Baseball Season’s Over, I’m Heading to the Mitten (Michigan)

A funky little map of the only midwestern state I’ve had the privilege to call home…

Great Lakes, Great Fun, (Great conference here in Ann Arbor!),
Sunshine Superboy

Regional D-bags, the ‘Village Idiot’ of the 21st century?

This Map of DoucheBags of the US classified by region is going viral on the internets! Don’t be left in the dust!

Strong Island
As far as my own region goes, I fear I hit a wistful tone in an earlier post about long island. Apologies my lads, I forget that I share my home island with friends like these:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Long Island Wants to Secede
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

…and you wonder why I grew up to be a homo. God, if I went to secondary school in northern california or some bullshit, instead of “strong island” I’d probably be some straight (okay, maybe heteroflexible) hippie playboy with no vigilant sense of injustice.

Don’t Let the DeeBags Run You Outta Town,
Sunshine Superboy

(ps- srsly though, if you haven’t seen that Daily Show clip, its kinda a must see.)

Happy Halloween Charlie Brown!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM BLACK MAPS!

(trick or treat!)
SS

Monopoly and Its Anti-Capitalist Origins

Some kid from Cincinnati thinks I should blog about this…
(not that this is a pic of his town. its actually Atlantic City by nite)

According to the BBC

A massive multi-player version of the popular property game Monopoly has been launched online. Monopoly City Streets, developed by toymaker Hasbro, will go live on 9 September for four months. The free game uses Google Maps or the open source Open Street Map as the playing board. The toymaker claims it will be “the biggest game of Monopoly of all time” and will allow players to purchase almost “any street in the world”. The goal of the game, like the real-world version, is to earn money on real estate and become the richest property magnate.

New players are given three million Monopoly dollars to build their virtual empire.
Every street in the world is, in theory, available for purchase. Once a player has taken control of a street, they are able to charge rent and build new virtual properties. Streets can also be traded and sold with other players. The game makers have introduced chance cards, which allow players to sabotage neighbouring rivals by building rubbish dumps, prisons or wind farms on their property to reduce the rent value of their neighbours. Players can only remove a hazard by bulldozing it off their property, again through the use of chance cards. The game will close on the 31 January 2010.

Yay playing at capitalist dispossession!

BFD. I was always more into the olde skool trivia- this being one of the oldest board games in my relatively young country. Like how, on the one hand I was probably half-way to college by time I’d learned that the properties were all based on streets in Atlantic City, New Jersey (Hence a bunch of streets that aren’t in New York for some reason, and the Boardwalk being the big payload). In fact, the little orange link below has some interesting clarifications on where exactly these names come from geographically (its not all actually streets), including which trains really ran in Atlantic City 100 years ago and so on, and what-have-you.

What really struck me, on the other hand, was the moment when my partner (who is quaker), told me about how Monopoly was created by a Quaker who wanted to make a game that taught people how effed up capitalism was, and how it makes everybody go broke (except for that one jerk who wins by exploiting everybody else). I was skeptical but wanted so badly to believe the rumor. After all, it totally made sense. So I did what most high schoolers, and too damn many undergraduates would consider “research”. Thus, according to wikipedia:

The history of Monopoly can be traced back to 1904, when a Quaker woman named Elizabeth (Lizzie) J. Magie Phillips created a game through which she hoped to be able to explain the single tax theory of Henry George (it was intended to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies). Her game, The Landlord’s Game, was commercially published a few years later. Other interested game players redeveloped the game and some made their own sets. Lizzie herself patented a revised edition of the game in 1904, and similar games were published commercially.

By 1935 a board game named Monopoly was created much like the version of Monopoly sold by Parker Brothers and its parent companies throughout the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st. The Parker Brothers’ version was created by Charles Todd but sold to them by Charles Darrow. Several people, mostly in the U.S. Midwest and near the U.S. East Coast, contributed to the game’s design and evolution.

So all this got me to thinking about how the Monopoly board, for all its iconography is also a bizarre slice of urban history in its representation of Atlantic City. For example, Illinois Ave (the real one for which one of the “red” properties just past free parking was named), has been Martin Luther King Jr Blvd since sometime in the 80s. Weird huh? I bet a lot of folks would be much more excited about a version with that guy’s name on it instead of the state that in recent history made Rod Blagojevich (he and some other political, movement-leading black guy) famous.

That, and apparently there was some online vote a year and half ago where “the world” decided that these were the cities that should be included on a ludicrous 2008 “World Monopoly” game edition. This may make you cry:

In case you can’t see it well enough to be depressed about it, the only two countries to have more than one city pimped out on the board are Canada (Vancouver, Toronto, and Montréal), and China (Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai). This is supposed to be World Monopoly. There are no cities in Latin America represented, folks! And none in India! WTeffers?! Riga (the capital of Lativa) is the 2nd most sought-after property in the world?! People!! Join me, please, in reading down this roster of utter disappointment. Going clock-wise from “GO”:

Brown
Gdynia
Teipei

Light Blue (celeste)
Tokyo
Barcelona
Athens

Pink
Istanbul
Kiev
Toronto

istanbul was constantinople

Orange
Rome
Shanghai
Vancouver

Red
Sydney
New York
London

Yellow
Beijing
Hong Kong
Jerusalem

Green
Paris
Belgrade
Cape Town

Blue
Riga (pictured above)
Montréal

In classic form, now that I’ve brought you down, I’ll leave you on a posi note. By introducing you to Riskopoly!!! Behold:

Instructions are as follows

As explained on the map, all of the trains connect. “Attack Jail” is a one way attack to the opposite corner. “Go” can attack any corner. All Chance spaces (question marks) are connected to the deck of Chance cards, and likewise all War Chest spaces (shields) connect to that deck (spaces can attack the deck and the deck can attack the spaces). The Chance/Chest spaces are part of their color’s continent, and the decks are part of the orange and yellow continents.

The utilities (Electric Co. and Water Works) can attack their deed cards laying in the lower left corner of the board. These two deed cards can also attack each other. The bills are also territories connected to each space they touch, and the bills are part of their color’s continent.

This is NOT a one directional board, attacks can go in either directions (except for the special corners as described above). There are 48 territories all together.

This is made entirely with original art, built from scratch. There is no copyrighted material on the map. The names of the spaces are all street names found in Atlantic City. The Parker Bros. patent for Monopoly expired in 1985.

I plan to add some more decoration (some dice and maybe a drink on a coaster…), but will wait until any further structural or game play issues are worked out.

Ideas floating around that could be discussed: make it one way, use Risk country names instead of the street names, no bonus for “free army” space, no penalty for tax space, more money around edge of board, make it a deck of “risk” cards instead of “chance” cards, put “just visiting” back in, etc.

I’ll leave all of that undigested. This may trump (ha ha, get it, atlantic city?!), Simpsons Monopoly as my here to fore favoritest version of the anti-capitalist classic.

À Bientôt!
Sunshine Superboy

Charming Man (Morrissey) Hospitalized After Stage Collapse

LONDON — Former Smiths frontman Morrissey was released Sunday from a hospital where he was held overnight after collapsing on stage during a concert. A spokeswoman for the Great Western Hospital in the English city of Swindon said the singer was “much improved.” “Morrissey became unwell, and he was admitted overnight as a precautionary measure,” she said on condition of anonymity, in line with hospital policy.

“He’s been seen by the medical team, much improved and now discharged home.”

A note on the 50-year-old singer’s Web site thanked fans for their good wishes.
Morrissey was performing at the Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of London, on Saturday night as part of his “Swords” tour when he was stricken. Two band members rushed to his side and dragged him offstage.
Fans were unsure what had happened. Jillian Moody told the BBC that some expected him to return to the stage.

“I didn’t think he looked particularly well but then again, he’s well known as a reclusive character so I sort of thought that was just the way he was when he was on stage. He kept putting his hand up to his mouth as if he felt sick or perhaps he was trying to hide something, but he didn’t look particularly comfortable. He got through the whole song though … to rapturous applause at the end.”

He has rescheduled several shows this year, and is due to play a string of European dates through the rest of October and November.

Moments after the news broke, I came across this photo of Saint Morrissey and his band in the flesh, and then my blackass collapsed (no hospitalization needed, thank you).

Unite and Take Over!
Sunshine Superboy

Panic at the undulating hips of Morrissey!!!

Feminist Comics Starter Pack: How Graphic Novelists are Subverting Patriarchy and Gender-Normativity, Buffy and Beyond

Lets talk about some badass anti-sexist comics & characters! Buffy! Runaways! Y-the last man! the Young Avengers!! American Virgin!!! and so many things written by Grant Morrison (esp. the Invisibles)!!!! I flaked out on posting some of these thoughts a long time ago…

Oh, if this isn’t the era of making good on old promises, I don’t know what is. As I’m fond of doing whenever we tread dangerously close to the annuls of geekdom, I’m hereby warning you that its gonna get priiiitty-darn geeky in a hurry, so suspend your usual aplomb, check over your shoulder for nosey co-workers who might report you to the nerd Gestapo, and if you’re an insider, check your self-reproach at the search window- cuz we’re going to feminist nerdville, population, nosotr@s!

We’ve alluded previously (“we” ya know, royally speaking), to emergent feminisms withinmic/ graphic novel genre, and I’ve been angling to give that theme a little more exploration…

The veritable 10,000 lbs gorilla in the room of course is Ms. Buffy Summers, since she provided such a crucial opening. So lets just get that out of the way before airing any reflections on new challenges to male supremacy, gender normativity, and heterosexism (and believe me, we’ll only manage to barely tip our hat to that iceberg on this post).

[I should warn you of spoiler alerts, even though I'm not writing on any super recent content on any of the titles. Just, if you don't wanna know who's transgender or who has a gay crush on whom, or any major plot arcs, then you'd best skim for the recommended titles and not read this till después]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the project, not just the character), both on the television, and most certainly beyond in the season 8 comics, has been bold, imaginative, and inspirational, (even if a bit 2.5 wave-ish, IMHO), in its championing of a popular feminism. That last attribute, its accessibility and high public profile, are perhaps its greatest contributions. Anyone who’s taken the time to listen to the commentary on seasons six and seven of Buffy (dorks!) understands how explicitly the writers (and especially creator/ writer Joss Whedon) set up sexism/male supremacy as the villain for the prime time show (groundbreaking, obvi), and the totally awesome seachange of women sharing power with women, embodied by the army of slayers from the TV finale and season eight.

Whats awesome, is hearing some of the female-identified writers from the show speak about this explosion of Whedon’s original idea of a single heroine with tons of latent power, to an organic realization of a truly feminist ideal, when every ‘potential’ slayer is given full slayer powers through the goddess-like witchcraft of everyone’s favorite red-headed lesbian witch, Willow. Fucking righteous.

Okay, lets not get too abstract. What was Whedon’s initial anti-sexist set up? A reaction to the unavoidable paranoia of women alone in the dark in the city… their vulnerabilities, the objectification of women as objects (specifically vampire dinner), and the bizarre displacement of men’s fucked up/ violent/ entitled-feeling desires as the fault of women who “dress like they want it” (that line in particular was used in the show where scantly clad femmes are blamed for attracting vampires- WTF). Right, so that was Joss’s reaction.

By season eight, Buffy transcended patriarchy not only making men yearn for the kind of power that women so ferociously wielded on the show (from Anya, to Ms.Calendar, to Faith, Tara, Glory and Kennedy, not to mention the original Scoobies themselves), such that by the end of the television run of the show, the entire paradigm shifted from “how do we show women being defiant of men’s power and violence” to “how do we envision women sharing the power they build through relationships as a community of anti-sexist feminist praxis”?

Okay, the feminist praxis bit is my own cherry on top, but you get the picture. By time there are thousands of slayers being trained up in Buffy’s European castle, we’re in a different world from the predatory un-dead men of the hellmouth. I can’t believe I have a blog where I can write a sentence like that, and where people like you can read that. Some corners of this world are just it seems (:

and we live in world where comics that were being written post 2003 have that as a pop-feminist foundation, beyond which we get all kinds of serious (by which I mean totally badass-ferocia).

Next up is Runaways, which is awesome for many reasons (chiefly, the superb writing by creator Brian K Vaughan, and the astounding & witty character development), but is worth mentioning here for a couple reasons. First, taking a cue from Whedon, the Runaways quickly settle on Nico Minoru as their leader, one of very few super hero (anti-hero?) teams that is fronted by a woman of color. She’s a fierce fashionista of substantial power, who has a goth-streak and who struggles very realistically with her sexuality. Totally crush-worthy…

which is why Karolina Dean spends part of volume two coming out, through exploring her crush on Nico. Ultimately though, its not Karolina’s chronicle of queerness that proves the ulitmate stroke of subversion (this arc was published after the L-word had already broken ground- although it was still unique in the world of mainstream comic books).

More groundbreaking was the revelation that Karolina’s betrothed, Xavin (a shapeshifting skrull, who initially appears as a black teenage alien- wait thats redundant… a skrull is a type of alien), comfortably changes genders and pursues their feelings for Karolina as a transgender lesbian. This was just five or six years ago, all playing out in Marvel comics so- Wow! Xavin’s friends switch which pronouns they use for hir/them as their gender expression/presentation shifts from comic issue to issue, though Xavin mostly interacts with Karolina as a fem lesbian once she (Xavin) realizes that Karolina prefers women (sexually speaking).

Brian K Vaughan moves past the quotidian politics of generation Y teens by taking a feminist bend to the apocalyptic crisis of September 11th, 2001 in his other graphic novel, Y the Last Man, which was published by the edgy DC/Vertigo Comics.

Here, Yorick Brown and his magician’s assistant/ pet monkey, Ampersand are the only surviving mammals with a Y chromosome. I can do the novel no justice here, buy its worth skipping around to some feminist touchstones that come up in the witty writing of Y the Last Man, including militant Amazon feminist separatists (who ritually cut off one of their breasts in political solidarity, and who burn all the world’s sperm banks), a planet of ubiquitous/normalized F-M transgenderism (and the sexwork that comes with it!), a little S&M rite of passage stuff, queer/co-parenting, a secret all female-run spy network (dating back to the Revolutionary War), and a whole lot of girl-on-girl lovin.

Basically, Y the Last Man is a realistic take on the “what if” concept of a gendered apocalypse, where virtually all the power-hoarding men (ie, all men) die out overnight, and the world wakes up to a dystopia where: 1) the American highways don’t work cuz all the truck drivers are men and they all died on the highway, leaving the wreckage of sixteen-wheelers everywhere, 2) the highest ranked woman in the entire US Government is the secretary of agriculture (anyone else having Laura Roslin/ Battlestar Galactica flashbacks??!) who then assumes the office of the presidency, oh and 3) the strongest military in the world becomes that of Israel, which, as you know, is the only army where women are fully 50% of trained harbingers of destruction. Shit makes for an interesting read! No super-heroes here!

Young Avengers. Not much to say. The hot leading men are gay lovers. BFD. Its a welcome change, but we were ready for that ceiling to be shattered like 30 years ago. Still, Hulkling and Wiccan are key-yute together!

Jumping tracks, Vertigo’s American Virgin “follows the life of Adam, a teenager who is a born-again Christian preacher, and his struggle with issues of his sexuality and faith as he plods step by step toward a lascivious world of desire, temptation, and cultural taboo. In exploring such faux-pas of protestantism, American Virgin whisks readers along a non-stop journey that takes us everywhere from homo-social groups in southern Africa to Phallic worship ceremonies in Japan, the Gay Games in Australia, and an Indian marriage ceremony where Adam and his girlfriend learn about the traditional roles of intersex hijra in sexual rites of passage. Throughout the whirlwind tour, Adam’s near constant companion is his stepsister, Cyndi, who is sexually liberal”, which is to say she’s a sex worker, and super-not ashamed of it, who ends up dating a sketchy Australian guy, who turns out to be trans and maybe not that sketchy? I dunno, I stopped working at a comic shop reading around then and don’t quite know how the story panned out, but shit was cancelled last year which is a huge bummer since writer Steven T. Seagle was taking American Virgin and its readers to new and unexplored levels. Le sigh…

Ya know, next I was gonna grapple with Marjane Satrape, whom you have prolly either read first-hand, or seen a film adaptation of Persepolis- but I decided its not even worth a whole spiel here. Long story short, the implication that liberation for Persian women can only come from accessing an escape valve to the West is a dangerous concept, (ooh la la, I’m in France, now I can be a strong feminist artist with political clout), even if those aren’t her real politics and its just her own story and not a world-view she espouses. Which is not to say I shun the work entirely. It was very worthwhile for me and is for most people- I just want to append it with some critical thinking (which the film does not entreat). From what I hear from friends who’ve seen her, Satrape is an engaging thinker and speaker, and has pretty good politics, so lets just leave it at that…

Great. So last, and possibly my favorite is The Invisibles, where legendary characters like Lord Fanny explode gender, identity, race/ ethnicity, fucking witchcraft and of course sexuality in myriad dimensions (often literally). There is no effing way I can do the Invisibles justice in a paragraph or two, so I may just have to blog about it more fully on another occasion, but but but, a cursory mention of the fag-identified, super tranny ferocia, Lord Fanny is in order.

Lord Fanny may be my favorite comic book character of all time. Of the 5 members in the invisibles cell that form the core of the graphic novel, Lord Fanny embodies Grant Morrison’s project of anarchistic destruction of all normativities. She is a brazilian witch (of mexican ancenstry), who was supposed to be born female. Coming from a long line of witch-priestess women, Fanny’s grandmother takes matters into her own hands and insists that fate-be-damned, this baby boy will be raised as a girl and continue the lineage of family witches. Dude. Badass Granny even slits Fanny’s inner thigh in order to fool the gods into believing that Lord Fanny has finally menstruated and become a woman worthy of their blessings and powers!

Like Xavin of the Runaways (only 10 years earlier), Lord Fanny unapologetically oscillates between male and female pronouns, can be seen trying on silicone tits in a London sex shop, and beyond simply sporting butch or femme clothing, she splashes the pages with cameos of fallatio in almost every city the Invisibles visit. Her nonchalant confrontations with homophobes is reason enough to read the Invisibles, but stick around for the invisibles crew as a whole: feminist power-sharing, leather fetishes, über dyke combatants, san francisco sex parties, and a grand scheme to sabotage the US Military’s attempt to hide the AIDS vaccine deep underground in the American Southwest!

I think the main theme in these graphic novels is not only who these writers and protagonists are, nor what they do or represent, but the ways in which these characters and plots provoke new relationships within the comic book universe. Who these women, trannies, fags, and dykes are in relation to their team mates, their enemies, their world, and the reader is the real feminist push behind books. We are forced to see things relationally, and not just follow a bunch of jacked up men from battle to battle kicking each other’s asses.

oh boy. now I’m all excited about re-reading all of these gems! Check ‘em out! Let me know what you think! And next time, I’ll try and highlight some of the great contributions of independent comics to our bold feminist world…

This post would not be complete if I did not address the obvious elephant in the room: serialobjectification of female bodies in comic books. Voilá:

Fangrrl Power,
Sunshine Superboy

National Grouch Day

According to Sesame Street Magazine, and the Muppet Wiki (apparently one exists), October 15th is National Grouch Day — a day for all Grouches to celebrate their way of life.

A Grouch’s mission in life is to be as miserable and grouchy as possible, and pass that feeling on to everyone else. Only then will a Grouch feel in touch with his or her world and be happy. Yet, even though a Grouch may show happiness at anyone’s misfortune (including his or her own), a Grouch would never admit to being happy. Such is the stability of a Grouch’s life: so balanced, and yet so unbalanced.

Man oh man. I didn’t know that muppet taxonomy got so deep. Check it:

Grouches are an eccentric race of pessimistic, argumentative, unhygenic furry creatures who prefer to live wherever there is garbage: trash cans, city dumps, even the occasional landfill (although, some Grouches live in crummy houses, broken cars, and some live in “yucky beautiful houses”). Grouches are a distinct species from Monsters.

A Grouch’s mission in life is to be as miserable and grouchy as possible, and pass that feeling on to everyone else. Only then will a Grouch feel in touch with his or her world and be happy. Yet, even though a Grouch may show happiness at anyone’s misfortune (including his or her own), a Grouch would never admit to being happy. Such is the stability of a Grouch’s life: so balanced, and yet so unbalanced. Oscar is especially aware of this.

Anything a Grouch likes is best described (to you and me) as rotten, smelly, yucky, awful, dirty and trashy to name a few. A Grouch will only buy appliances that don’t work, keep pets no person would keep in a house (such as elephants and worms), eat foods that are undesirable for any reason (they have a particular affinity for sardines in anything), sing out-of-tune, play the radio at high volume, and bathe in mud. [not to be confused with crusty punks- SS]

The most famous Grouch is Oscar the Grouch but many other Grouches have surfaced over the years. Grouches figured prominently in both Sesame Street films Follow That Bird and especially The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland. The latter explained that most Grouches come from Grouchland USA, presented as Oscar’s hometown, though many Grouches are also found internationally. According to the production notes for Elmo in Grouchland 25 new Grouch puppets were made for the film (and reused in variations to create a large Grouch population). Many of these are still used on the show today.

Have a Dirty, Rotten, Stinky, Trashy, Grouchy Day, Dammit!
Sunshine Superboy

Bonus:
something that does NOT make me grouchy is Leslie Feist singing on Sesame Street (the part where she says “one two three four chickens just back from the shore” cracks my shit up!)

Spider: “Its All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye…”

While I was in Milwaukee a fortnight ago, I had the opportunity to check out some of the Milwaukee Film Festival’s best short films. The last one to screen was Spider, which is written by Nash Edgerton & David Michôd and is also directed by Edgerton.

It was jarring. The sheer look-now-look-again style escapes my ability to categorize the genre succinctly. And when it comes right down to it, I don’t want to ruin the surprise…

Jack and Jill are always hurting each other’s feelings. But like Mum said, “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.”

Behold: “Spider” (2007)

I know… W.T.Fuck?!
Sunshine Superboy

Neil Patrick Harris? Fuck Yeah!

Fuck the Fuck yeah! Suit up Uncle Fuckers, Cuz its all about NPH, todayz.

Howz about a little Monday Meta-blog about Neil Patrick Harris?

Yup, some dedicated blogger has carved out a little slice of cyberspace (gawd, are we still using that term? I am such an old man. Do the kids even know what that means?) in homage to everyone’s favorite multi-talented, out, gay, sassy, hilarious comeback kid-actor.

…In case you are an old man like me, and have been totally snoozing (snoozy? toats!) for the past several years, your ol’ pal Doogie Howser (yes, the “M.D.”) is killing it in the prime time and among the nerd/geek/whedon/buffy blogosphere. I believe his words to People Magazine were

“I am happy to dispel any rumors or misconceptions and am quite proud to say that I am a very content gay man living my life to the fullest and feel most fortunate to be working with wonderful people in the business I love.”

Lets hear it for very content gay men!

Okay, so- Start with his antics on Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog (where he plays the title character), note his slam dunk contribution to the ensemble cast of How I Met Your Mother (which includes Whedon’s superstar Alyson Hannigan who played Willow in some other show), and oh yeah, he like hosted the Emmy Awards and the Tony Awards (or something)- so like what rock have you been under since the Doogie Days, eh?

Which is all to say: Fuck Yeah!!! Neil Patrick Harris!!

Its a blog.
Its insipid.
Its fucking hilarious.

Fuck Yeah.
Sunshine Superboy

Meat Me in St.Louis

Its every contemporary cartographer’s dream to etch out some newfangled representation and have it skyrocket around the internet, such as this map! Its an interesting take on the classic US at night time from space visual with all its lite-brite splendor. So yeah, if you’ve ever wondered just how far you could possibly get from a McDonalds within the contiguous United States of North America, here ya go:

Mind you, there’s nothing near the quality of these steak maps (above/ below) in the crap they grind into McDonalds meat. Still, its a thematization from some clever butcher-cartographer who decided to go nuts with a cleaver in homage to some of hir favorite commonwealths, albeit at the expense of local water quality, methane emissions, unconscionable resource usage, and… oh yeah, the lives of whatever sentient bovine looked best outfitted to be a mappy meal. (Have to wonder if I am the first vegan geographer to post these on the wordpresses?)

In 2006 the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations issued a report called “Livestock’s Long Shadow–Environmental Issues and Options.” The document revealed that livestock cause 18% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, more than that coming from all the airplanes, automobiles, and trains combined. The FAO report produced these startling statistics:

Livestock production

Accounts for 9% of carbon dioxide from human related activities

Generates 65% of human-related nitrous oxide that has 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. Most of this is from manure.

Produces 37% of human induced methane that is 23 times as warming as carbon dioxide. This methane is from ruminants like cows, sheep, and goats.

Creates 64% of ammonia that contributes to acid rain

Uses 30% of the earth’s land surface for grazing

Includes 33% of the planet’s farming land to produce feed for livestock

Has resulted in massive deforestation in Latin America with 70% of former forests in the Amazon cleared for grazing

Provides livelihood for approximately 1.3 billion people and contributes about 40% of global agricultural output

Because of increased prosperity, global meat production is expected to more than double from 229 million tons in 1999/2001 to 465 million tons in 2050. Milk production is expected to climb from 580 to 1043 million tons during that same time.

Which is all to say: Consider spending more time lower on the food chain.

and Eat More Local Foods, Dammit!
Sunshine Superboy