Don’t Cancel Your Cable Yet

We know times are hard unless you were skeevy enough to have Madoff with a shit-ton of loot last year. Pay thru March, Tor(rent) up, or just boot off the neighbors for a few days. You must. not. miss. the HBO premiere of Death on a Factory Farm on March 16.

The Day Before Slaughter

‘Twas the day before slaughter,
And throughout the dark shed
All of us shrieking,
All soon to be dead.

The snare on my snout,
And the one on my ear,
First sun on my face,
Now I’m screaming in fear.

My piglets! My babies!
So small and so frail.
They’ll be lost if I leave them,
Please don’t drag me from here.

I’ll walk if you let me,
Don’t hit me, please stop!
My body and spirit, now broken,
I drop.

They speak but in curses;
No kind words for me.
More beatings, then kicking;
In death, I’ll be free.

Day in and day out,
Just straight to their work,
More pain, then the blood,
Tails and testicles in one jerk.

If you still believe in Santa,
Or walls you can walk through,
PETA’s undercover elves have holiday video,
Shot especially for you!

Wrapped and ribboned
And tied up with a bow,
From Murphy Family Ventures, and Smithfield,
Now you know.

Their lives are this torture,
Kept far from your sight.
Happy Hogidays to all,
And to all a good-night.

Worst. Job. Ever.

What’s the worst assignment the guy with the worst job in science has ever had? “A guy had driven his truck into the waste lagoon and drowned. Not only was it full of urine and liquid pig feces, …”

Fine bunch, these folks. Stellar in every way.

The Jury Is Out

Literally, for Wiles Farm defendants. All three charged individuals, owner Ken Wiles, his son Joe Wiles, and employee Dusty Stroud, waived their right to a jury trial and instead will appear before Judge Stuart Miller only in Wayne County Municipal Court on Tuesday, June 19, 9:00 AM.

Better off with 3–on-1 rather than 3–on-12? Couldn’t seat an acceptable jury? Pressed for time, or just going with the flow? Sometime after 9:00 AM on June 19—exactly how much time after we cannot speculate—we will see how precisely balanced those iconic scales really are and whether or not the origin of Lady Justice’s blindfold is indeed founded on the impartial treatment of parties or just the cartoonish cynicism of a 400–year-old pissed-off German artist.

Update 06-20: The verdict(s) are in. Ken Wiles, charged with two counts of animal cruelty: not guilty on both counts. Joe Wiles, charged with six counts of animal cruelty: guilty on one count, not guilty on four counts, one count dismissed. Dusty Stroud, charged with two counts of animal cruelty: not guilty on one count, one count dismissed. More as we get it.

Judge Stuart Miller may be in, but we’re still out on the origins of dear Lady Justice’s blindfold. One point, though, of which we are most assuredly and unwaveringly certain: there were fine legal minds in the courtroom — yes, at least one, plus three-quarters of another. Mammalian anatomy and physiology — specifically and particularly, swine anatomy and physiology, or even basic, undergraduate general physics — not so much.

Are We There Yet?

Traveling with kids is not for the weak-willed. They wake you up at the butt-crack of dawn, the want stuff every time you pull over for gas, they won’t go to sleep, then they pee on you when you finally get to go to sleep.

God bless Annette Fisher and her Happy Trails Farm Sanctuary crew for hauling 10 hogs from OH to CA, through a tornado, blowing rain, lightening, hail, wildfires, and snow, all the way to their new home. You have to read this whole Pigs Across America travelogue, it’s amazing!

Here’s Annette beside another trailer, parked at the truck plaza on I-80 near Reno, where the Happy Trails gang had stopped to rest their own precious cargo. If you don’t look at any other postcards from the road or read any other updates from the adventure, just read this one and remember it because it’s Memorial Day weekend.

Dear Montel, Rusty, Chloe, Pearl, baby Anastasia, Milton, Mario, Sergai, Morris, and Kinko,