Episode 45 Earthlings

Explicit content warning

09/18/09 • -1 min

Episode 45 Earthlings
Hello and welcome to another fine episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast. This episode, I'll talk a tiny bit about Earthlings. I have two fairly long pieces of audio that will make up the majority of this episode. My intro is an old Australian news story of an animal who tried to escape from a zoo.
Earthlings is a very important movie to me, I think it says almost all that needs to be said on the side of veganism. Earthlings shows basically all the ways animals are used in todays society. It has graphic footage, from well known animal welfare groups such as PETA, and is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, who is vegan. Instrumental music throughout the movie is performed by well known vegan musician Moby.
This is a few minutes of audio from Earthlings.
I first saw Earthlings because Elizabeth Collins, of NZ Vegan podcast told me to. I was lent the movie by an Invercargill SAFE member, who hadnt watched Earthlings because they had heard how graphic it is. Its true, Earthlings has a lot of violent imagery, but I think its our duty as human beings to see what we have done, and continue to do to the world. To talk a little bit about Earthlings, here is Elizabeth, in a clip she recorded literally MONTHS ago for me :)
I'd like to thank Elizabeth for taking the time to add to this episode. Its taken me long enough to make this episode, but its finally done! You can find Elizabeth on iTunes by searching "NZ vegan", or at nzveganpodcast.blogspot.com as well as NZ Vegan Podcast on Twitter.
Thank you for listening. My outro is a Seinfeld clip.
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.

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Episode 44 New Zealand Hunting

Episode 44
New Zealand Hunting
Then I'll never visit Las Vegas. Hello, welcome to episode 44 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, where I talk about sad parts of New Zealands culture. My intro was from This Week In Tech episode 211. Recently I've been covering a lot of New Zealand news stories, I hope to help this information get out. Right now there are a lot of "white baiters", people who go out catching tiny fish known as "white bait" in nets along riversides. What we in New Zealand call Whitebait is actually the juvenile form of a certain kind of fish, not sure how to say the name, Galaxiid. The babies, White Bait as they are known, look like slimy little white worms. In Southland, a fairly rural area, its a big thing to go out "white baiting", a bunch of guys will go out to "the river" and catch these baby fish in nets. I find it revolting, but it seems to be a cultural thing here, and its nearly impossible to get people to agree that they are standing about a river, getting drunk, all to catch tiny little baby animals in nets. The newspapers and local business market for White Baiters, its just an accepted part of Southland life.
In New Zealand, its fairly common, or at least portrayed in NZ popular culture to be common, to go out hunting. I doubt the average New Zealand bloke goes out hunting a few times a year, but its part of our image, as being tough hairy men, all New Zealand men are portrayed as big strong hunters, even when catching baby fish in nets. The most commonly killed animals would probably be deer, ducks and pigs. For this episode , Ill mention all three. I have opinions from two other vegans to play on this episode, as well as many sound clips from youtube and New Zealand news stories.
To start off, heres some great advice comes from fishandgame.org.nz , a government body regulating hunting.
"Now comes the fun part, gutting it, drawing the bird, eviscerating it, whatever you want to call it. Grab that sharp knife and make 2 cuts. The first is in the throat area. This is so you can poke the hose or tap into it and flush the cavity out. The second cut is from below the breastplate bone toward the anus" Sound like fun to you?
The fish and game site even has a youth section, its kind of like a rugged boy scouts image, the idea of kids who know how to live off the fat of the land, so to speak. Its pretty sick, getting kids indoctrinated that hunting=good at a young age. Its a shame these kids arnt playing more violent video games, otherwise they might have learnt that hunting isnt something to be proud of , . Well said Solid Snake.
My first clip, is about pig hunting, I'll play back some of the sounds.
In one form of pig hunting, a pack of dogs track down a wild pig, then bite onto it any way they can, to hold the pig. Then a so called "pig hunter" will walk over, and cut the pigs throat.
In some forms of pig hunting, the hunters shoot the pig, I guess they need to shoot the more dangerous larger boars. But, in many of the videos I saw on YouTube, the big brave hunters rely on a 5-10 dogs to find, chase and catch the pig, and hold it down for the big brave hunter, as he cuts its throat. Sometimes, the pig manages to fight back. When they do, I bet the hunters act as though the pig's broken the law "hey mate, you're not meant to defend yourself, you should just let us kill ya mate!"
Heres an example of that, some idiot hunter had his finger bit by the pig, and yeah, its bleeding quite a lot, but its hardly equal to the damage done to the pig. Listen to him bitch about it.
So, when hes surrounding a single Labrador sized pig with a bunch of dogs, with a bunch of his friends, and hes complaining that the pig bit him on the finger? Dude, you're trying to cut its throat, why should it make it easy for you?
I asked for some help making this episode, and my friend Linda sent me a few pictures of injured pig hunting dogs. Heres what Linda has to say.
Thank you Linda for helping me with this hunting episode.
Some of these hunting videos I've got from YouTube have good production, with titles and different effects edited in. Some are set to music, making out a good time with rock music, or a large dramatic piece you may recognise, set to southland duck shooters. Those are real gun shots, not sound effects.
When you are out hunting, you are not meant to be drinking alcohol, but I would assume that most duck shooters etc do. Even tv pieces have highlighted "the boys havin' a few" as they stand around all day in camo gear, waiting to kill a small bird. This is just one of many mainstream news pieces about hunting in New Zealand, I really dont know why people want to go out hunting if this is anything what its really like.
Another person to get back to me about this episode was my good friend Sam, from http://nzdairy.webs.com/ .
Thank you very much Sam, Im always glad to have you on my podcast. You can see one of Sams websites at nzdairy.webs.com.
I ha...

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Episode 46 Stand By Me, Contact, American Beauty

Episode 46
Stand By Me, Contact, American Beauty
Hi, welcome to episode 46 of Jay Wont darts podcast. My intro was from episode 132 of No Agenda.
This episode, I'll talk about three of my favourite movies. Stand by Me, a coming of age flick, Contact, starring Jodie Foster and centred around aliens, and American Beauty, which is like a grown up Ferris Buellers Day Off.
First, Stand By Me.
Heres the trailer,
Stand By Me is a movie a lot of people will have seen before, and forgotten about. Its truly a classic. The movie, based on a Steven King book, came out in 1986. It has a lot of fairly well known scenes, the young boys walking along train tracks for most of the movie is quite memorable.
I'll read from the Wikipedia summary.
The film is narrated by an adult Gordie LaChance, known as "The Writer" (Richard Dreyfuss), writing the memoir about his youth. Set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Oregon, over Labor Day weekend in September 1959, Gordie (Wil Wheaton), and his friends Chris Chambers (River Phoenix) and Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman) learn from their friend Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell) that the dead body of a boy named Ray Brower, who was struck by a train while picking blueberries in the woods, has not been found. While under his porch looking for his buried jar of pennies, Vern overheard his older brother talking about finding the body while in the woods with a friend. The boys then embark upon a two-day journey across the woodlands near Castle Rock to see and find the body in hopes that the discovery will make them all famous.
Each boy has a physical and/or emotional burden. Gordie is a quiet, bookish boy with a penchant for telling stories and writing, rejected by his father following the death of his football-star older brother Denny (John Cusack) in a Jeep accident. Chris is from a family of criminals and alcoholics and, despite his intelligence and desire to break the generational curse, he is usually stereotyped accordingly. Teddy is an eccentric and physically deformed after his mentally-unstable father (whom Teddy sees as a war hero who "stormed the beach at Normandy") held his ear to a stove and nearly burned it off, thus forcing him to wear a hearing aid. Vern, overweight and timid, is easily scared, and thus often picked on.
Through the boys' misadventures and conversations, the viewer learns about each character's personality. Each of the boys, for varying reasons, lives in the shadow of their fathers and older brothers. Gordie's talent for storytelling pegs him as the most likely of the four to have a promising future.
Heres a clip of Gordie telling a story.
Stand By Me is a great movie, its been mentioned in pop culture a few times, such as the scenes of the adult writer reminiscing about his childhood friends. By the end of the movie, we hear him mention how he moved away from his friends, and the terrible fates that awaited each of them. Its terribly sad, to hear how they all end up.
The next movie is Contact, about finding a radio signal from outer space. Contact came out in 1997. Jodie Foster's character has been into radio all her life, and now she works with radio telescopes listening to signals from space. Eventually, she and her team manage to decode one such signal, and find out it has information inside, instructing them to build a machine.
Here is the trailer for contact.
I forget the total cost of the machines, but its actually quite low by todays standards, less than the US auto bail outs for example. A machine, or two, to teleport us through space, to meet aliens, and they cost less than keeping American cars around.
This is unrelated to the cost of the machine, but here is a clip of Jodie Foster asking for more funding.
Contact has a really interesting character, a ultra rich man near the end of his life, he shows up in a lot of interesting scenes, such as one as he floats inside a space station to prolong his life. Near the very end of the movie, as a question about him is brought up, we see his fellow space station friends put him in a body bag.
An interesting thing about Contact, the signal, and aliens, are from Vega, a star. When you mention this star , people from Vega are called "vay-guns". So, in the movie there are some GREAT clips to be made, as it sounds like they are saying Vegans! Observe.
Arnt they great?
The last movie is American Beauty. I love this movie, it features Kevin Spacey as the main character. American Beauty came out in 1999.
Reading from Wikipedia,
Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a middle-aged office worker who has a midlife crisis after becoming infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend.
After watching a high school basketball game at which Jane is a cheerleader, Lester develops an infatuation with Jane's sexually precocious friend and classmate, Angela . His fantasies entail a sexually aggressive Angela among red rose petals. Lester is informed he is to...