Ok, so I've been a vegetarian for a while now, in one form or another. Hell, as any of you know there's more forms to being a "vegetarian" then there are types of sausage, and man, there's a lot of sausage out there. Normally I wouldn't bring it up, but I've already been slammed once for my particular dietary quirks (remember the Vegetarian chorizo? That was me), so I thought I'd throw my thoughts on the grill.
Now, my particular vein of vegetarianism has nothing to do with stopping animal suffering, well, maybe 2% of it is... Most of it is health related. I started being a vegetarian suddenly one weekend about fifteen years ago. A car-load up us had gone up to the city to spend the weekend at a gaming convention. We'd subsisted on Twinkies and Pop-tarts and potato chips and soda for about 72 hours when we thought we'd go over to the greasy spoon across the street from the hotel and have a "real" meal. The writhing eel-like knot in my gut that formed around the bovine lard-bomb changed my life in one fell swoop. I never, ever, suffer from food poisoning (I routinely scoff at lesser mortals that whinge and cry foul at some of the burrito places I frequent), but this one time did it. I stopped eating meat for a week, the week turned into a month, and then I just never went back. Most of what kept me off of meat was the regular talk about those pounds of undigested red meat setting up residence in your bowels, or the gene damaging amounts of pesticides and growth hormones in most US meats. Now I know that just cutting out meat is no where near enough to make my diet healthy. Heck, just eating a little less food every day would probably be twice as beneficial as stopping my meat intake. But nowadays that's not the point, it's more that I'm at least making the effort. My brand of vegetarianism has drifted over the years; sometimes allowing fish, sometimes allowing fowl, sometimes anything a couple times a year... whatever... I currently let myself have a couple helpings of fish and one fowl meal per week. It's not so much the purity, but that I make a conscious effort to really cut down on my meat intake (you'd be surprised how many meat meals you have each week when you decide to cut them out)... and damn, it makes that chicken mole' burrito on Friday taste really good.
Point point point... who's got the point. Hmm. There isn't going to be a point... but I've still got two more things to thump on my primate chest.
There are those vegetarians out there that whine, complain, rant, and rave when you plan on going out to eat with them. The meal's got to accommodate them to every degree or they're just going to scream at you for the rest of the meal. Balls. I can understand if someone's diabetic, or fatally allergic to peanuts and they're going to die if they eat the wrong thing... But if you've made a moral or intellectual choice to limit your diet (the way I did), you're not going to get any sort of support from me by whining. You've chosen to suffer for these beasties, or your current figure, or your spiritual enlightenment; and by God you're going to suffer for it. Shut up and wear that martyr badge with pride. Be silently smug... but just shut up about it.
My other point... Octopi. I had a good friend once who'd often answer "I'll try anything once, twice if I like it." I remember him using this phrase about cannibalism. There's a lot of tasty things in this world. Steak, salmon, lima beans, toasted garden burgers with turkey slices... and there's a lot of things in this world that I've yet to taste. And, to be honest, I'll probably try 'em if they presented themselves. I'll probably draw the line at a couple things; I could eat horse, and I could eat grubs, but any large insect I'd have to crack open to scoop out the innards is probably past on... I could eat most primates once, provided they weren't actually human (although, I must admit, my blood tastes really good. I don't know what's up with that, I suspect all of you don't taste nearly as good as I do... hell, I was even once voted most-likely-to-be-eaten-by-his-friends-if-trapped-in-the-Andes... That tasty blood of mine is just one of the consolation prizes I get when I accidentally cut a massive gash in my hand while fixing dinner... just a little bit of sanguine reward while I throw out whatever I was fixing that I just bled all over). point... point... point... oh yeah Octopi. I used to eat Octopi. I called them fishies, and chewed on their little sucker riddled tenticles... until I started reading up on these clever little beasties... They're so cute, and coy, and intelligent. Adventurous, charismatic in their own cephalopodic way. I don't feel this way about squid... them's tasty. I don't feel this way about cuttlefish... them's nasty. I just love my little eight armed friends. They way they cavort and jet through the water, or the way they have a sort of collapsing sprint as they work their way through tight places. The way the figure things out the way I'd imagine a clean spider monkey would. I just can't bring myself to eat 'em any more. I love them... I do.
I'm just hoping no one shows me a really good documentary on the Tofu
beast.