"THE WORLD RUNS ... ON THE FUEL OF ... ENDLESS, FATHOMLESS MISERY."

Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (New York: A Marian Wood Book/G. P. Putnam, 2013) (THERE IS MUCH FOOD FOR THOUGHT HERE FOR A THOUGHTFUL HUMAN ANIMAL! "He talked about car companies that, as part of their crash studies, subjected fully conscious and terrified baboons to repeated, horrific, excruciating blows to the head. About drug companies that vivisected dogs, lab techs that shouted at them to cut the shit if they whined or struggled. About cosmetic companies that smeared chemicals into the eyes of screaming rabbits and euthanized them afterward if the damage was permanent or else did it to them again if they recovered. About slaughterhouses where the cows were so terrified it discolored the meat. About the stuffed battery cages of the chicken industry, where, just as my uncle Bob had been saying for years, they were breeding birds that couldn't stand up, much less walk. About how chimps in the entertainment industry were always babies, because by adolescence they'd be too strong to control. These babies, who should have still been riding on their mother's backs, were shut into isolated cages and beaten with baseball bats so that latter, on the set of movies, merely displaying the bat would assure compliance. Then the credits could claim that no animals had been harmed in the filming of this movie, because the harm had all happened before the shooting began." "'The world runs,' Lowell said, 'on the fuel of this endless, fathomless misery. People know it, but they don't mind what they don't see. Make them look and they mind, but you're the one they hate, because you're the one that made them look.'" Id. at 231-232. "Nonhuman animals have gone to court before. Arguably, the first ALF action in the United States was the release of two dolphins in 1977 from the University of Hawaii. The men responsible were charge with grand theft. Their original defense, that dolphins are persons (human in dolphin suits, one defendant said), was quickly thrown out by the judge. I'm unclear on the definition of person the courts have been using. Something that sieves out dolphins but lets corporations slide on through." Id. at 305. "My father was himself a college professor and a pedant to the bone. Every exchange contained a lesson, like the pit in a cherry. To this day, the Socratic method makes be want to bite someone." Id. at 6. "No apartment manager I've ever had since has put his whole heart into it the way Ezra did. 'The secret to a good life, he told me once, 'is to bring your A game to everything you do. Even if all you're doing is taking out the garbage, you do that with excellence." Id. at 271.).