what ocd isn't

I wish people wouldn't joke about OCD. Saying "oh, I've got a bit of OCD" to mean that you're self-conscious about being unusually particular about something isn't funny.

You can be particular about a ritual. Such behaviour gives you a degree of pleasure, even if you are a bit embarrassed to admit it. OCD isn't like that.

It's crushing and inescapable. It's something that lives in your brain and forces you to do really stupid things, even though you know doing them isn't the slightest use, but still you have to do them and if you don't you can't function. It's like somebody stuffed a cushion into your skull so that none of your thoughts can move until you've completed the particular set of movements which will get the cushion out. It's the difference between having new shoes that are a bit stiff and having your feet encased in concrete and nailed to the floor. It's not annoying, it holds you and paralyses you and hurts you and it isn't funny and it isn't trivial.

Just saying.

(no subject)

Happy birthday Darcy, you are Teh Awesome.

Ethics and meat

Government to kosher meat producer: You abuse your workers and you are not treating the animals right.

Kosher meat producer to government: ANTI-SEMITIC SCUM!

Government to kosher meat producer: No, seriously...

Kosher meat producer to government: ANTI-SEMITIC SCUM!

Jews to kosher meat producer: You abuse your workers and you are not treating the animals right.*

Kosher meat producer to Jews: ANTI-SEMITIC...oh. Er.

Workers: Cheers!
Animals: Cheers!

The organisation Uri L'Tzedek is co-ordinating that bit where the Jews talk to the kosher meat producer. To add your voice, email uri.ltzedek@gmail.com.

* In somewhat more detail, this is what Uri L'Tzedek is saying:

---

Lag b’Omer 5768
May 23, 2008

Mr. Sholom Rubashkin
220 N West St
Postville, IA 52162


Dear Mr. Rubashkin,

We write to you out of a deep sense of ahavat Torah and ahavat Yisrael, with both great respect and great concern.

Your company produces 60 percent of the beef and 40 percent of the chicken provided to the kosher marketplace in America. You employ 968 factory employees and serve as a pillar of the food economy. Your generous philanthropy supports moral and significant causes and is a great source of pride for Israel and Jewish institutions around the world. You are an important and respected leader of the Jewish community.

Therefore it is with great frustration and sadness that we write this letter. We are the kosher meat consumers of America. We are mothers and fathers raising our children in a kosher home. We are rabbis, teachers, and Jewish professionals who use your products in our work. Since you control much of the kosher meat market in America, we rely on you to uphold the halakhic requirements, both ritual and ethical, of the food we eat. We believe you have failed, and we are deeply troubled.

We are deeply troubled that you have demonstrated a pattern of knowingly exploiting undocumented workers, to paying them less than market wages and treating them poorly.

We are deeply troubled that according to many experts, the wages you pay your workers are the lowest of any slaughterhouse in the nation.[1]
We are deeply troubled that, despite years of public inquiry and concern over worker conditions at your plant, AgriProcessors was cited for 39 new health and safety violations in March 2008. It pains us to hear that examinations of Agriprocessor's OSHA logs reveal amputations, broken bones, eye injuries and hearing loss that occurred at your plant.[2]

We are deeply troubled that animals have been abused against the laws of kashrut and of tzaar baalei chaim, causing needless pain to animals.[3]

We are deeply troubled that among the hundreds of workers who were arrested by federal officials on May 12, eighteen were children between ages 13 and 17.[4]

We are deeply troubled to read reports of various criminal operations taking place at the Postville plant, the account of a Jewish floor supervisor who severely abused a Guatemalan worker in the most reprehensible conditions, and allegations of sexual assault and verbal abuse.[5]

( Continued under cut )