Episode 33 Matthew Shepard

Explicit content warning

07/17/09 • -1 min

Episode 33
Matthew Shepard
Hello and welcome to episode 33 of Jay Wont darts podcast, where I learn life lessons, and talk about them into a USB microphone.
This episode of my podcast, I'll talk about Matthew Shepard, a young man in America, killed for the crime of being gay.
I felt pretty moved by Matthews story, told by his parents mostly, and it made me think about how people use homosexuality as a negative term, its a put down to say "you're gay" for example. Researching this episode, I found this Public Service Announcement featuring Matthews mother
And it made me think of the words I use, and that I hear other people use, and do nothing about. Recently at work I heard people walking out and talking about something that they didnt like , they said "that was gay". I felt like I should say something, maybe confront the couple "what, you have a problem with gay people?", as if I were gay myself. Im not gay, but they wouldnt know that, would they? Instead, I just pretended not to hear them, I dont like to cause trouble while I work, the "customer is always right" and all that. In future I dont want to ever use terms like "gay" to mean a bad thing, and will bring it up if people use the word Gay as a negative slander.
Matthew Wayne Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was a student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured and subsequently murdered near Laramie, Wyoming. He was attacked on the night of October 6–7, 1998 and died at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12, from severe head injuries.
"Shortly after midnight on October 7, 1998, 21-year-old Shepard met McKinney and Henderson in a bar. McKinney and Henderson offered Shepard a ride in their car.[4] Subsequently, Shepard was robbed, pistol whipped, tortured, tied to a fence in a remote, rural area, and left to die. McKinney and Henderson also found out his address and intended to rob his home. Still tied to the fence, Shepard was discovered eighteen hours later by Aaron Kreifels, who at first thought that Shepard was a scarecrow. At the time of discovery, Shepard was still alive, but in a coma.
Shepard suffered a fracture from the back of his head to the front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature and other vital signs. There were also about a dozen small lacerations around his head, face and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate. Shepard never regained consciousness and remained on full life support. As he lay in intensive care, candlelight vigils were held by the people of Laramie.[5]
He was pronounced dead at 12:53 A.M. on October 12, 1998, at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins.[6][7][8][9] Police arrested McKinney and Henderson shortly thereafter, finding the bloody gun as well as the victim's shoes and wallet in their truck.[3]
GAY PANIC DEFENSE
The two attackers tried to defend what they did to Matthew as saying that as a gay man, Matthew had made a sexual advance on them, and in their disgust, shock and panic, they had killed him to defend themselves, they had lost control of what they were doing because they were so shocked. Its called the Gay Panic Defense. I hadnt heard of this before, but there have been two well known New Zealand cases in recent times.
New Zealand examples.
* In 2003, a gay interior designer, David McNee, was killed[8] by a homeless drug user and part time prostitute, Phillip Layton Edwards. Edwards said at his trial that he told McNee he was not gay, but would masturbate in front of him on a "no-touch" basis for money. The defence successfully argued that Edwards, who had 56 previous convictions and had been on parole for 11 days, was provoked into beating McNee after the former television host violated their "no touching" agreement. Edwards was jailed for nine years for manslaughter.[9][10]
* In July 2009, Ferdinand Ambach, 32, a Hungarian tourist, was convicted of killing Ronald Brown, 69, by hitting him with a banjo and shoving the instrument's neck down Brown's throat. Ambach was initially charged with murder, but the charge was downgraded to manslaughter after Ambach's lawyer successfully invoked the gay panic defence.
The prosecutor in the case charged that McKinney and Henderson pretended to be gay in order to gain Shepard's trust to rob him.[11] During the trial, Chastity Pasley and Kristen Price (the respective girlfriends of McKinney and Henderson at the time of the event) testified under oath that Henderson and McKinney both plotted beforehand to rob a gay man. McKinney and Henderson then went to the Fireside Lounge and selected Shepard as their target. McKinney alleged that Shepard asked them for a ride home. After befriending him, they took him to a remote area of Laramie where they robbed him, beat him severely, and tied him to a fence with a rope from McKinney's truck while Shepard begged for his l...

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Episode 32 Freezing Works

Episode 32
Freezing Works
This episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, I talk about Freezing Works, a New Zealand occupation, basically an abattoir or slaughterhouse where the meat is frozen at the end and exported overseas.
Download Episode directly here
My intro was from No Agenda episode 104.
I'll start with a quote.
The meat processing industry is in a constant state
of change. These changes will continue to meet the
requirements of the 21st Century. The meat plant of
100 years hence will probably feature a high degree of
automation. But this will be beyond our lifetime.
If we
focus upon the immediate future the meat plant of the
21st Century will probably incorporate many of the
current trends or developments.
Operating margins will remain small with the
emphasis upon high productivity and enhanced revenue.
We may see the rise of the mega-plant linked with a
national or international network of specialised added
value operations.
The international demand for meat and proteins is
expected to grow. The challenge of the meat plant will
be to meet this demand and produce a range of products
to the exact requirements of the customer.
'In the public eye, the Freezing Worker is one of the
lowest status individuals in our society. A rough,
irresponsible layabout who jeopardises the economy for
sheer greed and goes on strike at the drop of a hat. He
earns high wages for very simple work. He's at a key
point in the economy, responsible for processing one
or our biggest export commodities. He can hold the
country to ransom. So runs the popular myth.
No-one who has not seen what a freezing works is
like, and the kind of jobs freezing workers do is in a
position to criticise. The industry carries mass
production to its extreme. A freezing works is a giant
dis-assembly line along which carcasses and organs roll
with a deadening inevitability while the men scuttle to
keep up. The machine is truly king. A butcher on the
chain must carry out the same operation over and over
again, day after day until the season ends. Not for him
the carpenter's pride in his skill, the watersiders variety
of tasks, the shearers' sense of completing a meaningful
job. Instead endless, mindless, meaningless work, often
standing in the same place all day using a dangerously
sharp knife, surrounded by hundreds of other men doing
the same thing, and by the unedifying sights and smells
of freshly dismembered animals.'
Kerr Inkson of Otago
University, 1977
I had to look up the term Watersider, it means a person who loads and unloads ships, a dock worker.
In Southland , there are a few different Freezing Works, or "The Works", as they are known colloquially. Freezing Works are common in New Zealand rural areas, farmers grow animals like cows, sheep and pigs, and they are sent off to The Works to be killed. When you go past a Freezing Works, they are quite large factory buildings, normally white, and with lots of metal frames outside, where the animals were kept. Trains or trucks will bring the animals in, they will go through pens, to be stunned and then murdered, or in Freezing Works terms, Slaughtered, inside. Their skin is removed for leather, bones are cut and pulled out, heads cut off, tongues cut out, their muscles sold as meat. Their organs are snatched out and thrown in stainless steel trays for inspection, if they are fit for sale, then they are sold for people to eat. Intestines are used as the casings for sausages, the intestines are like socks that get stuffed with low grade meat, to make sausages. I've read that glands are sold, some powdered up and sold overseas as a health thing, some such as testicles, are probably bought in an attempt to spice up the bedroom. In old photos I've seen, you know from the 80's, hairy old men, without gloves on , are wringing out the intestines to make sausage casings, I assume that nowadays they have to wear gloves at least. The intestines go through a wringer, and get washed.
A little about the history of meat exported from New Zealand. Canning of meat was started in 1869 in New Zealand, only the best meat was canned. In 1874, american cooled meat was sent to Britain, natural ice kept the meat cold.
The first ship to carry frozen meat from New Zealand to the United Kingdom was The Dunedin. The Dunedin used 3 tonnes of coal a day, through a steam powered refrigeration machine, to cool The Dunedins hold, down to 4 degrees celsius. The ship was rigged up for refrigeration in 1881, and its first journey, from Oamaru New Zealand, thats in Otago just north of Southland, left for London on the 15th of February, 1882. It took The Dunedin 98 days to arrive, on the 24th of May.
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Episode 34 Scary Technology

Episode 34
Scary Technology!
Hello and welcome to episode 34 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I play endless clips of other people talking for an hour straight.
This episode, I've got a lot of good No Agenda podcast clips to play, about scary technology thats either out now, or coming out very soon, apparently. I dont believe all of this stuff is 100% true, then again, it always takes 20+ years to find out what America has, think about the SR71 recon plane that cruises at the edge of space at Mach 3 spying on people, or the nearly invisible B2 bomber, we know about these things, they are not really used at all now, so America must have greatly superior replacements that we'll find out about, one day in the future.
My next episode will be title "the joys of human invention", it'll serve to counter this crazy and terrifying episode, so dont take that cyanide pill just yet, episode 35 will hopefully give you a reason to live.
So, many of these rumoured technologies will no doubt turn out to be true. The question is, which are real, and will be used against you, and which ones are just a pipe dream?
You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com
If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to [email protected], j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.
Have a super happy day, bye.