December 12, 2006

"Two Borat-inspired British animal rights activists clad in lettuce bikinis braved the winter chill in the Kazakh commercial capital Almaty..."

The message: Stop eating horses!
"The Borat film is ridiculing Kazakhstan, but we come with a positive message: how to live a healthier, longer life" said Yvonne Taylor, one of the two Lettuce Ladies, her teeth chattering as they stood in Almaty's main square in freezing temperatures....

"This is disgrace," said 74-year-old Orazbek Ziyakhanov of the activists' outfits. "Don't we have enough of our own spoiled girls? This is not Europe, this is Asia."

As for becoming a vegetarian, Ziyakhanov said: "How can we stop eating meat? All the vitamins are in meat."

20 comments:

Balfegor said...

Horse meat is actually quite delicious. Or at least, it has been, in my experience -- sometimes even better than beef, and I am a great lover of the cowflesh. If I recall rightly, though you can't eat horses in this backwards country here. Or perhaps you can't sell them for eating. Some sort of obscure religious taboo or something, I expect.

Anonymous said...

Well, if American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act becomes law, not only won't the folks in this here backwards country be eating horses, but people in the more refined countries won't be eating American horses. I say, if that's backwards, sign me up. It is not an obscure religious taboo, by the way. It is called being an equestrian.

altoids1306 said...

"Don't we have enough of our own spoiled girls? This is not Europe, this is Asia."

Sounds about right. I'm hungry for some salad.

Balfegor said...

Your dictionary must be broken; riding horses and eating them are not mutually exclusive activities, as long as you're not trying to eat the same one you're riding.

Incidentally, given that Kazakhstan is full of the descendants of Turkic nomads (and Russians and Chinese and Koreans and all kinds of things -- but the Kazakhs themselves are ex-Turkic nomads), their equine cuisine was probably developed by people who both rode and ate horses themselves.

But that's kind of beside the point since (aside from entirely seriously recommending horsemeat as tasty), I was mostly engaging in sympathetic mockery of attitudes one hears with respect to religious prohibitions on consumption of pork or beef.

Dwight said...

"This is not Europe, this is Asia."

Funny how comparisons have changed so little from the time of Herodotus.

Steven said...

Stop the persecution of innocent photosynthesizers! Switch from vegetarianism to humanitarianism!

JohnF said...

Let me just say this. In an article about women wearing bikinis made of lettuce, we deserve a link with pictures. We didn't get it.

Pick it up, Ann.

Anonymous said...

"Why does your horse only have three legs, Mr Clohessey?"

"Will, he wahn the darby doncher know; and a harse like that you don't eat awl at once, now do yer?"

Anonymous said...

"Why does your horse only have three legs, Mr Clohessey?"

"Will, he wahn the darby doncher know; and a harse like that you don't eat awl at once, now do yer?"

Dactyl said...

JohnF said...
"Let me just say this. In an article about women wearing bikinis made of lettuce, we deserve a link with pictures. We didn't get it.

Pick it up, Ann."


Yeah, get your s*** together, willya?

Eli Blake said...

There are worse things to eat than horses:

According to the latest 'research' done by the nutbag right, soybeans cause homosexuality in men.

LoafingOaf said...

But it gave us all a good laugh in an otherwise boring day. I think it was supposed to be about inhumane treatment of veal calves or something like that - I never really figured it out.

Sounds like you knew what it was about, but you told yourself to laugh so you wouldn't worry your head off about the calves being tortured in the most barbaric fashion.

Peta are too fanatical for my taste, but a lot of their campaigns are very effective and they do have some good points.

Josef Novak said...

"According to the latest 'research' done by the nutbag right, soybeans cause homosexuality in men."

Ahhh hahahaaha!

I live in Tokyo - I'm DOOMED!

This has got to be the most ridiculous specious byte I've seen this week.

But at least Tofu is OK.

(On a more serious note, why on Earth should we be worried about a dip in birthrates, while we continue to grossly overpopulate the only world we have? The Japanese, and foreign investment bankers here worry [much more understandably] about the decline in the Japanese population; but I cannot understand why a dip in total GDP, which is related to population dynamics, should be such a big deal. I might understand a per capita decline, or a decline in the standard of living; but I haven't read any evidence to support such a claim - more alarmingly I haven't even heard anyone make such a claim - everyone is just looking at the raw numbers...)

Josef Novak said...

"...at least Tofu is OK"

I meant, at least natto is OK.

goesh said...

Yee-haww! I darn sure won't deny my canine teeth their due, be it pony flesh or calf flesh. We've had the darn things in our mouthes for millions of years. We weren't intended for stalking bananas. We weren't grazers crawling about on all fours that suddenly developed frontal vision and canine teeth.

Tibore said...

"... riding horses and eating them are not mutually exclusive activities, as long as you're not trying to eat the same one you're riding."

Who's that flexible? Besides, what if you went for the wrong part and fell off? You'd look sooooooo foolish...

Robin Goodfellow said...

This reminds me of a hilarious quote from the movie "Everything is Illuminated":

Jonathan: I'm a vegetarian.
Alex: You are a what?
Jonathan: I don't eat meat.
Alex: Pork?
Jonathan: No.
Alex: Chickens?
Jonathan: No!
Alex: What about the sausage?
Jonathan: No meat!
Alex: What is wrong with you?

Anonymous said...

Riding horses and eating them may not be mutually exclusive activies, but loving horses and eating them certainly are.

Synova said...

I don't think that "loving" and "eating" are exclusive things. We should love our food animals, so that we take care of them well and make sure they have a nice life. We never kept afection from the critters we knew were going to end up on the dinner table when I was growing up on the farm and I think it's quite terrible to do so.

If native americans can respect and thank the animal before chowing down, I think we can handle giving our food names and playing with them when they are babies.

As for PETA... they inspire in me the desire to participate in "eat a tasty animal for PETA day", if I can ever figure out when that is ahead of time. They inspire me, actually, away from concerns about veal and egg farms and all sorts of things because their nomal mode is lies and emotional manipulation. Makes me think they *don't* have a legitimate point to make.

And they don't, really.

Are the methods of raising veal horrific? Maybe. But what about veal that wasn't confined? Happy little calves in a pretty meadow romping about enjoying the sunshine. Can we eat those?

Of course not.

Because it's not about the treatment of our food animals, it's that we eat them at all.

They lie.

kentuckyliz said...

IIRC at Stanford there's antiprotesters that give out free hot dogs opposite the PETA protest. Love it!

Have you noticed...it's the tasty and useful animals that have not gone endangered or extinct?

My oncologist wears a button on his coat: "Animal Research Saves Lives." Amen to that.

A friend of mine just starting selling beauty products, and part of the pitch is that they weren't tested on animals. "Well, I'm not buying any, then." She asked why not. "If you don't test on animals, it just means you're testing on your customers." LOL

Seriously, I don't get the connection between lettuce and horses? Or is salade cheval a popular local dish?

Save a horse...eat a lettuce bikini. LOL

WV: awonjob
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