Yanks can't run with the Spanish Bulls like the Euros [MUST see this]

[jon_j_rambo]

Here's a couple smart dudes from Pennsylvania. Nice going dude.

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/070713/481/ef5af798074f4a4e8070577d110017a8

[Blashy]

Some will think of me as nuts but I always root for the bulls and IMO anyone who supports this cruel act to animals simply deserves to die.

I respect more a cockroach than this type of human.

All the bulls are tortured to death after the run by toreadors ... being slowly impaled while you bleed to death is torture and plain evil.

[JerseyJohn]

Ernest Hemingway has always been one of my favorite authors. He wrote two books on bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon during the mid-1930s and The Most Dangerous Summer which was edited and released after his death in 1961. Additionally many of his excellent short stories and a novel, The Sun Also Rises involve bullfighting. Despite reading all those works about a sport he was obviously a big fan of, I've never understood the appeal.

On the other hand, I don't think it's right for people of other countries to make sweeping judgements about it. The sport, or I think it's more accurately described as a fatalistic ceremony, has some sort of deep significance to the Spanish and also to several Latin American cultures, as well as Mexico.

According to Hemingway, writing in the 1930s, the whole thing was much more evenly matched in the 19th century, when bulls were bred to be larger and more aggressive than later on. One odd thing he describes is how old horses, especially those who had been used to pull fruit and vegetable wagons in the United States, were bought hundreds at a time and shipped to Spain. They were fattened up on a diet that included large quantities of sawdust and sent into the arena for the bulls to gore, tiring themselves out while the crowd watched the efforts of the doomed horses to stay clear of the horns. Hemingway seems to have admired this part of the ritual too. I have no idea why.

I've forgotten the names for the various bull fighters -- I think matador was the archaic term -- toreadors, picadors sticking the beasts with barbed sticks turned me off, but seems to be a crowd pleaser and something that can't be done away with in order to prepare the bull for its demise.

One thing I have to say, though, is it has to take a huge amount of courage to stand alone in an arena against an eraged bull, aremed only with a cape and hidden sword, or no cape and a pair of barbed sticks, or even sitting on a horse with a lance.

Naturally there's no real point to any of it except for those who have been raised with this as part of its culture.

-- Hemingway used to also run through the streets with the bulls. Now that's something I really can't understand. On the other hand, growing up in Brooklyn, we never had anything like that in my childhood so I'd be very hesitant to pass judgement on people who grew up with all of this in their culture.

-- -- Bullfighting music is pretty good. :cool:

[Blashy]

I don't care if it is "their culture" it does not make it right.

Any person with good morale sense and respect for ALL life will find this barbaric.

My wife is from Mexico and she's always been ashamed her country participates in this cruelty.

I'm not saying Canada is any better, just look at how we treat livestock...

[JerseyJohn]

I'm not defending bullfighting, cockfighting, dogfighting, or even boxing, which I'm not a fan of -- I don't personally like any of those things. What I'm saying is it's something that's been going on for centuries and, as neither of us live in the country being discussed, it's their business, not ours.

I'm sure every culture does something that would seem repulsive to other cultures. What about Boxing Day when you Canadians go around punching each other?! :eek:

-- All right, bad example.

[Moonslayer]

Running with bulls is something I would definitely have a go at if I ever go to Spain and the opportunity presented itself. I would also go watch a bullfight purely out of curiosity.

I think that while these cultural practices may seem barbaric to some they merely show humans being humans in that particular culture's own, unique way.

Cruelty to animals is a relative term... those that are bred for a particular purpose (like food or bullfighting) are hardly being treated cruelly if they are fulfilling their chosen destiny. On the other hand pinning a worm to the end of a hook and ripping apart the mouth of a wild fish is the height of barbarism to my sense of morality.

I would never condemn a fisherman for practising his sport, however, just that I wouldn't do it myself. To each his own.

[targul]

Closest I have come to Bullfighting is on my Dad's farm. Mabel a Charle Heffer with horns sharp and long one day decided to exit while we were bringing in the corn.

She charged me. I decided I would stand my ground and not let her out the gate. Well my dad who was on the wagon jumped from the wagon kicked Mabel and knocked her out. He told me not to be stupid and stand in front of a charging animal.

My dad is a very intelligent man whom I respect dearly so I have heeded that advice. So both he and I are still here this day to continue to let the cows out.

[jon_j_rambo]

I'd LOVE to run with the bulls. I'd need to drop 15 pounds first Here's the thing, the Bulls run, you run, you get gored, the bull gets slapped, big deal.

@Blashy --- Dude, where in your life did you get rewired? Seriously, they are animals.

Quick informational: Animals are animals, not people. Animals do not have souls, they were given to us. Man has domain over animals. Do you eat chicken? Beef? Fish? Does your lettuce scream too? God killed the first animal for Adam & Eve. God also had Israel kill animals for sacrifice unto him. Yes, it showed "death" to the world for the first time. But the last thing I will ever worry or care about, is an animal, over a human being. Humans goto Heaven or Hell. Animals go back to the dust. Simple as that.

"Beef, its what's for dinner" --- Robert Mitcham.

Spotted Owl soup, Seal meat, Chicken 'al anything, Beef 'al burger, Mantatee, Dolphin, whatever. What you eat doesn't matter, enjoy.

"Rise, Slay, & Eat" --- Acts.

If you'd like to contribute money for the Legend to "run with the bulls", please forward your credit card information.

Far as Hemmingway, sorry, can't get into any book where the author hanged himself in real life. Rather, I like books which promote life. I remember high school English class, we were reading "The Sun Also Rises" by EH. Told the teacher, I ain't reading nothing by a suicide dude. The book was about some dude who lost his family jewels. I ain't into that, don't wanna read about it.

Legend says, tell those teachers off!

Legend says, think for yourself.

Legend says, read the book of Life only.

[Ottosmops]

@ Rambo - Dude, Saturday night fever?

[JerseyJohn]

To JJRambo c/o Battlefront,

Regarding your various posts about me -- Ah, screw it, I'm not writing to this guy till I see what kind of marlin he hauls in.

[jon_j_rambo]

@Ernest --- Well, pal, I'm more of a Lake Trout fisher...get me a half-dozen of those 10 pounders I'd take you along, long as you don't hang yourself again. Hope you were saved EH. Didn't do your daughter justice either, she followed in your footsteps. Folks, get the right heroes.

[JerseyJohn]

-- Outstanding JJR Hemingway was also a fresh water fisherman. One of his Nick Adams stories from the 1920s, Big Two Hearted River is about a trout fishing. :cool:

[jon_j_rambo]

I think EH also has a chain of bars/pubs? Or at least his image is used. His one daughter killed herself, sadly. The other is a successful actress.

[JerseyJohn]

Yeah, there's a lot of use of his name, he still has a lot of commercial appeal. I think one of his sons (he had three, from three different wives) is behind most of that.

That family seems prone to suicide. His father, who was a doctor, committed suicide in the 1920s when Hemingway was living in Paris. His mother sent him the pistol!

[jon_j_rambo]

Hey, maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. Maybe the dude needed to cap himself?

[JerseyJohn]

He went through three or four different stages.

Volunteered to fight in WWI, wound up as an ambulance driver in Italy and was wounded from an artillery blast.

In the 1920s he lived in Paris and was a reporter for the Toronto Star and a Kansas City newspaper while he got his start writing fiction. Most people think he wrote his best work during that time.

1930s he became very famous, went to Spain to cover the Civil War, was oppenly communist and vehemently anti-fascist.

1940s his writing began going downhill. He married a newspaper writer and wound up in France covering the Allied advance but also seems to have been with a French fighting unit. He lived in Key West during most of those years.

1950s Had his last hurrah with the short novel, The Old Man and The Sea, and won the Nobel Prize for literature a short time afterwards. He spent most of the decade going to the places in Africa and Europe that he'd travelled through as a young man. Along the way he was in two airplane crashes in two days and came away with serious head injuries. Afterwards his drinking went out of control and he was steadily sinking into manic depression. He lived in Cuba and at first thought Fidel Castro was a hero, but changed his mind soon afterwards and returned to the United States.

Living in Idaho, he kept claiming the F. B. I. (which had a real file on him) was tracking him with assassins, including the local sheriff. He was given electro-shock therapy against his will and soon afterwards committed suicide.

Hemingway was one of those larger than life people, always enjoying everything and very physical. By the mid-40s he couldn't keep his private life seperate from his public life and that's when he started going downhill.

I think he couldn't deal with the idea of growing old. He was 62 when he killed himself.

[Gorgin]

What does this thread have to do with SC2 ??

[JerseyJohn]

[Bromley]

I wonder if that photo is of the Yank, although that's what it says in the description. From the article:

Another participant, Christopher Neiff, 24, of Norway, had the bull's horn tear into his shin and slide under the skin right up to his knee. Festival organizers said Neiff had a nearly 5-inch wound, but that the bone was not affected.

Whether there's just one gory goring or not, great photo .

[JerseyJohn]

There's a photograph of a pair of brothers from Ohio, celebrating because one of them just recovered from testicular cancer so they went to run with the bulls. In the photo they're jumping in opposite directions with the same bull goring both of them, one on each horn, seemingly up the butt. Both were hospitalized and photographed laughing about it. I'm sure a blownup version of the photograph will end up in both their homes. A Great conversation piece.

It's amazing that no one died in that mess and, over the decades, not many people have suffered fatal injuries in this screwy ritual.

[Bromley]

Do you have a link JJ?

[JerseyJohn]

It was the AOL opening screen, Bromley. I'll try to post a path to it.

[JerseyJohn]

I think the names are Todd and Michael Lanahan of Philadelphia, turns out they must be the same two mentioned in the opening post.

Not sure I got the proper link, but here goes,

< Philadelphia Brothers at Pamplona >