Category: veganism

I Hear Ear Worms

Gradual hearing loss brings unexpected blessings: I shall name but two:

  1. An inability to overhear the conversations of strangers.
  2. An inability to hear programmed music in übermarkets.

Spongebob's_brain_in_earworm.

Lisa and I will be sitting at a table within earshot of others and I will be enjoying the still of an enveloping bubble — it’s like a meditation garden, monastery or babbling brook: a way around the babbling of maddening Babel. Couldn’t hear it if I squinted my ears.

Cut to the chase, Bill. Your annoying alliteration and meager metaphors test us to the teeth, they crawl into our craw, they bites our hands, they gnaws our feet.

Privacy without private spaces. Lisa will burst forth with OMGs and WTFFs and I’ve not a single clue to her consternation nor inspiration. By the bye, we’ll be a 25-year item next year, we’re now able to decipher misstated and unintended word misses and annoying affectations. We also assume the identities of avatars: German moose and Italian owl.

raccoonInvitesOwl

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Listen Bill, you are dancing to the tune of thin ice. Life is to be gotten on with, not sallied about in the figments of a forest, feeling the fauna. Get a grip and move on. We sincerely hope you get the help you need. 

Some years ago I packed my ears with sound deadeners to shop without agony. Such is the life of an agoraphobic tree-hugger. When I could hear proper my ear canals became desecrated by ear worms from worn tunes of outrageous decades, looping indefinitely. Gradual hearing loss now permits me to wander the aisles without mulling music lyrics and the likes, dislikes and “likes” of fellow shoppers.

Are you not also one of those annoying people who trundle about with a rücksack on your back, Bill? Do you deny this unfortunate character flaw?

I plead guilty with conviction and with impunity. A backpack permits right and left hands to page-flip a tome, pick up the ultimate stone or dead-head twigs along an arboral path. A pack on the back frees pockets, it supplies the only items necessary for a becoming existence: spare books, blank paper, full pens and what-the-nots.

I live in the land of the frenetic and the home of the Atlanta Braves (Atlanta was once the home of the Cherokee Nation), a left-handed vegan with a name at the tail of the alphabet, a card-carrying member of Jewish Voice for Peace (you do not have to be Judaic to join), a believer in the inalienable rights of all sentient beings and a speaker on the pompetous of love.

I leave this writing moment with a ponder. What reveals the following photograph from Houston Harvey? How might I convey the moment?

cleared.houston.shelves
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Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

“In Praise of Idleness” and Veganism

40 years ago I read Bertrand Russell’s “In Praise of Idleness,” an essay he published in 1932. The piece was already 40 years old when I got around to reading it — 40 years later I reread this essay, perhaps under visitation of some Jungian synchronicity. Reading it this morning allowed my imagination to stagger — where have I read a better statement on redressing an injustice: the theft of productivity gains? My tentative answer — “nowhere more succinctly.”

First of all : what is work? Work is of two kinds : 
first, altering the position of matter at or near the 
earth’s surface relative to other such matter ; 
second, telling other people to do so. The first kind 
is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant 
and highly paid. The second kind is capable of 
indefinite extension: there are not only those who 
give orders, but those who give advice as to what 
orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds 
of advice are given simultaneously by two organized 
bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill 
required for this kind of work is not knowledge of 
the subjects as to which advice is given, but know- 
ledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, 
i.e. of advertising.

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I’ve alluded to Russell’s essay “Nice People” several times now. Actually it’s becoming a commonplace theme here.

I checked out the marvelously titled “Why I am not a Christian” from a West German library in 1971 Giessen — the librarian was not, not, not in the least amused. Not.

Das ist Blödsinn. Totaler Blödsinn.

how.to.love.and.eat.animals

I took up my practice of living iconoclastically shortly (about ten minutes) after graduating from high school — I’d completed 12 years of mandatory Catholic education and needed to discover why free thinkers were so despised by non-freethinkers.

By my estimation vegans are free thinkers who believe that all sentient beings are fellow free thinkers, Genesis 1:26 notwithstanding. Being a vegan just may qualify you as iconoclast. Hold that thought a moment. I’ll be right back…

Hey, it does qualify you as iconoclast.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

I am convinced that veganism is the gentlest means for solving the ever unaddressed need for addressing global warming. It might even nip a certain extinction event in the bud: The Anthropocene. Is it possible that 7 billion homo sapiens consuming 70 billion animals (from fur to marrow) annually — a practice sanctioned by most religious institutions — might warrant more than a shrug?

Look here, Bill. Humans are created in the image of their maker. Read Genesis 1:26. ’nuff said.

Today’s bumper sticker suggestion:

Meatism kills. Veganism nourishes.

Was Venus once a lush planet? Are we preparing to become a one such once-lush planet?

Thanks for reading.

 

 

Iconoclasm and Veganarchism

This post is inspired by Peter Schreiner’s word of the day for 16 August 2017:

iconoclastic [ahy-kon-uh-klas-tik] adjective
1. attacking or ignoring cherished beliefs and long-held traditions, etc., as being based on error, superstition, or lack of creativity.
2. breaking or destroying images, especially those set up for religious veneration.

Speaking of Peter Schreiner, you’ll find him at Crows Head Soup. Despite the fowl allusion, it’s a gathering place for venting spleen. For some good spleen-venting I recommend 20,000 miles — it vents much spleen. Carefully note that no actual spleens were damaged in the writing of that post.

I say that it is better to vent a spleen than to consume a spleen belonging to an animal that does not wish to relinquish her spleen for some splendid table.

Veganarchism joins aspects of veganism and anarchism. It is a sharp representation of V and A.

veganarchism

You don’t have to tilt at windmills to be an iconoclast. One hears “Resistance is Futile.” But what is the alternative? How about peace, independence and leaving the planet better than it was when you showed up here?

Suggest to a meater that a vegan diet is one wallop of a good idea?  No, not in polite society. They may even suggest that a day in Genesis (1:26) had already given one species the right to decide the rights of all the other species . So you could say that it’s okay to eat any living thing as long as it’s inhuman.

greenland.fire

Homo sapiens are not particularly adept at thinking for themselves, for independent thought, for paying forward; however their proclivity for crying havoc and letting slip the dogs of war? Wow. Truly amazing, astonishing and awful.

Eat, drink, make merry and declare endless war. Who’s with me?

I would prefer not to.

As I write this a large series of fires, fueled by vegetation formerly locked in permafrost rage across the western shores of Greenland. The soot they produce is spreading out over white ice sheets. What happens when you wear a black shirt on a sunny day? A shirt of soot is warming a body of land that seems destined to cast off ice-blocks aplenty. So, what are we to do? Book cruise ships that promise to get your arse up close and personal to the floating blocks. Scale the ice-face and flaunt your mettle. Scurry to the top, stake your flag and sizzle some spleen steak!

primal.hog.port.melt
This is someting called a primal hog porkmelt (spleen), but it looks like canine éliminent to me — steaming even. Just reporting.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meat, Dairy, Ova and Addiction

Veganism is gentle joy.

But it’s not very manly, Bill

owl.breakfast

Public Service Announcement:

Refrain from drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco or consuming Fentanyl® if you are, or think you may be, pregnant — chemicals found in these products may poison the womb and its contents.

Meat, Dairy and Ova

Do baby Homo sapiens already become addicted to meat while in the womb? Is meat an addictive substance? Is it harmful for children and other living things?

Meat is addictive.

Meat is life.

A field-trip activity:

Write anarchical vegan-inspired statements on a T-shirt and get thee to the local Kroger Dupermarket. Warning: wearing T-shirts may result in sudden death and/or punctured tires.

Meat-Eaters to Vegans — Drop Dead!

Here is a loaded question: do vegans threaten world order?  Meat economies consume much land, they poison much air, they kill much marine life — they even supercharge extinction events. See Anthropocene.

 

anthro-graphic

What happens after each of those extinction events?

The planet still rotates on its axis, the planet still revolves around the sun.

Beings from five earlier extinctions lived from sunrise to sunset to sunrise to sunset…

Now a word from our sponsor:

Hey, what is that congealed substance that remains in the skillet after you’ve skilletized pig parts or spatuled blood-laden cow flesh? Does it clog a human consumer’s veins, arteries, heart and brain?

Just put bacon on it and chill. Life is short — throttle it.

I wonder if that stuff sticks in sewer pipes? Answer at Waste-Water Archives

FOG

Did you know that most doctors are meat-eaters?

What about cereal killers, Bill?

Carnivores have sharp teeth for some reason. Carnivores have short digestive tracts for some reason. There is a subtle difference between wild animals and domesticated animals for some reason.

It’s a matter of self-defense, we die or the cow dies, and we’re smarter than cows.

Thanks for reading