Animal Farm

George Orwell

an interesting book, i read it last weekend or so in about 2-3 hours. i will start with it because it's the first book officially read at the start of my sabbatical.

small book, but incredibly interesting. i will definitely keep this one around so that i can read it from time to time to remind myself of why it's important to not remain complacent in regards to the powers-that-be, whether it be the national government or a future career.

for those of you who've never read the book, i will try to be vague enough, but for those of you that have read it, i believe you'll understand what frustrations i had!

whilst reading, i kept finding myself hoping that someone, human or animal, would come to the farm to rescue everyone from the pigs. i kept thinking, "well, sooner or later the hero is going to show up and save the day". ha! or not. then the next thought was "well, maybe something bad will happen to them, like a tornado or something". well, we know what happened when that happened.

some of the other frustrations i had were the stupity of some of the animals. for instance, the ones that couldn't read, or the sheep "four legs good, two legs baaaad!", or that darned horse boxer. but we've all been those animals in at least a few instances in our lives, and we clearly can point out the people we've come into contact with that are the sheep, or are boxer, or also napolean and snowball, etc. and then when you think about it, there are people who are born and raised in the united states who can't even say the pledge of allegiance, nor do they know the national anthem. another pet peeve of mine are people who don't keep up with current politics. i don't care if you classify yourself as "apathetic" and also choose not to vote (which that is a different argument in itself), but just know what's going on. and i definitely fall guilty to this, for in the past i couldn't tell you what was going on to save my life, but since mending my faulty ways, i feel like i'm a better citizen for doing so.

an example of what i just complained about: this morning i read a ny times article about how the chilean president legalized the prescribing of the morning-after pill at state run hospitals for free so that any girl can go get the pill if she needs it. people are in uproar, from conservatives to liberals, because they're freaking out that 14 year olds can now go get "abortions" without telling their parents. some background: president bachelet is a former pediatrician, i.e. she used to be a DOCTOR so obviously she knows what she's talking about, and i respect what she has to say about MEDICAL things because she's a DOCTOR!!! and now, the morning after pill is not ABORTION. and isn't that what people are told? conception happens not in the womb itself, but rather in the ampulla, or one of the fallopian tubes, and the zygote then travels down to the womb, still developing, still dividing cells at a trememdous rate, a process that takes a few days. and then the blob cells implants itself onto the uterine wall (it's called a blastula when it does implant), where it stays to keep growing and growing into a baby. what the morning after pill does is just keeps the blastula from implanting onto the uterine wall, therefore it just comes right on out. the morning after pill does NOT kill anything, it just prevents implantation. it is NOT abortion. now the social ramifications are not what i'm concerned with. i'm just pissed that people are calling it an abortion pill, when obviously, it is not. it is a "prevent implantation onto the uterine wall" pill. i just wish people would get their facts straight. this precisely illustrates that the government are the pigs and we are all the silly sheep that cry out "MORNING AFTER PILLS ARE ABORTION PILLS!". wrong.

so all of that, my dear friends, was inspired by reading "animal farm".

feel free to share your thoughts, or correct me if you like.