Category: vegan

The Green Sheep in the Family

Herewith a set of considerations introduced more than four year ago. It is, therefore, well-neigh time to tie a few strings in the midst of many threads. Encouragement  from the inimitable Katrina of New Zealand.

A Bold Woman who has brought us a grand thought issued by David Bowie: Katrina.

“Aging is an extraordinary process, where you become free to be the person you always should have been.”

— David Bowie

Full disclosure first — I am the green sheep in the family: one of “those vegans” who have the temerity to speak up for “others” — more similar to us than not — who have no voice in determining their own destiny. Today I focus on the multiple billions  living in camps

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By this time next year 70 billion will have lived from birth to death in one of those facilities. Factory friendly farms.

Well there must be a good reason then.

Many reasons, but each is specious, spurious and tawdry. We deny inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to “the others.” Is that ethical behavior? Do animals volunteer their own destruction?

Bill, they outnumber us 10 to 1. So it looks like we are the ones endangered here. Do you call that fair? Let us tell you something. life isn’t fair and freedom fries aren’t free. It’s a wonder that any of us are left standing, actually. So it’s self-defense, us or them.

But can we talk about something a little less depressing?

Sorry. Let’s talk about optimal health, vibrance and well-being. In short: those habits that produce a healthy body. There are many ways to become ill: some involve luck, some are viral/bacterial, some are self-induced. I’ve tried many ill-advised styles of life.

Vegan protein icons

To quote my own father “I would rather be rich and healthy than sick and poor.”

Majority rule then. You vegans comprise 3% of the eating public. Why force bunny-salads down our throats? We are not geese. We are designed to eat meat. Some call it stewardship in a dominion over all life. What’s wrong with being top dog? Beats low dog.

3% of human eaters are vegan, 3% of human scientists deny climate-change, 3% is a good guess at the percentage of lifeforms that would survive an extinction event — asteroidal, nuclear or climatological.

Detox is tough because meat is a powerful addiction that is socially acceptable and culturally sanctioned. Secreting toxins is wearying — so is withdrawal from other addicting chemicals. We are living and breathing chemical factories, walking bags of chemicals.

Some very good news: craving for meat and meat byproducts metamorphoses into revulsion.

Why are you vegans always so negative?

We aren’t. And being a green sheep is a very good thing.

Thanks for reading.

Veganism vs. Cannibalism

There comes a time — quite often actually — when a reader’s “like” inspires me to craft a post from a comment.

Bill, you have a highly overdeveloped sense of your own importance. Is that not a superfluous sentence you’ve just written?

As a vegan, I join with non-such at a restaurant, open the menu and bite my (own) tongue at the overwhelming quantity of non-vegan fare that tastelessly adorns the menu — beef tongue is but one. Hey, why is tongue not among the lurid photographs of dismemberment, decapitation, mutilation and third-degree burns?

Vegetarian_Dating

Wonder no more my friend, you do exactly the same thing with produce — dead on arrival at the supermarket.

Tongue bite: What is the difference between cannibalism, eating body parts from a fellow specie, and consumption of any other highly evolved sentient creature? “Meat” cuts come from an animal with a highly developed central nervous system.

 

It is societally sanctioned. Call it an appetizer, entree, craving, tradition, custom, rite, blessing, a dominion-over thing. We’re talking about a nutritionally healthy and balanced diet. Humans are hard-wired…

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You see, it’s OK — those animal remains on our plate did not have four fingers and an opposing thumb, did they? Nor did they have vocal chords that produce words. So it’s OK, OK? It is OK, Bill. By the way, have you ever heard of the Natural Law? 

Look here, Bill. We’re getting a little tired of vegans trying to stuff kale down our throats all the time. Do you have any idea what that’s like? Do you? Well let me tell you about the Natural Law. It’s what gives us dominion over all the beasts. Scripture tells us that man has an immortal soul, all other animals have mortal souls.

If that isn’t enough to stop your insane raving, we have saved the very best argument for last, so please, if it’s not asking too much. Might you leave us these two words — CANINE TEETH.

canine.teeth

Thanks for reading.

First Job: 1965 — Steampunked

Well, it’s time to steampunk the time machine again. The one over there. The one in the corner. That’s mine.

Yes. The time has arrived to set its calendar function to a May day in North America — its 1,965th iterations of C.E or A.D. (your choice). My machine, its vacuum tubes warm to the challenge. I click the counter to 2000 + 17. Dial needles slowly sway forward as the tubes warm. I click the destination counter to 1900 + 65.

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Was it…

OK it was McDonalds. My parents dropped me off so I could put in an application while they did journey upon an errand. I shall never disclose the nature of their journey-called-errand because both joined the deceased quite some years before I started writing this account you now read, that is, unless you have already departed from this post.

Dear readers, we are now in that very McDonald parking lot. Do you see the car leaving this lot? Do you see me walking in at the back door?

OK. There was this guy at a corner desk. Did he tilt his head sidelong in my direction? Yes he did. How did you know?

mcdonalds.1965

That guy would utter something of portend the following day. You’ll read about that mere minutes from now. Allow me to repeat his very words, so that you may carefully note them:

“The uniforms are in the basement.”

By gosh there were uniforms in that nether room. And don them I did.

Bill, thank you for recalling the insignificant.

Upon donning the red and yellow vest, upon tilting the paper cap to a jaunty angle, I returned by the same set of stairs.

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And thus did I learn the milkshake-machine trade. A fellow tradesman was already at our shared station. Few customers demanded shakes that day. We simply stood there and took turns. My associate posed an inquiry:

“Why did they assign two tradesmen to this light-duty trade?”

“Why were we not assigned the task of squeezing mustard and ketchup for the grillsmen?”

Excuse our yawns, Bill. Uh, did you parents return from their quest?

Indeed. They returned. I do not think that they expected to find me in full uniform regalia, jaunty tilt and all. I do not.

steampunk.time.machineDay number two: co-shaker and I are on the job,  waiting for the ever infrequent shake order to arrive. In the mean while the manager and his assistant sat upon a picnic table outside. They watched us as we nervously stood, working hardly at faux cleaning.

Some short minutes thereafter the assistant manager of picnic-table note informed me that my application existed not, one person where only half-ass staffing sufficed.

application-mcDonalds

Fortunately I had a prepared response “uh, yeah. I haven’t done that part yet.” My second day was also my last — pink papers were drawn.

Next job to visit via steampunk: OS&D Clerk at Dance Freight Lines — connecting the north with the industrial south.

 

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Thanks for reading.

 

Veganarchism and Crows Head Soup

 

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Source

Peter Schreiner leads Crows Head Soup, a vegan touchstone. Peter brings strong vegan stew to the table  —  you’ll find poetry that skewers the skewering, photographs of hanging carcasses, the blood slurried into storage tanks for unspecified ends. Here is the post that inspired me to write this post: Lamentations of a Veganarchist.

That’s not very nice, Bill. Where are your manners? We don’t talk about hanging cows in polite company.

Sorry. I’ll get my mind right now.

Take the scenic route on your family vacation and remark on those grass-munching cows. Talk about the time a cow escaped from a truck and ended up on the highway. Remind all that it was adopted by a nice local family. Did you know that two turkeys are presidentially pardoned every year — that it adds up to a whole lot of birds over the years. Stop at a Dairy Queen to nod approvingly on its storied history.

Thank you for opting a little common decency, Bill.

Think death camps the size of Mordor behind the hills of rural America.

 

 

Each In-N-Out Burger consumed (or tossed) triggers a supply-chain decision. Breed another cow. How now.

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inventory = inventory minus one. When inventory reaches a certain level a replenishment order is issued.

Folly, arrogance and confusion gone long wrong.

Mr. Bill, do you have any idea how many blessed jobs depend on all those animal molecules you talk so long about? So long.

Do you know how many jobs are lost through extermination events of the planetary kind?

 

Family tours are never offered at “meat=processing facilities” but jobs are offered to the über marginalized in this economy.

The machinery grinds “resources” into hoppers for added value down the line. Marketplaces require workers’ willingness to press each shoulder to each wheel. From hopper to shopper — a lifestyle that assigns each party a horror, the insatiable appetite for more “resources”, more uses for each mighty molecule. 

What is the nature of evolution? Species developed over several billion years result in predators and prey surviving in a delicate balance, absent the actions of a single specie hellbent on tipping the scale. If you are not a human, or not a specie domesticated by humans, you thrive and perish at the razor edge. 

Meat_Atlas_2014_subsidies_animal_products
Direct Subsidies for Animal Products and Feed

Enter the indifferent world of commerce — the scale-tippers. Tippers so cunningly successful that their own numbers increase by the billion and wild species are driven to extinction. Domesticated species are bred for extermination camps — the demands of the most insatiable homo sapiens require that the slaughter houses produce enough turnover in daily carcass units to make them economically viable processing centers in a modern society.

Thanks for reading.