Don't Tell My Mom!

It's funny how in some contexts we never grow up.

When I was growing up, there were all kinds of things that I didn't want my mom to know. I didn't want her to know that I smoked; which she may or may not have, I was never sure how much my excuse of "all my friends smoke, that's what you smell" worked. I never wanted my mom to know that I smoked pot; to this day, I'm sure she doesn't know. And I never wanted her to know that I got a tattoo.

When I was a teenager, way back in the olden-times land of the mid 80s, the current tattoo culture hadn't started yet, at least it hadn't started where I live. According to my mother, if you had tattoos, you were either a biker or a prostitute. I was obsessed with having a tattoo and started visiting shops when I was about 16 years old and when I hit 18 I got my first piece of permanent artwork. And spent the next year of my life wearing nothing more revealing than t-shirts around my parents so that they couldn't see the silver dollar sized mark on my skin.

They did eventually see that one, about a year later, and my mom FLIPPED OUT. And over the years, as my art collection grew, she or my dad would occasionally get a glimpse of a new bit and they'd freak out all over again.

So, fast forward to the recent past of this past Saturday and me sitting in my friendly neighbourhood tattoo parlor with my son. For his 18th birthday this week, his gift from me was his first tattoo.

I am now seriously living in dread of my mother finding out about this.

I know, at almost 40 you shouldn't care what your mother says about things; but anyone who has a mom who does this kind of thing knows that it's not that easy. I *know* that at 18 years of age, any teenager has the right (at least in BC) to legally acquire a tattoo without parental consent. But somehow stuff like this is always my fault.

I'm wondering how *my* decisions as a teenager weren't her fault though.

Maybe, if I hear about this from her, I'll have to bring that up.

Jonathan Adler Junior PWNED by me. And Paul. And there's this stuff about eating dogs.

Little Timmy is going to need deep psychological counselling

If you think that's funny, you should look up posts on Apartment Therapy that happen to contain pictures of a hide/skin rug or wall hanging. I have seen maybe three posts that didn't have some vitriolic comment along the lines of FUR IS MURDER OKTHXBAI. And of those three posts, one hastened to assure the reader that the rug was 'rescued at the last moment from the garbage!'

Strangely enough, when leather sofas are mentioned, it's rare for there to be an actual mention of anything to do with animal cruelty. Apparently the closer to the animal in the rendering process corresponds with the amount of cruelty that the producer/seller/buyer is accused of.

I am opposed to trophy hunting or hunting solely for skins/teeth/gall bladders. However, I am not opposed to hunting for meat or to rid an area of a dangerous animal. I am also not opposed to humane meat production. As Marshall Saunders said in the book Beautiful Joe, "It's a possible thing to raise healthy stock, treat it kindly, kill it mercifully, eat it decently."

However, this brings to light some things that we North Americans often find shocking and abhorrent. I speak of using companion animals as food animals - dogs and cats. Now I am an avid dog lover. Avid? More like obsessive. Cruelty towards dogs, of all the companion animals, makes me tense up and fantasize all manner of scenarios that end with animal abusers begging me to kill them because it hurts so much and me saying, "Ha ha! Fuck you! No." The practice of eating dogs just doesn't do it for me.

But is it my right to condemn people who raise dogs for the purposes of food if I'm okay with pigs being raised for consumption? An adult pig is easily as smart and trainable as an adult dog, only less aesthetically appealing. What about cows? Sure, they don't seem as smart as the pigs, but then again, I've had dogs that weren't too brilliant in the brain department and I wouldn't have heard of dumping them because of it.

Our attitudes towards animals and what is cruelty and what is not seem really skewed when I look at them this way. I won't get over my abhorrence of dogs being eaten, but I don't think I can condemn it unless I condemn the killing and eating of other animals.

I can't wait until the AT house tour with a dog skin rug featured on the living room floor. The mogg blogg came close with the taxidermied former Fido, but not quite.