A friend of mine who worked on the Marc Bouwer/PETA show on Friday is still in New York for the rest of Fashion Week. Last night, she went to some trés chic afterparty at the Roseland Ballroom where she reported that what stood out even more than the coked-out models were "the frumpy fur-wearers who looked out of place amidst New York’s trendiest fashionistas, who were by and large fur-free."

Apparently these "asshole" stickers have become the must-have accessory of the season for anyone stupid enough to still wear fur. She says they've been showing up on every fur coat she sees ...

Europe's biggest turkey killer, Bernard Matthews, is back in the news. And oddly enough, this time it's not because their workers were filmed kicking birds and using pipes as baseball bats to hit them, but because government veterinarians have confirmed bird flu at a poultry farm in the UK.

So my friends Anita and Lucy at PETA Europe jumped into action and have been doing these “biohazard” demonstrations outside grocery stores in London to let the public know that there is a simple solution to this whole bird flu mess. Here are a couple of pics from yesterday’s demo.

Not to get all doomsday on you, but even our very own US Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt called the likelihood of an influenza pandemic "very high, some say even certain." Yes, bird flu is serious problem and all that, but it just seems like such a simple choice to me: we can either run around in these absurd looking masks all the time like these people

Or we can go vegetarian. Tofu anyone?

Every now and then I’m struck by just how much work we get done at PETA. Especially when we have weeks like we had last week: We won the Pom campaign, Smithfield Foods announced that it's phasing out gestation crates for pigs, and CareerBuilder finally stopped its abusive chimpanzee ads.

Much as I'd like to take credit for all this stuff myself, the fact is that none of it would even get off the ground without the vision and the amazing work ethic of PETA's president, Ingrid Newkirk. She’s the first one here every morning and the last to leave, and she's always first in line for “extra” activities like bagging straw for cold local dogs or protesting at the local KFC. Right now she’s on a nationwide book tour promoting her latest book, and there was a pretty great news story about that the other night, which you can check out here.

Anyway, my point here is that Ingrid is amazing and inspiring and all things like that. On a completely unrelated note, Ingrid, it feels like a really long time since I last had a raise ...

Obviously, the overpopulation of cats and dogs is a serious issue, but for those of you who haven't seen this PSA yet, which was sent to us by a member, it's a blast. Enjoy! And, like, don't forget to spay and neuter your pets.

African Gray Prodigy, N'Kisi

His name is N'kisi, and he's been getting a whole lot of press lately in scientific circles because of his huge vocabulary and his unique sense of humor. Instead of mimicking things he's heard already, N'kisi goes right ahead and invents his own phrases to describe new ideas that he's introduced to, and he even rocks the past and future tenses when he's feeling fancy.

According to the BBC, N'kisi described perfume as "pretty smell medicine," and commented on pictures of Jane Goodall with the very reasonable question, "Got a chimp?" The BBC article also reports on N'kisi's sense of humor:

Kind of amazing.

On a slightly sadder (and perhaps inevitable) note, the story immediately made me think of the countless African Gray parrots like N'kisi who are sold in stores like PetSmart and destined to spend their incredibly long lives in captivity, without much stimulation beyond the occasional "Pretty Polly" comment through the cage bars. Which, well, is just really depressing. … Soooo, instead of ending this entry on such a depressing note, here's a completely unrelated video of a trapped deer being blown to safety by a helicopter. Hooray!

CareerBuilder (the employment company behind the ad campaign with all those monkeys dressed in suits and ties in an office) is tentatively in our good books at the moment—though we're keeping a wary eye on them. The reason is that they've decided to, as they put it, "evolve," and move beyond using primates—as we've been asking them to for quite a while now, on account of the truly disturbing way these unwilling "animal actors" are abused behind the scenes. I thought that CareerBuilder's Super Bowl spots yesterday, which featured a bunch of office workers battling to the death in the jungle for a promotion, were the best of the bunch—and a sign that using actual creativity is a fantastic alternative to just trawling out the live animals when you're stuck for ad ideas.

Of course, in all the hype about the ads and the halftime hoopla, it's sometimes easy to forget that there's actually a football game going on. If you can call three interceptions, five fumbles, and a missed extra point a football game. Stay tuned next week, when we launch our campaign against Rex Grossman for his shameless cruelty to The Bears this weekend. Oh, zing! And yes, in answer to your question, Chicago, I do think I'm pretty hilarious.

If you haven't seen the PETA “Year In Review” video that was made for our annual New Year staff party yet, you should check it out. It’s a great snapshot of just a few of our accomplishments from 2006, and when I saw it at the party, I knew we had to get it on the Web ASAP. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong ... As it turns out, our legal department has all these issues with us using music without permission—yadda yadda yadda. So we had to replace the song that was originally in it. Luckily my buddy Coulter is all musical and stuff, and he gave us a great song that I think works better than the original anyway.

Anyway, here it is: PETA’s 2006 staff party video*:

*Warning: this video does not contain gratuitous nudity. Sorry.

Everyone I've talked to who was at the Marc Bouwer show says that it was just amazing. It was full of celebrities, the media loved it, and Marc’s animal-free designs were beyond anything that’s ever been seen.

I promised you video, so here it is:

This was the first ever collection presented by a designer of this caliber who is 100 percent cruelty-free. Totally awesome.

Pretty much every media outlet was there, including AP, Reuters, The New York Times, and, well, everybody else who is anybody. These are a few of the comments from the press coverage:

My pals Jayasimha and Anuradha from PETA India have been busy little beavers this week, making sure the attendees of the Indian International Leather Fair (IILF) get an earful from the animal protection community, and they’ve held demos and press conferences of their own outside.

According to PETA India, 90 percent of all the leather exported from there comes from illegal slaughterhouses, which are completely unregulated and where the cruelty is beyond imagination. Despite the documented atrocities occurring daily at these hellholes, the Indian Council for Leather Exports says that it is premature to ask its members to source leather only from legal slaughterhouses. Wow, premature to stop breaking the law . . .

The kicker here is that nearly all Indian leather is exported overseas where it is made into everything from leather jackets and gloves to shoes and steering wheel covers, and it is almost always labeled as “Made in” the country where the final product is finished. So if you buy any leather products, there’s a decent chance that it came from India. And no, leather isn’t a byproduct of the meat industry—far from it, especially in India, where many of the cows are killed exclusively for their skins.

Sorry to get all preachy and heavy-handed in the blog, but this is just beyond the pale and it has to stop. Please don’t buy any leather and tell you friends and family to do the same.

Sermon over.

It’s already the talk of the fashion world gathered in New York for Fashion Week, and of course the media is all over it, but just in case you haven’t heard yet, PETA and Marc Bouwer are making fashion history today. This afternoon, PETA is hosting Bouwer’s show—the first ever collection by a designer that’s 100 percent cruelty-free. Not even any wool!In an industry that isn’t exactly known for its social conscience, Bouwer stands out as a very successful anomaly. He’s dressed A-listers galore including Mariah Carey, Oprah, Jessica Simpson, Heidi Klum, Jennifer Hudson, and so many others. Remember how amazingly hot Angelina looked at the Oscars? That was Marc:

We’ll have exclusive photos and video from the show soon, so check back in the next few days.

Good luck this afternoon Marc!