Happy Thanksgiving

This is a special time of year -- a time of year where we get together with those closest to us and celebrate the systematic extermination of an indigenous people.

Yeah, those of you that know me know that I am the kind of guy that enjoys watching the world burn while giggling like a twelve year old Japanese school girl. Yet all the same, this holiday (as originally intended by Abraham Lincoln, who created the holiday in the midst of the Civil War) is for giving thanks.

I'm thankful to St. Louis vegetarians, who inspire me in so many different ways. You are intelligent, thoughtful and compassionate people that make this city a better place, and make St. Louis not a complete joke in the vegetarian world. This blog does not begin to represent you with the awesomeness that you deserve. The past year and a half has been the hardest period of my life. Basically, in this time, my life has fallen completely apart. Most of you know of my struggles with depression. I won't lie: it's still there, and I don't know if it's getting better or not. It's hard for me as I am a person that is very skilled at stabbing myself in the heart, and also allowing other people into my life that do it for me. For all my cynicism, I am also, interestingly enough, rather naive. I trust people too much, I get the wrong messages from people, misunderstand intentions, and on occasion push away people that I shouldn't. (Okay, that got a little ranty -- sorry!)

My point? My life would be of much lesser quality if it weren't for St. Louis vegetarians. So, thank you. I don't know if I will be in St. Louis all that much longer. This saddens me, as I love this city, and the people in it. But regardless, my life has been enriched for having know you.

Stuff...

I should make sure there is at least one post on here every week. So I will just spout off about a few things.

First, there was a meatless Thanksgiving event. It was held at some church near WashU by the St. Louis Vegetarian Society. And DA-YUM there was some good food there! Given my last post regarding how vegans tend to say everything is amazing just because it's vegan (even when it sucks), hopefully it means something coming from me. Trust me, if the food sucked I would be sitting here bitching about it*. I was glad to enjoy some good food by some apparently good cooks. I brought my garlic-rosemary mashed potatoes**, homemade gravy, and some bbq seitan (no one ate the bbq seitan, probably because no one knew what the hell it was, and it looked a lot like meat. The other stuff was virtually gone).

I will say this -- if there are going to be that many vegans at an even I think it's a little tacky to bring a dish that is not vegan. Pretty much every person I knew there was vegan. I mean really, how hard is it to not make that casserole with eggs in it? Make something else ffs***!

Okay, I will finish up with some holiday talk. 'Tis the season for these awesome bad boys again.

Hells yeah! I love these things. I can sit down and eat like ten of them in a sitting. It's like junk food that isn't that bad for you. If you've never had one, well what the hell is wrong with you. Go get some now. Yes, I mean right now. I'll wait.

See? I told you they were good. Now what to do with those peels? Well I like to throw them on a pot on the stove and boil them in water with a little cinnamon. It makes the house smell good.

Yes, I just gave you a homemaking tip. With garbage (or compost). I guess that kind of makes me like a white trash Martha Stewart. Only vegan. And with a penis****.

*I'm an asshole like that.

**I would give the recipe, but that means I would actually have to measure stuff out, and I'm too lazy to put in that kind of effort for the six people that actually read this blog. No, you are not worth it. Deal bitches.

***Means "for fuck's sake." Or you could have just Googled that, with your lazy ass.

****Albeit a very small one.

I'm sorry, but sometimes things aren't simply amazing

Maybe I'm in a grumpy mood. I hope this doesn't come off as passive aggressive -- while I am the self professed master of passive aggressiveness, that usually manifests itself most in closer relationships (family, friends and significant others are the ones that get to enjoy the product of my unresolved self-esteem issues, not the unwashed masses -- go find your own covertly insidious asshole!). So I don't want anyone that reads this to think I am singling him or her out personally -- I assure you I am not! But there's a pet peeve I have about vegans: we tend to think that every food in the vegan universe is amazing. Sorry, it's not.

I don't know why we grasseaters have a tendency to think that every food that exists in the vegan world deserves a reaction of "OMGZ this is SO unbelievably good; it's the best thing I have ever put in my mouth!!!!!!!" But we do. Is it out of politeness? Possibly. I mean, most of my fellow herbivores are very nice, passive and accommodating people that want everyone to just get along, and for everyone to be happy. Most other veggies don't have the inclination or the disposition to play the grumpy asshole role in the vegetarian social ecosystem. I guess that's my job, to be the vegan player hater. Oh well, I guess I'm okay with that. Someone's gotta do it!

There are also probably some basic psychological processes at work here. When we tend to categorize things we encounter in the social world, there's a natural tendency to associate like with like. We like it when a restaurant or a bakery creates something vegan. That's a good thing. We are already biased to think it's good. And when we taste it, and it doesn't completely suck, we automatically give it credit for being much better than it really is. If it's vegan, it must be good, right?

So what though? I mean is it really a big deal when vegans think everything they try is amazing? Well, kind of, yes. For one thing, if everything is really, really amazing, then nothing is really, really amazing; the vegan chili whose recipe I spent twelve years perfecting and worked five hours to make is suddenly in the same category as the salsa someone made by by throwing onions, garlic, peppers, a can of Rotel in a food processor. Another example: the vegan cupcakes at Sweet Art are really, truly amazing. They are the best cupcakes I have ever had in my life; that is not hyperbole. I don't throw the word amazing around like it's meaningless; when I say something is amazing, I mean it. Those cupcakes deserve a higher evaluation than the mediocre sweets served at other vegan friendly establishments in the city. We should reserve the concept of greatness for things that are truly great, and not for the merely good, and certainly not the mediocre.

In my opinion, systematic, uncritical bias is never a good thing. And this tendency among vegans to evaluate any food that's at least average to the level of greatness is very much a bias. It's a bias towards positively in evaluating things that don't deserve it, and lifting the merely good or passable into a category of elite quality. Not every vegan buffet is amazing, and not every vegan scone is delicious. Sometimes the buffet is average at best, and doesn't have enough variety. Sometimes the scone is dry, bland and flavorless. Sometimes the food is too salty, too expensive, and portions are ridiculously small. And, even if the place is very vegan friendly, sometimes the service sucks.

Just trying is not enough to make something truly great. Now I'm all for trying. Trying is awesome! I think it's great when a new vegetarian restaurant opens up, or a local restaurant decides to do something to accommodate vegans. That does deserve recognition. But that doesn't mean that whatever they do is, by definition, of very high quality. Until someone actually does something great, he or she doesn't deserve credit for achieving greatness.

No Vegan Left Behind

Somehow, somewhere along the line, Vegan became a bad word. I don't know how it happened that refusing to be connected to the suffering of any living thing became tantamount to devil-worship, but let's see what we can do to fix our image. In tribute to the Republican Congressional takeover this week, I'm taking a look at some of the marketing strategies conservatives have used to successfully dupe the American people. Perhaps we can learn a thing or two?

Healthy Forest Initiative
The Bush Administration saw a bunch of trees and thought, how can we clear that landscape without people knowing that we're raping the environment?
They looked ahead and knew that a news-clip discussing any initiatives to clear-cut national forests would be bad publicity, so they decided to twist the truth and science of ecology around a few times, and call it something NOBODY could argue with. You have to admire the brilliance. How could an environmentalist argue with something called "The Healthy Forest Initiative"? Most Americans would think, "hmph, George Bush is doing something good for the environment!"

No Child Left (Behind)
This is a fine example of christening a destructive initiative with golden euphemisms. Who could argue with a purportedly pro-child initiative like that? Bush got to redirect millions of dollars from failing/noncompliant schools towards funding the Iraq War, all in the name of improved education! AND they got to send military recruiters to high schools that wanted to continue to receive funding. Ted Kennedy even helped pass this Act (he later regretted the diminished educational funding that resulted). Talk about a win-win.

Intelligent Design
Brilliant false advertising. What better way to introduce religion into elementary education science classes than to promote something which lacks any scientific evidence as "intelligent"? This really takes the cake for euphemistic abuse, and might explain why over half of Americans believe God created humans in their present form. God help us.

Anti-Animal Rights Groups Are Buried in Doublespeak
These days it seems like for every Animal Rights/Welfare group, there exists some similar-sounding group whose intentions are the exact opposite.
I decided to come up with my own names for some of the Anti-AR Groups:
Alliance for Truth- why didn't they just call themselves Puppy Mill Defenders?
Humane Watch- this one should be obvious- Inhumane Watchman
Center for Consumer Freedom- Consumers for Hardened Arteries
Californians for Safe Food - this was actually a group of farmers opposed to CA's 2008 Proposition 2 for improving conditions for farm animals. It should have been called Farmers Against Animal Welfare

What Can We Learn From Them?
Some of the above initiatives and groups have been exposed for their true intentions, but it can take awhile. They work in the short-term by using half-truths to convince people to vote against things they normally would have supported. Remember how easy it was for Bush to convince the masses that Iraq blew up the WTC? He just had to use Saddam Hussein's name enough times in conjunction with 9/11 and before you know it, we were invading Iraq.

The Alliance for Truth's mission was almost realized this week as Proposition B barely passed. Can we learn something from these groups' duplicity? I'm not suggesting we be dishonest, but I think we should take a look at why they are successful and see if we can't turn it around in our favor. Can we revive our own image and reframe our cause in a more convincing way? Or is the vegan agenda too complex to be universally accepted?

Seitan

I need to cleanse the pallet of the blog from politics. Yuck. Politics has a way of making people stupid, and despite the detached and analytical angle I usually use to observe partisan politics, I can't help but get really passionate, and subsequently rather angry, regarding issues of animal rights. I am cursed with a rather high degree of understanding of public opinion, and this leads me to understand what a huge uphill struggle the fight for animal rights will be. I'm no Marxist (not by a long shot!), but I can't help but agree with his observation about the idiocy of rural people. Anyway...

Seitan. Yeah. I've been making a lot of it lately. And I have been getting better and better at it. For the longest time I had a rough time making the stuff, but as they say, practice makes perfect. And while my seitan is not perfect, I will say that it's pretty good. And recently I have found a secret to make it even better.

Well in the entry I will share my own, special, super secret, super awesome seitan recipe. I usually don't follow recipes, but with seitan it's kind of important to get the proportions just right. Seitan is not something you can just whip up -- it's really hard to just eyeball the amounts of most of this stuff. This recipe is the culmination of years and years of fucking up.

Here's what you need and the amounts*:

Dry ingredients

2.25 cups of vital wheat gluten flour

7 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes

4 tablespoons of garlic powder

Wet ingredients

1 cub of broth

0.5 cups soy sauce

5 tablespoons toasted sesame oil

2 teaspoons liquid smoke

*This makes a pretty large batch of seitan. If you want to make a smaller batch just use half of everything.

You want to thoroughly mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients together, separately. Then, in a large mixing bowl, add the wet to the dry. Some people suggest using a spoon for this, but I just use my hands. You are going to want to kneed this for several minutes until the dough is nice and elastic. Then I roll in into a log shaped form several inches thick and slice pieces about half to three-quarters inches each.

Then you put them into a stock pot with 10 cups of cool broth (or 8 cups of broth and 2 of soy sauce). It doesn't have to be cold -- room temperature is fine -- but it can't be warm. The turn the heat on high and bring it up to a boil. After it's boiling, put the

heat on medium low (high enough to where it still simmers) and cover for an hour.

The main ingredient that I'm sharing here with you is the toasted sesame oil. Like many culinary discoveries, it was made by accident. There's not really a cool story to

it; one time I was making seitan I was out of extra virgin olive oil (a sin, I know) and didn't feel like taking my lazy ass to the store. So I used a combination of canola oil and sesame oil. Turns out it was much better than usual. So I started using only sesame oil, and it's even better.

Seriously, this seitan is good enough it makes you wanna slap somebody. It's especially good to make barbecue sandwiches.

Update: I forgot something rather important. It's the final step to making the seitan. You drain it through a strainer (common sense there) and then you let it cool. When it's cooled off then you will need to squeeze the excess broth out. It will be very watery if you don't do this.

On puppy mills

It's election night. And I'm angry. The anti-puppy mill Proposition B here in Missouri is going to pass, but it's going to be a lot closer than people thought. Polls from the Post-Dispatch found 70% support. Right now, as I type this, the margin is 51-49 in favor of passage. It will probably get larger as the night goes on, as St. Louis city, St. Louis county, St. Charles country, and Jackson county still have votes to be counted. These places will go heavily in favor of Prop B. How do I know this? Because these areas are civilization.

But who would possibly go against puppy mills? Is anyone for puppy mills? Yes. Some people make a lot of money in these canine factory farms, and they have money to spend in defending their economic interests. They did this using a very simple, and very effective tactic aimed at rural Missourians: they vilified animal rights supporters. Vilifying animal rights supporters is cheap, easy, and effective as far as an election goes. If AR people are for it, then it must be bad!

But to blame the puppy mill industry in this state misses the point. Missouri is the puppy mill capital of this country, and this is a well known fact throughout the state. That we have a puppy mill problem is not news, and it takes a hell of a lot more than a few misleading ads to make people forget that. The puppy mill industry is not to blame for this vote being close.

The people of Missouri are to blame. Specifically, the rural people of Missouri are to blame. Look at the county-by-county election map for Prop B. Notice a pattern? Look at civilization -- St. Louis and Kansas City areas. Then look at the rest of the state; "Mizzuruh" as the rednecks call it.

There is a hard truth that not many people want to face, but I will say it.

*ahem*

Rural Americans are the scum of the Earth. They are disgusting, immoral people, and honestly this country would be better off without them. If we removed all the cities from this country, this part of North America would be home to a Third World hellhole called Redneckistan.

Yeah, I am angry. I'm angry that what should have been a slam dunk was so close. I'm angry that people hate animals so much they would cast a vote for puppy mills. But this should serve as a reminder: a lot people hate animals. The road in the fight for animal rights is hard. It's going to take fundamental cultural change.

Nights like this do not make me optimistic for the future of animal rights.

The importance of voting

Yes, it's election day. And yes, I am a big proponent of voicing opinions and of keeping up with politics. But no, I am not here to tell you how important it is to participate in the country's elections today.

I'm here to tell you how important is it to realize that you don't just vote on ballots once every couple years. You vote with your wallets every single day. Many times per day, usually.

And with that, you have incredible power.

Our system is governed, more or less, on supply and demand. There are only iPods because people want them. There is only makeup because women (and some men, to be fair) want it. Sometimes demand is organic and real. Sometimes it is artificially produced by people who want to make money. But either way, demand begats (I'm inventing words, so try to keep up) supply.

This is the case with animal foods and other products. Joe Bob wants a cheeseburger. So business-savvy (read: greedy, evil) men hire illegal immigrants (and the occasional down-and-out American) to kill cows, and hire teenagers and elderly folks to make cheeseburgers for Joe Bob.

When one day Joe Bob sees a video, gets handed a pamphlet, or (ahem) reads a blog post, and decides to shorten his name to Joe and stop eating animals, the demand for cheeseburgers decreases. No, not very much. Not even noticeably. Yet.

When fifty, five hundred, five thousand Joe Bobs decide to stop eating animals, cheeseburger businessmen take notice. They have taken notice. That's why Kraft makes (and sells, sells, sells) vegan burgers. Same with ConAgra. And Kellogg (although their Morningstar Farms crap is mostly non-vegan). And others.

Companies produce and sell what consumers indicate - with their money - that they want.

When you buy a shirt from Target, you're voting. When you buy a dog from a large-scale breeder, you're voting. And yes, when you buy a cheeseburger from McDonald's, you are voting.

You are only one person, yes. But large groups.... revolutions.... are made up of a bunch of "one person"s.

You have incredible power.

Recognize it.

And use it wisely.