Cetacean Captivity Is Wrong!

Imagine your family gathering with everyone present, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, siblings and little babies, all together enjoying the love.  A group of terrorist thugs, that call themselves “hunters” comes crashing in, armed with LRAD sound weapons.  The weaponized sound is so loud it hurts everyone’s ears and heads, making it impossible to even think.  The “hunters” use the terrible noise to herd everyone into a small alcove, and they drop a net across the only way out.  One of your relatives panics, runs headlong into the net, trying to escape, and hangs himself in it. The rest look on in terror and cry in despair.

More thugs called “trainers” enter the alcove; they don’t have any weapons but are still very creepy!   They examine and grope each of you without consent, for reasons not immediately clear. After they’ve finished molesting everyone, the “trainers” select you and two of your cousins to be “performers” because you are young and good looking.  You have no say in the matter, it’s a done deal.  Over time you will figure out that they have detained the three of you for life.

With their bounty now in hand (that would be you) the “hunters” then proceed to ruthlessly MURDER nearly ALL of the rest of your family, two or three at a time.  They have pointed steel rods that they shove into the backs of your loved ones’ heads as you listen to them cry and scream their last screams.  Corks are stuffed into the wound tracks to reduce the flow of blood, but even so the alcove runs red. 

The only ones that seem to be spared are the very young, but it’s only momentary as they too are doomed.  The “hunters” have a kill quota and the babies don’t have enough meat on them to be worth butchering, so the “hunters” chase the babies away and abandon them somewhere, leaving them to starve to death or to be eaten by predators.

In reality your murdered family members were the "lucky" ones, you’re going to be held captive for the rest of your life, forced to do the “trainers’” bidding.  You'll always be kept hungry so you're more obedient, forced to perform demeaning "tricks" on command and coerced into "kissing" degenerates that pay for you, like some kind of whore.  Your body is no longer your own, they do to you whatever they please.

You'll be exposed to chemicals that irritate your skin. The food they do provide you with won't have sufficient water to keep you hydrated, so they'll have to force a tube down your throat for that every few days so that you don’t drop dead.  They will inject you with mood-altering drugs, trying to compensate for all the stress they cause.

EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, YOU ARE LONELY, MOURNING YOUR DEAD FAMILY THAT YOU LOVED, IN CAPTIVITY, GROVELING FOR SCRAPS OF FOOD YOU DON'T LIKE, UNTIL FINALLY THE SWEET RELEASE OF DEATH IS YOUR REWARD.

That is EXACTLY how the captive dolphin industry works, no exaggeration, no drama, that is real life for the dolphins, beluga whales and other small cetaceans used, exploited and abused by marine theme parks and other tourist attractions.  Anytime you buy a ticket or attend a show, you are directly supporting this horror.  PLEASE BOYCOTT ANY CORPORATION THAT KEEPS EVEN ONE CAPTIVE CETACEAN, FOR ANY REASON!  

Even the so-called “rescue” organizations that aren’t truly dedicated to returning all of them to the wild, that don’t place them in marine sanctuaries as worst case alternative, and/or those that do put cetaceans on public display, for any length of time, ever – BOYCOTT, BOYCOTT, BOYCOTT!  (The ones that disingenuously pretend to be acting in the best interests of the cetaceans are the worst of the worst.)

Are torture, murder and destruction of families consistent with your values, all for the sake of mere entertainment?  Your actions are what truly define your morals and ethics.  Talk is cheap and words are meaningless when you are willing to overlook the brutality and injustice committed in the course of providing something you effectively support.  Your money and attendance are effectively an endorsement of one of the most heinous ongoing acts in the history of our species.  

Either you boycott 100%, or you cannot consider yourself to be a decent human, it really is that cut and dried, it really is that simple.  There is no middle ground!

The Legend of the Beer Clock

Circa 1985 my dad, my old friend Phil and myself were sitting in a dive bar called The Cabana in Chula Vista, drinking one-liter mugs of ice cold beer.  About ¾ the way through mug #6 dad decided it was time for him to go; I pointed at his not-empty mug and said, “beer clock.” 

Dad introduced us kids to the beer clock at an early age, the basic premise is that the beer clock reads “time to go” when the pitcher or glass is empty, and most importantly, not before.  When I invoked it he laughed, acquiesced to the authority of the beer clock, chugged the rest of his beer and stayed to drink three more liters of beer with us.

I told him that I was carrying on the fine tradition of the beer clock with my kid, who was about five at the time.  Dad wasn’t often given to displays of emotion, but on this occasion I saw him hurriedly brush a tear away, a couple more streamed past… I don’t know why but my eyes started to leak too… he said something funny that included the word fuck, gave me a hug and the moment passed.  But every once in a while I wonder what touched him so deeply, on that drunken night so very long ago…

Many years have come and gone, dad passed away (RIP Old Dude,) my kids are now grown, but despite consuming extreme amounts of alcohol that day, the memory of the moment remains clear as day in my mind.

A side note: I lived 20 miles away from Chula Vista.  We had just drank 9 liters of beer in a sitting, we were well past the legal limit; Phil had driven flawlessly over 19.9 of those 20 miles...  Literally a block from where I lived, Phil punched the accelerator momentarily to spin his rear tires in the gutter we were crossing.  A cop that happened to be there noticed his “exhibition of speed” and red-lighted us as he parked across the street from my apartment.  But of course it didn’t matter, we were fucked up, Phil was arrested for DUI, and I, unable to STFU, had to spend 6 hours in detox. 

(Doesn’t if fucking matter that we live right the fuck here?  As it turned out, no, it did not.  Phil was booked, released and set free to roam the city street hours before I was.  I wasn’t charged with any crime, but the detox people held my driver’s license and I was told I’d be prosecuted for drunk in public if I left early.  Talk about a buzz kill… I was pissed the fuck off, and then some.)