Tuesday 14 September 2010

In which I discover I am a battery farmed chicken.

1) Last night I read Marina Lewycka's Two Caravans, which I liked and disliked. For lots of reasons I won't go into now because, er, they're boring. But it brought back alot of imagery about the poultry industry...you know, electrical zappity zap, skin the skin, no space to move, et cetera*

*I should probably explain that my best friends are a group of 4 hardened vegetarians who've explained the horrors of battery farming to me a million times. Hence the flippancy.

But today I was thinking about chickens, and my sister announced she'd turned down a date with another guy, and I was watching the Big School Lottery and all my thoughts collided like this,
PAKOW.

Oh, thanks, blogger, for the unintentional italics.

Anyway, here comes the convoluted metaphor:

Academic pressure turns alot of people into battery chickens. They're prepped and prepared for a career as a high-end chicken fillet, but when they're sitting in the barn, being fed knowledge like chicken feed, it's unhealthy: ever heard about how battery chickens' legs are underformed, brittle and breakable, and they don't hold up their own weight? Even whilst their bodies are expanding and becoming turkey twizzlers.

Er...chicken twizzlers...

Anyway, I'm discovering that the metaphor applies to my life, in the sense that I've sacrificed a social life and a love life for the sake of academics. And I haven't even finished college yet! But I can see where it's going.

The thing is, I know that it doesn't have to be like this. Free range farming for the win, baby, I was born to run ;)

Emma xxx 

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