January 2009 Archives

This past week I could not believe my ears when I heard a story on NPR about how PETA is trying to rebrand fish as "Sea Kittens." I laughed so hard that I almost drove off the road. Then I realized as the story continued, that these people are serious. From the NPR web site:

"PETA thought that by renaming fish sea kittens, compassionate people who would never dream of hurting a dog or a cat might extend that sympathy to fish, or sea kittens," PETA campaign coordinator Ashley Byrne says.

Growing up, I went fishing on a regular basis with my Dad and brother. I don't think I ever felt much sympathy for the fish because we ate nearly everything we caught and I thought it was far more humane (and less work) to eat a dead fish than a live one. Honestly, if anyone deserved sympathy during our fishing trips, it was my Dad. My brother and I were typical kids, and by that I mean we weren't very good at sitting still for long periods let alone the extended spans we often spent staring at the surface of a lake hoping that a fish would bite at the gnarled worm we had haplessly impaled on a hook. Dad showed tremendous patience with us as demonstrated by not only our staying out for several hours, but by the fact that he took us with him time and again. I thought fishing was fun also because we got to spend leisure time with him that didn't involve tearing down a wall or putting up drywall. The Peta spokesperson apparently has a different view on what Dad was doing with us:

"Most parents would never dream of spending a weekend torturing kittens for fun with their families, but hooking a sea kitten through the mouth and dragging her through the water is the same as hooking a kitten through the mouth and dragging her behind your car," Byrne says.

Granted there were times when we caught fish that were considered too small to be legal. In those cases we carefully removed from the hook and returned to the water, alive and able to swim away. I don't recall that any of these fish were mangled or mortally wounded, at least not with anything more severe than the minor cuts I suffered from the occasional fish hook which I somehow managed to get caught in my hand, which my Dad promptly removed.

In classic journalistic style, the NPR reporter sought the public's reaction to the campaign. In a move that I would have expected from The Onion or The Daily Show, the reporter went to what one might consider a hostile environment: members of a fourth-generation commercial fishing family in Alaska. The comments were about what you might expect. My favorite quote was from a 12-year old girl, with whom I couldn't agree more:

"I don't see fish as sea kittens; I see them as food."

After hearing this story, I took a few minutes to visit the peta.org web site and to look over their materials. While there I skimmed it and didn't find anything that changed my opinion about the rebranding. I took a minute and made a sea kitten avatar (see right) and in the process began to think about the incredible amount of money this organization must have spent on this absurd campaign. I've never given money to Peta, and honestly, after looking at how they spend donations, I will not do so in the future. If you care to read about the campaign for yourself, or create your own sea kitten avatar, visit the site at peta.org

And I thought the wheel on an iPod was annoying...

Thanks to Reneé for passing this one along.

Watch the CBS Videos Online

My friend Jennifer sent me a link to this video about an incredible friendship between what could best be described as an "Animal Odd Couple." Watch the video and you will wonder, as the reporter does, "If they can make it work, what's our excuse?"

Here's an image I found recently that I thought people might get a kick out of: A parody I created of a Spin magazine cover which features my musical alter ego, DJ Snarky.

If I'm not mistaken, I created this in the late Spring/early Summer of 2003, right about the time I quit my job and was contemplating a move to Barcelona.

This is what I'm buying Melissa for her birthday, as soon as it becomes available:

Check it out...this is a brilliant ad, one of the most creative I have seen in recent memory.

I have finally finished compiling the web-based album of photos from our Italian honeymoon. You can find them at: Honeymoon.

This album has four parts, with photos from each city we visited:

• Venezia (Venice)—where we spent our first four days,


• Siena—where we spent the next week,


• San Gimignano—which we visited on a day trip from Siena, and


• Firenze (Florence)—where we spent our last four days,

The cities aren't listed in the order we visited them because the program I used to create the album, Jalbum, put them in alphabetical order.

A note about the web-based wedding photos
In the coming weeks I will be creating an expanded version of the web-based wedding album to include captions and to add some of the many wonderful photos (and possibly videos) from the friends and family who were able to attend.

This should be a lot easier with Jalbum versus the crappy freeware tool I used to create the original version that only contained proofs from our photographer. That tool was far too cumbersome and very pretty limited in its formatting options to deal with again.

I would like to wish everyone a very happy new year! Melissa and I are starting 2009 out with a new addition to our family: earlier this week we adopted a 2.5 year-old Siberian Husky named Niko.

Niko comes to us from one of Melissa's co-workers who is moving into an apartment building that doesn't allow pets. Niko is kid friendly and allegedly house-broken, so we'll see how things work out. Luckily I'm on vacation for the first week he's with us, so hopefully that will help with the transition. The challenge will be in seeing how well he, Melissa, and I are able to adapt to when I'm back at work next week. I will post more photos soon.