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In This Issue

• Graffiti: High Art with Penii
• War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Columbia is Friend
• COPS: Keeping You Safe, At Any Cost
• Pigs, Drugs, and Electric Shocks
• Letters to the Feditors
• Operation: Fed Freedom!
• Mike Ilardi: From Carman Mutant to Fed Helm
• Farewell, Mr. Lippert
• The Pope Vs. Katie, Round II
• Pranking Feditor Fades into Archival File Cabinet
• Oodles of Doodles
• The Last Days of Mary-Kate and Ashley
• Gangrenous Jaguar
• The True Story of How the Big Bad Bunny Stole the Easter Animal Election From the Cute Piggy
• What All the Cool Immortals Are Reading
• John Jay Flees, Kids Rejoice
• Arts & Entertainment : Del McCoury Band
• THEY Watch
• Meet the Staff of 20.8
• Get to Know Us!

Yoni BenTov

Cocaine turned this pig bad, real bad. Still delicious.

Over the ages, the people who have drawn the wrath of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals outnumber the people who haven't. Zoo keepers, cosmeticians, pharmaceutical companies, and sexually confused young boys have all done one thing or another ("another," in the boys' case) to harm our faunal brethren. Consequently, PETA's list of offenders grows by the day. Well, get ready to add one to the list. Not right this second, though, because for the second paragraph, I'll be stretching my journalistic legs. By fleshing out what we call a "back-story," I'll be leaving you in "suspense" about "who" the addition to PETA's offenders list might "be." If you have no patience for inventive composition or groundbreaking finesse, then skip to the third paragraph, and I'll meet you there shortly.

Profits at Taser International have shot up recently with growing sales of its product, a weapon predictably named the Taser, to police departments, military units, and thirty-something women across the world. Shaped like a gun, when the Taser is fired, compressed air forces two metal barbs out of the device, through the air, and into your enemy's flesh. Then, an electrical current travels down the wires connecting the barbs to the weapon, knocking your now-convulsing assailant to the floor and rendering him completely harmless. Unfortunately, on occasion a Taser will also render an assailant deceased. Police have noted a correlation between cocaine use and Taser-induced heart attacks. And so, on a $500,000 grant from the Department of Justice, researchers at the University of Wisconsin have set out to get to the bottom of this.

The Three Little Pigs lived in houses of straw, wood, and brick, respectively. If, however, the pigs had built their houses inside the University of Wisconsin laboratory of biomedical engineer John Webster, their contributions to science would include not only their famous architectural study but also an inquiry into tTaser and drug use. Specifically, the pig in the straw house would be shot with a Taser. The pig in the wooden house would do his part by getting high on cocaine. Most nobly, the pig with the brick house would pull double duty in the name of science: putting cocaine up his nose and having Webster shoot him with a Taser.

To hear PETA huffing and puffing, you'd think the pigs were being forced to eat bacon or watch The Surreal Life or, God forbid, eat bacon while watching The Surreal Life. The fact is that not only are the pigs coming out of this with a sweet nose candy high, but Dr. Webster is anesthetizing them before he lays 50,000 volts across their flesh. The pitch for the pigs is simple: you let us electrocute you while you sleep, we'll get you high. I know kids who have done that for free, and these pigs are getting a week's worth of food, a benefit that doesn't usually come with a procedure that amounts to your basic fraternity hazing. True, the pig in the straw house has to make do with nothing but the Taser, but his wood-dwelling compatriot gets off scot-free, making it out of the lab with little more than some dust on his nose and a Scarface DVD.

Where does that leave PETA? What is there to condemn? The anesthesia? The cocaine high? The free Scarface DVD? Ha, the fools! Next I suppose they'll criticize the carte blanche I've given my friends the pubic lice. "Unsanitary working conditions," PETA will cry. "Poppycock," I say. If in the name of science a man is not allowed to test his ability to resist an itch, then truly our society has gone astray. John Webster wants to get pigs high and shock them while they sleep to save human lives. Is that so bad? Clearly not, but if PETA remains blinded by their animal rights credo to the need for these pig experiments, then I say to them and John Webster, "Um ... well, where can I sign up?"