Tag: veganism

“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.

Source

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.

 

 

Veganism, Meatism and Freneticism

It’s a good day to weigh value systems and lifestyles.

Sounds judgmental, Bill. A waste of time and a waste of electrons. You know very well that we’re too busy and far too important to read your screed, yet you insist on inviting us to your frugal table. Why do that?

I don’t know.

ConsumeristVeganism

Freneticism. An active lifestyle, branded on gross national consumption — consumers playing a complacent role toward a dismal goal.

Michael Ende’s classic novel Momo explains it well. Ende knows his Zeitdieben (time thieves) — those functionaries  who siphon the productivity of persons more innocent, more gentle. Quite a fine book, if you have the time.

Do con artists ever have a hidden agenda? Just an idle question.

momo.zeitdiebe
from: Vegan Warrior Princesses Attack

May we remind you, Bill, there is more money in beef than in beets. Jobs from sea to befouled sea, that’s what we’re talking about. Filling waste-management positions, artery pharmaceutical rep salaries, butcheries and slaughterers, belly futurists, hide sellers, Boeuf Taco artisans.

Meatism: a lifestyle based on flesh and blood, unfertilized eggs, calf milk, buttered bacon, Snausages®  all nicely appointed on a dinner plate. Marketers know their play-books, how to drone a message into your psyche, how to grant you the illusion of independent thought —  you are the one doing the thinking. Something to manufacture a lasting crave, powerful enough to drive you from refrigerator and pantry to the supermarket and back. Where are the car keys? The 12-hour Energy Boosters®?

Consume, c o n s u m e, C O N S U M E, c o n s u m e, consume. 

The lab gals and guys have skills honed to fashion biochemical ions that stimulate taste receptors and simulate well-being. Palm oil fuels a munch crave. Be they chips or be they crisps — an open bag is an empty bag. Palm oil substitutes for hydrogenated oil, but threatens rainforests.

You’re a do-gooder and a poison-ivy hugger, Bill. Let us buy you an ivy salad. Our treat.

Buy another bag. And aren’t you clever now  — buy a bigger bag or two, or five. Buy ten bags and save ten dollars. The more you buy, the more you save.

Wow. Where are the car keys? The 12-hour Energy®?

A dinner plate is a wasteland, absent a meat entree to grace it, my friend. We did not evolve to nibble bunny salads and sip miso soup. Let us tell you about tired emaciated vegans. God made animals for us to domesticate and to eat. F-ing cows were not created in God’s image. We are not Bottom-headed — and we’re not bottom feeders. 

Of course.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

Vegans Threaten World Order!

News Headline: Vegans Threaten World Order!

Warning. This post is rated VV — violently vegan. Not suitable for…?

We’re getting weary of your salad-eating-vegan fare , Bill. Let’s make something clear. Veganism is a form of terrorism, do you know what that makes you?

 

 

vegan_vs_meat_eater
from The Snow Fairy

Do vegans threaten world order? Yes. World order implies the preservation of disorder — something Mayor Richard Daley uttered in 1968 with a memorable tongue slip:

“The police are not here to create disorder, they’re here to preserve disorder.”

Seventy billion kills per year implies disorder, in my mind at least. More on this in a minute.

Time for a few statistics. There are three times as many homo sapiens alive today as there were in 1947, when I personally joined the fray. What about fellow sentient creatures in factory friendly slaughter houses? Well, they suffer short brutal lives, but let’s call it inventory turnover. Why? Because one specie values them for their flesh, fur and hide. Consumers love everything about them. A snapshot census for your statistical curiosity: seven billion of one specie consume seventy billion fellow sentient creatures, annually

We like fine Corinthian leather and we like the smell of bacon in the morning, jellied gasoline, while we’re at it (ha ha. We made a funny). Love it or leave it, my friend. Get with the program before we body-slam you.

“Smart leather fashions are arriving just in time for your busy Summer.”

Who gives the thumbs up or thumbs down? Private and personal shoppers in the marketplace do, aisle by aisle by aisle: does the nutrition label of that item you’re tossing into the shopping cart contain body parts or body-part byproducts? When the barcode is read a replenishment order automatically issues. Death by scan.

grill-sergeant-apron-outdoors

Celebrate your heritage by firing up the barbie and wearing a meaty heritage on your apron (the one with the funny soundbites).

Holidays here march on. They mark successive memories of war or metaphors for war. Remember Hamburger Hill while enjoying ground-bovines. Equate patriotic soundbites with a craving for cheeseburgers while you sit on a hill with buns around sizzling bovines and tubed slaughter of befouled fowl, cow and cowering pig. Call it a hot dog memory.

If you like the seventy million so much, why don’t you join them. I hear they’re hiring in Meatland, Misery, if you’re man enough. Capiche?

Thanks for reading.

Crohn’s and Diet — What gives?

A kind reader’s comment catalyzed my thought process to inspire this post. Seriously. My readers are wondrous alchemists that way 🙂

Crohn’s and Diet — What gives?

diet-loses-their-minds

Curiously enough, I need not reset the year on my time-machine dashboard. We’ve recently visited curious stuff in 1975, but this time I won’t rattle on about Singer minicomputers. This time-travel travelogue concerns a close encounter at the shore of the river Styx at age 27.

The vacuum tubes in my time machine are powered by  rearranging electrons. This permits movement through time, according to a red-herring theory concocted one day while waiting on a bus to Eureka. I’ve heard that one theory is as good as another.

I’ve discovered an intriguing tattoo inspired by experience with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) — something quite striking IMO.

ibd.inspired.tat

 

Sorry, but we suspect you’re just belly-aching, Bill. We’ve heard that Crohn’s is all in your mind. For the record, would you be nice and admit that?

No.

I visited my doctor on a Friday afternoon —there was unrelenting fever and stomach pain. The pain and fever were still there on Monday morning — so my doctor, being the gullible type,  told me to get my guts to the emergency room. They assigned the nearest available surgeon, one who knew how to remove several yards of intestine. The surgeon was not known for his bedside manner — he informed me that I’d brought the disease on myself by worrying too much. His advice: stop worrying and it will go away — QED.

Bill, you’ve simply become more gutless.

I guess so.

Let’s shove some electrons in the other direction: to 1978. Just a simple corollary if you will. Time is straight-forward stuff. It has a past, a present and a hypothetical future.

This time ’round I had the same Crohn’s flare up symptoms, but something unusual caught my eye while pissing in the pot — gases and solids came out with the liquid. It seems that a fistula (a tunnel) grew from an intestinal wall and connected with my bladder, thereby compromising my urinary tract.

In other words, Bill, you decided to strain the nation’s provisional health care system AGAIN. Had you listened to the wise advice of that first surgeon and changed you state of mind…instead you became ever more gutless.

This time an excellent team of surgeons were available to perform simultaneous intestinal and bladder operations. I spent the following nine weeks in a hospital bed, weaning off Prednisone by eating popsicles three times a day.  Hyperalimentation was a new technique invented by Dr. Stanley Dudrick. A tube was inserted near my right collar bone, through a vein and into my heart. Simple dumping into veins would clog immediately My weight before the hyper-A was 51 kg. Under hyper-A resulted in a weight gain of 454 gram per day.

erase.the.dividing.line

After a surgery for removal of some more intestine, and an attempt to reconnect healthy tissue to healthy tissue, I woke up with a colostomy — it reminds me of that gentle expression “We’re going to cut you a new asshole” ; in other words, I eliminated solid waste when the excrement reached that rectal alternative. The takeaway: two weeks after that surgery I was back at work and regaining strength.

We do like that part about the rectal alternative, but we do not approve of your language. Just trying to keep things civil here. You’re not very nice, are you?

Junk food is still food

I encountered that chunk of idiocy while researching this post.

Well, you got to die of something

Sadly, nutrition does not interest most physicians. There are head-shaking doctors who rail against vegan patients that have the temerity to answer a questionnaire with an honest response.

you.are.what.you.eat

It’s very much left to personal choice, and what is called dietary freedom. I suggest this caveat — you’re bucking trillion-dollar industries when you question the consumption of sentient-animals.

You are told that malabsorption results in low B-12 levels, that the most effective solution is cow consumption — the more the better. Bon appetit.

There is not much funding available for the promotion of vegan diets. Following the money leads you to profitable enterprises — a trillion dollars is not chump change.

vegan.world.jpg

When I finally realized that cheese, dairy and eggs meant both bad karma and bad health, my health became much better. Perhaps it’s the positive influence of all my kind readers :-).

Diet is only considered if there is a handy pharmaceutical prescription to address it — a little special remuneration in back pockets perhaps, provided by the nattily dressed and manicured, not to mention Happy. HAPPY. H A P P Y Big Pharm reps.

 

Thanks for reading.