Baroque Beauty, Tats, Tigers and Controvasy

Were any tigers harmed in the making of this film?

We don't know.

Many of the comments on Youtube, as soon as this promo for hauntingly controversial Video Games singer Lana Del Rey's second single Born To Die was released, were/are based around this question.

What makes me curious, is how many of those people eat meat without a second thought as to where that meat comes from, what conditions the cows/chickens etc lived in, how most of them were taken from their mothers dependent on what product they could produce for us is? Exploitation of animals such as Tigers and Pandas is not okay because it is public and the animals are rarer and more exotic to us. But the perpetual mass exploitation of less attractive, seemingly less exotic animals is okay, as long as we are not reminded that this is what we are buying and eating every day.

My family have run the butcher's shop in our area for 100 years next year. I have been a vegetarian for most of my life as I, like most other members of my family, worked in the shop for a while during early adolescence. Between the ages of about eleven and eighteen, when friends would come to visit, we would go to the shop to get chocolate or ice creams. It amazed me at the disgust my meat-eating friends felt when confronted with an actual dead animal, as apposed to a 'meat product.' Many of them were too repulsed to enter the shop at all. The hypocrisy of this has angered me ever since. It also seems symptomatic of a vast mind-set in our culture - don't ask, don't tell. If you don't think about it, it isn't happening. If you ignore it, it'll go away.

But, as we should have learned as children, covering your eyes with your hands doesn't mean the bully or the scary film isn't still going on right in front of you. Evidently this is a basic human defense mechanism - but it is just that: basic.

My mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year. I said I didn't really want anything. Maybe money. She said How about pants? I said Okay, as long as it's THESE. They don't bleach the cotton before it is dyed, which is one of the major pollutants of the textile industry. They pay the workers fairly. They come in a variety of colours and patterns, are well made and come in a cute, well designed, bio-degradable box. They are a bit more pricey than your average Marks and Sparks pair of panties, but you have the sensation, every time you slip them up over your arse, that you are doing the right thing pant-wise. And, they are the comfiest pants I have ever worn. I think it's because of the breathability of the 100% cotton knick-knacks covering my nads.

This is what this video makes me think of. I wonder what will go through your head? Watch the vid and find out.