A momentous thing happened today. True, I braved the 66 bus, not knowing entirely where I'd end up, but that's not this story. For some reason, I got up at least an hour earlier than usual. I awoke in the arctic tundra that has replaced my room, feet nearing hypothermia, and went to take a blessedly hot 20-minute shower. I step out, place my hand on the radiator - and it's warm. Yes, my captive audience of three, the heat arrived at 146 Coolidge Street today. Was it karma for not indulging in an extra hour of sleep? Is that what they call dharma? Ironically (take note, Alanis), what drove me out of bed on this unusual morning was not the heat but the usual frigidity. In my excitement, I slipped tea on the hardwood floor. The living room now smells of orange, pekoe, and warmth.
I come home from the symphony tonight to find myself sunbathing ten minutes later. We have reached the oasis of Boston, and it is good. If I complain that my apartment is too warm, please slap me across the face with a halibut. Preferably dead - I don't promote animal cruelty.
Do any of you meat eaters find it difficult to express your views to the face of vegetarians? Or worse, the (shudder) vegans. "Survival of the fittest": there's one choice phrase. "I need the protein to gain weight": not many people say that, so it buys me stalling time. But what about animal rights? Lots of veggie-ers consume fish, but it seems we are just as cruel to them by, you know, killing them, slicing them open, throwing them on a grill, serving them as lox on a bagel. Don't get me started on the people who are against veal.
Maybe they don't mind being cooked. I am currently roasting and loving it, just like McDonald's does. (What does scare me is the meat that isn't, served by restaurants that aren't like MickeyD's. What were McNuggets made of before they used all-white meat?)
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
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2 comments:
I'm going to comment on this post instead of your most recent one because I have much more of an opinion about animal rights/vegetarianism than I ever will about politics. Being a vet student/animal person (hehe, that's the second slash I've used in two sentences...awesome) I seem to often find myself surrounded by vegetarians. I find this a little amusing in vet school, especially since we seem to spend the majority of our time working with animal cadavers that were killed for the sake of science. I also find it kind of amusing that there's this amazing division of people in vet school - on one side there's the large animal folks who grew up on farms, enjoy lassoing cattle and eating rare steak, and see animals as property; on the other, there's the super animal rights activists who won't eat meat and are seriously disturbed by pretty much everything we do in lab. And then there are people like me who sit nicely in the middle (and, thankfully, there seem to be a lot of us). Anyway, I've totally gone off on a tangent, but, yeah, vet school is an interesting little culture.
Anyway, the main thing I wanted to say, and what I use to defend myself to vegetarians, is that humans are naturally omnivores, and our bodies are made to get everything we need from a variety of food, and that includes meat. I have nothing against vegetarians who want to work a little bit harder to get everything they need nutritionally for ethical reasons or whatever. As long as they don't try to force their ethical views on me, I'm cool. I would like to see meat production become a more humane practice worldwide (which, as people are becoming more aware of it, it seems to be), and I'm definitely all about reducing animal suffering as much as practically possible, but I'm choosing to do this in ways other than giving up meat.
That's probably a much longer comment than you ever wanted to read. I just get to listen to this stuff a lot, so I've formed some pretty strong opinions about it. Time for me to stop procrastinating now...
I hope your week's going well! :-)
I personally am not against veal, but I tried it once, not knowing what it was, and found it disgusting anyways... ;)
perhaps my palate is not as sophisticated as yours...
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