I'm sorry but at age 12 you all should know that hurting animals are anything else for that matter is WRONG!

My brother is 25 and he still deliberately squashes snails after a rainstorm. Is that cruel? I think it's pretty mean.

In my early teens I had a friend tell me that he'd put a kitten in the microwave for like 5 seconds. I said "Oh man that's jacked up...you didn't?!" He said "Yeah but it was only for 5 seconds. I dunno, he was like, shivering afterwards...like shaking." What an idiot. This guy was a nut to begin with, so I don't know if he was just making it up. Either way, that sucks. Vivid memory.

during their early teen years, my stepbrothers & other neighborhood boys were truly fucking cruel to animals. they used to douse snakes & other animals in gasoline, light them on fire & race them down the street, taking bets on which animal would win. finish lines were marked in all directions, in case the panicked, agonized animal accidentally ran the wrong way. the adults would just stand there & watch, often laughing. nobody cared. except me, but what the hell, i'm a weirdo. this one guy i know used to bury cats, leaving only their heads exposed. then he'd fire up a lawnmower & go mow the cats. horrific. blood everywhere. same kid would light birds on fire or force them through electric fans. the neighborhood guys used to play baseball w/ toads (using the toad instead of a ball). one of these guys, now in his 40s, still thinks it's pretty cool to kill random animals, just for the hell of it. these things always horrified me. my parents used to slap me around when i'd cringe over various acts of cruelty, telling me to get the hell over it. they always told me that when i heard an animal or person screaming in pain, to thank my lucky stars that it wasn't ME who was getting hurt (& if i couldn't get over it, then it would be me getting hurt, because they didn't want me to grow up to be "sensitive"). as a kid, when i moved from the city to the country, i had to butcher a lot of animals for food. i generally did what i was told. but i hated being around when people butchered pigs. i just couldn't hang around for the pig-sticking. i remember having a friend who hated it, too. we'd hide together under a bed holding hands, our heads buried under pillows, while the hog screamed & screamed. no surprise, my stepbrothers loved butchering the animals, especially the lambs & rabbits. but anyway, i digress. killing for food & killing to be a mean SOB are two entirely different things.

you need to write a book crimson, yeah i killed an animal, once..... being a good american boy i had RedRyder, compressed air bebe gun......I spotted a squirrel in the tree, took aim, WHAMO one half dead squirrel fell out of the tree........i felt so awful, the poor thing wasn't dead yet and I had to shoot it again up close to put it out of it's misery. the randomness and the senselessness of it i think tore me up the most. I cried to mama shortly thereafter. Oh wait, i actually did kill a possum as well, but that was after he had cut Sir Dudley Do Right the Dalamtion on the nose with his razor sharp claws. he got trapped in the back yard, the dog, being a dog, took him to task for stepping in his realm. Being an 11 year old boy, seeing your best friend bleeding.....well that possum died.....this time, still being a good american boy, i had my .22 available, with 200mm scope and all......it took one bullet. I did have the respect to bury it, the squirrel as well. Otherwise the senseless, pointless violence against the animals mentioned above simply distrubs and saddens me.....a lawn mower to a cat???? frog baseball? Did you grow up with Beavis and Butthead? I suspect so,

i grew up w/ people who made beavis & butthead look like girl scouts. the guy who killed the cats w/ a lawnmower was known throughout the neighborhood as "crazy george". i heard that he got religion in his late teens & grew up to be a preacher. no joke. so did another neighborhood bully. crazy george. jesus, what a head case. he got the crap beaten out of him by his domineering, overbearing grandmother. you could go by his house & hear it happening. sometimes, she'd tie him to the bed while he was still asleep & wake him up by beating him. crazy george had eyes just like charles manson. he was mean as hell...except to me. even when he started coming on to me, he was unfailingly polite. he'd beg me to touch him gently. he'd take me into a bathroom, turn off the lights, take off his clothes & beg me to "touch him nice". not even necessarily sexually, but just tenderly. i always felt kinda sorry for him, even though i hated the shit he did w/ animals. he seemed like such a lost soul. but i guess that soul's been saved now. i need to write a book? cool. because that's exactly what i'm doing.

This stuff makes me feel sad and angry. Humans are fucking shit. I can't stand to even hear about an animal being tortured or killed. If there is an eternal hell it is made for these assholes.

if anybody actually gives a damn, i have a small collection of news stories i clipped for a project (since temporarily abandoned). it's a compilation of true stories regarding both child & animal abuse. pretty recent stories, too. shit that would curl your hair. it's not pleasant reading. anyway, there are about 25 of these stories, paraphrased to be short. write me if you care & i can possibly share these gems w/ you. i've posted them elsewhere online & got soundly blasted for being "depressing". but you know what? the shit happens every day, whether you're depressed about it or not. anyway, just thought i'd mention it. people frequently tell me that my fiction & poetry is "sick". but reality beats anything that my imagination can dream up. people are so goddamn cruel that it's mindbending. about the kiddie animal abuse issue: i do know people who seemed to "get over it". however, i know a few people who never did. i've heard a lot of arguments about child-generated animal abuse just being "a phase". i dunno. it's a phase i never personally felt compelled to go through. my husband had a violent phase in his youth, but completely confined his outbursts to people. like walking into a baptist church & just beating the piss out of people w/ a metal chair. that sort of thing. rites of passage.

crimson- where did you grow up? i have very few words about this (i'm shaken) the idea that the adults watched and shoved you around for being 'sensitive' really disturbs me all i could think was that these kids must have been being treated really badly by someone they couldn't stop or talk back to- that they had to take their pain out on something else. then you talked about george's life so i guess in some cases it was true. fetidbeaver- hearing about animals being hurt makes me feel awful- but hearing about the abused children (and adults) makes me feel a lot worse. sometimes i don't understand all the people putting their energy into saving and taking care of animals. there might be fewer abused animals to take care of if they were paying attention to humans. but yes- people suck

beating random people with a metal chair is a rite of passage?

in some states it is, Texas and Minnesota being two of them....the wrasslin industry would like to think they fathered that practice, but it just is't true?

about the "rite of passage" comment: i was joking, of course. but not about the metal chair. that was for real. i grew up in different places around the country, but i've lived in arkansas longer than anywhere else & that's where this stuff happened. i've lived in a lot of different parts of AR, but this happened in a crappy neighborhood in little rock (actually, it was damn near outside of little rock at that time). LR can be just as cosmopolitan a city as any other. i hate it when people think that everyone from AR is, by default, a fucking hick. i'm still in the state, but i'm not in LR anymore. anyway, that particular neighborhood at that time was just too bizarre. adults were fucking the kids over right & left. i saw a lot of serious abuse & bullshit. my initiations into drugs, sex, crime & my own little rites of passage were largely brought on by out-of-control adults. the adults were mostly interested in staying stoned or drunk, fucking a lot of the kids & generally being hateful, abusive shits--all the while being sanctimonious about their religious lives. vivid memory: there were these catholic kids who lived a couple doors down. their father used to punish them by standing them against the wall of the garage & punching them until they passed out. sometimes, i could hear them crying through my bedroom window. the old man would get drunk & just start swinging. he wouldn't stop until they'd lost consciousness. he'd broken some of their bones, too. when i tried to talk about how much it bothered me, my folks just said that the guy could do whatever he wanted w/ those kids, since they were his. i was informed that i had no business interfering, unless i wanted some of the same treatment. vivid memory #2: this kid, 14, got out of a long stretch in juvenile hall (almost every kid in the neighborhood got to do that gig--except for me). some grown men decided that since the boy had been incarcerated, he must know "the tricks of the trade" by now. so the kid got hauled off in the middle of the night & raped half to death. everybody in the neighborhood just laughed & said he had it coming for being effeminate. he was weak. fuck him. later, the boy sat in my room, shaking & crying. i felt so helpless. i had some deep inner sense that he was fucking doomed & there wasn't a damn thing i could do for him. that night, my family gave me hell for being nice to "that disgusting little queer". when the animal abuse went on, nobody seemed concerned at all. i remember seeing adults standing around. it often happened right in plain view, sometimes in the middle of the street. people just shrugged it off. "boys will be boys," they'd say & chuckle at the burning animals. my folks didn't want me to be "sensitive". they thought that my artsy leanings were total bullshit. they wanted me to be forget all that sissy shit & be NORMAL. i'm the only person in the family who turned out this way (i.e., creative). needless to say, i'm the black sheep. other people in the family have had serious run-ins w/ the law, drug problems, domestic abuse, the whole thing...but at least they weren't "art fags" like me.

damn

here's something to ponder: a friend of mine was recently saying that animal abuse tends to be a largely male phenomenon, especially among youth. agree or disagree? i realize that not all animal abusers are male, though. i grew up seeing my stepmother abusing the crap out of animals. she'd punch them right in the face w/ her fist. she went on to teach her malice to her sons, who went on to kill & torment animals (see above). she also hates animal rights activists w/ a passion, because she believes that they're challenging god (her belief: god gave man dominion over the animals, which means that people can do whatever they like to them...anybody who challenges that concept is obviously in defiance of scripture). still, growing up, almost all the real animal abuse freaks were boys. when the girls got weird w/ the critters, it was usually sexual (like getting head from the family dog, that sort of thing).

I agree,I was seriously abused as a child,got the belt all the time,I,d hide the belt and get the switch in stead(that was even worse).I went to school all the time with welt marks on my legs,my teachers knew what was up,but back then nobody cared,or if they did,they couldn,t do anything about it.I was put in juvinal hall and a Catholic girls school for being incorrigble,I never hurt anyone(till I got locked up),I never stole from anyone,I never committed a crime,I just got to the point where I wouldn,t cry and let them have the satisfaction of knowing it hurt me,I learned to keep it all inside.I can still do that,I can keep it all inside,but when I,m alone,and nobody can see me,I cry.I cry a lot,life don,t mean nothing till the angels sing.I,ve never spanked my kids.I want them to know I love them,but they sure don,t mind fucking me,and that gets old.

i agree crimson, little boys are generally more aggressive than little girls, they have to do something with this energy......also the more abusive the parents the more abusive the kids, heather mentioned a great idea above, of which i believe entirely, behind every evil child there is amore evil adult.....kids are born into this world a clean slate and the adults write the curriculum.....

well, boys do seem more aggressive--not just toward animals, but toward every creeping thing on planet earth. some of them get over it. many of them don't. i do remember, in my youth, being bullied by a few girls. they had problems...serious king-hell mental problems. but in 6th grade, a bullying experience turned kind of weirdly homoerotic. this really heavy-set girl used to pick on me. we were buddies, actually. she just had this weird habit of grabbing me & giving me the equivalent of a vulcan death-grip until i sank to my knees in front of her. from there, she'd make me tell her she was beautiful. she'd press my face against her large breasts (6th grade, & already she had humongous tits). she would kiss me while i whimpered in pain & begged for release--not that i really wanted her to let me go. she made me pray to her as if she were a deity. she pulled my hair & told me she was going to hold me there on the schoolyard forever. it was the only submissive experience i ever had that i actually liked. no one ever stopped us. ever. in retrospect, that kind of freaks me out. we'd do this gig every day on the schoolyard. if you were an adult & saw this going on, would you not ask a few questions, perhaps? oh, well. i guess they couldn't be bothered. anyway, her name was laurie. & she was the best bully i ever had the pleasure of getting humiliated by. all the others were shoddy, rank amateurs by comparison.

did you go to school with Pat Califa?

*grin* nope...but if i had, perhaps the entire schoolyard socialization process could've turned out even more interesting. hey, where's the starling-stomper who started this damn thread, anyway?

This crazy fucker last week took his 2 and a half year old daughter,told her they were going to look at Christmas lights, he took her to McDonalds,got her a happy meal,then he took her out in the desert,poured gasoline on her and torched her,drove around then came back to make sure she was dead.She had managed to crawl 10 feet towards where he was when he set her on fire.He won,t get the death penalty I don,t think, he,s bi-polar,so is Amee and it scares me.

j, that fucking ruined my evening. this song goes with this thread.

I hope they kill him.

ANYONE WHO PUTS ANY HARM ON ANY ANIMAL IS CRUEL! RESEACHERS SHOW THAT AT AGE 10, YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING TO ANIMALS IF YOU ARE ABUSING THEM! RESEARCHERS ALSO SHOW THAT ITS A HUGE POSSIBILITY THAT ANYONE WHO ABUSES OR KILLS ANIMALS WILL GROW UP AND HURT AND KILL HUMAN BEINGS! IMAGE THAT PERSON GETTING TORTURE OR KILLED IS YOUR CHILD, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR FRIENDS! I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW ANYONE COULD HURT ANY ANIMAL AND FEEL GOOD ABOUT THEMSELVES! ASK YOURSELF LATER IF THAT ANIMAL DESERVED IT, THE PAIN, THE TORTURE, THE CRUELTY! WHAT IF THAT WAS YOUR FRIENDS OR FAMILY THAT GOT PUT THREW TORTURE? ANIMALS FEEL THE PAIN WE FEEL IF WE WERE TO GET HURT OR KILLED, AND ITS WRONG! PEOPLE ARE SICK IN THE HEAD AND NEED HELP! ANIMALS HAVE A VOICE..... ITS YOU!!!!!!!!

research also shows that typing in all capitals makes you 3000% more likely to be ignored, no matter what the subject.

yeah. It's the net equivalent of wearing a sandwich board covered in horribly handwritten "The END is NEAR" messages.

I had a dream last night that tucker carlson was at my parent's house visiting. he was taking to us and I kept feeding him lines from the show with John Stewart. He tried to laugh it off.

America: The Book got the Book of the Year award from some publisher's association.

http://tinyurl.com/3u8u7 sounds fun.