LOOK AT LIFE / COCO HAMES

Meat indie rock band The Ettes.

By Coco Hames

Has anyone noticed how hipster snobs are pronouncing Vietnamese pho "phuh"?  Is this the correct, indigenous pronunciation or something?  Because it isn't an isolated incident, I must have heard at least four hipster snobs pronounce it as such in the last month, coast to coast.  Well, whatever, I'm not playing that game.  I don't play games with my food!  I eat it!  

Now, because Obama isn't really DOING anything at the moment (he's so not busy, it's crazy...) we need to start wrangling up legislation to outlaw factory farming.  My grandparents were hog farmers, my mom grew up on a farm, and she asked me "What's factory farming?"  Factory farming is the phrase used to describe the machination of animal farming and prevalent industry (and consumer, presumably) disregard for the health and welfare of the animals we eat.

You could go to YouTube and look up "Meat Your Meat", or visit peta.org and see pretty much anything they have documented there, and you could get an idea of what factory farming is, and why we should not do it.  It's bad for the planet, it's bad for the animals, which is bad for us (H1N1 anybody?) and it is cruel and inhumane.  You don't want to eat a sad pig do you?  I don't.  I want my bacon happy and healthy.

Jonathan Safran Foer FINALLY gets to the point in his new book I won't recommend at all to anyone, Eating Animals.  PS - nobody informed me this was a glorified collegiate essay, I.  Cannot.  Stand.  That.  Shit.  Hey alla y'all Susan Sontags, listen up!  If you are an academic writer, please fall off your high horse and just deliver the info with simple, elegant, educated panache, will you?  There is nothing I dislike more, NOTHING, than playful academia.  Who do you think you are?  Take all of your English classes and your grammar classes, learn and use proper Latin and the Dewey Decimal System, that is all important, but do not wag your academic finger at me from your ivory tower of reference books, get to the effing point.  Which, like I said, Foer FINALLY does (seriously, second to last page in the book), ahem:

"It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable.  Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal.  We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects.  And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals."

As Foer mentions, it really SHOULDN'T be the consumer's responsibility, I know how crazy my aunt and uncle (farmers) think I am to even worry about this stuff, and I admit, it's exhausting to go into a grocery store and put on my Terminator laser eye beam and scan and scowl at the food being offered.  Do we elect these government agencies to protect our food and drugs?  Are they appointed?  Is it more of a quorum really?  See, I'm not being preachy, I don't know that much, I cheated off of Wilson McDowell (so dreamy) in government class, though I did really like the teacher and felt a little bad about it.

This band is making every effort to eschew factory farmed meat, at home and at restaurants.  Although if Poni has to eat a chunk off of a live factory farmed cow that just happens to be walking by, she will, she is a bloodthirsty monster chupacabra and I have no control over her.  Although evidently we can eat at Chipotle?  Google that, see if I'm right, I think I read something about that.

The sentient beings argument is for another time.  Don't ask me "If not now, Coco, when?" you thoughtful, intelligent, ethically responsible vegetarians and vegans!  I don't KNOW when, okay??  I'll pull my aunt's Judeo-Christian standby about man in God's image, or else the Darwin that fits my meat-eating agenda, or else published studies on brain evolution in tandem with meat consumption!  And don't think it stops with the meat, there need to be judicious, legally enforced practices of safe, responsible farming in all aspects of the agrarian world, from taking care of the people who pick your oranges to demanding transparency as to where all that corn is going and why.

And yes, there ARE other things to worry about.  For instance, the stir fry I just made came out all one color because I forgot to pick up greens at the Turnip Truck.  Aha!  My parsley plant is still alive, you'll get greened up yet stir fry!

Forensic Files,

Coco

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Blurt "co-co-editor" Coco Hames fronts The Ettes - Hames on guitar, Jem Cohen on bass and Poni Silver on drums - whose album Look At Life Again Soon and EP, Danger Is, were released by Take Root. Their new Greg Cartwright-produced album Do You Want Power arrived in stores Sept. 29, and you bet we've got a big feature on the band in our new print issue. Check out the band's MySpace page for music and tour dates.