Sunday, July 10, 2011

Kippenhandel Heindryckx

Belgium, you crazy little country, you've done it again! It's always a blow to one's American pride when some Old World obscurity (we apologize) shows us how it's done.

Belgium's 11,780 square miles put her at about the size of Maryland. Now, sure, Maryland has plenty to boast about, not the least being this and this, but pound-for pound, Belgium is a major player.

This wrapper here is a doozy. It has recast the horror of seeing one's fellows immolated as an evening's comfy entertainment. The chickens gather around—are they in a clubhouse?—and plop down and just... relax.

Again (and again, and again), they don't tune in to a closed-circuit TV providing them with up-to-the-minute intelligence about the guards' whereabouts so that they might effect their escape. They sit there watching the boob tube! And what's more, it's not even some kind of keep-the-natives-fat-and-ignorant fare like, say, Belgium's Best Coops or Cock-a-Doodle Doofus! No, it's the brutal truth, the very thing that should have the power, the moral authority, to get them running for their lives.

Neither in Belgium, nor in Maryland—nor, indeed, in any place we have yet become acquainted with—can the animals be bothered.

("What's that? The corpses of our brothers and sisters slowly turning in the flames? The very flames to which we ourselves will be consigned tomorrow? What of it?")

"Hey! Keep it down! This is the good part! The skin's splitting open!"

("This really isn't a good time. Listen, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Catch me in the morning.")

It's a small world, after all.

(Thanks to Dr. Simon for the referral and the photo.)

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