Food for Thought (*Buddumm Chiiii*)

I find all this interesting, but perhaps you won't. Just please don't hurt me.


(Click on charts for more readable versions)

Industry Profiles

Which candidates is the computer industry giving to? What are the patterns in tobacco contributions over the last ten years? Where is the political money coming from within the agribusiness industries? You can answer this kind of question effortlessly here, with this one-of-a-kind resource.

Meat processing & products:

Long-Term Contribution Trends

*These figures do not include donations of "Levin" funds to state and local party committees. Levin funds were created by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.

METHODOLOGY: The numbers on this page are based on contributions of $200 or more from PACs and individuals to federal candidates and from PAC, soft money and individual donors to political parties, as reported to the Federal Election Commission. While election cycles are shown in charts as 1996, 1998, 2000 etc. they actually represent two-year periods. For example, the 2002 election cycle runs from January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2002. Data for the current election cycle were released by the Federal Election Commission on Monday, January 23, 2006.

(from http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?ind=G2300)



Meat processing & products:

Top Contributors to Federal Candidates and Parties

Election cycle: 2004

Total contributions: $337,821



(from http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.asp?Ind=G2300&Cycle=2004)

(All data from http://www.opensecrets.org/)

-------

This morning, I had a dream that an individual I used to be friends with slipped a note to a friend of mine to pass along to me--the note was a once long sought-after explanation and apology for being a complete and total douchebag, scrawled hastily and almost maniacally in garish-colored marker on scraggly pieces of notebook paper. I sat there quietly, trying to decipher the letter and the explanations, excuses, and apologies housed within it. Then Zooey clambered up onto my pillow and woke me up. It was strange because, while I once cared about this person quite a bit, I haven't given them a second thought in months. And yet, I remember feeling, upon being woken up, a very potent sense of loss and disappointment when I realized that these events hadn't actually occurred.

I really and truly hate when your subconscious hasn't caught up with the attitude of your waking self.

Get with it, subconscious, I say. Get motherf-ing with it already. Oh, and while we're at it, more sex dreams about The Strokes and less about Hyde from That 70's Show would be much appreciated as well, dammit.

-------

My Future Husband

Just the other day, I realized that my Sinfully Vegan cookbook was missing a chunk of about 50 pages in the middle of the book and, since somehow they managed to print the last 50 pages TWICE in a row at the end of the book, they didn't notice the missing text before printing the books and sending them out. So on Monday, I emailed the publishing company (more specifically, Matthew Lore, the vice-president, since there wasn't a general email for the publishing company) and asked if I might be able to send my book in to get a new copy. Mr. Matthew Lore promptly responded and said he wasn't aware of the errors and that he would send me a new book out immediately. (I'm using Mr. Matthew Lore's name as much as humanly possible in this post knowing that even kind and gentle bigwigs sometimes get the urge to google their own names and hoping he stumbles across this post. Anyways...)

Yesterday (that's the fricking day after he told me this), I came home to a package from Mr. Matthew Lore in the mail. Already. And not only did Mr. Matthew Lore send me an error-free copy of Sinfully Vegan, he also sent me a copy of Vegan with a Vengeance with a little handwritten note that said, Thought you might appreciate this book as well. Sincerely.

*Swoon*

Granted, I already own this cookbook (so my plan is to give away the new copy to the next feisty vegan I meet--which may be awhile), but it's the thought, you know?

Sometimes people just break your heart with their generosity.

Matthew Lore, will you marry me?

-------

One Reason I Cannot Bring Myself to Order Horror Movies the Likes of Cannibal Holocaust and Porno Holocaust through the library...

The librarian who tells me whenever I pick up my reserve materials, "I always look forward to seeing what you've ordered next. I just love looking through the recipe books... And the other books you order always sound so intelligent and interesting."

-------

NUM NUM NUM CRUNCH CRUNCH NUM

I have been averaging about 5 hours of (restless) sleep a night during the work-week.

Come near me, and I will eat your baby.

-------

New Sidebar Thingamajigger

As you can see from my sidebar, I've decided to nix the tallying of my neighbors' orgasms, that way my downstairs neighbor can orgasm in peace again (and so I don't give her some weird sorta complex about it).

(For the record, she is not the neighbor whose orgasms I was tallying--it's my front neighbors who orgasm freakishly early in the morning and whose orgasm my groggy 6 am brain once interpreted as being from a peeping tom that was peering in my window... which made even less sense seeing as I live on the second floor. But I digress...)

Instead I've added a "Most Recent Vegan Food Experimentations" category in which I will list out my most recent adventures (or miserable failures) in the kitchen, hopefully with the occasional recipe link. I don't have the time or blog-energy to jump on the food-blog wagon, so this'll just have to do instead. Hope you enjoy.

Happenstance, may you enjoy fucking like a bunny this weekend.

-------

The Sanctity of Life

Last night, the beautiful Ms. Mo and I went to see Peter Singer speak, thanks to The Vegetarian Advocates and their diligent emails about upcoming events. For those of you unfamiliar with the man, he is the author of the widely-influential book Animal Liberation* and is considered one of the most controversial philosophers of our time, enough so that he had police supervision when he presented last night because inevitably there are surly members of the audience and protesters. One may very completely disagree with him, but it is hard to deny that he is a brilliant and lucid man, especially after hearing him speak.

I was unsure of whether or not his talk would focus on the issue of animal rights (of which he is clearly a huge proponent), given that the topic was "Our Changing Ethics of Life and Death." Much to my pleasure, it did, but in a wonderfully round-about and slyly pointed kind of way.

The nature of his talk revolved around the notion of "the sanctity of life" and how this notion is frequently used to defend many moral issues today (particulary, in his talk, euthanasia and the debates around brain death, life support, and patients in a persistent vegetative state). He was impressively coherent and organized in his thoughts as he took on these various different topics and then wove them all back together in an attempt to demonstrate a) the far-reaching implications of the notion of "the sanctity of life" and b) the inconsistencies inherent within this notion--how its most hard-core proponents conveniently overlook and fail to take into account the various other stances that this notion of "the sanctity of life" requires them to take, specifically in terms of animal rights issues and foreign policy/funding issues. He discussed how we treat the notion as a view specific to humans only, but how our logic surrounding it compels us to take animals into account as well (if "personhood" is the most important concept in arguing for the "sanctity of human life," and personhood is defined by consciousness which is in turn defined by sentience, then animals fall into this category as well and need to be given moral consideration in order to consistently uphold this notion of "the sanctity of life").

(Please excuse my vagueness in discussing some aspects of his speech, but I fear that I might misrepresent him as he discussed a LOT of stuff last night and I am not quite so adept at making all the connections with the ease that he does.)

Essentially his point was that the notion of "the sanctity of life" is an untenable one where it stands now in its most flimsiest of forms (as an entity that is founded on inconsistencies and which is poked full of holes) and that our actions in this time in history are continuing to add a weight to it that it will not be able to sustain and which will inevitably lead to its collapse...

He is a brilliant fellow. I don't necessarily agree with him on everything (especially since I have qualms about the whole utilitarian notion--I think it is a logical viewpoint and a good one, but only up to a point), but I recommend going to see him if you ever have the opportunity as he is a *powerful* speaker. Until then, I provide you with a vast wealth of links so that you can read him instead.

"When the traditional ethic of the sanctity of human life is proven indefensible at both the beginning and end of life, a new ethic will replace it. It will recognize that the concept of a person is distinct from that of a member of the species Homo sapiens, and that it is personhood, not species membership, that is most significant in determining when it is wrong to end a life. We will understand that even if the life of a human organism begins at conception, the life of a person—that is, at a minimum, a being with some level of self-awareness—does not begin so early. And we will respect the right of autonomous, competent people to choose when to live and when to die." (from Foreign Policy)





----------
*Offers a utilitarian argument for why it is that we should not exploit animals for food:

He argues not about the wrongness of killing but about the wrongness of inflicting pain and suffering on beings when the pain and suffering could easily be avoided by a change in our actions...

"If a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering - in so far as rough comparisons can be made - of any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be taken into account. So the limit of sentience (using the term as a convenient if not strictly accurate shorthand for the capacity to suffer and/or experience enjoyment) is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others. To mark this boundary by some other characteristic like intelligence or rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary manner. Why not choose some other characteristic, like skin color?

The racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race The sexist violates the principle of equality by favoring the interests of his own sex. Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to over ride the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.

The people who profit by exploiting large numbers of animals do not need our approval. They need our money. The purchase of the corpses of the animals they rear is the only support the factory farmers ask from the public. They will use intensive methods as long as they continue to receive this support; they will have the resources needed to fight reform politically; and they will be able to defend thcmselvcs against criticism with the reply that they are only providing the public with what it wants

Hence the need for each one of us to stop buying the produce of modern animal farming - even if we are not convinced that it would be wrong to eat animals that have lived pleasantly and died painlessly. Vegetarianism is a form of boycott. For most vegetarians the boycott is a permanent one, since once they have broken away from flesh-eating habits they can no longer approve of slaughtering animals in order to satisfy the trivial desires of their palates. But the moral obligation to boycott the meat available in butcher shops and supermarkets is just as inescapable for those who disapprove only of inflicting suffering, and not of killing. In recent years Americans have boycotted lettuce and grapes because the system under which those particular lettuces and grapes had been produced exploited farm laborers, not because lettuce and grapes can never be produced without exploitation. The same line of reasoning leads to boycotting meat. Until we boycott meat we are, each one of us, contributing to the continued existence, prosperity, and growth of factory farming and all the other cruel practices used in rearing animals for food.

"The question is not, can they reason? nor,
can they talk? but, can they suffer?"
Jeremy Bentham"

(Read more HERE and HERE.)


Bibliography:

Is Our Changing Definition of Death for the Better?

The Sanctity of Life

A brief FAQ detailing his more major philosophical concerns.)

-------

I am a Vegan Baking Whore (And Proud of It)

I don't normally post recipes here, but I've been cooking (and in particular BAKING--which is a new adventure on my end since I've never been much into baking) a ton since I done up and went vegan, so I'm feeling compelled to share. And YOU WILL LOVE ME FOR IT. Oh yes. Or you will be destroyed.

Things That I've Cooked Recently:

• A wicked good and spicy corn chowder from Vegan With a Vengeance. So easy. So tasty. So fricking healthy for you that it should be jailed for indecency. Or something like that. In food-jail of course. Because yeah, that exists.



• A broccoli-spinach vegan quiche from The Peta Celebrity Cookbook--I even made the crust myself (Look, Ma, no hands!) and it was fricking good, if I may say so.



• My tried and true Stuffed Peppers (stuffed with portabellas, wild rice, and those little tiny orzo noodley things) from the big white vegetarian cookbook that's sitting on my shelf at home and whose title is eluding me (but I know my friend Shanna bought it for me back in the day and I done stoled it from my ex- when we broke up so now it is mine mine mine and thank god because I could not live without you, oh stuffed pepper recipe).

Things That I've Baked Recently:

• Vegan chocolate chip cookies--I remember not from which or where nor who or why. I am useful like that.



• A Fat-Free Vegan Banana Bread (with semi-sweet chocolate chips and sunflower seeds)--this turned out a bit moister than I would've liked. And the semi-sweet chocolate chips tasted a bit too bitter for my taste. Whine whine whine.



• Corn bread from The Lantern Vegan Family Cookbook. Num diddly num.



• Amazingly good peanut-butter and oatmeal cookies from Vegan With a Vengeance--I wish I could track down the recipe for you all on-line because they were INCREDIBLE. If you cook anything that I've mentioned here, let it be this one--it will be like a week-long orgasm. However, I suspect that they could very easily kill you (the cookies, not the week-long orgasms)--I've never put so much oil and peanut butter into one recipe. I made them for my friend D for his b-day, and I actually felt obligated to order him not to eat too many in one sitting, they are THAT unhealthy. They are addictive too--I found myself chowing on multiple reject cookies all week from my fridge and was both happy and sad to see the last one go. They are super-soft and super-gooey and super-fricking-peanutbuttery. And I could just eat mounds and mounds of the uncooked dough. And now I just keep craving them *ALL* the time, mostly because for some reason, many items in my house smell exactly like them, including my cat.



• A vegan yellow cake with butter-cream frosting from La Dolce Vegan!--the cake was so fucking dense that it should've been called "bread" by the recipe-makers, but the frosting was gloriously rich and yummy and heart-attack inducing (I've never put so much butter into one item).



• The world's worst raspberry-swirl brownies you ever did taste:
  
  E's mom was ever so sweet and got me the fantastic dessert-filled cookbook Sinfully Vegan: Over 140 Decadent Desserts to Satisfy Every Vegan's Sweet Tooth so I eagerly jumped in to try out their raspberry-swirl brownies (replete with tons of glorious cocoa and raspberry preserves). Before I get any further, let me just make it clear that I suck and not the book. Not like you couldn't've figured that out anyways. But yes, I am high in suckage. Anyways, these brownies looked glorious going in (and man was the raw batter good to wolf down) and they looked glorious coming out. And they tasted glorious in their warm gooey goodness as I tried not to burn my tongue. But come the next morning, they were stiff and rubbery as a car tire. I suspect this is not the fault of the recipe, but the fault of The Fear that Accompanies Vegan Baking--this fear is overcooking/undercooking items. Many vegan bakery items actually have to firm up outside of the oven as part of the cooking process, so it is often incredibly difficult (especially with cookies) to tell when it is done--many times it'll feel squishy as shit and seem completely undercooked but if you leave it in due to The Fear That Accompanies Vegan Baking, you will overcook. I suspect I did exactly that with the brownies, partially because I also doubled the recipe and cooked them in a larger pan, so I was worried that they should be baked longer and overcompensated on the baking time. The rubberiness may also partially be due to a lack of eggs. But one cannot be quite sure. Damn you though, you weird binding ovals from hell!



• And most recently, beer cookies! Who'da thunk it. These are by no means the most amazing thing I've ever baked--they come out light and squishy and sweet but aren't knock-your-socks-off--but hell, they're a lot of fun to make, mostly because a batch only requires about 3/4 of a beer, so you'll end up dancing around your apartment while you bake, downing the excess in your bottles so as *not to be wasteful* ahem yes that's the reason. *AND* they were incidentally vegan (as in, I was roaming aimlessly looking at recipes and stumbled across these babies on a non-vegan website)--alls you gotta do is use some vegan beer in the recipe, and your vegan friends will love ya.
  
  These yielded a tiny bit shy of 2 dozen cookies.
  
  INGREDIENTS:
  2 cups all-purpose flour
  1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  1/2 cup packed vegan brown sugar
  1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  1/2 cup vegan butter (I think I used Soy Garden brand)
  1 1/4 cups room temperature beer (When I baked these cookies most recently, I used their Holy Moses beer (which is my favorite beer of the moment--god bless you, coriander)--for more vegan beers checkHERE)
  1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  DIRECTIONS:
  1. Cream together the butter or margarine and the brown sugar. Cut in flour, baking soda and spice.
  2. Blend in beer slowly to form a soft dough.
  3. Drop by teaspoonfuls and top with a walnut piece.
  4. Bake 12-15 minutes at a 350 degree F (175 degrees C) oven until lightly brown. Cool one minute on cookie sheet and remove to wire rack.
  
  (from All Recipes.com)
  
  The cookies were nicely squishy (which I like in a cookie) and gave you potent enough beer breath that it had the added amusement of making everyone at work smell like they'd just dragged themselves out of an awake-through-the-morning drinking binge. When I have some spare cash, my goal is to pick up a 12-pack of Great Lakes Brewing Co. beer (with it's 4-different beer assortment) and try out these cookies with each of the beers. I also intend to tamper with the recipe some so that they're a bit more flavorful and to turn them into KILLER beer cookies that will immediately get me laid.


And that's all I can think of. Now run along and pick up Vegan With a Vengeance and make some of them there PB-Oatmeal cookies. Better than crack, better than winning the lottery, better than that one-night-stand you just woke up from to blearily read this blog. Get ye.

-------

Unable to Think of a Title That Isn't Just a Lame Play on Words That Will Cause You to Groan and Hate Me

So I caved on Friday and succumbed to the St. Pattie's Day demi-gods, despite my uncomfortability with large crowds (and my even bigger uncomfortability with large DRUNKEN crowds). And I actually had a rip-roaring good time, shock of all shocks.

Apparently it was meant to be, because cruising through downtown only minutes after the parade let up, I managed to find a fricking METERED parking space on E. 9th, only about a block or so from pretty much any bar activities a person might wanna partake in. And then the lovely Ms. Mo managed to get me in to Flannery's for free (which also included me getting to line-jump as though I were some big-name supah-star). And then some random bead guy paid $10 to get me into the armory later in the afternoon without even telling me (so I got to hear those magical words--"You, yeah you--you're already paid for").

I drank me some good booze, had me some good conversations, hugged me some jolly drunken fellows and ladies, and got to wear lame-ass four-leaf-clover antennas.

All in all, I was surprised because what could've been a drunken mess (and maybe eventually was) felt more like a huge city-wide feeling of cheer and cameraderie that I was completely not expecting and haven't ever really felt in Cleveland before. It was nice, and I suspect I'll be heading back next year as well.

Oh, and just for the record, you will be happy to know that apparently guys *DO* make passes at girls who wear glasses. (Bizarrely, "those are fucking great glasses" was the most frequent compliment I received from flirtatious guys--apparently it ain't all about the tits, babies.)

-------

Wow. I Suck.

Wow. I made the worst brownies ever last night. And I brought them into work and offered them up to folks. I don't know if I should be grinning for having tortured co-workers with them or I should be worried that they will never trust anything I make ever again. I just ate one right now and it was like trying to rip through a piece of tire with my teeth. Raspberry tire, but tire nonetheless.

I swear to ye co-workers who read my blog, THEY TASTED GOOD LAST NIGHT WHEN THEY WERE FRESH FROM THE OVEN. They also didn't have the bouncing capacity of a super-ball.

They were fun to bake though and entailed dancing around my kitchen with raspberry gunk and chocolate smudged all over my hands while I sang at the top of my lungs to a very kick-ass Peppermint mix and my cats stared at me in horror (which they do every time I either sing or dance--apparently they are snooty and appalled by my lack of talent).

Note to self: Stop sucking.

-------

Things That I Miss

Last night, when I was standing in the shower, I got to thinking about how many things I really fucking miss in my life.

2:18 pm

• How it was so special to stay out and play past dark.


• Dynamite magazine, Weird Worlds magazine, and Sassy magazine.


• Colored ice cream cones.


• My grandma's chicken nuggets and biscuits.


• Recording mixed tapes from songs on the radio--waiting forever to hear that *one specific song* so you could record it.


• Maniacally flinging pool balls at each other on my neighbor's pool table.


• My parents shouting "around the world!" when we were eating ice cream cones (which was the secret code that your cone was dripping and you needed to lick "around the world" before it got all over your hands).


• Those bathtub crayons.


• The special days my dad brought me a kit-kat home from work.


• Sitting outside in the freezing cold, reading a book in the igloo we built in the backyard.


• Playing the book-reading games at the library.


• Choose Your Own Adventures books.


• Getting to go to the library and then coming home to scour my books while I sat on the couch with legs too short to reach the ground.


• The aftermath of sunburns, and the lack of skin-cancer knowledge attached to them.


• The hideous hideous fashion of the 80's.


• Wearing crooked side ponytails.


• Peel-off nail polish.


• Unicorn collectibles.


• The trouble pop-o-matic bubble.


• The smell of crayons and gluing crayon shavings onto paper for art.


• Getting sticky hands.

8:29 am:

• Running down the sidewalk full-speed in bare feet.


• Falling and scraping up my knees.


• Getting a meticulously crafted basket of strawberry-shaped pieces of bubble gum packaged in a green strawberry basket which I ate ever so slowly so as to delay the pleasure of them as long as possible.


• Tying one end of the jump rope into the fence so you could skip rope with only two of you around.


• Waking up eagerly on summer mornings to find brown-wrapped packages or magazines left on the piano with my name scrawled across them in stinky permanent black marker.


• Riding bikes barefoot after it rained.


• Sneaking off to wander up to McDonald's with my best friend.


• Cherry coca-cola slushies from K-Mart.


• The feeling of my tongue working its way around a loose tooth.


• Being afraid of the attics.


• Our hideous kitchen wallpaper.


• Imagination and making things out of nothing.


• My barbie pool complete with functional shower.


• The entertainment of kiddie pools.


• The way the cold marble of the aquatic-animal-shaped fountains at the kiddie pool in our neighborhood slapped icily at your thighs as you climbed around on them; shooting the fountain streams at your friends by pressing your fingers carefully over the holes.


• My wobbly 1970's-looking first three-speed green bicycle.


• Hula-hoops.


• Setting up the presidents on their styrofoam platform at my grandma's house.


• Climbing my grandma's tree.


• Stopping at the gas station on my walk home from school to buy Big Chew and Garbage Pail Kids cards.


• The way it felt to climb in between clean sheets after a bath on a hot summer night after spending all day running around outside.


• Chasing lightning bugs around the back yard with bare feet in the cold-dusk grass.


• Peanut-butter and graham crackers when I got home from school.


• Making fake "braces" by pressing bubble gum awkwardly over your teeth and then walking around talking uncomfortably because of the gum.


• Playing waiter with Annie's mom's serving platter.


• Trying out those first swear-words in front of Super Mario Bros. at my friend's house.


• Spud.


• Freeze tag and tv tag.


• Having a face-painting booth on the sidewalk instead of your typical lemonade stand.


• The intense fear that came with playing Concentration.


• The old record player that would give us a slight electrical shock whenever we went to use it.


• 21 Jump Street.


• Thinking that my parents were strange because they had a piece of shit in a box in the basement (which I later found out was a rubber piece of shit, which really didn't make it that much less strange).


• The weight of my purse from the rolls of quarters my grandma would secretly slip us as a treat.


• The homemade Sit n' Spin that my friend's father made us which was really just two very large tiles held together loosely in the middle with no pole coming up to hold on to, resulting in large chunks of knuckles lost to spinning around feverishly with our hands gripping the top tile which never succeeded in keeping us on the damn thing for more than a minute or two.


• Rollerskating on the cement floor in my best friend's basement.


• Sleep-over dance parties.


• Not feeling compelled to brush my hair.

-------

Fluffy Bunnies! Rainbows!

You ever have one of those days where no matter *what* you say, it ends up making you sound like a complete and total bitch? Like you could say, "Puppies! Pink hearts! Love! Heart! Love! You are pretty! You are love! Pretty pretty love and puppies!" but somehow it would *still* end up coming out all distorted and make you sound like a mean-spirited ho-bag?

Yeah, this be one of those days.

You are love! Pretty pretty love and puppies!

*Sigh*

-------

Middle School Flashback

I've been listening to really old mixed tapes while doing my evening driving lately.

Yesterday's was a nauseating gem of diversity.

A cross-cut of content for your entertainment (not the full tracklist):

Iron Butterfly's 20 minute long "Inna Gadda Da Vida"

XTC's "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead"

Monie Love's "It's a Shame (My Sister)" (I still heart this song--watch the video HERE)

John Lennon's "Imagine"

That fricking "Life is a Highway" song which makes my skin crawl with a big big hate

Three fricking songs from Les Miserables

Digital Underground's "Freaks of the Industry" which I could not stop laughing at because the lyrics are so nasty for my middle-school self

Some nauseating Phil Collins song

A whole bunch of songs from Wayne's World (including "Dreamweaver" and the RHCP's "Sikamikanico"--I'm pretty certain I also have Alice Cooper's "Feed My Frankenstein" on another mix somewhere as well)

EMF's "Unbelievable"

That "Hello Cruel World" song (which I just realized is by the Eels--rock on with your bad-ass middle-school self, LL!)

Poi Dog Pondering's "Be the One" (I still absolutely love this song)

And of course, the obligatory version of "Creep" by Radiohead

(which appears to be on pretty much every mix that I've made in the past 15 years)

-------

Even More Reasons to Heart Six Feet Under

"You've lived your life one way. I've lived mine another. The costs are different. But I can tell you this. Every day when I wake up, I'm glad that I'm alive. And if people don't like the way I've done things, that's their business."

--George ("Falling into Place," Season 4)

-------

Yet Another Commercial to Hate

So my biggest beef with the Oscar's this year (and I controlled myself and waited until today to blog about it, in keeping with the whole "Blog Against Sexism" day thang) was the preponderance of ridiculously sexist commercials. It was enough to make a nice quiet nonconfrontational girl like me hork all over the place.

The most disturbing of the bunch was that motherf-ing commercial for Tab Energy Drink. (Good lord, the website is equally nauseating. You can watch the commercial in disgust if you click on the media link found HERE.)



Apparently the new Tab Energy Drink is a low-cal energy drink being marketed towards women with its nauseatingly pink exterior and promise of low calories.

According to the commercial, it takes a lot of energy for women to:

Commute in 3-inch heels

Accessorize

Defy Gravity

Be daring

Apparently these are the various "diverse" activities of women-on-the-go: a woman trying to seduce her pool-boy ("accessorizing"), a woman running through the streets in a short short skirt and heels, another woman literally jiggling around her cleavage while she attempts to hike her tits up to chin level ("defying gravity"), another woman hairspraying her hair. Tab offers us women, and I quote, a "fuel to be fabulous...because women need a different kind of energy."

Is it just me, or does anyone else find this ridiculously offensive and sexist? Last time I checked, I could use some energy for, say, getting through my work day in one piece, spending hours educating myself, arguing the shit out of any and every topic on my plate, giving people crap for being sexist douchebags, and dealing with the sexist bullshit stereotypes that commercials like Tab's are feeding the population.

If you as a woman (or as a man, for that matter) DON'T find this commercial offensive, then goddamn--something's up with you. This commercial presents women as nothing more than two-dimensional objects whose main priority is to maintain their fuckability. Oh, and to lose weight--hence it being a DIET energy drink.

That's just fucked up.

Apparently, according to Tab, "fabulous" is "Style. Fashion. Grace. Ability. Success." According to the site, "These are all words to which we as women can relate, and words that we would probably use in defining the essence of being fabulous."

The words I'd use to define the essence of fabulous would consist of "twisting the nutsack," "Tab's bullshit stereotypes," and "until all the men who came up with this commercial are singing like castrati."

----------
*If you wanna email Coke and rip them a new one for being so goddamn sexist, drop by their feedback page HERE.

-------

This past weekend marked my first trip on a plane.

Yes, gasp in shock and all that.

-------

Reasons I'm Actually Kinda Happy That Crash Won Best Picture

1. It means that the Academy is not nearly as thumb-suckingly boring and predictable as I thought it was.

2. Despite the fact that I'm all about the movie Brokeback Mountain and will argue to the death that it's a good thing that it got made, Crash was definitely the far more interesting and complex (and well-crafted) of the two movies, especially in its examination of prejudice and social issues.

3. And most importantly, it allowed us to dodge the bullet that would've been Land of the Anxious Dog shouting "I told you so" and gloating for the 1,500th time.

-------

There is just something about bananas that still freaks me out.

-------

Newman, You Little Devil You!

I think the whole Newman's Own line rocks, so I'd never make fun. (He's pro-organic, he offers a ton of vegan foods, (including motherf-ing glorious chocolate), and he donates *ALL* his profits and royalties (post-taxes) to charitable purposes. I mean, how kick-ass is that?)

But I've just gotta say:

Paul Newman? A closeted S&M-er? You decide:

-------

Today...

I would like to make out with some of the Strokes. Not all of them necessarily. Maybe just two or three.

-------

Vegan Cats

So after much thought and research, I've decided not to force my vegan lifestyle upon my cats. I know I will get crap for this one way or the other, but I take solace in the fact that most of you folks who are gonna tell me "I'm not doing all I can" and "I'm not being consistent" are the same folks who, had I said I've decided that I AM going to make my cats eat vegan, would've told me it's wrong to force an "unnatural lifestyle upon them." Translation: either way I wouldn't've "won" with many of you. So suck it. ; ) Plus, if you are a meat-eater and *do* argue that I should be forcing them to eat vegan, realize that you arguing against your own lifestyle. So double suck it. =) And really, my vegan agenda shouldn't be one that I'm setting out on just to please other people anyways. That's not the point of it. I constantly have to remind myself of this when various meat-eating folks email me/inform me of various areas in which I'm failing in my "vegan duties." Yes, there are probably things that I'm still using/consuming that I'm not aware are not vegan. So much of the stuff we use to function on a daily basis isn't vegan (paints, tires, etc.). There is really no way to eliminate EVERYTHING animal-product-related from one's lifestyle. And even once you think you have, you're bound to find out something NEW you didn't realize wasn't vegan. It's not a matter of living up to the picky-ooney standards of folks who aren't making any effort in the first place. It's a matter of doing as much as possible. And it's a matter of educating yourself as much as you can on the subject matter and then using this knowledge to make the most informed decisions possible. It's a matter of doing the best you can do (in informing yourself on the matter and making knowledgeable decisions) and realizing that this best *is* helping out, and that perfection is NEVER attainable anyways, so better some than none.

But why not vegan though? That's the question. I've never been one to think that it's ok to eat fish but it's not ok to eat chicken and beef, simply because of the size of the animal and its more complex nervous system (and alleged differences when it comes to their capacity for suffering). To me, saying that it's ok to eat one but not another is its own weird world of speciesism. And if there's even the slight chance that you *might* be causing an animal to suffer, why take the chance? Maybe fish don't experience pain the same way that cows do, but I am not a fish so I do not know how they experience pain. And not eating fish is no skin off my back, so why take the chance that I could be causing them to suffer when I could just not eat them and eliminate that possibility? And yet, I've decided that I am going to continue to let my cats eat meat. And I've decided to draw lines on what they will be eating in the exact same way which I just criticized. My cats currently eat and will continue to eat moist food that is made solely of fish and vegetable products (and treats of the same), and they eat a dry food that is organic and made from free-range chickens and vegetable products (Pet Promise).

But why? Why why why? Why not feed them a vegan diet and stay consistent with my own moral ideals?

If I had a dog, I think I would probably feed it a vegan diet. Dogs are omnivorous. This makes it much easier to switch them over to a vegan lifestyle. Cats, however, are carnivorous:

"There is a huge difference in dogs’ and cats’ physiological, behavioural and dietary habits. Dogs evolved from an omnivorous species while cats evolved from a strictly carnivorous diet. The shorter gastrointestinal tract of the cat results in a rapid rate of passage, and therefore lower digestibility, of foods than the dog. Because of this there are many very special needs in a cat’s diet.

These differences are the cat’s unique energy and glucose metabolism, higher protein requirement, need for the amino acid, taurine, sensitivity to a deficiency of the amino acid, arginine, inability to convert beta-carotene to active vitamin A, the inability to convert the amino acid, tryptophan, to niacin and the inability to convert linoleic acid effectively into essential long-chain fatty acids. This is why many vets and nutritionists say cats cannot be vegan but dogs can if given a nutritionally balanced diet."{1}

There are vegan cat food sites that, while not *encouraging* a diet of meat for cats, are actually telling people that it may be necessary to do so (read more at vegancats.com). Why is this? Because cats need a daily dietary source of the amino acid taurine (which is naturally occuring in animal tissues). Deficiency can lead to degenerative heart disease and blindness, among various other things.{2}{3} Vegan cat foods often contain synthetic sources of taurine, but most places warn about it since a lack of taurine in a cat's diet can lead to horrible effects (as mentioned above). Unlike dogs and human beings, apparently cats also cannot synthesize Vitamin A from plant sources, and a deficiency in this area can cause hearing and sight problems.{2}{3}{4} Most vegan cat food places also warn that vegan cats need to be closely monitored--mainly for urinary tract problems due to a difference between their processing of meat/vegetable proteins. So it is recommended that a vegan cat food diet should include a) as much water as possible, b) added enzymes pH in every meal, and c) having your cats urine pH tested regularly to make sure that they are not suffering from urinary tract problems.{4} If a vegan cat starts having crystals form in the urine, then you also need to start supplementing their diet with methionine as well.{4} All this seems to me to add up to a very unnatural lifestyle for a cat. If you need to constantly and closely monitor your pets for health problems because of their diet and if the risks seem to highly outweigh the benefits, I find myself hard-pressed to want to force such a diet upon my pets.

Many vegans argue that cats are being forced to live an unnatural lifestyle anyways (indoor cats are kept indoors all day, they are forced to eat processed meat, etc.) and so since they are already living an unnatural lifestyle, it doesn't make a big difference to make it more unnatural by hoisting a vegan diet on them. This logic doesn't make sense to me, and I don't find it to be a justifiable reason to make a cat's diet even more unnatural. If an animal is suffering, you wouldn't say, "Ah well. The animal is already suffering, so that makes it ok to cause them to suffer more." Vegans would find this attitude detestable. You'd say, "Well, this animal is suffering already. So how can we reduce this suffering rather than increase it more?" This same logic seems to me to apply to a domestic animal's way of living as well--keeping an animal as a pet is perhaps an unnatural thing. But that doesn't mean that, ah well, since it's already unnatural, why not make it more unnatural? It means that, yes, it *is* an unnatural thing, but knowing that, how can we keep it as natural as possible? And to me, feeding an animal a diet that is far-removed from their natural carnivorous lifestyle to the point that they need to be monitored for the sake of their own safety is not keeping their lifestyle as natural as possible. Of course processed meat is not the healthiest and most ideal of meats. But to me, it seems to be more natural than no meat at all.

Vegans may also argue that I am promoting one type of animal's suffering over another's--a farm animal's over a domestic animal's. And yes, perhaps they are right. But I see this decision as a no-win situation--no matter what decision I make, there is the potential for suffering. And so, yes, I am choosing to safeguard the well-being of these two specific animals over the well-being of various non-specific animals. Perhaps this is not right, but in a no-win situation, it is (to me) the lesser of two evils. The well-being of these two specific animals (my cats) has been entrusted to me, and they are my immediate responsibility, so in a situation where there is the potential for suffering no matter what choice I make, it is difficult for me *not* to choose to reduce their suffering over another animal's. If you had to choose between investing money in reducing the suffering of some child you didn't know in, say, India and investing the money to reduce the suffering of your own children, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who would argue that doing the former makes the most sense. In fact, the majority of people would probably argue that it is your responsibility and duty to choose the latter. Your own children are *your* responsibility, and you'd be neglecting your duties to them by placing the well-being of others' over their own.

This is how I see it at least.

I completely understand the logic behind a vegan's choice to raise their pets vegan. It is consistent with their philosophical outlook on factory-farming/meat consumption. It is also viewed by some folks as healthier for domestic animals. And so if that's the conclusion you've reached after educating yourself on the matter, it makes sense to me and I have little problem with that, since it seems to me to be a no-win situation regardless. But based on research and much thought, it is not something I want to force upon my cats. This is an ethical choice that I've made which many vegans (and many meat-eaters perhaps) will disagree with me on. It is not a decision I am happy about. But it is an informed choice, and despite the fact that it is a choice that doesn't make me happy, it seems to be the less detrimental after weighing all the pros and cons.

And now you may commence to yell at me as you see fit. =)

----------
{1}http://www.veg-soc.org/html/articles/cats-dogs-go-vegan.html
{2}http://www.vegansociety.com/html/animals/care/cats/
{3}http://www.peta.org/factsheet/files/FactsheetDisplay.asp?ID=34
{4}http://www.vegancats.com/pages/1007/FAQ.htm#1070

-------