Morality Schmorality

Saturday night, when we were out with friends for Husband's birthday, we went to a sushi spot on Sunset. When all the couples were ordering rolls and slabs of dead fish and whatnot, they asked me what kind of sushi I liked. Husband chimed in and loudly said, "DON'T WORRY 'BOUT HER, SHE'S A VEGAN." Which sometimes you just want to keep on the down low because the mass public loves to have a confrontation about this subject. So the people at the table started to ask me why as I blushed demurely. Husband, who apparently was my mouthpiece for the night said, "It's not like she does it for moral reasons . . . " And the sentence trailed off into a light echo as I stared at him.

I quickly added, "Well, that is part of it; y'know, moral reasons. I mean, the killing bothers me. It's how they treat THEN kill them, that really bothers me. But it's mainly how contaminated I think all animal products are . . ." I thought, am I really going to be Debbie Downer at this dinner party right now? Somebody help me.

One dinner guest said, "Yeah, you're a vegan with a peacock purse."

WHAT THE FUCK -- attacking my purse? My fantastic 1950's clutch with the peacock feather decorating the front that I bought from EBay for $20? Is this necessary, to be so judgmental? This guy is going to point out the imperfections of my veganism as he stuffs his face with bottom-dwelling, shit-eating shrimp? It's a feather adorning the front, not the poor bird's carcass. These types always think they've gained a small victory when they point out you've failed at something that seems too hard for them. I said, "My mother (who was also a vegan) used to buy old fur-lined items at old ladies' garage sales and would declare, 'Someone has to care for them now.'"

But the dinner party was already thinking, "Mmmhmm. Vegan Schmegan."

Obviously what bothered me most was that Husband believes I'm a callus vegan. One only concerned with the health aspects of veganism and of course, that disgusting contamination thing that I'm neurotically paranoid about. Seriously . . . one of the (many) things I thought about when they were finally able to drain New Orleans was, Where is that water going? For God sake, no one eat the fish coming from the Gulf of Mexico and, fuck it, from the entire Atlantic.

I'm off the subject . . .I don't think my husband realizes how much this is a moral issue for me. That saddens me, and I wonder if I am not vocal enough. But any adjustment I make to my life comes from a lot of thought and is based in morality. Maybe I should tell Husband that. Or maybe I don't have to make any goddamn explanations for why I don't eat animals or why I wear conscientious make up (a lot of it, thank you) or why I want to take care of my pretty peacock purse.

Look Who's Mad

I worked with a lot of vegans at the health food store; cool kids either straightedge or not, tattoo'ed and interesting. And I'd say the primary reason that they were vegans was because of animal-rights issues. Here are some of their stale sayings and bumper sticker and tshirts and buttons:




"I Don't Eat Anything with a Face"
"Eat Beans Not Beings"
"Tofu - the other white meat"
"Beef - It's What's Rotting in Your Colon"
"Please Don't Eat the Animals."
"Baby Cows Drink Cow's Milk, Not Humans"

And there's a billion more that get progressively more preachy; shirts with tortured caged-animal photos and others that basically say you're a real asshole if you consider causing such terrible pain on the animal kingdom.

I'm not saying I don't agree with all of that to some degree -- why would I want to cause that kind of suffering-- but I'm saying it's not the primary reason that I personally am a vegan.

By far, the main reason I am a vegan is because -- and this is in part caused by my ever-increasing germaphobia -- I think meat products are disgustingly contaminated. It's horrible how they pen 'em up and immobilize and kill them and all that, yeah, yeah. . . but the filthy, horrendous conditions where animals are crammed together with festering bacteria, standing in their own shit, pumped with adrenaline as they sense their impending doom, and the malnutrition of them all and having to stand amongst their dead friends -- I'm getting a tshirt made up that says all that -- MAKES MY SKIN CRAWL. Don't get me started on pigs and salmonella-slimed foul fowl and filmy, coagulated cheese . . .

The second case of Mad Cow Disease was confirmed today. Did you see the infected cow that they showed on the 6'oclock news where it couldn't walk - it tried but couldn't? It disturbed my six year old so badly I had to talk her down. She was horrified. I scrambled, saying, "The cow is sick, baby." She asked with a traumatized face, "That's why he couldn't walk?" Shouldn't they warn you before they show that kind of stuff? The news did reassure us, however, that this infected cow was not slated for slaughter and I'm thinking it's because it couldn't walk up the goddamn ramp.

How badly do you think everyone wanted to keep this a secret? Especially as the U.S. is trying to lift a ban from buying American meat that Japan placed the last time we had a mad cow? I'm guessing badly. And I'm guessing that there are quite a few other secrets they have kept from us regarding the safety and sanitation of our food.

My friend Dan and I were trying to figure out why it was called Mad Cow. I said, "Don't be mad, cow, that you can't walk because we've penned you up in your own shit with a thousand cows in a 100-cow pen." Actually, Mad Cow just drives an infected person mad because it causes a rare neurological disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a maddening name for a disease, where "affected individuals may develop confusion, depression, behavioral changes, impaired vision, and/or impaired coordination, dementia, impairment of memory control, personality disintegration, agitation, restlessness, neuromuscular abnormalities, shock-like muscle spasms, slow involuntary writhing movements" then you get infections and die. HOLY SHIT. 150 people have died from this so far.

Looks like the animals have plotted a brilliant revenge - in a kamikaze, non-walking kind of way.

A Natural Cookie Monster

When I became a vegan in February (2005), I also gave up refined sugar and processed foods and I began buying foods as organic as possible. For the most part, I have really stuck to this. Sugar was/is a drug to me; an evil, wicked, back-stabbing, two-timing devil of a drug and it makes me so foul-mooded that my lip perpetually curls hatefully, and in those moments, I have no recollection as of why I feel that way. I call it Sugar Blackout. Other processed crap just perpetuates the cycle; cravings are never satisfied, you just eat until you're vomitous. Or is that just me? To me the most important health change during my Age of Veganism has been giving up the processed crap. In fact, if a gun were to my head and I were forced to choose between a piece of smelly, samonila-infested, fleshy grilled chicken or 3 ding dongs and/or 4 Krispy Kreme donuts, I would have to choose the gross chicken option. The chicken may nauseate me, but I know that on the crack donuts I will be a mean-ass ciznunt that hates life in a matter of a half hour.

With white refined sugar a thing of the past for me, I have explored a million new options for a sweet treat. And I've realized that no matter how many food groups I eliminate, I will still be able to find a great cookie. If I boiled my eating habits down to simply spinach and tofu only, I guarantee you, I would find a cookie made soley of those two things. What I'm trying to say is that even though I'm not a hateful bitch anymore, I am still severely addicted to cookies. I just alter the cookie to whatever restriction I place on myself. My ability to roll within the guidelines is astounding.

My first cookie love in my Vegan Age was Uncle Eddies Vegan Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. This cookie is a small coaster-sized orgasm. I once asked another lover of the Uncle Eddies how to curb the addiction to this piece of heaven. She said, "You have to eat so many that you literally can't ingest another for months." Unfortunately, I know exactly what she means. Here were the reasons I had to give up Uncle Eddies VPBCCC's: 1. I thought about them a good 15 hours a day. 2. They have approximately 17,000 calories in them, half of which come from peanut butter fat. 3. They are sweetened with organic evaporated cane juice. Now, doesn't "organic evaporated cane juice" sound au natural? It kinda is and it kinda isn't. I learned that this sweetener is a couple processes away from being good ol' white sugar. It's sugar with the minerals left in. But it's still sucrose which is the type of sugar that makes me crazy, makes my addiction well, addiction.

So, I narrowed my cookie selection to ones either malt barely sweetened or fruit juice sweetened. My new love is Michelle's Chocolate Chip cookies that are vegan and fruit sweetened. But I'm convinced a report will soon come out that these cookies have, all along, been laced with lard and pure corn syrup and pounds of white sugar. They are that good. They are beyond good. I saw a woman buying a bag once and I said, "I don't know if I can buy those any more because I just eat the whole bag." She said, "I freeze them and just eat one at a time." I immediately thought, "bitch." But I tried it. They tasted so good frozen, I ate the whole bag. FUCK ME. If I buy a bag of Michelle's now, I give them all out until there is only 2 left. The other cookies I will eat are Fabes Mini Chocolate Chip cookies which are pretty good, but not good enough to eat the whole package; precisely why I should really just buy those.

I read an article today declaring the Atkins, South Beach and Zone diets bullshit. They said their "diet" really worked though it was not really a diet. It said the key is -- and I'm not kidding --- Eat Less, Exercise More. And I immediately thought, Fuck you assholes. We're not morons. (Wait - are we?) On paper, eat less, exercise more is supposed to be so suprisingly simple that we, the masses, by god just . . .might . . .do . . .it. And I so plan to once I can find a way to squash the cookie addiction. Even Sesame Street has decided that the Cookie Monster has to cut down on so many cookies. I was so embarrassed. I used to think that the Cookie Monster was so my man. And now he has to announce that cookies are only a "sometimes" food. He's all, "Me love cookies. But me only eat them sometimes now." And I'm all, "Fuck you, Cookie Monster." And he's all, "Eat Less, Exercise More." And I'm all, "Fuck me, Cookie Monster."

Fun at Work

For a few months after The Holiday Gorge, I worked at a health food. I used to conduct my own experiments on the customers unbeknownst to them. I started out doing menial experiments, like, we sold these apples called Pink Ladies and many times when I placed the fruit on the scale they, especially men, liked to announce, "Pink Ladies." Then I started counting how many Pink Lady Buyers actually did this and it was a surprising amount. The second I told a coworker about this phenomena was the second people stopped announcing Pink Ladies! which disappointed me highly. Other experiments included guessing forms of payment before customers paid- like, was there a type of person that pays a certain way (there is, fyi). I tried to guess people's ages if they had to whip out their driver's license for check writing. It went on and on, in my mind.

My last experiment before I left the health food store seemed more meaningful. I tried to spy who looked the healthiest and then observed what they were buying. In this experiment, the first flaw was that there is a distinct difference, I noticed, between who looked healthiest and who looked hottest, as in a model-type or buff-dude look. The majority of very healthy types (as in those who buy the purest and most whole foods) were mainly, but not exclusively 1. Hippy Types (I smelled pacholi oil all day long which was surprising because I thought pacholi obsolete) and 2. Asians; from very little-english Asians to very americanized Asians. For the most part groups 1 & 2 have phenomenal skin and are much more ageless than anyone else who came in the store. But they were not necessarily "hot." For example, we had a famous nutritionist who had a radio show called The Truth About Nutrition who came in daily to get freshly juiced vegetables. He was gangly and pale; he had absolutely no style, but there was not a nicer guy you will ever meet. I thought, This is what a very healthy person looks like? Then I found out he was 51 years old. He literally, no bullshit, looked 10 years younger than that.

Now, the "hot" types bought the muscle-head crap, full of processed shit. If it was low carb, hi protein no matter how many chemicals it took to get it that way, they'd buy it. But their skin did not necessarily look that great. Their bodies were phenomenal, but hmm, I dunno, at what price? And I don't know how old these people are. They may actually look years older than they do. I wish in my experiment that I could've seen a read out of everyone's internal health. If they looked so good on the outside how do they really look on the inside? Would those that eat fresh, whole foods, be, unknowingly, more susceptible to disease and sickness if they did not? Will the Crap Eaters be eventually? I just wish I could see inside. That would've really helped my experiment.

I obviously feel one has less of a chance of disease and sickness with clean eating. I think the hotties are mainly hot because they concentrate a lot on exercise. Their bodies were scultped and lean, and that looks good to me. But they do not necessarily look clear and healthy; they lack the glow of a pure eater. There are obviously those that are hot that have pure diets, as far as I can tell. I had an Indian woman come through my line that was DROP DEAD gorgeous, 8 months pregnant though from the back she was simply a size 2 with no hints of pending child, and she was buying all vegan food. I asked. She said cheerfully that she was a vegan. I said, Your doctor doesn't push you to quit veganism while pregnant. Then, she said smiling, I'd get another doctor then.Which brings me to the major difference of pure eaters vs. meat-head product consumers: overall demeanor and personality. By far - very far - the pure eaters were much nicer, more relaxed, generous, kind and patient. Come to think of it, what is hotter than that?