being trialled, things using loud sounds, and electric shocks to control people. People are not allowed to take more than so much liquid on planes, ever since some guy tried using liquids to make a bomb. People have to be searched more at hospitals, they have to take their shoes off, ever since one guy had a bomb in his shoes. One weird incident will end up making huge new laws, and new searchs, checks and ultimately restrictions on everyday americans lives.

I dont at all agree that America right now is exactly the same as Germany was when Hitler came to power. But its quite interesting to listen to anyway. I dont know who Americas Hitler character would be, President Obama? Hes had some critics, who say he promised so many great things, like shutting down Gitmo on day one, that just havnt come to pass. The Hitler character could also be Al Gore, people who impose new Green taxes and laws on people. Keep an open mind, and just listen to the facts, the history of what happened before World War II, and whats happening now. Straight after, Adam played a Immortal Technique rap thats quite clever to listen to.

The second clip is a caller talking about 911, and Adam brings up some mysterious laser beam, microwave type weapon that he says blew up one of the World Trade Centre buildings. Pretty nuts, I dont know what to say really.

I highly recommend everyone listening to this podcast listen to Adam on his No Agenda podcast, and also Daily Source Code, these are both easy to find on iTunes.

Dont call me a crackpot just because I find the clips interesting to think about! Just making this episode to help spread the interesting information Adam Curry brought up.

I'll play the clips now.

Episode 15 1970's Horror Films

2009-05-07T21:20:00.000+12:00
Episode 15 1970's Horror Films

Deranged, Deliverance, Soylent Green episode

I get that alot.

Hello and welcome to Episode 15 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, 1970's Horror Movies. The movies I'll be mentioning are Deranged, Deliverance and Soylent Green.

This Episode I'll give tiny reviews for some of my DVD movies, all of these movies are of the Horror genre, and from the 1970's, and we all know that old things are scary!

But first, I'll start by telling you about my friends new podcast thats on the way, its going to be totally excellent, lots of informative talk, and interesting opinion, well basically so the deal is that...

Back to me, yip Um, thanks for that Des. Yes, um, well I'll, um, go back to my episode now, yeah.

I have the trailer for each movie, and some sound clips from famous scenes. I should give you a warning now, there will be heaps of spoilers, I always read about movies before I see them, normally the Wikipedia page, to see if its worth seeing or not. But, I know some crazy people who actually enjoy being surprised by movies, weirdos, rather than knowing the ending before you hit play on the dvd, or sit down at the movie theatre. The point of my little movie reviews are to tell you about movies I think you should see, so Im trying to convince you that its worth buying, or renting the DVD. I cant show you fancy fire explosions in slow motion like movie trailers do, so I focus on the plot, Hollywood should try that sometime. However, if you dont want to have Deranged, Deliverance or Soylent Green spoiled before you've seen it, then its time to stop listening to this episode!

You've been warned.

First movie, is Deranged.

I saw part of Deranged years ago, on Sky pay tv. It was the part near the end, with the young woman in the snow. Very messed up.

Heres the Deranged trailer

As always, I hope you search for the video clips that I play, audio only, you really have to watch these for yourself sometime. I've tried to put the links in the shownotes, that show in the lyrics mode of your ipod....I say this every episode huh?

Deranged is based on Ed Gein (geen), one of the most well known killers in history, heres what Wikipedia has to say. Alex, the Mac Voice is gonna mess up his name, its pronounced "geen".

Scary guy huh?

and now the Wikipedia plot for Deranged.

Apparently, the dead bodies in the movie are made from chicken wire, plastic skulls, and painted cotton. The faces are plaster casts from crew members. Also, Mrs Cobb, the elderly mother who dies, the actor who played her was only 14 years older than the actor who played Ezra, her son. I hate the word actress, it sounds demeaning to me, like an actress is a woman trying to be an actor, I dont get why actor cant be for both genders.

Heres a clip from Mrs Cobb, what she thought about women. Throughout the movie, we see clips from what Ezra remembers her telling him.

I'll give Deranged 3 out of 5, its a very enjoyable movie, but theres no really mindblowing scenes, its pretty much just a standard old horror flick. Its a B movie really. I do like a lot of little scenes, but its not a very original movie, and overall I dont think its as good as Silence of the Lambs etc.

Next movie, Deliverance.

Deliverance is a movie about a Canoe trip in the American South gone wrong.

Listen to the trailer for Deliverance,

Deliverance is well known for two scenes in particular, the Banjo Duel, and "Squeal like a Pig". I'll play parts from those scenes very soon, after playing what Wikipedia has to say about the movie.

Heres what Wikipedia has to say about it.

Pretty brutal.

Ok, first I'll play the Banjo Duel, one of the main characters plays his guitar against a local boy, who doesnt seem quite "right", the movie crew looked for someone who looked, well, retarded, Billy Redden, the boy who plays the character is mentally fine, but he doesnt look very normal in the movie. The banjo kids characters called "lonnie". Well, so Lonnie plays his banjo, against a guitar, and wins! See if you recognise the song, its a pop culture moment, its been parodied in the simpsons, family guy and other places.

Heres the clip

At the end, Lonnie the not right looking boy with the banjo turns his head away awkwardly from the main characters. he shows up in a weird way in the later parts of the movie, on a creepy suspension bridge watching the canoe go down the river.

Something interesting, Billy Redden, the guy playing Lonnie the banjo kid, is not actually playing the banjo, hes wearing a weird shirt, with a very good banjo player reaching through from behind Billy, his hands seem to belong to Lonnie.

the other popular scene from Deliverance, is "Squeal like a Pig".

Two of the three main characters come across locals, one main character gets tied up, and the other, well, he gets raped by a scary southern guy. He gets told to "squeal like a pig". also, "hes got a real purty mouf"

At the end of the scene, the third main character saves the other two, by shooting one of them with his bow.

I'll give Deliverance 3 out of 5 again, its not an amazingly good movie, but it does deserve its place in popular culture. 3 out of 5 on the Jordan-ometre for both movies so far, doesnt sound like they deserve a special podcast episode, but they are interesting movies in their own way, just not that amazing to watch, if you ask me. i mean, they have great scenes, classic scenes that you need to see, but the whole movie, as a whole, is not very good compared to awesome movies like Forest Gump.

My last movie, Soylent Green.

This is a fun movie for Vegans to watch, its basically about how screwed up the worlds going to become, from overpopulation to corporations.

In the future, meat, and regular decent food are almost impossible to find, people eat Soylent products, Soylent Red, Yellow, and the latest version, Soylent Green. Thanks to Wikipedia, a jar of Strawberry Jam is said to cost "150 dollars", which isnt really that much really when you think about inflation etc, the movies set in 2022, which sounds far out, but its 2009 now remember :) When the movie came out, in 1973, 150 usd a jar of jam would have sounded expensive, but 150 dollars is not that much money anymore, it is for jam, but not overall a huge sum of money.

The way the recessions hitting america, hyperinflation could come about very easily, some third world countries have ultra high value notes, you pay for things with hundred thousand dollar notes, I think Zimbabwe has a billion dollar note now. So, paying 150 us dollars for jam doesnt sound very expensive, if we have hyper inflation, by our standards, in the year 2022. I guess, in the 70's, a jar of jam would have cost 5.2 cents american money, so 150 dol lars sounds a lot of money.

In the movie they make it seem like only millionaires have food like we eat today, everyone else makes do on these government handout Soylent products. People act like they've never even heard of Jam, and they cant read at all, I dont think it would be that hard for a group of people to save up money for Jam, its essential you know! Its fun to think about though, I mean, the movie made in the 70's, 2022 must have been like a billion years away, well, its just around the corner now, and it seems unlikely that in a few short years, we wont be able to read or afford Jam. I guess we predict stupid stuff too though, the future never gets accurately predicted by anyone.

Heres the trailer for Soylent Green.

Funky noises huh? The future is all about eery sounds. Thunderbirds had those kinda wheep whooop whoooo whoooup noises too.

I like the way the name Soylent Green sounds , I might start calling Soy products, "soylent" something from now on. So, my Soymilk will become Soylent White, being white.

Heres the plot for Soylent Green.

Soylent Green, the food product, has been in modern tv series, in futurama its a common food, even though people know its made from actual people, its just accepted. In The Simpsons its showed up too.

An interesting fact, the guy who plays the old guy in the movie, Edward G Robinson, he died TWELVE days after filming was finished. It was the 101st movie that he'd been in.

Heres a part from the end of the movie, when the main character finds out what Soylent Green is.

To shake things up a bit, I'm going to give Soylent Green FOUR out of 5, because of its interesting message about the future, you know, a few years from now? Some scenes are pretty stupid, like at the food riots, people are broken up by riot police, one of the tools they use are these big dump trucks that "scoop" people up and into the back of them. Well, I think future police wont have special people picker uper truck things, they will use pepper spray, or tazers. Not just some big trucks rigged up with bulldozer bits on the front, a zany movie prop.

All old movies look dated, but these three 1970's horror movies have great scenes, and that makes them worth watching. I hope you do decide to rent, or even buy these great, fantastic, amazing, world changing movies, that I rated as 3's and a 4 out of five.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast!

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources
========

Wikipedia

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

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliverance_(1972_film)

Youtube Videos

Deranged Trailer,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4-i-APyMbU

Soylent Green Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVpN312hYgU

Soylent Green Its People
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sp-VFBbjpE

Deliverance Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9R4t_Nwy5E

Deliverance Banjo duel,

Deliverance Squeal like a Pig

Episode 14 Blackbirds

2009-04-29T22:35:00.002+12:00
Episode 14, Blackbirds, Common Blackbird, and SR71 spy plane :)

Episode 14, Blackbirds

Hey guys, welcome to episode 14 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I talk about things that interest me, and maybe you'll find interesting as well.

This episode is about Blackbirds, first the Bird happens to be Black, and then the Area 51 spy plane.

The intro for this episode was the second episode of Auto Tune The News, search for it on youtube. I asked permission from the stars to be featuring it as my intro. I'll include the link in shownotes as always, that you seen in the lyrics mode of your iPod etc, but its easier to just search "auto tune the news" on youtube. Auto Tune The News works by using a green screen to put extra people into news footage, its quite cool to see how they hide the extra people in behind podiums and other items in the news video. Make sure you watch the full video, and see other Auto Tune The News episodes that have been made.

I've also decided to do a new outro format, I'll stop throwing the same song on, Cant Say No To A Soldier, and instead do another No Agenda clip for the end, so hopefully each episode will have a shiny new intro, and outro for you to listen to, start to finish.

The Common Blackbird,latin name Turdus Merula (meaning thrush, and blackbird), is found worldwide. There are many different types of the actual Black-Bird, and thats excluding every other animal thats both a bird, and black. Interesting fact, only male blackbirds are actually black, the female is a dull brown, probably better for camouflage. Males start off fairly dark brown, and they eventually turn black, with a bright orange beak, and orange ring around each eye.

According to Wikipedia, Shakespeare wrote about the Blackbird, calling it a "woosell". Not sure if Im saying that right. , "The Woosell cocke, so blacke of hew, With Orenge-tawny bill" Apparently Woosell was a popular name for the Blackbird up until the 17th century or so.

Blackbirds have long been my favourite common bird, I like how shiny and black they are, as well as the colour around their eye and on their beak, that bright orange. Blackbirds eat a lot of insects, which makes me sad, but they do like berries and other fruit too. So theres hope that I could have a whole bunch of Vegan Blackbirds, they eat any seeds or bread you leave out for them.

They normally over 20 centimetres long, and weigh between about 80 and 120 grams. My iPhone weighs about 130 grams in comparison, its fairly solid for a cellphone, so that gives you an idea. Lets say that a Blackbird weighs the same as the average cellphone. Birds all have hollow bones, to make them light enough to fly.

Apparently Blackbirds can mimic other birds, they can hear other birds singing, telephones ringing and things like that, and impersonate them. Its meant to be fairly rare for people to hear it though, not sure why. I think thats pretty impressive, I know that people who have caged birds often find them mimicking people and the telephone, its probably because they are so bored and lonely in the cage they are trying to have exercise.

Here is some of the Blackbirds song, they sound similar to other thrushes, like those light brown and white speckled birds, that look almost the same as Blackbirds if not for colour.

Did you recognise that?

I also like Blackbird nests, they are round and quite smooth, the brown, female Blackbird makes the nest, from twigs, sticks, thin scraps of plastic and other long and thin materials she can find. Mud is used to stick everything together, I've never watched birds making a nest from scratch, must be pretty impressive. Inside the nest, 4 eggs are normally laid, they are a light green colour, like light green/blue chewing gum, with red spots on it. Overseas , other birds like Cuckoos try and sneak their eggs in to the Blackbirds nest, thats where the term "cuckold" (cuck-old) comes from, it means a stupid husband doesnt know that the children in his house arnt his, his wife cheated on him, and hes raising some other mans kids, like Cuckoos try and pawn off their eggs to other birds, for others to raise. New Zealand doesnt have any cuckoos that try and do this to Blackbirds, but overseas there are plenty, and the Blackbirds there know how to spot the difference between the eggs, I think they throw the other eggs out of the Blackbird nest when they find them.

Blackbirds are monogamous, like most birds, they stay with their partner for their entire lives. Very sweet. Daddy Blackbird also helps feed the chicks. Wikipedia says most Blackbirds in the wild live for just over 2 years, doesnt sound very long to me. The oldest recorded individual was over 21 years old.

A clip from Wikipedia about the song,

A sad fact about Blackbirds, they often have parasites. They pick them up from all the time they spend in long grass, they get ticks, and internal parasites. Especially rural birds in the country, 74% of French countryside birds were found to have parasites, only 2% from urban areas had the parasites, according to a French survey.

One more clip from Wikipedia.

I often wanted a pet bird when I was growing up, when I was very little my parents hand lovebirds, they are nice, green and red coloured little birds, like budgies. But its very mean to have birds in cages, since Birds naturally fly long distances each and every day, and have whole social communities, with different songs that get memorised by different "blackbird tribes". If I could have a little Blackbird friend, I'd call him Winston Peepers, like Winston Peters the infamous New Zealand politician, but with Peepers for the 'peep peep' noise baby birds are meant to make. I'd teach him to raise hell, my little fighter squadron of Blackbirds would knock spinsters, ha, only old ones, not pretty Vegan ladies who could have any man they want, down steps, to get their handbags. Or, maybe I could teach them to have just one on the footpath, with a note in its beak, it would beckon the old lady onward, she'd take the note from its beak, and read "give me all your money", when she failed to do that, then my black cloud would descent from the rooftops and peck her to an inch away from death, and THEN take the handbag.

I've always thought Blackbirds looked very nice and gentle, but theres something kinda "evil" about them, not sure why. Its not the colour black, I think its the orange band around the eye, its like a bandit's mask or something.

I figure, even if for some reason my song birds didnt want to murder the elderly, they could always just fly around town and find shiny coins on the street, im sure birds can notice those very well, they will have great eye sight, and notice shiny things. But, up until now, birds wont have understood the concept of money. I'll change that, I'll get my little friends to pay for their own keep, finding money in return for Budget brand canned corn, worth about a buck at Pak n Save.

----------

I started off talking about the Blackbird, now I'll talk about THE Blackbird, the SR71 Blackbird, officially the fastest millitary plane EVER. This baby did over 3500 kilometres per hour, to put that in perspective, the largest commercial planes do about 900 kilometres an hour, the SR71 was heading close to 4 times that. Most fighter jets now have been stuck at about 2000 kilometres per hour, none do 3000, at least no known fighter jets can. Its a matter of balance, its either bigger, thirstier, heavy engines, or a tradeoff to get excellent maneuverability, to be agile as well as fast.

The Concorde, that lovely supersonic commercial plane, it could to 2000 kilometres per hour, and was very, very hard for fighter jets to keep up with. But the SR71 would breeze past it. A way to measure speed is the time it takes to go from London to New York, a Boeing 747 takes a little over 6 hours to do the trip one way, Concorde could do it just under 3 hours, so thats twice as fast, 6 hours, down to 3, the SR71 did it slightly under 2 hours.

You know that Austin Powers bit, where they see all the weird things, and call out rude words? One part has Dr Evils spaceship showing up on radar as part of a man, well the SR71 pretty much looks like that in reality, its very beautiful, but kinda obscene too. Its very long looking, it looks black, but Im told its actually a very, very dark blue, made out of titanium for strength and light weight, with two large engine pods , one on each side.

The SR71 is the only successful version of its A12 precursor, which was actually very slightly faster, by a tiny bit, and could also fly very slightly higher, because it was lighter than the SR71.

Other versions of the A12 include the YF12, an interceptor, basically all the A12/Y12/SR71 planes looked pretty much the same, 90%, and flew over Mach 3, they were just for different roles. SR71 and A12 were for recon, spying, with their cameras and sensors, the YF12 was for taking out bomber planes. Officials decided that the YF12 Mach 3 interceptor wasnt needed, no bombers went near that speed, and so it was never created in large numbers. 32 SR71s were made, 13 A12s, and just 3 YF12 interceptors.

I'll focus on the SR71 again, it could barely take off, it leaked its ultra expensive fuel on the ground, needed help from starter carts on the ground, which had big american car engines in them, these spun the engines up to speed until they could run themselves, the plane limped off the runway, and had to dive, point down to break the sound barrier, Mach 1. But, once it got up to that speed, it rapidly accelerated to Mach 3. The engines themselves are rumoured to have handled mach 4 and a half, about 5000 kilometres per hour, but the rest of the plane couldnt handle the heat. The SR71 was made out of Titanium almost entirely. The Titanium had to be smuggled in from the Soviet Union, it had to be hidden, because the US was in the Cold War against the Soviet Union at the time of course.

Politicians were often against the SR71, who didnt understand it, and saw it as expensive and un needed. The Air Force was also not very fond of it. The SR71 was taken out of use in late 1989. It had survived prior attempts at retirement. But, it was actually reinstated, and used again, the first Blackbird took to the sky again in 1995. The Blackbird was permanently retired in 1998. President Bill Clinton had cancelled funding for the plane in 1997, it was in 1998 that it was finally put into its grave.

Theres many places in America where you can see the SR71 Blackbird, I'd like to visit a lot of the air museums and see one for myself. One of the coolest ones is in New York, the Intrepid Sea Air and Space museum. Its a giant retired aircraft carrier, moored near a highway, and has a whole bunch of famous planes on deck, including an F16, and an A12, the precursor to the SR71. Next to it, theres a retired Concorde, wow, and a nuclear submarine. Just amazing! To think they are all in the same place, and anyone can see these treasures.

Thank you for listening to my Blackbird episode.

Time for my new outro, the clip is from a porn star award show! Its worth hearing!

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

Sources:
------------

Auto Tune the News episode 2, used for intro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBb4cjjj1gI

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

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-71_Blackbird

http://www.intrepidmuseum.org/

Outro, Porn star show No Agenda clip from episode 92

Episode 13 Crackpot

2009-04-25T21:12:00.002+12:00
Episode 13, Crackpot.

A sampler of clips from the No Agenda podcast, focusing on Adam Curry, aka Crackpot.

Wacky, crazy, zany conspiracy theories are the order of the day :)

Make sure you listen to the earlier "The Buzzkill episode" for the other half of No Agenda, John C Dvorak, The Buzzkill

Episode 12 and The Buzzkill

2009-04-24T22:45:00.003+12:00
Episode 12, and The Buzzkill

A clip show extravaganza! I've taken a fairly random sampling of the No Agenda podcast, focusing on John C Dvorak AKA "The Buzzkill". Listen as Dvorak talks about honey, hummingbirds, Soy Milk, oh, and flu shot conspiracies, evil business, false presidential elections.......

Coming soon, Episode 13, Crackpot, focusing more on Adam Curry's side of No Agenda :)

Thank you to the No Agenda podcast makers, Adam Curry, and John C Dvorak, for letting me use clips from their amazing podcast, my favourite podcast, excluding that VEGAN podcast for New Zealanders :P

Episode 11 Richard Nixon

2009-04-13T17:59:00.000+12:00
Episode 11, Richard Nixon

Welcome once more to another fantastic episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I blabber on about things you dont really want to know about. The opening is a clip from the No Agenda podcast with Adam Curry and John C Dvorak.

This episode, one of the worst presidents in Americas history, no not Dubya, but Richard Nixon. I'm doing this episode before one of my favourite podcasts, Tank Riot, covers Nixon, although I hope they decide to talk about him because Im not going to be as accurate as their excellent podcasts are. By all means, make sure you search for " Tank Riot " on the iTunes store, and listen to Viktor, Sputnik and Tor's podcast :)

Richard MILHOUS Nixon was born in 1913, sounds like such a long time ago now. He died in 1994, at the age of 81. I'd love to know what he would think of all the Nixon Parodies.

As a New Zealander, I'd heard alot about Richard Nixon, mostly parodies of him, and about what an awful president he was. He seemed to hate everyone in the world, being portrayed as a grouchy old white guy, with a gravelly, angry sounding voice. If he were an animal, he'd be a bulldog. I've heard a few actual nixon speechs, and he doesnt sound much like the common impression, but its stuck in pop culture. I'll try and do a crappy impression, im not any good at all, but it'll give you an idea. Its pretty poor , but I'll try it a couple times for fun.

< say something in richard nixon impression voice "im richard nixon, i hate you drugged out hippies listening to this new fangled podcast">

I guess the vibe I'm going for is a rabid sean connery.

I do have one of his most famous speeches, the Checkers speech to play later, and you'll probably notice he doesnt sound that much like his parody voice. I guess its one of those things thats been built up through the ages, that Nixon is an evil, evil man, in the Hitler category, and that he sounded awful to match his black heart.

The Checkers speech is important as its full with nixon cliches, it has a whole bunch of his most well known lines.

One rumoured quote that I wish I had a recording of, he found out that J Edger Hoover died, and said jesus christ! that old cocksucker!

That would be a great clip to play.

Nows as good a time as any to play my Obama Clip collection, these little beauties deserve an episode of my podcast all to themselves. Basically, current President Barrack Obama read his own audio book, he reads all the lines in his book Audacity of Hope, including lines from a racist sounding character who swears.

These clips went around the news a while ago, I just love hearing Obama swear , sounding like a pervert, and how he hates whitey.

awesome huh? Its going to be interesting to see what people think of Obama in a few years, if he was as great as everyone hoped. I realise saying that, i've just made this podcast feel dated, so future listeners, feel free to make fun of us silly 2009 people.

Nixon has some really soppy quotes, stuff about hoping to be remembered as a good man, a peacemaker, that kind of stuff. Real Obama stuff, thats what I was getting to before. But, Nixon had this thing about recording conversations, and that came back to haunt him, in the same way im going to be forever plagued by my shitty nixon impression.

"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana are Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists. "

"The Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards. "

Richard Nixon is well known for the Vietnam War. Somehow people actually liked Richard Nixon at first, because he served two terms as President. Nixon stood down, and resigned from presidency because he was likely to be impeached, kicked out of the white house, from the Watergate scandal. I'll talk about that in due time.

Nixon was a Quaker, a religion basically thought of as American, although it was started in the UK. The full name of the religion is "religious society of friends", ew, makes it sound like a cult. According to Wikipedia, there are less than 400,000 quakers alive today, and it seems to be just in America.

Being in the "religious society of friends", a quaker, Richard Nixon was exempt from millitary conscription, but he chose to join the US Navy in 1942.

After World War II, Nixon got a seat in the house of representatives, he became a politician and represented California.

Quoting straight from Wikipedia,

I love the name of that group, House Committee on Un-American Activities, Un American activities HA! Imagine if New Zealand has a committee to find out Un New Zealander activities, it sounds like people have to conform to government standards for day to day life! Women have to act like perfect little wives all the time, cripes! The name was changed to "Internal Security" before it was gotten rid of a few years later. Something the House Committee on Un American Activities was known for was the Hollywood Black List, where the government cracked down on Hollywood for fear that popular films were housing communist propaganda! "thats uhn erh-mery-cun!"

During another political election, Nixon was up against a woman, Helen Douglas, that he beat by accusing her of being "pink right down to her underwear". Apparently most women's undies at the time were pink, and pink, or pinko is a term for someone who likes communists, pink looking like a washed out red. Douglas started calling Nixon "tricky dick". Both nicknames sound pretty rude to me.

In 1952 Dwight Eisenhower was president of America, and Richard Nixon was Vice President.

Here comes a great speech of Nixons, the Checkers Speech as its now known.

September 23rd, 1952, Nixon appeared on television to defend himself after he had been accused of misspending money.

Richard Nixon gave a review of his campaigns funding, and mentioned his own money situation. The Checkers speech is in pop culture because of some of the funny stuff hidden amongst the serious tone, Nixon mentions his wife PAT, sounds like a male farmer's name when nixon says it, well she wore a "Respectable Republican cloth coat", they didnt steal money from the public to spend on mink coats, she made do with a honest and cheap "cloth coat". The reason why the speech is known as the Checkers speech? At the very end Nixon mentions how his children wanted a dog, and a farmer sent him a dog, it sounds quite cruel how the dog was sent to him. Nixon says he wont give the donated dog back, because his children love it, they've called it Checkers.

I feel bad for making fun of his wifes name, reading more about Pat, she was born Thelma, but her father called her Pat because of their irish background. She liked the name Pat better and called herself that, or sometimes Patricia. Reading more about Pat Nixon, she did a lot of volunteer work, helped disabled children, and orphans.

I'll play part of the Checker speech now, its 11 minutes long.

Nixon doesnt sound anything like this, does he?

Now I'll talk about the 1960's Presidential Election.

Richard Nixon ran for president as a republican, against John F Kennedy, a democrat. The election was close the whole time, with Nixon running on his experience, and Kennedy wanting change, sounds a bit like John McCain vs Barrack Obama, or Helen Clark vs John Key. We know how this is going to turn out!

John F Kennedy claimed that the USA was now behind the Soviet Union when it came to missiles, The Missile Gap. Television was a new phenomenon, the 1960 presidential debate was the first to be televised. In the first debate, Nixon was recovering from illness, and didnt wear much makeup. Nixon looked old, fat, tired and confused, you can see him sweating. John F Kennedy looked comfortable in comparison. This has become a pop culture moment, often made fun of on Futurama, or The Simpsons, where a candidate is sweating and drowsy, like Mayor Quimby, and his opponent easily wins based on appearence.

Wikipedia mentions that people who saw the debate on television thought JFK was the winner, but those who only heard what the two presidential candidates were saying thought Nixon won the day. Could it be that a persons appearance affected the voters that much?

When the election was over, Nixon had lost by just 120,000 votes. Amazing. There was some confusion and charges of vote fraud, in the end its said to have been 120 000 votes between Nixon and the new President John F Kennedy.

After losing to Kennedy, Nixon moved back to California where he was a lawyer. In 1968, Nixon ran for president once more.

The 1968 election was at a difficult time, with racial tensions and hippies a problem. Many civil rights race riots occured, and divided the nation, and left wing students protested the Vietnam war, often getting into massive fights with police.

Quoting straight from Wikipedia,

Nixon ran a campaign promising Law and Order, to calm down all the violent protests that had been occurring. In a campaign promise, Nixon promised to end the conscription draft, to not force people to join the military to fight in Vietnam.

Nixon won the election against democrat Hubert Humphrey, by about 1%. One of Nixons slogans was "Nixons the one", sounds like something The Daily Show would make fun of.

In 1969, man walked on the moon, July 20th President Richard Nixon spoke live (with a considerable delay due to distance) with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, two of the three astronauts. Not very well known third astronaut, Michael Collins had to stay aboard the main module and keep it in space, he didnt get to stand on the moon.

Nixon approved development of the Space Shuttle, but was against a manned voyage to Mars, and a permanent base on the moon.

Nixon is also known for being friendly to China, who had split with the soviet union. The Chinese table tennis team invited the top American team to join them for a demonstration competition, it was one of the first times in twenty years that americans were allowed into China. These ping pong matches were included in Forest Gump, where Forest goes to China to play Ping Pong.

America and China became quite friendly, and fearing that the two would work together, the Soviet Union relaxed its policies towards both, for fear of provoking a war. This is called détente "day tont", a french word which is basically used as standing down from conflict during a war.

""You see: homosexuality, dope, immorality in general -- these are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff; they're trying to destroy us.""

In 1973 Richard Nixon served a second term as president, he was voted in by a landslide, gaining over 60% of the votes.

Inflation became a problem, and to counter it Nixon had price controls set, controlling the market prices. The public didnt like this idea, according to Wikipedia meat disappeared from grocery stores and farmers DROWNED chickens rather than sell them at a loss.

Nixon chose to remove the gold standard, I dont quite understand economics like this so I'll quote from Wikipedia alot here. Basically, the US dollar was tied to gold bars, sitting in bank vaults or wherever they were kept. Deflation stepped in, the american dollar wasnt worth as much as it was before. OPEC, which is a group of countries that export oil, wasnt getting paid the same for oil, if we say they were getting paid $100 dollars for each barrel of oil, then that 100 dollars was only worth half as much as before, $50, now that the american dollar was lower. I made both those values up by the way, but basically the oil sellers were not getting paid what they wanted anymore. OPEC cut production, and raised prices for oil.

From Wikipedia

I love the quote from the Shah of Iran, about how they get screwed on the price of goods, so now they're treating the Western World the same way. It sounds fair to me, although it started the 1973 oil crisis.

The 1973 Oil Crisis affected america quite deeply, many petrol stations would be out of petrol all together, with signs saying exactly that, "out of gas". Fuel rationing was in place,
in the U.S., drivers of vehicles with license plates having an odd number as the last digit (or a vanity license plate) were allowed to purchase gasoline for their cars only on odd-numbered days of the month, while drivers of vehicles with even-numbered license plates were allowed to purchase fuel only on even-numbered days

The US Car makers, you know those guys who make really crappy cars? And are all pretty much bankrupt right now? Well, they started making smaller cars finally, and NASCAR reduced its car race distances by a whopping 10 percent.

"I can't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco."

Alternative fuels were seeked, in New Zealand it became semi popular to have cars that could also use LPG, natural gas, a conversion cost a thousand dollars or so, im not sure who much it cost at the time, I think its somewhere around the three thousand dollar mark now, dont hate me if Im wrong!

Inside the car, you have a knob to turn, you can run on both petrol or gas, you have the normal fuel tank, petrol, as well as a gas cylinder in the boot etc. I think its a pretty cool idea, to be so much more reliant, even if its kinda wacky. I know someone with a LPG capable car, it seems pretty interesting. I do think with LPG you dont have as good performance, you dont get as much engine power, but its still alot cheaper than petrol to use.

The Soviet Union exported oil , their economy had been bad for a while, but now they had much more demand for oil, so americans could really have been helping out their arch nemesis, the Soviet Union, by having to buy their oil.

Nixon mandated a new speed limit of 55 miles per hour, for the rest of the world thats about 90 kilometres per hour. This was to save fuel. Prior to the new speed limit, state set their own maximum speed limit, with some states being around 120 kilometres per hour, and apparently some rural roads you had no real speed limit, and could go as fast as you wanted.

I'll end with Watergate.

Watergate deserves its own episode, hopefully on Tank Riot.

The Watergate Complex is a apartment type hotel set of buildings in Washington DC. The buildings are in some funky retro looking shapes, including one (or two) thats a curled C shape, and another J shaped building.

On the 28th of May, 1972, a team of burglars working for Nixon's re election campaign broke in and installed wiretaps and took photos of the Democratic National Committee's offices inside the Watergate complex. The installed "bugs" were listened to from a hotel across the street. During a second break in, to replace a wiretap that had become faulty,five burglars were caught, and the Watergate scandal begun.

The Washington Post covered the story, and reporters used an FBI Informant who was known as "Deep Throat" to show how the men caught were working for Richard Nixon.
Deep Throat is a famous name, it was apparently from a porn movie of the same name, guess what happens in the movie.

Deep Throat is also used as a codename in Metal Gear Solid. Also, The Simpsons have had fun with the character, like Smithers meeting The Simpson family in a car park late at night to give them tips, this is based on the real Deep Throat.

Nixon at first tried to down play the convictions. It became known that Richard Nixon had a secret recording system setup, where things he said, conversations on his phones etc were recorded on tape. These Nixon tapes are on the internet, and are listened to still to find information about what happened.

Something interesting on one of the tapes, theres an 18 minute and 20 second gap. The first 5 minutes is apparently from Nixons secretary Rose Mary Woods, who accidentally hit record on her tape recorder controls while she reached for her telephone. Theres still controversy about this, Rose Mary Woods was asked to recreate how she accidentally hit record and wiped part of a tape, theres a photo on Wikipedia and its pretty odd how a leg is stretching out one way and her arms are another reaching for the phone. There are conspiracies that it was not an accidental wiping.

< i am not a crook clip >

I got these quotes from the Nixon Tapes from the Rotten.com article on Nixon, Rotten.com normally is thought of as just incredibly sick photos of rotting bodies and porn, but they have a great library resource too, believe me! They make fun of history true, but you'll learn interesting things that are not on Wikipedia because they sound biased. Theres a great photo of "win with dick bubble gum cigars, presidential favorites bubble gum cigars 5cents" I'll spare you my Nixon impression, I know its terrible.

During the watergate scandal, President Nixons approval rating fell to 23 percent support. Gerald Ford, Vice President, took over the presidency as Nixon resigned, facing impeachment, which is a being kicked out of the President job.

Nixon delivered the news of his resignation on television, and on the 9th of August 1974 he left office. He never admitted breaking the law, but regretted making some bad decisions.

The new president Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon of any crimes he MAY have committed. The president can basically overturn any conviction, getting people off death sentances etc.

Something very weird, on the evening of the pardon from newly elected President Ford, Nixon felt very sore, his left leg had swelled to three times its normal size. Phlebitis, flu-bite-is had returned, he had blood clots. This is mentioned in a Futurama episode that I'll play clips from very soon.

Ah what the hell, I'll try some more of my Nixon impression, just because you want to hear it so bad.

By the way, the word dike here means like a damn, not something else that would be funny coming from Nixon. Here he is talking with Henry Kissinger.

"Nixon: I still think we ought to take the North Vietnamese dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: About two hundred thousand people.
Nixon: No, no, no, I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?
Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
Nixon: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?...I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes."

doing that voice is killing the back of my throat! I cant do it too fast, or for long! Bear with me ok?

"Nixon: The only place where you and I disagree ... is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about civilians and I don't give a damn. I don't care.
Kissinger: I'm concerned about the civilians because I don't want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.

Theres a great episode of futurama called " A Head In The Polls", you really should google it, wikipedia has a great article about it. In Futurama, many famous dead people have been somehow kept alive as heads in glass jars filled with water, they get fed with what looks like goldfish food, flakes that get put into the jar. The heads themselves are bolted to the bottom of the jar, and the persons name is on a little plaque. Richard Nixons Head, as its often called, keeps turning up over the years, in A Head In The Polls he wants to be president again. "No-body" can be president more than twice, which Nixon was, but with a "new robot body" he runs for President against two idiot identical clones, one says one thing and the other says it slightly different. Throughout the episode many famous Nixon moments come up, I've got some clips to play now. Listen for Checkers the dog, which he doesnt want to give back, Checkers is also just a head in a jar, Nixons "good republican body", reffering to how Pat didnt have a fancy coat, but a good republican cloth coat, how Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon for any wrongdoings he may have done, and just some general made up evil nixon stuff! You'll also hear how a proper richard nixon impression sounds.

I've got a few more Richard Nixon Clips, this one is "you wont have nixon to kick around anymore", from when he didnt get elected as californian governor

In 1977 Richard Nixon worked on a PR comeback. He met with interviewer David Frost who paid Nixon six hundred thousand dollars for a few interviews. I dont know what that would be in todays money, but without a doubt thats a million or two?

In the interviews, Nixon does admit to some wrong doing,
"I did abuse the power I had as president." He said that at the time of his resignation, he was crippled and that "I said things that were not true." He revealed, "I brought myself down. I gave them a sword and they stuck it in. And they twisted it with relish. And, I guess, if I'd been in their position, I'd have done the same thing".

But still denied CRIMINAL wrong doing. Worldwide, over 45 million viewers saw the Frost interviews.

The Frost interviews were made into a play and recently a movie called Frost/Nixon.

In 1986, Nixon made a address to a newspaper convention, where he impressed people with his worldly knowledge. A headline was "hes back", which was also mentioned in the Futurama episode I played clips from, as "Nixons back!" while the robot Nixon stands on people, fires rockets, says "whos kicking who around now? and breaks into the white house "knock knock mwhahahahhaha". In Foreign affairs Nixon was respected as an elder statesman.

Richard Nixon opened his presidential library in California in 1990. It also has the house Richard Nixon was born in on the site.

Pat Nixon died in 1993 of health problems. Nixon was said to have cried deeply for the first time in his adult life. Ten months later, April 22 1994, Richard Nixon also died, they are both buried at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.

Thank you very much for listening to this podcast episode, I do hope Tank Riot will make a Nixon episode of their own, so they can correct all the mistakes Im sure to have made.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

<--End song You Can't Say No To A Soldier plays-->

Written for: Iceland (1942)
Lyric: Mack Gordon
Music: Harry Warren
Year: 1942
Original publisher: Twentieth Century Music Corporation, rights controlled by
Mayfair Music Corp

Listen, little lady, it's the order of the day,
Issued by the highest of authority;
Fellows in the service simply can't be turned away,
You know that defense must get priority.
So, if you're patriotic'lly inclined,
Heed the call to arms, and keep this thought in mind:

Chorus 1:

You can't say, "No," to a soldier,
A sailor or a handsome marine;
No, you can't say, "No," if he wants to dance,
If he's gonna fight, he's got a right to romance;
So, get out your lipstick and powder,
Be beautiful and dutiful, too.
If he's not your type, then it's still o-kay,
You can always kiss him in a sisterly way,

Oh, you can't say, "No,
No, you gotta give in,
If you want him to win for you.

Chorus 2 (from movie)

You can't say, "No," to a soldier,
A sailor or a handsome marine;
No, you can't say, "No," if he wants to dance,

If he's gonna fight, he's got a right to romance;
So, get out your lipstick and powder,
Be beautiful and dutiful, too.
If he says it's cold on those submarines,
You can knit a sweater, but that's not what he means;
Oh, you can't say, "No,"
No, no, no, no, no, no;
No, they're not made of tin,
So, you better give in

If you want him to win for you.

Sources
---------------
Richard Nixon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon

Quaker article,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Society_of_Friends

Checkers Speech
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkers_Speech

1968 election
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1968

Rotten.com article
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/presidents/richard-m-nixon/

Episode 10 Podcasts

2009-04-10T22:47:00.000+12:00
Episode 10, Podcasts

Hello and welcome to the tenth episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast.

This episode is about Podcasts themselves, a brief history of podcasting, some of my favourite podcasts, and how I make my podcasts. Perhaps you'll like some of the podcasts I mention, or even decide to make a podcast of your own.

Podcasting started as a way to have subscriptions to audio shows. It sort of evolved from RSS feeds, which stand for Really Simple Syndication. RSS feeds are like a website address that gets used by a program, such as an internet browser like Firefox, or a media program for podcasts such as Apple's iTunes. Using the podcast example, the RSS feed is subscribed to, checked for updates, and if they're available, iTunes will then download the latest episode.

Focussing on iTunes and podcasting again, Apple added a Podcast feature to iTunes in June 2005, with a podcast directory that had 3000 podcasts linked to. Within two days, one million podcast subscriptions were reported.

To give you a little idea about how useful podcasts can be, I'll include a short episode from ABC news, interviewing Apple CEO Steve Jobs when podcast features were released into iTunes.

One of the most famous podcasters is Adam Curry, who makes the "No Agenda" podcast that I love. Curry is known as "The Podfather", for being a celebrity who embraced the podcast medium early on. He didnt invent the idea of podcasts, but grabbed the idea while it was small, and held on.

Another famous podcaster is Leo Laporte, who broadcasts some thirty hours of audio a week, he has his own company TWiT, This Week in Tech, which has about 10 podcasts about Apple computers, Windows running PC's, security, bio tech and general computer news.

Most major news organizations also put out podcasts, I subscribe to the 60 Minutes podcast, its awesome, its actually only 40 something minutes long, you miss 20 whole minutes of ads from the tv version! Its also the full american version, in New Zealand we get a rehashed version for NZ, with a New Zealand host, and a couple of normally lame New Zealand stories each episode. The American show focuses on much larger issues normally like war, A list celebrity interviews, health breakthroughs etc. The stupid New Zealand issues are normally slapped in for some kiwi content, things about young mothers in Auckland, or P users in Christchurch. Not only do I miss out on 20 minutes of ads, but I also get to hear major stories a week or two before they are on the NZ show. I dont ever watch the televised NZ 60 minutes now, just listen to the podcast that comes out monday my time, probably released sometime sunday American time.

I also get Time podcasts, from Time magazine, documentaries from the BBC and audio from NPR, which is an american public radio station, we know them best from parodies on The Simpsons and Grand Theft Auto games where they have really boring content, and constantly beg for listener donations every 2 minutes.

Theres many types of online only content released as podcasts too, my Time magazine podcasts are only available as podcasts of course, you cant have audio in the magazine edition, so actual audio from interviews is released as podcasts, whereas in the magazine you just get edited text from the conversations.

Some of the best content only released as podcasts that I listen to include Stephen Fry's PODGRAMS, Stephen Fry is perhaps the smartest man in the world, Tank Riot, which is kind of my inspiration for my own podcasts, a bunch of friends talking about topics they like, and the many Vegan podcasts I like listening to, the most enjoyable is NZ Vegan Podcast. Until theres a Vegan Channel on TV, the internet and podcasting in particular is indispensable for Vegan shows.

Podcasts can be anything from some weird guy talking into a microphone in his bedroom, ahem, to professionally produced shows like the NZ Vegan Podcast. An interesting interview trick in podcasts is people using Skype to call people, and recording the audio from the call, there might as well be two people in a recording booth recording the show together, when they can be anywhere in the world thanks to Skype.

I'll quickly list the podcasts I subscribe to, all 36 of them :) I'll make it quick.

Adam Currys Daily Source Code, where Adam Curry talks about conspiracies,

Cranky Geeks, John C Dvoraks main show, I listen to the audio only version , its about 15MB per show compared to 100+ for the video , a computer news show,

The Debate Hour Podcast, debating for, you guessed it, an hour about gun control, abortion etc,

BBC Documentaries, stories about The Beetles and the Soviet union among others,

Great Speeches in History, where I've got a speeches from Nixon and Reagan, Martin Luther king and Nelson Mandela.

I Cringely, Cringely is a tech writer who also records his articles and puts podcast editions up, its very cool to choose between reading and listening, both for free, it takes me a minute or two to read the story, or about 10 minutes normally to listen to it read.

Borats Bits was a one off podcast, an australian interview with Borat, a character by Sacha Baron Cohen,

Next is my podcast,

The Kojima productions podcast, video game news,

The Laporte Report, The Tech Guy and Mac Break Weekly, all Leo Laportes technology podcasts,

Macintosh Folklore Radio, stories about the 1984 Macintosh development read out,

Marcus Lush, a Radio Live podcast that NEVER seems to get updated, its the highlights from his morning radio show,

Meat Free Media Podcast, a New Zealand Vegetarian/Vegan podcast,

Motown 50, Motown is celebrating a look back at their long history, this includes interviews with stars such as Stevie Wonder,

No Agenda, one of my favourite podcasts talking about random things mostly, life experiences, politics, real news, conspiracies and how Vegans are to blame for everything.

Bored yet? Almost over.

Intelligence Squared, and NPR Memorable moments 2007, thats from the american public radio station I mentioned , Intelligence Squared is some very good debates held in New York, and Memorable Moments is highlights from 2007 that were on the radio.

NZ Vegan podcast, my personal favourite podcast, and thats saying something, I listen to podcasts for over an hour a day, and NZ Vegan is by far my favourite.

The Onion Radio News, one minute fake news clips, very funny.

Peta's Podcast, talking about animal rights ,

The Secret Diary of Steve Ballmer, a joke podcast with articles from the fake ballmer blog read by Alex, the mac voice I also use. Hasnt been updated for awhile now.

A Meet the Author Episode, Meet The Author is an Apple podcast featuring book writers talking about their books for an hour or so, I have the Stephen Fry episode, he talks about his history with Apple computers.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at D5, a tech conference with Bill Gates from Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple talking with Walt Mossberg, a famous tech journalist.

Tank Riot, talking about mostly nerdy topics like sci fi movies and scientists, a very good podcast.

Tech 5 comes out during week days, its an american podcast by John C Dvorak who also is on Cranky Geeks and No Agenda,

This WEEK in TECH, Leo Laportes main podast that comes out weekly of course,

Thrillercast, people talking about how great black Michael Jackson was, to do with the release of Thriller 25, the greatest selling album of all time,

Three Time magazine podcasts, Entertainment, Politics and 10 Questions, where you hear full interviews.

Vegan Freak Radio, a podcast for Vegans,

and finally the 60 minutes show.

Right now I have 9GB of podcasts, 11.1 days worth according to iTunes. I have 36 different podcasts.

To end, I'll tell you, dear listener, how I make my podcast.

Basically, I type out a script, I figure out what I want to talk about in advance, what sound clips I want to use, and get it all prepared. Then I use Garageband, a audio recording program that comes with all Apple computers, part of iLife, I basically open up TextEdit, which is the Word like program with my script in it, I click record in Garageband and Command Plus Tab to switch quickly to the script in front of all the other programs. If I need to pause and correct a mistake or something I can switch back and re-record that flubbed line. To put sound files in , I just drag AAC sound files into Garageband in the place I want them.

Finally, when Im all recorded in Garageband, I export the recording to iTunes, which takes a couple of minutes getting it all mixed right, and convert it from a 900MB odd AIFF type sound file to a 10-40MB AAC sound file, for the final podcast.

I put in the information like author, the name of the podcast episode, and I copy the script I read from into the Lyrics section, or description, so it shows up when you play the sound file back on an iPod or in iTunes itself.

I also add the Album art, a photo I took of a Dragonfly outside of the kitchen here.

When I have the AAC sound file on my Desktop, I upload to archive.org, which saves websites like a museum, they seem to have infinite storage space, they let you upload files for free to their servers.

Then, I copy the actual link to the sound file on the Archive.org server, very important, and paste that as a media link into my Blog. At the Blog, www.jaywontdart.blogspot.com, I also paste the show script in the blog entry. So you could always just read my full podcast episode there without downloading the audio :)

When I update my blogspot blog, my Feedburner RSS feed account picks up the new entry and adds it to my RSS Feed automatically. I also log into Feedburner to update the RSS feed's description for iTunes to pick up, I include the topics of the episode into the description so they also work as keywords on iTunes, if someone searchs for keywords I've used in my podcast topics, it should show in iTunes, if you search for South Invercargill, or Mister Rogers, I should show up.

iTunes just shows the RSS feed, it doesnt do any storage or sending of the podcast itself. The crucial thing in podcasting is the RSS feed, you dont need iTunes to listen to podcasts, its the best thing for podcast management of course, but you dont need it. All you need is the RSS feed address.

So, to sum up, I record my podcast, upload it to archive.org who host for free, I make a blog post with the link to the actual file, my feedburner RSS feed picks up that new blog entry automatically and when iTunes updates RSS feeds, it will notice my new episode and download it automatically to your computer! Simple!

Well, thank you again for listening to this long and boring podcast episode. My next episode topics include some more No Agenda stuff, Im making two seperate episodes, one for Crackpot and one for The Buzzkill, clips from No Agenda to do with each of the main hosts, Crackpot, Adam Curry, with his wacky conspiracies, including the Hydroxy Booster he got a bunch of hippies to cook up and add to his Jaguar, to try and get more out of the fuel he uses.

The Buzzkill, John C Dvorak, the calmer older host, with lots of interesting lifestories. Some of the things he talks about include Hummingbirds, Soy Milk, Honey and the little Black Kids who go door to door in his area trying to get you to buy magazines.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

<--End song You Can't Say No To A Soldier plays-->

Written for: Iceland (1942)
Lyric: Mack Gordon
Music: Harry Warren
Year: 1942
Original publisher: Twentieth Century Music Corporation, rights controlled by
Mayfair Music Corp

Listen, little lady, it's the order of the day,
Issued by the highest of authority;
Fellows in the service simply can't be turned away,
You know that defense must get priority.
So, if you're patriotic'lly inclined,
Heed the call to arms, and keep this thought in mind:

Chorus 1:

You can't say, "No," to a soldier,
A sailor or a handsome marine;
No, you can't say, "No," if he wants to dance,
If he's gonna fight, he's got a right to romance;
So, get out your lipstick and powder,
Be beautiful and dutiful, too.
If he's not your type, then it's still o-kay,
You can always kiss him in a sisterly way,

Oh, you can't say, "No,
No, you gotta give in,
If you want him to win for you.

Chorus 2 (from movie)

You can't say, "No," to a soldier,
A sailor or a handsome marine;
No, you can't say, "No," if he wants to dance,

If he's gonna fight, he's got a right to romance;
So, get out your lipstick and powder,
Be beautiful and dutiful, too.
If he says it's cold on those submarines,
You can knit a sweater, but that's not what he means;
Oh, you can't say, "No,"
No, no, no, no, no, no;
No, they're not made of tin,
So, you better give in

If you want him to win for you.

Sources
------------

Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_podcasting

ABC News Podcasting added to iTunes, interview with Steve Jobs from the iTunes store

Episode 9 Vegetarian/Veganism

2009-03-30T21:19:00.002+13:00
Episode 9

Vegetarian/Vegan

Welcome to Episode 9 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, this is my first episode to do with animals. Through different episodes in my podcast, Im planning to cover topics about movies, computers, video games, music and animals.

In this episode I'll talk a little bit about why you should really think about being Vegan, the history of not eating animal products, health benefits, and about how cool it is to whip out the line, "yeah, Im vegan because I care about animals, they have feelings and I really respect that", that little beauty is better than any date rape drug, you're going to get some serious action. That's why I'm vegan of course.

You should know by now that I love cutting sound clips from other media, in this episode I have a lot of snippets from other podcasts, and even some stuff from Metal Gear Solid 4, one of the best Video Games ever. It talks about animal abuse ingame as little easter eggs really. Its great to see such a manly, James Bond spy kinda game bringing up the idea that strong men can be nice to animals too.

I also have some YouTube audio to play, and links to the videos I used are included in the notes for this episode, as always you see them in "Lyrics" however you bring that up depending on how you are listening to this podcast, if on an iPod you go through the info for rating, skipping through the audio, and Lyrics should be there. You can see the entire script of this episode, with my sources at the very bottom :)

I do have some videos featuring celebrities, such as Moby, a musician, and Carl Lewis , one of the all time greatest athletes, he dominated world records for a considerable amount of time. Ok, so the fastest man in the world right now isnt Vegan, but one of the very top of all time is, and Carl Lewis says that being Vegan helped his performance.

Mixed in are some clips from No Agenda, my favourite podcast after the NZ Vegan Podcast of course :) Knuckles, the host from NZ Vegan was kind enough to record a clip to use in this episode. I'll have her on later.

No Agenda often bring up anti "green", anti "vegetarian/vegan and "VAY-GUN" as Dvorak likes to pronounce Vegan, he also thinks They're trying to put AMY WINESTEIN into rehab, and she says no no no, and that George Michael, and the band, was the lead singer of Queen.

When I listen to No Agenda, I'll write down funny quips, I grab a piece of paper and scratch out "NA Episode 40, 1 hour 40 minutes 14 seconds" or whatever, and at home extract the clip to use later.

I love when they talk about Vegetarians and Vegans, they joke as if we are some huge terrorist network invading america, poisoning people with our ideas about cutting out meat. I have read a lot of people tying in Veganism with Global Warming, how meat needs many times more resources and pollutes far more than plant crops do, but I dont like that spin either, Global Warming politics is a very messy item, No Agenda often will point out a lot of things about what politicians are trying to do with it, all sorts of crazy taxes, and human rights getting taken away, all to save some supposed animal on the other side of the world. When you think about it, Global Warming, now called Climate Change when it turns out a lot of places are getting colder, not hotter, Climate Change is a lot like Y2K, remember how upset people got over that? It was going to be anarchy remember, nuclear power plants would go off, killing millions, planes would drop from the sky.....nothing happened. On No Agenda, they often give the idea Climate Change is another way of creating a new economy, a new way for the elite to rule over the working classes.

I dont deny that Climate Change is occurring, and its another topic, so I'd better get on track!

I'll start by talking about Vegetarianism.

Vegetarians are people who generally dont eat meat, but they may or may not eat eggs, and diary products. Some really weird people dont think fish are animals, so fish dont count as meat, um, so what, they are minerals are they? Vegetables with eyes, fruit with brains? Steve Jobs, Apple CEO is said to be pescetarian, he eats fish but not other animals.

I personally think that pescetarians are kinda funny, I mean they go so far as to cut out practically all animal's, but then go and eat fish, so they dont get to use my killer pick up line about caring for the cute little animals and their really important feelings.

Vegetarians may also eat honey, and wear leather. When I ate things with milk in them, I had Vegetarian Cheese, which still has cows milk, ugh, but is free of Rennet, rennet is basically baby cow vomit, its used to break down the milk in cheese. I guess they kill baby cows just for the rennet as its called, vomit. Vegetarian cheese uses an artifical kind of rennet, it can come from other sources, I guess it must be more expensive than baby cow vomit, so mainstream people eat rennet containing cheese without having a clue whats inside. People really should start looking into ingredients.

Vegans are different to Vegetarians,

Donald Watson coined the term Vegan, he took the start of Vegetarian, and the end, to form Veg an, pronounced Ve-gun.

Heres a sound file I took from YouTube, asking people in San Francisco what they thought the word Vegan meant. Most are very fat americans.

Vegans dont use any animal products whatsoever, I now call myself Vegan, although I dont like the term as to me, it sounds like a Japanese sex toy. It is a very useful term though, as if you order food thats vegetarian, it could have milk in it, or eggs, or even fish, who knows what the chef's idea of vegetarian is, Vegan is very easy to define, nothing belonging to an animal, so I'm starting to get used to the word.

Vegans also shouldnt like leather, its nothing more than preserved skin. Its gross what has to be done to the skin to make leather goods, I feel sick when I see gorgeous women, and then the scaly hide handbag they have.

Now, being vegetarian or vegan is not a religion, I get very annoyed about people who call it a "lifestyle", a "personal decision", I dont see it as anything more than a choice somebody makes, because they care about their health, and the lives of animals. I myself was put off the idea of being Vegetarian, I didnt even know what a Vegan was until only a few years ago, because Vegetarians are portrayed as freaky people, weirdo hippie chicks, always women really, skinny, whiny, bitchy, always lecturing and handing out pamphlets on the street. If a guy is vegetarian, hes either gay or insanely effeminate, its not a manly thing to do. I had known some vegetarians, some family members living in Christchurch, vegetarian capital of New Zealand, and a family friend, but I saw them as female, and different people, they ate different things to normal people and were just weirder!

I guess it was the stereotype stamped in my mind from where I grew up. I knew I didnt like eating meat, I hated the bones in KFC, I could never pick the last bits of flesh from them, my parents would literally suck the bones to get the marrow, I never would eat cold meat, I didnt like cutting meat from the bone. But I ate meat, and ordered medium rare steak, I would have Meatball Subway sandwiches, and meat lovers pizza. I guess it was trying to be a man really, trying to fit in. Through the internet I learnt about more people who cared about the lives of animals, and it started sinking in, I mean, I wouldnt eat a cat would I? of course not, because you dont do that, not to cats, but its ok to eat cows , um, right? Online, I found out more and more about animal rights groups, like SAFE here in NZ, Save Animals From Experiements, and PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It started to affect me more and more. One of the final things for me was learning about really smart men who were vegetarian, people like Nikola Tesla, who invented practically everything to do with electricity, radio, and magnetism, Albert Einstein, Mr Scientist himself, and Adolf Hitler, the baddest man in history. I began to see Vegetarians more as normal people, people like me, who cared about animals, who didnt want to hurt them ,to eat them, I couldnt ever kill an animal and strip all its organs out, its not me, so why would I pay someone to do it for me, while I shut my eyes? It was about being logical, about doing the right thing. Now that I had my own vegetarian role models, it seemed like something I really wanted to do.

Now I'll play the Metal Gear Solid 4 stuff, the first is about the tough James Bond type hero, Solid Snake getting help from his rat friends,

and the second clip is what happens if you shoot a wolf that appears during the game, you can hear a second guy, Otacon get upset straight after, he was in love with Sniper Wolf who was a female boss who you killed in the same location years early on Shadow Moses island....um, well I'll skip the Metal Gear Solid story, its really good, look it up sometime :)

Here are some recordings from YouTube, the first is about a Vegan guy who wont date meat eaters. Have a guess if hes straight or not.

Did you guess that he was gay? Well, he is, his name on youtube is Gay God, he has a photo of him with his boyfriend, and its kinda obvious! Good for him.

This clip is a response to the last clip, now a woman who wont date meat eaters.

On youtube, people just have to add their opinion, normally in some hastily shot video.
finally, a meat eater who wouldnt date vegetarians, his clip sucks compared to the Vegan versions, it doesnt have any thought put into it.
< meat eater response clip>

It was fairly easy to be vegetarian, apart from the first month, where I kinda felt weird not eating what my dad ate. People generally didnt even know, you dont have to eat meat every meal, its not like you have to be seen eating live chickens as you walk down the street. I starting being vegetarian when I was 19, for 2007, 7 the lucky number, and for 2009 I've decided to start being Vegan, all I had to do was cut out things with milk inside. Things with milk as an ingredient are harder for me to avoid than meat, I'd never thought about it, but chips, baked beans even bread can all have milk hidden away. Suddenly, things I'd been eating every week for years were the devil, and had to be replaced, quickly!

To hear about someone elses perspective, heres my friend Knuckles, from the NZ Vegan Podcast, she was wonderful enough to record this for my little old podcast

No, thank you Knuckles! You can find the NZ Vegan Podcast on iTunes by searching for "N Z Vegan" in the iTunes Store.

My average meals now have a lot of beans, rice, pasta, fruit and vegetables in them, more than when I ate meat. I hate even thinking about eating meat now, I wish I could forget about it, just delete my past. I even feel angry at my parents a little for how they ate around me when I was little, I feel like I was cheated out of thinking about not eating animals when I was younger. Ultimately its a personal decision, not something I can blame on everyone else, but I really wish I'd never eaten animal products now. I've heard about people being angry at vegetarians who bring their children up that way, they say its like brainwashing, depriving them of dead animals all hacked up, but that works both ways, and I think that you could use the term brainwashing more for people who are told to pat the kitty, because some animals feel pain, but to be quiet and eat the chickens legs, "because its normal dammit!"

Some of my friends act like I'm weird, they've joked that I've had some spiritual awakening or something, like im a weirdo hippie now ,sometimes they will say "right, im off to KFC" in front of me. It doesnt bother me at all, no skin off my back ha. Their little words dont cut me to the bone, I'm on a roll!

So once I got past the idea that vegetarians were weirdos, I felt great being vegetarian, and now vegan, for my health, and for the lives of the animals. Screw anyone who wants to put down someone else for caring.

Some famous Vegans
Jermaine Jackson, Michael Jackson's brother, Dennis Kucinich, he ran for President, his SUPER SEXY red haired wife , Elizabeth, half his age, shes also Vegan, Joaquin Phoenix, he narrated Earthlings, Moby, Techno artist who made music for Earthlings, Weird Al Yankovic, who makes all the parody songs, Billy West, voice actor on Futurama and many other shows, Pamela Anderson, Ellen Degeneres, Tobey Maguire, Daniel Johns of Silverchair, Prince, Shania Twain, Andre 3000 of Outkast, Ingrid Newkirk, founder of PETA, and Donald Watson, founder of the UK Vegan Society, the man who came up with the word Vegan by taking the start and end of the word Vegetarian to make " Vegan"

Phew. And thats just a tiny list, from memory.

Moby is a famous popular musician, and Vegan. Heres an interview he gave.

Heres the rest of the clips from No Agenda that I've gotten so far. I'm sure Vegans will come up in future.

Its a little difficult sometimes to find out if historical figures were Vegetarian, and ate diary and eggs, or if they were fully Vegan, as my friend Knuckles points out, the word Vegetarian really encompasses alot of stuff, some people who just stop eating red meat will call themselves vegetarian, its also become a trendy fad, something that famous people do, like scientology, and something that Oprah did for 21 days to "cleanse" herself, ugh. Oprah said so much great stuff about being Vegan, she also stopped caffine, sugar and other things, she said how great it made her feel and how easy and tasty the food was. But then she goes and gives it up still. It really makes it seem like a trendy diet you do for a month, and then give up.

This clip was on CNN, its some womans day type story, womens television I guess, ugh, its awful to listen to them! They talk about veganism as being "hard", they dont think about the animals, its about giving up non vegan Chocolate cake. It also makes Veganism to be like a new fad diet, like the aitkens diet, something you do for awhile and then give up once you grow out of it. It does have an interview with Russell Simmons at the end though, and has a huge figure that they claim is the number of vegans in america.

Theres many international groups that promote being Vegetarian, most people today will have heard of PETA, People for The Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA have been mentioned quite a few times on mainstream television like The Simpsons, they put out huge billboard ads, they have had advertising spots during the SuperBowl over in america.

Lots of PETA campaigns are well remembered, they almost all end up causing controversy, many use violent imagery, showing blood and cages, saying that eating meat is like the holocaust,

That really annoyed Jewish organisations in America, even though it was also defended by famous jewish animal rights campaigners, in America mentioning anything negative about Jewish people seems to be instantly bad, you get sued for using the J word.

Other campaigns PETA has run target KFC, Mcdonalds and other huge fast food companies, for using abused animals in their food byproducts. These campaigns often result in the targeted company introducing some token vegetarian option like salads, along with a little pr speech saying "Company X is all for animal rights and we try to have our animals in the largest cages ..." blah blah blah.

PETA have also shown animals being used in experiments, they have hidden cameras on as they visit places where horrific acts occur. Some I've seen are about animals in experiments, such as having their bodies strapped into a machine, and "snapped" upright, to test the effects of pressure on living bodies. Other experiments that are performed on animals include isolation tests, vivisection, and testing chemicals on animals, many large companies put chemicals into rabbits eyes to test how they react badly.

A well known PETA discovery was the case of Britches, a monkey who was kept at the University of California, Riverside. Poor Britches was taken from his mother, his eyelids were sewn shut with really thick string, and a bizarre "sonar device" was strapped on his head. Britches, and another 23 animals were to be kept isolated from other animals for three whole years, apparently to see if these animals could learn to see with the sonar device or something.....Its just sick. Theres plenty of photos of Britches online, eyes all bandaged up, and this crazy device on his head that made a high noise every so often. Britches was found with a warm device with fake nipples, which he cowered around, probably thinking it was his mother. Close to 500 animals were "liberated", stolen, from the labs, and now Britches lives with other monkeys, without any experiments performed on him.

Many famous celebrities campaign for PETA, Pamela Anderson is probably the most well known.

I wasnt sure about what PETA's actual goals were, if they were into whats called animal welfare, where companies that use animals such as slaughterhouses, they are asked politely to use less painful methods of killing animals, or abolition, which is ending all animal use period. Practically all the anti meat pamphlets I've seen from PETA use the word "Vegetarian", not Vegan, I asked if they would clarify PETAs position on animal use, and got this statement.

I thought it was quite a good ready to send response, but I do wish PETA would use the word "Vegan" more often.

Heres a clip from Ingrid Newkirk, a co founder of PETA.

Theres a very good interview podcast with her, if you search for Time 10 Questions on iTunes, you'll find the Ingrid Newkirk interview, where she answers questions Time Readers have sent. I hope you decide to listen to it, its not very long.

However, there has been lots of criticism of PETA, they operate animal shelters where they do kill unwanted animals, its kinda shocking that some of their statistics show they've killed up to 85% of all the animals given to them. There are "no kill shelters" where animals are not put to sleep forever, killed, but PETA says these dont work out and are cruel because they basically keep the wounded and sometimes dangerous animals in cages forever.

PETA workers have been caught before hurting animals.

And one more point, PETA have been criticised by abolitionist groups, who call PETA welfarest, that PETA is willing to work with KFC etc to still sell meat, as long as the animals lives are made a little less horrible first. Abolitionists think that thats selling out, and is harming the Vegan message to leave all animals alone.

An interesting Vegetarian to bring up is Adolf Hitler. I love reading about wars, history in general is awesome, but war is really the best of it, Politics by other means, as the quote goes. Hitler is a famous vegetarian, or he said he was Vegetarian, hes known to have eaten blood sausage and other gross german offal meals at times, and his personal chef is known to have snuck bone marrow and other guts into his meals if she thought he wasnt getting enough "healthy food", like blood and bones.

Hitler personally thought that being Vegetarian was a great thing for the human race, and could help his own stomach problems. At the time of Hitler, being vegetarian was seen as more to do with your own health, to get the health benefits, rather than for ethical reasons like caring about animals.

From that we can see that he also ate eggs, so he was certainly not Vegan, and because he was known to eat meat, was not a very good Vegetarian either.

In other countries being Vegetarian or Vegan is quite acceptable, in India many people are vegetarian, some surveys show as high as 40 percent of India is vegetarian. In India, its very common for vegetarian products to have a green circle in a green square, products that have animal products should show a brown circle in a brown square. I wish all New Zealand food were labelled this way, although there are a handful of things with the Vegetarian Societys label.

Many Athletes are also Vegan, because of the health benefits. A very famous Vegan is Carl Lewis, heres a clip featuring him.

In America, almost 1 out of every 200 children and teenagers are Vegetarian, its more common among young women.

To finish, I'll mention the Brown Dog Affair. Its about experiments performed on a small brown dog in 1903, in London. The dog, a small brown terrier, was used in an experiment, then kept in a cage for two months, where he howled loud enough to upset people. For the second, most well known experiment, he was brought into a lecture theatre, strapped on his back to a board, his legs and head tied to the board, his mouth muzzled to try to silence him. His throat was cut into, apparently to show something to do with saliva, he was electrocuted inside his throat or mouth area to try and make spit, it didnt seem to be working. The main experimenter kept trying to make saliva appear for thirty minutes, I guess he had this dog cut open, still quite conscious, and shocking glands inside the mouth, for thirty minutes. A student came up, cut out the dogs Pancreas, and then killed the dog with a knife. This whole awful affair was taken before court, and became a well known news story at the time. Much protest happened about vivisection,performing experiments on living animals. The National Anti-vivisection Society made a memorial to the Little Brown Dog, the over 2 metre monument was made from stone, with a bronze dog at the top. It had a waterfountain for people to drink from, and a lower trough for dogs and horses to drink from.

An inscription on the memorial said

"In Memory of the Brown Terrier Dog done to Death in the Laboratories of University College in February 1903, after having endured Vivisection extending over more than two months and having been handed from one Vivisector to another till Death came to his Release. Also in Memory of the 232 dogs vivisected at the same place during the year 1902. Men and Women of England, how long shall these things be?"

Medical students were annoyed by the memorial, they didnt see anything wrong with experimenting on living animals. At first the memorial was safe, but in 1907 the area was protested often. Over time, groups of medical students would attack the memorial with weapons, and many people were arrested.

During one protest, street vendors sold hankerchiefs with the date of the protest on them and this small slogan

""Brown dog's inscription is a lie, and the statuette an insult to the London University"

A good passage from the Brown Dog Affair wikipedia page,

"Coral Lansbury writes that the causes of feminism and women's suffrage became closely linked with the anti-vivisection movement. Three of the four vice-presidents of the Battersea General Hospital that refused to allow vivisection were women.[63] Lansbury argues that the Brown Dog affair became a matter of opposing symbols, the iconography of vivisection striking a chord with women. The vivisected dog muzzled and strapped to the operating board blurred into images of suffragettes on hunger strike restrained and force-fed in Brixton Prison; women strapped into the gynaecologist's chair by an all-powerful male medical establishment, forced to have their ovaries and uteruses removed as a cure for "mania," or strapped down for childbirth.[64] Richard Ryder writes that the dog represented the vulnerability of women; the medical students the machismo of science.[2]"

In 1910 the memorial to the Little Brown Dog was taken down. Over 75 years later, a new small memorial was put up elsewhere, near the end of 1985. It repeats the previous inscription, and adds

"This monument replaces the original memorial of the brown dog erected by public subscription in Latchmere Recreation Ground, Battersea in 1906. The sufferings of the brown dog at the hands of the vivisectors generated much protest and mass demonstrations. It represented the revulsion of the people of London to vivisection and animal experimentation. This new monument is dedicated to the continuing struggle to end these practices. After much controversy the former monument was removed in the early hours of 10 March 1910. This was the result of a decision taken by the then Battersea Metropolitan Borough Council, the previous council having supported the erection of the memorial. Animal experimentation is one of the greatest moral issues of our time and should have no place in a civilized society. In 1903, 19,084 animals suffered and died in British laboratories. During 1984, 3,497,355 animals were burned, blinded, irradiated, poisoned and subjected to countless other horrifyingly cruel experiments in Great Britain"

I think most people now would think it was wrong to experiment on animals like what happened to the Little Brown dog, and countless other animals. Some say that there was no evidence the dog even had painkillers. I personally think that we dont need to experiment, to hurt animals, to find out ways to help people. There are now many animal rights groups worldwide, one that I like in New Zealand is SAFE, Save Animals From Experiments, they protest animal abuse of all kinds in New Zealand, and they promote vegetarianism/veganism. I've been to meetings here in Invercargill of SAFE, and I was only the second Vegan, there were a few vegetarians. I'm told in Auckland all the leaders are Vegan though.

I think that many people can agree that hurting animals is wrong, and I hope that they investigate whats done to animals for themselves. Theres a saying, you cant be a meat eating environmentalist. I hope anyone who eats animal products, and who's listened to this episode of my podcast will decide to listen to more Vegan podcats, and google for more information about animal rights.

I hope its been an interesting little toe dip into the world of Vegetarianism, and more importantly Veganism. If you want to listen to more podcasts to do with animal rights, I cannot stress just how great the NZ Vegan Podcast is, you can easily find that by searching on the iTunes Store for " N Z Vegan", Knuckles even translates her show into spanish!

Thank you very much for your time.

If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.

Have a super happy day, bye.

<--End song You Can't Say No To A Soldier plays-->

Written for: Iceland (1942)
Lyric: Mack Gordon
Music: Harry Warren
Year: 1942
Original publisher: Twentieth Century Music Corporation, rights controlled by
Mayfair Music Corp

Listen, little lady, it's the order of the day,
Issued by the highest of authority;
Fellows in the service simply can't be turned away,
You know that defense must get priority.
So, if you're patriotic'lly inclined,
Heed the call to arms, and keep this thought in mind:

Chorus 1:

You can't say, "No," to a soldier,
A sailor or a handsome marine;
No, you can't say, "No," if he wants to dance,
If he's gonna fight, he's got a right to romance;
So, get out your lipstick and powder,
Be beautiful and dutiful, too.
If he's not your type, then it's still o-kay,
You can always kiss him in a sisterly way,

Oh, you can't say, "No,
No, you gotta give in,
If you want him to win for you.

Chorus 2 (from movie)

You can't say, "No," to a soldier,
A sailor or a handsome marine;
No, you can't say, "No," if he wants to dance,

If he's gonna fight, he's got a right to romance;
So, get out your lipstick and powder,
Be beautiful and dutiful, too.
If he says it's cold on those submarines,
You can knit a sweater, but that's not what he means;
Oh, you can't say, "No,"
No, no, no, no, no, no;
No, they're not made of tin,
So, you better give in

If you want him to win for you.

Sources
------------

NZ Vegan Podcast, number one source of course!

Youtube videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1se0ZM6Gy8 what is a vegan video by Vegvideo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOTETXwfIaY Carl Lewis vegan video by headveg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FytZI6EEXvQ moby vegan video by epicuriousdotcom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYX18NGTwls Vegan revolution video by hazelwhisper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JANxeJI07Zo wont date meat eater gay guy gaygod

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxgrrgfmvGk wont date meat eater 2 woman by kimxxxyyy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTYXJZgirGY wont date veg response video by ParodyPlus