{"id":1232,"date":"2003-03-26T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-03-26T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/2003\/03\/26\/i-didnt-have-usable-picture\/"},"modified":"2003-03-26T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-03-26T05:00:00","slug":"i-didnt-have-usable-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/2003\/03\/26\/i-didnt-have-usable-picture\/","title":{"rendered":"I didn&#8217;t have usable picture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I didn&#8217;t have usable picture today (too much nudity) so I had to pull one from the Associated Press. The U.S. is now using dolphins to locate mines in the harbors of Iraq, something which I have no problems with. This caused me to ponder the right and wrong of it. I eat meat and I consciously condone the killing of animals for appropriate reasons, but I don&#8217;t give it much thought very often. My train of thought led to thinking about all the animals I ever killed personally. Growing up in the country with a BB gun, I had ample opportunity to snipe a few critters. Here&#8217;s a list complete with explanations. Before you have me committed, try and realize that it&#8217;s not always easy to come up with things to write about. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>insects<\/b> &#8211; Yeah, this is a given, but once during a boardgame, I asked a friend to squash a mosquito that had alit on a gamepiece. A very rich, hot, spoiled vegetarian girl who was also at the table screeched at us not to because that mosquito was part of the food chain; we owed our very existence to it. I promptly caught it between my fingers and tossed it into my mouth and swallowed. &#8220;Now it still is,&#8221; I told her as her jaw dropped. The hippy girls at school didn&#8217;t like me.\n<li><b>frogs, toads, &#038; salamanders<\/b> &#8211; By the dozens, every way possible. I grew up next to pond. Frogs float with just their eyes above the surface,<br \/>\nrequiring a very skilled shot. Apparently, killing animals is acceptible if it is difficult. <\/p>\n<li><b>robin<\/b> &#8211; Brian Mattas and I shot one in second grade with our BB guns. We actually felt so guilty that we floated it out onto the pond&#8212;viking style&#8212; on a board covered with flaming newspaper. At the age of eight, I had a gun and access to matches.\n<li><b>two cats<\/b> &#8211; One with the car, felt awful. The other was the neighbors. They were on vacation, unknown to me, and I poked my head in their stupidly unlocked door to see if anyone wanted to &#8220;play&#8221;; I was six. Their cat squirmed out and made a bee-line for the nearest moving bumper. I had to tell them when they got home that their cat was dead.\n<li><b>mouse<\/b> &#8211; Just a month ago. I found it on the sticky paper and put it in a bucket of water to humanely dispose of it. It wriggled for a thirty seconds or so and then with one tiny bubble, it was gone. This actually shook me up for the better part of the day.\n<li><b>many snakes<\/b> &#8211; Including a copperhead that tried to eat a minnow on the end of my fishing line.\n<li><b>many fish<\/b> &#8211; I ate these.\n<li><b>several bats<\/b> &#8211; In college I lived in a house that was plagued with bats and for years I had to run to my elderly uncle for protection every time one swooped through. The damn things scared the shit out of me, until one day after a fight with my girlfriend, I dispatched one with a broomstick like it was my job. Nothing like a little relationship frustration to help you overcome your fears. Totally healthy.\n<li><b>horseshoe crabs<\/b> &#8211; While I was a assistant clam biologist in Hyannis, I slaughtered hundreds of horseshoe crabs because my boss told me that they ate baby clams. It wasn&#8217;t until the end of the summer that he told me that it is illegal to kill horseshoe crabs.\n<\/ul>\n<p>CONCLUSION: If you have read this far, god help you. I can&#8217;t really make any coherent conclusion from the above reminiscent homicidal babbling. Maybe I&#8217;ll buy a point and include these stories in an essay that actually has structure. I just felt like typing.<br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn&#8217;t have usable picture today (too much nudity) so I had to pull one from the Associated Press. The U.S. is now using dolphins to locate mines in the harbors of Iraq, something which I have no problems with. This caused me to ponder the right and wrong of it. I eat meat and I consciously condone the killing of animals for appropriate reasons, but I don&#8217;t give it much thought very often. My train of thought led to thinking about all the animals I ever killed personally. Growing up in the country with a BB gun, I had ample opportunity to snipe a few critters. Here&#8217;s a list complete with explanations. Before you have me committed, try and realize that it&#8217;s not always easy to come up with things to write about. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>insects<\/b> &#8211; Yeah, this is a given, but once during a boardgame, I asked a friend to squash a mosquito that had alit on a gamepiece. A very rich, hot, spoiled vegetarian girl who was also at the table screeched at us not to because that mosquito was part of the food chain; we owed our very existence to it. I promptly caught it between my fingers and tossed it into my mouth and swallowed. &#8220;Now it still is,&#8221; I told her as her jaw dropped. The hippy girls at school didn&#8217;t like me.\n<li><b>frogs, toads, &#038; salamanders<\/b> &#8211; By the dozens, every way possible. I grew up next to pond. Frogs float with just their eyes above the surface,<br \/>\nrequiring a very skilled shot. Apparently, killing animals is acceptible if it is difficult. <\/p>\n<li><b>robin<\/b> &#8211; Brian Mattas and I shot one in second grade with our BB guns. We actually felt so guilty that we floated it out onto the pond&#8212;viking style&#8212; on a board covered with flaming newspaper. At the age of eight, I had a gun and access to matches.\n<li><b>two cats<\/b> &#8211; One with the car, felt awful. The other was the neighbors. They were on vacation, unknown to me, and I poked my head in their stupidly unlocked door to see if anyone wanted to &#8220;play&#8221;; I was six. Their cat squirmed out and made a bee-line for the nearest moving bumper. I had to tell them when they got home that their cat was dead.\n<li><b>mouse<\/b> &#8211; Just a month ago. I found it on the sticky paper and put it in a bucket of water to humanely dispose of it. It wriggled for a thirty seconds or so and then with one tiny bubble, it was gone. This actually shook me up for the better part of the day.\n<li><b>many snakes<\/b> &#8211; Including a copperhead that tried to eat a minnow on the end of my fishing line.\n<li><b>many fish<\/b> &#8211; I ate these.\n<li><b>several bats<\/b> &#8211; In college I lived in a house that was plagued with bats and for years I had to run to my elderly uncle for protection every time one swooped through. The damn things scared the shit out of me, until one day after a fight with my girlfriend, I dispatched one with a broomstick like it was my job. Nothing like a little relationship frustration to help you overcome your fears. Totally healthy.\n<li><b>horseshoe crabs<\/b> &#8211; While I was a assistant clam biologist in Hyannis, I slaughtered hundreds of horseshoe crabs because my boss told me that they ate baby clams. It wasn&#8217;t until the end of the summer that he told me that it is illegal to kill horseshoe crabs.\n<\/ul>\n<p>CONCLUSION: If you have read this far, god help you. I can&#8217;t really make any coherent conclusion from the above reminiscent homicidal babbling. Maybe I&#8217;ll buy a point and include these stories in an essay that actually has structure. I just felt like typing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brooklyntrout.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}