“There’s a big movement about women not being victims, and now they’re survivors,” Arfuso avows. “Well to me, ‘survive’ means I just made it. I’m into thriving. I’m into being an activist.”
My sister sent me this video of protests in West Hollywood. She was there along with my other sister.
She’s 21 years old, and this is her civil rights movement. We can’t allow discrimination like this, the legality of marriage shouldn’t be based on religious concepts of marriage or sexuality.
It’s WRONG.
“I’m looking for a gift for a girl – you know, something that will get her in bed with me.”
Once in a Masonic temple in Rialto, Calif., a young man approached me in a dark room. The techno was booming throughout, and we were surrounded by young people wearing fairy wings and neon furry pants.
“Where’s your candy?” he asks, pointing to his piles of glow-in-dark beaded necklaces and bracelets.
“Oh, is this your first time to a rave?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Nope.”
He slides a bracelet off of one of his wrists and hands it to me. “Here. My name is Peter Pan.” I said “thank you” and smiled politely, not really sure if I heard correctly. Peter Pan?
That was several years ago when my boyfriend was still DJing at underground, often illegal parties, and until last night, I haven’t been to any illegal or underground raves.
At about 9 PM myself, my boyfriend, and his two friends, Jerry and Ryan, all pile into my car and head over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin county. We have no idea where we are going. Ryan calls the info line in order to find out where the map point is located – some random spot where we are supposed to pick up a piece of paper from some random guy, so that we will be able to find the secret location. “Go to the Seven-Eleven,” the voice of the recorded message says. “There will be a guy standing near some pay phones. This is your guy. Get the map from him.” We had to get to this guy by 11 PM otherwise we were out of luck and wouldn’t know where the party was.
Shortly after crossing the bridge, we find the phones, and the guy, except we don’t know if the guy standing by the pay phones is “our guy.” Because, you know, it’s so uncommon to see random guys hanging around the Seven-Eleven pay phones on a Friday at 10:30 PM.
But he’s our guy, and we were able to get the “map,” which is really just a page full of text. “Continue on HWY 1,” the directions state. We do. We drive on the curvy, nausea -inducing road, yelling whenever we see a deer. ”Go until you see the white road marker with 11.0 on it. When you see this IMMEDIATELY begin slowing down. There will be a white gate to your left.” This is where we are supposed to park before crossing the highway. The directions warn us not to cross the road if there’s a car approaching, because it might be a cop. Once we traverse the highway, we follow a hiking trail into the dark, dark woods.
Last night, my boyfriend was watching random, depressing things on YouTube, like he usually does, but last night he stumbled upon a pretty lengthy video called “Earthlings”.
It showed the abuse and torture that humans inflict on fellow earthlings — animals.
It showed how we throw the lives of our companion animals away because we don’t spay and neuter. It showed how our food is brutally killed — tortured with pleasure — before it is displayed in neat little cellophane-wrapped packages.
Watching all of this, the ground turkey I ate for dinner felt like guilt in my stomach. I don’t know if you know what guilt feels like in there, but it’s not good. It’s a heavy, nauseating feeling that you just want to get out of your system.
I seriously don’t think I can eat meat anymore.
I have a dog — a Cavachon — and I know that she feels pains, and that when she feels pain, she suffers just as I do. I know that when she’s scared or upsets (yes, she gets sad!) she runs to find me, and jumps in my lap. I would never eat my dog or wear it’s fur. So why should I feel any different about a cow? Maybe it’s the separation the farm factories have created between the slaughter house and the supermarket shelves which keeps people comfortable with eating the carcasses of tortured animals. I know, I know, it’s life — animals are meant to be consumed — but is it our right to make the lives of these animals miserable? To torture them before taking their lives so that we can eat them?
Toward the end of the video, the narrator made a great point: he said something along the lines of ultimately, is this what it means to bite the hand that feeds?
