Some Thoughts

My thoughts for today are as follows:

I was watching America’s Funniest Home Videos today; something I do on occasion when I am flipping through the channels and nothing else is any good.  As usual, the clips shown were little kids doing silly things, animals acting crazy, and grown-ups being idiots.  Now, seeing little kids doing silly things is funny.  Seeing animals acting crazy, is pretty funny.  Sometimes, an adult acting like an idiot is kind of funny.  What’s not funny is when, during the filming of the “funniest” video, the person being filmed gets injured.  They don’t show the injury, but you can always tell when, after the filming stops, the person is bleeding profusely from their cuts or are nursing their concussion.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not talking about videos of little babies that fall on their well padded behinds.  I’m talking about videos like the one I saw today.  The guy, riding his bicycle full-speed, hit a pothole, flew over his handlebars and landed, sliding on his face down the road.  This is not funny.  This is terrible.  You know that guy was picking gravel out of his face for the next week.  You know that guy was going to the hospital for the possible broken bones he received from his stupidity.  Why do people think things like this are funny? 

I believe that plants feel pain.  Mythbusters (and scientist Cleve Backster) hooked up a polygraph to plant leaves and then proceeded to perform experiments on them – touching them, tearing their leaves, burning them, etc.  Interestingly, the polygraph showed a “reaction” to these experiments.  Do I think plants have a brain???  No.  Do I think they are living things that can feel???  Yes.   Now, this whole dialogue is because a lot of people choose to be vegetarians because they can’t stand the thought that an animal is going to die to feed them.  Okay.  I get that.  Now, as you all know, I love animals.  And, I eat meat.  I like the taste of it.  I like the texture of it in my mouth.  I eat beef and pork and chicken and fish and goose and bison and…meat.  Have I ever visited a slaughterhouse?  No.  Am I going to?  No.  It’s bad enough that Ben and I went to the Bison Trading Company a couple weekends ago and visited with the bison…before we went into the store and bought bison hot dogs and bison burgers.  That was a little hard for me.  I knew that the bison I was visiting with would, one day, end up in the cold cases in the back of the store.  It made me realize that I don’t want to know what happens to my “meat” before it’s my meat.  Perhaps I’m just being ignorant.  I think, if I was to learn more about what happens, I won’t eat meat anymore.  But, I also think plants feel pain.  So, if I am going to stop eating meat because I see what happens to animals, I should also stop eating plants because I know what happens to them too.  I guess I could just stop eating everything then, but I think that would probably kill me. 

And, my final thought for the day…

Why the hell do they call it a funny bone?  I looked it up on the internet and the best I could find is that it is called the funny bone because the pain you feel when you hit it is due to your ulnar nerve hitting your humerus.  Humerus…humorous; a bit of a play on words, it seems.  All I know is that it is not funny and even though the internet says it’s a strange, tingly feeling you get when you hit it, I think it hurts.  I hit mine today and was laid out in pain for five minutes. 

Until next time.