Burn your mink
Take that message any way you want.
The platform used for this blog is awfully wonky when it comes to comments. It may work for you, it may not. It's a Google thing, and beyond my control. Apologies if you can't get through. You can email me a comment at jackbogsblog@comcast.net, and if it's appropriate, I can post it here for you.
Most historians agree that 2020 officially started on January 26th with the crash of Kobe's helicopter. Within weeks we had plunged into the pandemic followed a couple of months later by George Floyd's death at the hands of Minnesota cops.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere along the way - probably tied to the suspension of sports - people began to associate anything that truly sucks but in a distinctive way as "A 2020 thing." Since then there have been hundreds of examples to the point where being recognized as a 2020 thing has become harder and harder to accomplish.
Nobody disputes that your awful example is worthy of the designation, but there's just so many things going wrong that it's become harder and harder to draw the attention.
That's why these minks are to be admired. Not celebrated - let's not get crazy - but admired. First there was some genuine surprise at learning that minks are still raised presumably for coats. Who knew? They still have mink coats?
Now the next part - where the minks come up with a mutated strain of Covid 19. That is a solid contender for our year's most famous slogan. Tying yourself to the main virus is not just very serious but it's topical. It's relevant. Plus it happened in Denmark. That's colorful. It also helps that there are hundreds of thousands of minks involved just as a visual. Denmark must have been crawling with them - another thing I did not know.
Now culling animals is not that uncommon. Hell, they killed 300,000 chickens in the U.K. over pandemic concerns and nobody batted an eyelash about that. Other dietary changes are even more subtle. For example in the markets of China people are now much less likely to say, "I'll have one of those bats to go."
In the culling of the minks however, the poor dears were slaughtered and buried in a trench that was not deep enough. As they decomposed the process caused them to return above ground like zombies. Zombie minks. And you thought the Sharknado movies were bad.
This was the detail - the horrendous twisted detail - that put the minks over the top. In sports terms we have a first ballot hall of famer here. So let's cringe at this story. Let's even be revolted by it but we should also acknowledge that it is a real accomplishment: a situation that sucks so badly that it gets the famous words: "It's a 2020 thing."
Congratulations and welcome to the club.
Well I don’t know how anyone could buy or even raise animals just for the fur anymore. It is not like we haven’t progressed enough that we cannot manufacture warm and comfortable clothing that doesn’t involve any dead animals. I cannot even squash a bug without feeling massive guilt and I refuse to eat meat and hate any stories of animal cruelty. But maybe with how 2020 is going we will all be back to living in thatch houses, burning manure for heat, and indentured farming?
ReplyDelete