About three years ago I was out with my ex-girlfriend and a bunch of friends at a horrible dance club on Bowery. We’re all Asian, and there were two guys in our whole group and about 10 girls, who were hitting the dance floor hard. Dancin’ Till the World Ends, or something. Meanwhile, being the life of the party I am, I sat on the sidelines with an $8 beer, unsuccessfully trying to hide my misery.
Then, out of nowhere: a blur on the dance floor. Something was wrong. My then-girlfriend was yelling at the top of her lungs at a group of five to seven big, hovering dudes near the bar. Another friend was talking with the manager, waving her arms like a maniac. I pulled my GF in, took one look into her watery eyes, and scanned the room to make sense of what was going on. One of the guys had apparently reached out and touched her butt while she was dancing. Well, shit. The bouncers, however (who were apparently the perv’s friends) were already escorting their buddy out, albeit reluctantly.
We took a breath and grabbed our coats. While leaving “da club” shortly thereafter, that same guy and another friend were hiding near the entrance. As my GF and I passed them unknowingly, he yelled out at our backs. “That’s right, you fucking chink [something something]. Get the fuck outta here.” He looked right at me. His friend, an equally large man with pristinely manicured facial hair, just laughed. “Keep walking chink-ass [something something].”
I looked at her. She was tired, and so was I — 5’5” and 135 pounds of uninsured magazine intern against four fists and 360+ pounds of reckless stupid. I shook my head (like, REALLY shook it), squeezed her hand, and hailed us a cab home. Or we walked, I don’t remember. All I recall is that while she dozed off at some point, I selfishly daydreamed three totally perfect comebacks in my head.
I never got to use them, of course, as tends to happen with something as fleeting as perfect comebacks.
***
The Atlantic Wire wrote a thing today about a few numbskulls who watched “Olympus Has Fallen” — a movie I’d watch on TV if it came on — and subsequently tweeted a bunch racist stuff about Asians out into the Twitter vacuum, a.k.a. where all my half-assed jokes go to die.
Yes, I found the offending tweets shocking and gross, at least at first. But unlike the usual ignorance catalyzing other social media shamings, I felt strangely okay with the underlying fear driving all that ugly racism.
This is Rick Yune, who plays Olympus’ North Korean badguy. From what IMDB tells me, he doesn’t spend the film doling out mysticism in Yoda-speak or getting friendzoned by Aaliyah. He isn’t even a pudgy, Tumblr-friendly dictator with his trigger finger on a nuke. He’s handsome (a former Versace model IRL!), menacing, and pissing off real Americans by murdering fake ones onscreen — the opposite of an easy stereotype, in other words.
It’s weird. On one hand, it’s glaring coming face-to-face (sort of) with idiots who feel a fleeting, unsubstantiated hatred towards a group of people they don’t understand. Big duh: racism exists, and Twitter’s search tool makes that kind of nastiness easily accessible. But the air of hatred here is a different flavor from the diminishing small penis jokes and reductive praise heaped on Gangnam Style’s cartoonish buffoonery. It’s reactive fear masquerading as patriotism.
One of the main differences, here, is that for the first time in a long time, an Asian man is scary enough in a visible medium that complete strangers feel compelled to punch me in the face. (Okay, maybe it’s not really that different.) But it’s a new kind of characterization, one that’s antagonistic, threatening, and the opposite of cartoony; it adds a layer of complexity to a neutered Asian male composite that was most recently used to hawk pistachios during the Super Bowl. Although it’s not nearly as multi-dimensional, it’s a little empowering, kind of like rap once was to the community that birthed it.
And as of right now, in 2013, this scary new dimension is one that I find myself largely okay with, mostly because it fucks up the funny, cuddly caricature already out there. And perhaps the worst part of all? It’s 2013 and I shouldn’t have to be.
Fucking white people….
fucking people..
Godzilla doesn’t give a fuck….
(Source: destruction-mode, via towritelesbiansonherarms)
The shelter manager’s letter:
“I am posting this (and it is long) because I think our society needs a huge wake-up call.
As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all - a view from the inside, if you will.
Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don’t even know - that puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it’s not a cute little puppy anymore.
How would you feel if you knew that there’s about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at - purebred or not! About 50% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays” that come into my shelter are purebred dogs.
No shortage of excuses
The most common excuses I hear are:
We are moving and we can’t take our dog (or cat).
Really? Where are you moving to that doesn’t allow pets?
The dog got bigger than we thought it would.
How big did you think a German Shepherd would get?
We don’t have time for her.
Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs!
She’s tearing up our yard.
How about bringing her inside, making her a part of your family?
They always tell me:
We just don’t want to have to stress about finding a place for her. We know she’ll get adopted - she’s a good dog. Odds are your pet won’t get adopted, and how stressful do you think being in a shelter is?
Well, let me tell you. Dead pet walking!
Your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off, sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy.
If it sniffles, it dies.
Your pet will be confined to a small run / kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it.
If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers that day to take him / her for a walk. If I don’t, your pet won’t get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose.
If your dog is big, black or any of the “bully” breeds (pit bull, rottweiler, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door. Those dogs just don’t get adopted.
If your dog doesn’t get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed.
If the shelter isn’t full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed, it may get a stay of execution, though not for long. Most pets get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression. Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment.
If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles, chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don’t have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment.
The grim reaper
Here’s a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being “put-down”.
First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look like they think they are going for a walk - happy, wagging their tails. That is, until they get to “The Room”.
Every one of them freaks out and puts on the breaks when we get to the door. It must smell like death, or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there. It’s strange, but it happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs (depending on their size and how freaked out they are). A euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the “pink stuff”. Hopefully your pet doesn’t panic from being restrained and jerk it’s leg. I’ve seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood, and been deafened by the yelps and screams.
They all don’t just “go to sleep” - sometimes they spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves.
When it all ends, your pet’s corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back, with all of the other animals that were killed, waiting to be picked up like garbage.
What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? You’ll never know, and it probably won’t even cross your mind. It was just an animal, and you can always buy another one, right?
Liberty, freedom and justice for all
I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head. I do everyday on the way home from work. I hate my job, I hate that it exists and I hate that it will always be there unless people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter.
Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes.
My point to all of this is DON’T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!
Hate me if you want to - the truth hurts and reality is what it is.
I just hope I maybe changed one person’s mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say “I saw this thing on craigslist and it made me want to adopt”.
That would make it all worth it.”
STOP BUYING FROM BREEDERS YOU SELFISH ASSES!
PLEASE RE-POST THIS.
(Source: sparkleyunitard, via poopbird)
Please, take a seat anywhere, my friend.
roses are penis violets are penis
(Source: marxvx)
