7 posts from 2006

    I just finished this book (big surprise) on "vegan freakdom". It is an excellent guide to ethical veganism and the details pertaining to those principles, written in a very first hand, personal style by two ethical vegans, Jenna and Bob Torres. It is full of great resources and suggestions, and although I think it could have done without the profanity sprinkled throughout, the authors definitely make their point and defend it with solid arguments. There would be more vegans in the world if people were willing to investigate where their meat (and eggs and dairy) is coming from. Ignorance is bliss. After visiting a pleasant family farm on Sesame Street no one wants to see the processes in between happy cows in a pasture and happy burger with fries.
    The same mindset goes for any commodity in the department store. How did it get there? Oh, from a factory I suppose. The consumer audience doesn't see the work going on backstage. All your toys and clothes and power-tools just appear on the store shelves, and wait until you come to buy them. Capitalism is the system at work in the US, private companies are owned by private individuals, they produce goods for private profits. Don't worry, I'm not going "corporate conspiracy" on you, capitalism is a free system for good reasons, but like every system, there are ways to take advantage of it. Monopolies are the magicians and just like in a magic show, "the hand is quicker than the eye". The only part of the trick we see is the result. Even the people involved in the process don't see the big picture. The factory worker, the delivery guy, are paid to do their jobs and go home.
    Now I've gone way off track, sorry about that. All I have to say in closing is - think, question, and act. Don't take things for granted, or ignore the inconvenient facts. If you're already a vegan, or seriously considering becoming one,
I recommend this book. If you're merely curious, beware, this book will probably convert you!


peace.

    Call me nostalgic, but I just can't resist posting on this year's layout of edible architecture. A onetime burst of simplification genius has evolved into a yearly tradition in my house, we never actually make gingerbread houses out of gingerbread, but graham crackers. Compared to custom shaped baking pans and glossy royal icing, our broken-cookies-stuck-to-a-milk-carton approach probably seems a bit...uncultured. What can I say? Way way back, a few Christmases ago, my mom decided that the glory of homemade gingerbread houses was not worth the "fun" of cracked cookies and collapsing walls, even with the helpful fine motor skills of four kids ages two to seven. So even to this day (with the fine motor skills of four kids ages ten to fifteen) we continue to honor the old ways, and construct our humble little abodes upon the sturdy framework of four 6 oz. milk cartons, plus a prodigious amount of Duncan Hines vanilla frosting (which is vegan).
     Decorating is the fun part anyway. This year we got very creative with the classic red variety of Swedish Fish. These vegan gummies can be found gracing the toasted coconut plots in a variety of ways including shingles, doormats, and the blades of a very sticky windmill. Yes, several of this year's models feature environmentally friendly, self sustaining power sources, complete with generators with bright red and green lights, or jujubes, for storage purposes. Who but a home-schooler would install solar panels to power the jelly bean Christmas lights on their gingerbread house?

peace.

   















 
   So. A few hours ago I went to see the most anticipated adventure movie of this holiday season at my neighborhood's nearest movie theater: Eragon.
I'm afraid I have probably ruined the rest of the book for myself, considering I'm only halfway through it, but along with my friends and family - i just couldn't wait. We managed to get seats for the only matinee the day after opening night. Yeah. I think about three (including myself) out of the thirteen people in our group have read any of the book, so comparisons were varied.
    Everyone who saw the movie first now want to read the book, and we loyal literaryists (is that a word?) found much to critique. Granted, it's probably a daunting process to condense a volume like Eragon into a film with a reasonable running time. I'll give you that one. But a lot of the cinematic changes made had a distinct Hollywood flavor to them. I hate it when that happens. Sometimes I'd rather take the adaption without the predictability. Oh well. Ok, enough venting, I don't want to be too negative, this is a very good movie. It is also a good book (although it took a while to really pick up), I enjoy them both, separately. I especially like the slightly modern touch they gave to the theme of the movie, the costumes were cool and creative! It helped to distinguish this fantasy from the Lord of the Rings, a resemblance which proves challenging (at least for me) during the book.
    To sum it up, I'd suggest reading the book first. Actually, that's my suggestion for any book-to-movie.


    peace.

    I'm sure everyone is familiar with the "fish wars". The airing of religious beliefs, takes on the origin of species, and various innocent jokes, through the symbolism of a small metallic sticker on the bumper of a car.
    There are way too many fish out there to list them all here, from the playful "cat" and "dog" fish, to alternative religious figures like an exceptionally round "Buddha" fish and the notorious "Flying Spaghetti Monster", plus a few more iniquitous options such as "Diablo" or "sinner" complete with mini devil horns. Regardless of their dubious implications these fish are all parodies of the original "ichthys" fish.
    Although the ichthys fish is now commonly accepted as a symbol of Christianity, the fish as a symbol can actually be traced back to early pagan beliefs, where it was an emblem of femininity and/or fertility. In fact, the ancient Greek word "delphos" means both "fish" and "womb". During the early Roman Empire when Christians were forced to meet in secret, they adopted the fish as a simple sign of their religion to help find safe meeting places and to recognize each other.
   

    In 1983 the most famous parody, the Darwin fish, was invented in California by Al Seckel and John Edwards. The design was first used on a free thought leaflet for Atheists United in 1984. Since the creation of the shiny silver automobile emblems in the early '90s, the main battle waged is between indignant creationists and evolutionists, in a chain of evolving (ha) rebuttals.


    Peace.

     Ok, I should probably mention this book. I just finished reading it today for a book club I'm in, the "Utopia" book club, we're reading all kinds of fiction for different types of "perfect" societies (which turns out to be a pretty consistent subject for science fiction).
    I have to admit, the 18th century language was a little hard to follow at first, but once you get past that the political satire is hilarious! Those who have not read the book are mostly familiar with the stories of the Lilliputans, the little people who tie Gullliver down, and maybe the giants, who adopt Gulliver as a source of amusement for their royalty. However there are two more civilizations after these, the floating island of Laputa where Jonathan Swift (the author) pokes fun at the lofty scholars of his day, and the island of the Houyhnhnms (don't bother trying to pronounce it) and the Yahoos. The Houyhnhnms are an advanced form of horses, capable of speech, and the dominant species of the island. The Yahoos are depicted as something like the penultimate link on the evolutionary chain, kin to humans, and the beasts of burden. When the perspective is completely flipped like this, get ready for a wicked reality shock.
    When the exploited under-race is so closely related to humans, how can we help but sympathize (to a certain extent)? Swift meant this passage as a prod at all the disgusting, designing, dishonest aspects of humans by calling them Yahoos and comparing them to a simultaneously flawless society. But I also saw in it a glance at the plight of animals used for labor in those days, and today - for food. Animals confined for life and without consent to unfair treatment and abuse until the dominant beings can't get any more out of them, at which point they are disposed of. All because they don't speak for themselves, at least not in ways comprehendible to their oppressors, and are assumed to be un-feeling, or of an inferior understanding. Hello, we can all feel pain!
    While I definitely appreciated Swift's intended parody, I was excited to find some food for thought of my own through the empathy he created by blatantly switching the points of view between "humans" and "animals".


    Peace.