A Spook-tacular lawsuit!
Happy Halloween, boys and ghouls! What did you get in your goodie bag? I got this:  To clarify: I'm being asked to remove, from my own website, a comic I drew about a true experience from my own life. My parents sacrificed significantly so that I could attend the school that provided the setting for the story in question. I've made no money from it and I've never used it to promote anything of mine. I've neither lied nor slandered. You can probably guess what my answer was. Trick or treat!
An Afternoon with the Murder King
**Edit: Carey just sent me a link to several pictures of a recent KFC boycott she attended. (She's "Beaks Cut Off".) Thought it an appropriate intro to this particular post. Click the image to enlarge.**
Part of Carey's 29th Birthday Extravaganza was a Saturday trip to Animal Acres, a farm sanctuary in Acton, California, for their Grand Opening event. To save you a Google, a "farm sanctuary" is a safe-haven for animals that have been rescued from the horrorshow of factory farms and managed to survive. Abused, crippled, and otherwise maltreated beasts and fowl of every stripe are nurtured back to health and allowed to live out their days as God intended. Farm sanctuaries tend to operate on donations and volunteer support and there are precious few of them in the United States. (In fact, Carey made the decision to go vegan 15 years ago on a visit to one such facility in New York.) I didn't know what to expect. Carey had promised a plentiful selection of vegan delights (like veggie dogs, soy desserts and tofu skewers), not to mention the opportunity to romp with maimed chickens and pet deformed pork bellies. We arrived to find a gaggle of Carey's kindred spirits: nice folks selling their vegan wares and volunteers maintaining animal stables. There was live music and a benefit auction. A lot of hippies and granola-types, a fair amount of regular folk and, of course, the occassional whacko (the most memorable being the guy that walked around with animal masks, a plastic "decapitated" pig head and a homemade sandwich board, decorated with magazine cut-outs of animal imagery and ransom-note-style Bible quotes re-shuffled to demonstrate the idea that Meat is Murder). We meandered through a few of the stables, frolicking with goats and sheep and various chicken life. We chatted up the volunteers and posed for photo ops with a baby pig. Then we settled in to watch the featured film: " The Peacable Kingdom." The Peaceable Kingdom is a nicely-produced indy doc about the horrific practices of factory farming. I don't mind admitting that I was shocked and outraged and I'm a cynical bastard: Cattle... tortured, tased, pumped with hormones and stuffed into holding bins for years without daylight, proper nutrition or the opportunity to excercise so that their extremities atrophe and deform. Pigs genetically altered through steriods to outgrow their own bodies before maturity. Cows forced to produce over 10x the amount of milk they would naturally, 50% of them developing Mastitis (resulting in swollen, infected udders the size of bathtubs). Chickens, de-beaked and sardined into massive egg-production facilities where they never have the opportunity to walk or see daylight. As the doc demonstrates, these practices are not only common, they are the norm in factory farming, where the vast majority of the United States' animal-based foodstuffs are produced. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. Needless to say, Carey lost it. She sobbed openly and she wasn't the only one. All the gathered vegans howled with disgust as horror after horror materialized onscreen. Gradually, the crowd became surly and energized. I scanned the room to see if anyone suspected I wasn't a vegetarian (if my secret was leaked, that might've been it for me). I felt my cover was secure until, about 3/4 through the movie, I looked down and gasped. Shit! Leather shoes! After the film, we exited nonchallantly and took in more of farm (though Carey remained shaken the rest of the day). At her suggestion, I sampled a portabello sandwich, but passed on the pork substitute kebabs.  Eventually, the live music ended and the "Murder King" took the stage (I don't know his real name, but he wore a t-shirt with the logo at the right emblazoned on the front. I discovered later that the logo was part of a PETA boycott campaign of yesteryear. [ The boycott ended, Burger King relented and PETA was successful, but I don't think you sweat those kinds of details when you're the Murder King.]). MK danced and whooped and pontificated on the virtues of veganism. He scolded meat eaters and dairy-consuming vegetarians alike. And, finally, he treated those gathered to a song of his own devising called "Animal Acres" sung (or, in his case, awkwardly stuttered) to the tune of "Green Acres". "I wish I had a video camera right now," I told Carey while the King shucked and jived, "it would have been a great candidate for JeremyBear.com's first bit of streaming video." The auction was admittedly very cool: I walked away with a ridiculously incredible deal on a couple of DVD boxed sets (collections of Scorcese and Errol Morris films). Carey, unfortunately, lost her object of desire: a framed rooster portrait (that actually would have been a nice addition to our home). The highlight of Carey's day, though, came when she discovered that Animal Acres was established by Lorri Bauston, who began Farm Sanctuary in New York in the 80's. Long story short, Lorri was the one that convinced Carey to veganize 15 years ago and here, now, in Acton, California, Carey was able to meet her again to say "thank you." This woman is, without a doubt, Carey's Kevin Maguire. I wish I'd thought to take a picture. Eventually we made our way back to Long Beach, ate a nice dinner and caught a really terrific movie. Not a bad day, all in all. I certainly learned a lot. But I'm still not touching those kebabs.
Yes.
It was 1995 and I had a crush on Carey Moyer. At 19 years of age, I had zero grace with ladies. It was fashionable (and probably always will be) to target empty-headed hotties, but I had no interest. Same went for the intellectual bookworms and volleyball stars and Susie Homemakers and career climbers. The girls I liked spending time with usually defied classification: they were just weird, which usually translated as crazy. And Carey was definitely that. I liked the animal-rights activist thing. I also liked that she dressed like a recovering punk/hippy/goth with strange jewelry and sweet perfumes. Her hair was straight, dark and nearly waist-length. Her skin was pale, her face heart-shaped. We'd become fast friends due to a shared interest in theater. Talking to Carey was both comfortable and challenging: she kept you thinking. She didn't fall for the usual bullshit guys tend to throw at girls to keep them interested ("I sense something deep and unique in you that I don't see in most other girls... tell me about what makes you tick, I'm dying to know!"). After screwing up the nerve, I finally held my breath and gave her a call to ask her if she'd be willing to accompany me to our school's Homecoming festivities. When I brought the subject up to her, she mentioned that it happened to fall on her birthday and her parents would be visiting. So, if I didn't mind her folks tagging along, yes, she'd be glad to go. And, of course, the day before Homecoming, she broke her foot. It was the recipe for a horrid first date: on her birthday, with her parents, cast and crutches in tow. I really, really liked this girl, though, so I hoped for the best. So we went. After dropping her off at the end of the evening, I headed back to the dorm and told a few of my friends, "it was the best date I've ever been on. In fact, it was one of the best nights of my life." That was ten years ago today. So, since October 20th is still her birthday, Happy Birthday, Care. I hope 29 is the best year yet. And while the days of waist-length hair and gothy jewelry are long gone (although the sweet perfumes and animal-rights activism have managed to hang around), I still think of that night often. "I love you" wouldn't come for another year and a half and "as long as we both shall live" was four and a half years away, but I still look at October 20, 1995 as the first day of my favorite chapter. Seems like yesterday, babe, it really does. Thanks for saying Yes.
6 Billion Awaiting Instructions
Do you ever get the feeling that, as a society, we're being told what we're supposed to care about? "Ashlee Simpson just turned 21."
"Oh. Does anyone like Ashlee Simpson?"
"Doesn't matter. She's 21. Just so you know."
"Got it."
"AIDS is an auto-immune disease that affects heterosexuals as well as homosexuals. You need to think about a cure."
"That is terrible, but my wife has Lupus, which is also an auto-immune disease that's actually even more common than AIDS in the United States. I wonder if--"
"No. AIDS. Think about AIDS."
"I'll... try."
"Ashton and Demi have tied the knot. Their difference in age is 15 years."
"...Okay...?"
"George W. Bush once picked his nose at a baseball game."
"Uh."
"Andres Serrano peed on a crucifix and called it 'art.'"
"Mm."
"Major League Baseball has been lax about steroid testing."
"So?"
"So that. It's important."
"Why? To whom?!"
"IT'S IMPORTANT!!!"
 Fortunately, my posting Lauren's preggo pic a week or two ago was sufficient to guilt Erin into sending me one of herself. The big day's less than two months away. You're really starting to let yourself go, darlin'. Watch that.
The other day, Howard Stern was poking fun at bloggers. "Who are these losers? Don't they have anything better to do than yammer on and on about every minute detail of their pathetic lives? Does anyone really care?" Apparently, Howard isn't familiar with his own job description. Irony!
Schwyzen gently pointed out to me: "I hate to say it, but there's ' discreet' and there's ' discrete.'" Ach. Well, I'm not too proud to admit to needing a vocab-related selfangulation.
I rarely check my own web stats, but sometimes you just can't help it. I'm always surprised to learn that the number of distinct (or, I guess, discrete) visitors that happen across JerBear.com in a given month is well into the hundreds. How are these people getting here? Search engines, for one. Since approximately 95% of the content of this website is archived blogs, it's no surprise that I've generated enough varied content to turn up on a fair amount of search engine results. So what are people searching on to find me? Well, according to my web stats, here are a few choice phrases: white hair
unfiltered saki
"blood in the litter box"
Paige Davis
bear porn
"putting out for Hitler"
furry chests
panty smeller
"pre teen turkey"
trolling for strippers
stone lodged penis
excessive orange ear wax
hiding feces
i'm a bear called jeremy, i can do most anything
stupid drunken monkey pics
masturbating after passing a kidney stone
big niggaz
transformers stand for justice
"I'm fat now"
dropping keys down elevator shaft costs and, for some reason... my wife likes to be spanked i hired a spanking on her birthday at her place of work So, I don't know, to all of you with personal websites out there: don't get too cocky with those web stats. Reality can be jarring.
Finally, if you happen to be that last lonely soul on the internet that hasn't seen it yet, you really need to check out the re-cut movie trailer for The Shining. If you didn't know before, marketing is everything. Labels: dialogue
"My child, you killed it."
So we were talking about marketing the Pro Life movement over at Caribouyah, and I've come to reason that it's a very sticky wicket... how to address the horror of the situation without confronting people with the horror of the situation. Everyone seemed to agree that trucks and billboards displaying half-aborted baby parts wasn't the way to go. Frankly, I don't think this is either.
Congratulations to my mom, who stared down the devil of public scrutiny last night and spoke at Kent State as part of Domestic Violence Awareness week. From what I hear, her talk was both intriguing and inspiring, with a good Q & A session immediately following. Way to go, Mom. And it's official: my mother has more integrity than anyone I've ever met. Over the weekend, NBC made her a wildly generous offer to appear on a national television program. Not wanting to compromise her privacy (and because she felt that "someone else probably deserved it more" (hah)), she turned them down. When I asked her about it, she said, "they told me they had the resources to change my life if I agreed to do it. I told them, 'that's okay, I have a great life!'"
Kirk Millett's a colleague and a friend who apparently reads this blog occassionally. He gave me a good-natured chastising about a recent post where I mentioned work I was doing for a company called Medsphere. Looking back, I made it sound as if I'd done all the work myself, which wasn't the case at all. To set the record straight (mostly because I feel a little guilty), the Medsphere demo was a collaborative effort between myself, Kirk and another truly talented designer, Ryan Crook. Without those guys, the piece wouldn't exist and they deserve due credit. In fact (and this isn't just blowing smoke), my favorite moments in the thing are theirs. Sorry, fellas.
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