Albion’s Alchemist

Well friends - I’ve been toying with the idea of seting up an IRC channel for this blog for a few months - generally I have dismisssed the idea since I seem unable to give this blog the time I should. My reasoning is along the lines of ‘I cannot even take 15 minutes to bitch about some current evil - why should I do any better patrolling a specialsit irc channel?’ I also remind myself that the site gets only a small number of hits every day.

Still, who dares wins, eh? And perhaps the channel will prove a catalyst to make me update more often, you never can tell. The chances are higher if someone drops in to the channel to tell me what a chap I am…

Anyway, the channel is there for you - you can look in, and say hello if there are any other Alchemy readers in there, and if I am in there you can order me to update more often, and point out my spelling mistakes.

S’possible I’ll set up a special time to drop into the channel and hear your complaints, but in the meantime it’s dumb chance.

The link is just to the left.

For IRC most people seem to like mIRC - but the Alchemist is a grown up, so he recomends Chatzilla for those of you with Firefox, and Firefox for those of you without.

Hell & Damnation!

I honestly intended to write immediately after that last post, but, well as regular readers (which is to say anyone who reads at the irregular rate at which I post) will know, I’m unreliable.

Thank you to Mr. Free Market for that swift verbal kick – it seems to have done the job.

So… What shall we discuss?

Ah! I know just the thing. Any of you who have read or watched coverage of the latest atrocities committed in the name of animal rights will have been as appalled as the Alchemist, I’m sure. BUAV typically wash their hands of such violence, in public at least, but it still goes on, and one doubts that they are really that upset about it at Anthropomorphist HQ. The trouble of course is that there is no organized body to stand up for the rights of those Humans who don’t want to die from some ghastly, but potentially curable morbidity.

But wait! What’s that in Cyberspace? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a website!

Fear not citizens, for Pro-Test.org is here to stand up for your right to health. This is the project of one ‘Sqrrl101’ who prefers to remain anonymous (and the Alchemist understands why, long time Alchemy readers will recall that your author has himself been threatened for holding views out of harmony with those of another).

Last month our heroic Sqrrl101 and some colleagues, armed with almost £2 worth of protest gear, held a counter-demonstration during an animal-rights march in Oxon.

Doing so earned him a spot on the radio (credit where credit is due – I don’t like a lot of BEEB policies, but they gave him a voice) and an attack from SPEAK, who style themselves ‘the voice for animals’ – one wonders why they did not go the whole hog and call themselves SPEAK ‘the spray can and threatening letter for animals’. You can read the whole thing via the link from Pro-Test.org, I’m not linking to it because I don’t feel like giving them even one additional unique hit.

At the end of the day, the Alchemist likes animals a lot (I could eat a whole one), but he cannot bring himself to see them as people – this is because they are not. It is within Human power to save lives, but, as with any power, comes responsibility (oh dear, oh dear, oh dear). In this case our responsibility comes in the form of a choice – we can either save Human lives, or animal lives. It’s really that simple. One might argue that there is no shortage of Humans (I quite agree – and I am 100% in favour of birth control and abortion), however, by the same token, there are no shortage of rats, mice, fruit flies, dogs and cute little apes. So all we have to ask ourselves is, ‘which is more important?’ The answer, and it seems obvious enough to me, is ‘Humans’.

As an afterthought on my part, Pro-Test has a list of medical hoo-haa which has resulted from past vivisection (medicine is not the Alchemist’s strong suit, but he suspects the list is just a bare sampling of the whole) – and I defy any animal-rights activist to swear off the treatments on that list.

I almost take it as my due to get an email from some yahoo wanting to take me up on that – so let me make this clear, when I say I want you to swear off those treatments, I mean forever, you cannot change your mind when your diet of organic grasshopper’s ears gives you colon cancer.