Today I will plug plug plug since my life is kind of dumpy right now, and not very interesting.

I ship bean/petra!=pean?[ew.] or betra [odd.] it is so incredibly sweet, and a lot like the canon pairing harry/ginny. Though I think not many osc fans ship pairings because the books are quite plot-based, and one tends to focus on the themes and major issues at hand. And bean/petra have weathered many hardships together and they are the only people that genuinely understand each other, just like in Kathy/Tommy in Never let Me Go. (you should read that) Sometimes I find it surprising that osc can write fairly good fluff, since most of the Worthing Saga was smut, and the fact that he is a guy. (okay I'm stereotyping) So I'm kind of on Shadow Puppets right now, after a short break from osc because his stuff are quite intense and sometimes emotional, and after reading one, you feel a little drained and in great awe-- this 'whoa' sense like after you've been though a 360 degree roller coaster.

= I am very happy that blogger automatically saves posts now, so that my long lovely posts don't get accidentally deleted.=

I read in Two Caravans that chickens are bred in masses, and they are housed in a large warehouse-type thing (illegal, of course, but cheaper for major supermarkets) the lights are turned on 24/7 so they don't sleep and continue feeding all the time, making them nice and plump for human consumption. The food they have is nutrition-rich, making them weigh more and sell for a higher price. In the crowded space they are in, they are packed shoulder to shoulder, such that they can only waddle a little and shove their way to the feeding tubes. As a result, they have little or no physical exercise and underdeveloped muscles, with brittle bones. This makes them all the more easier to catch them and stuff them, sometimes on top of each other, into crates for transportation. Feeding on large quantities of food results in them producing great amounts of excrement. Because they are packed so tightly within these warehouses, the excrement forms a layer on the floor, and the birds have to wade through it as when one cleans the warehouse, one has to first remove all the chickens. During their short lifespan of five weeks, they live in these unsanitary conditions but do not fall ill because of medicines in their food supply.
One can only imagine how other livestock are treated, just to supply the needs of human demand and excessive consumption. The fishing industry is also not spared because most companies fish from unsustainable sources, and the fish are killed at increasingly younger ages to meet worldwide demand. Their short lifespans only allow them to grow to a certain weight before they are harvested. These are one of the reasons I chose to go veggie, and perhaps you should consider changing your diet to save your environment. Having one less meat product every week may not seem much to you, but if done on a large scale, the demand for animal products may eventually decrease and the overwhelming amounts of natural resources used to sustain these industries may decrease as well. For more information, go to The PB&J Campaign.