heatherhansendesigns / CC

This is all just a tad too ironic. I bet losing that fingertip hurt—perhaps even as much as it hurts piglets to have their tails cut off, baby chickens to have their sensitive beaks cut off, or calves to be burned with a hot iron and have their horns cut off—all without any painkillers. Yeah, I bet that feels like a day at the spa.

Let's work for the day when a news story is about sparing a thought for the real victims who suffered greatly for the meat behind that counter.

Posted by Jennifer Cierlitsky

Just when we thought all the fur-clad skeletons had been pulled from Sharon Stone's closet, yet another story about animal abuse surfaces. In his new autobiography, actor Ernest Borgnine talks about working with Sharon Stone in her early, looking-less-like-a-scarecrow years. He writes that in Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing, Stone refused to do a scene with a spider unless the spider's pincers were ripped off—which the crew apparently did for her.

"It's not shocking to us that she displayed evil tendencies even when she was very young. It was her first starring role, and she chose to make a tiny insect an amputee. Perhaps she should change her name legally to Heart of Stone," says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk.

I, for one, am appalled at the hypocrisy on Stone's part. She was willing to ask that this spider have his pincers ripped off his body, yet she exposed the surely terrified and disgusted crew on the set of Basic Instinct to bits of her that might give you the shivers. Shame on you, Heart of Stone.

And just for funsies, check out this fantastic picture that our friend Connie Talk created in response to Ingrid's letter asking Stone to get her brain scanned to see if Stone might be missing the empathy gene:

Beachgoers in Fort Myers and Pensacola today got the envious privilege of being able to see planes hired by PETA flying up and down the shoreline towing signs reading "8 REASONS TO BOYCOTT KFC," and featuring a demonic, blood-soaked "Colonel Sanders" in the act of stabbing a chicken. So without further ado:

1. Being top-heavy is only cool for women
2. They do chickens wrong
3. Sometimes big bright packages contain dirty little secrets
4. Being scalded to death sucks
5. If Pam’s doing it, I want to do it too
6. Cheap food costs animals dearly
7. Those wings were broken when the chicken was still alive
8. The “secret recipe” involves de-beaking with a hot wire

I never got to see anything that fun when I lived in Pensacola, though there were a lot of orange people....

Posted by Sarah King

nytimes / CC

Let me recap for the irony-impaired: People who came to look at animals stuck in cages ended up stuck cages themselves.

For perhaps the first time since their capture (or births in captivity), the residents of the pens below the tram tracks had reason to feel grateful for their enclosures' sizes—they at least had walking room (albeit it nothing like freedom), while the human animals were confined to 4-by-5-foot boxes. On the other hand, the human animals had liberty and exercise of free will to look forward to, which was not the case for the Bronx Zoo's permanent "residents."

Some stranded patrons saw the connection, according to The New York Times, which ran the story.

One such visitor walked away with a better understanding of how the animals must feel: "You have no say in what happens to you. You lose all control," she told the Times. Another man said, "It's a good lesson to humanity. They're now afraid, they're now vulnerable. Humanity needs to learn humility. They're not masters of the universe. They're part of the natural world."

What bizarre role reversal will come next? Will meat kill people? Oh, wait ....

Posted by Sean Conner