links for 2007-06-30

Mitt Romney is an idiot

Thanks to Chris for pointing out this puff piece on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In it, it describes Romney packing up the family for a summer trip:

Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family’s hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon’s roof rack. He’d built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.

I echo Chris’ sentiment of “WTF?”  Who the heck puts their dog on the roof of their car?  And we’re supposed to be all “Wow, he’s so caring about his dog!” when he builds a windshield for the carrier?

Here’s some news for Romney: dude, your dog isn’t a piece of luggage.  If the family were to get into a car accident, the dog wouldn’t stand a chance.  At least inside the car he has the protection of the vehicle’s frame.  What if the carrier came loose and fell off the car?  Again, the dog has no chance.

This is just another example of “animals as property” that so pervades our lives.  To Romney, the family dog isn’t worth space in the car.  Having him dangerously perched on the roof as they fly down the roads at 65mph is a risk that’s reasonable to him.  Would he consider that same risk with his kids?  Of course not.

Want another example of how Seamus gets treated as property?  OK.

A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

Animals rarely get much respect from the oval office.  Sure, President Bush’s dog Barney gets a nicer home page than most people have, but he’s also used to create stupid White House promotional videos.  Then, of course, there’s the debacle that is the presidential turkey pardon at Thanksgiving.  But if Romney were to become president, Seamus would be the worst-treated First Dog since Warren G. Harding’s lab named Seat Cushion.  (That last sentence was said in a manner imitating Jon Stewart.  Imagine me looking coyly at the camera.)

How you treat animals is usually a good indicator of how you treat people.  Perhaps we should keep that in mind when looking at presidential candidates.

links for 2007-06-28

4 Reasons I Hate Rachael Ray

I know, I know, it’s low-hanging fruit to take shots at Rachael Ray, but she keeps coming up in daily conversation and I’ve gotta get this out of my system. I wish Isa would just challenge her to a boxing match or something.

  1. She spells her name stupidly. I know, it’s not her fault. I should blame her parents. But every time I see that extra “a” in there, I get the same twinge I get when people spell “Michael” as “Micheal” (being that it’s part of my last name, so I’m a tad hypersensitive).
  2. EVOO. The fact she can take the enormously annoying acronym-turned-catchphrase and turn it into a marketing gimmick drives me nuts.
  3. She’s every-freakin’-where. She’s on boxes of Triscuits for Buddha’s sake.
  4. She’s an idiot. Her cookbook 365: No Repeats (we got it as a gift… it’s being regifted to my sister who, for some unknown reason, not only tolerates Rachael Ray, but seems to like her) is about as vegan un-friendly as it gets. Sure, there’s a “vegetarian” section, but everything’s smothered in cheese. The book is filled with hideously disgusting recipes like Bacon Wrapped Meatloaf Patties, Bacon Wrapped Beef Tenderloin, and Chicken Cutlets on Buttermilk-Cheddar-Chorizo Biscuits, but there is a sole tofu recipe in the book that’s actually vegan. How does she ruin it? By adding this absurd commentary: “I really do not get tofu, but some of my friends do. This is for them.” You don’t “get tofu”?! What is there to get, you moron? It’s a food. Vishnu have mercy.

No more “x reasons I…” or “y ways to…” posts this week. I promise.

10 Ways to be a Kick-Ass Vegan

I know one Joshua Hooten that loves when magazines list the “x Ways to ____” teasers on their front cover, so Josh, this one’s for you.

You’re vegan.  Awesome.  But are you the most kick-ass vegan you could be?  Are you pretty kick-ass, but looking for ways to increase your ass-kickitude?  Try these ideas on for size.

  1. Make a vegan gift basket.  Do you have a friend that just went veg?  Harken back to your first few weeks… I remember thinking, “Jeez… am I doomed to a life of soy hot dogs and lettuce?”  Go to your local co-op and grab some Red Star nutritional yeast, agave nectar, soy jerky, and some other fun convenience foods.  Then maybe toss in a cookbook or print out some recipes from the web.  Arrange them artfully and there you go: a vegan starter kit to help get your friend on the road to veganism.  (Kudos to my wife who recently did this for a friend of ours that recently went vegetarian.  Great idea.)
  2. E-mail local restaurants and bakeries and ask them about vegan options.  I pretty much stole this one from Isa’s article from the last issue of Satya, but it’s a really good one.  You may not get many responses, but if you can start getting vegan options (with the word “vegan” attached to it) into some local eateries, the vegan love and wisdom will spread like a ray of hippie sunshine.
  3. Talk to other activists.  In person, if possible.  It can get difficult when you’re sitting at a desk all day to remember that there are other people out there who take veganism and animal rights as seriously as you do.  So talk with them.  I’m not officially a member of any organizations, primarily because most of the ones near me are in DC, which isn’t really all that near me.  But when I volunteer at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, everyone talks about activism, animal issues, food (usually while cleaning the pig yard), and social issues.  I always come away from a day of volunteering reinvigorated and bubbling with new ideas and inspiration.

    When I was in Portland last month, I attended a really great gathering of activists from different causes to discuss burnout and infighting.  I walked away from that not only more inspired than I’d ever been, but wishing that I could go to something like that every month.  Keeping the dialogue active is essential to keeping ourselves excited and motivated.

  4. Donate small.  Do you donate to one of the large animal rights organizations?  Have you thought about whether or not your money is being spent in a way you approve of?  If the answer is “no” or “I’m not sure,” then consider donating your money (or time!) to a smaller, local organization.  Small non-profits can have trouble raising money when directly competing with larger organizations for your dollar.  With a small, local organization like a rescue or sanctuary, you can find out specifically how your money is being spent and you can physically see how your money is directly helping the animals.
  5. Join a CSA.  When a friend told me about the concept of Community Supported Agriculture a few years ago, I was floored.  It was exactly what I’d been looking for: locally grown organic vegetables picked in the morning and delivered to you by that evening for about the cost of vegetables at the local supermarket.  It really is one of the best things you can do as a vegan (aside from growing your own): you’ll support local farmers (with all the ecological benefits that go with it), you’ll get fresher, more nutritious vegetables, and the taste will be beyond anything you can buy in the store.  It’s a win for everyone.  Search for a CSA near you.
  6. Clean out your cleaning closet.  Cleaning products tend to last for a long time (confession: I still have a functioning “stain stick” that I bought before my freshman year of college in 1994), so even if you’ve been vegan for a while, you probably still have a bunch of cleaners that were tested on animals or contain nasty, unnecessary chemicals.  I’m sure you’ve already switched to greener cleaners and only have the old cleaners around because you don’t want to put them to waste or dump them in a river.  Well, donate ‘em.

    I found out today that a local thrift store that benefits the homeless needs dryer sheets.  Why?  The store cleans up clothes and gives them to homeless men and women going on job interviews and, thus, needs dryer sheets.  What a perfect way to get rid of those old animal tallow-filled beasts I have sitting down by the dryer!  Look up a local shelter and see whether they’d be able to use your leftover cleaning supplies and then never look back.

  7. Make an animal care kit for your car.  In each of our cars (yes, we have two… thank the suburbs for that), we have a basic animal care kit.  Making Kind Choices has a section on creating one that you may want to look to for suggestions (also covered briefly here), but here’s what I’d start with:

    an animal carrier that could hold a cat or small dog, a very simple leash that can easily be placed around an animal’s head, a card with the numbers of local animal control, rescue organizations, and shelters, pull-tab cans of cat and dog food, a towel, and print-outs of what to do when you find birds, possums, turtles, owls, and other animals.

  8. Read.  At any given time, I’m reading 3-4 books.  One of them is always somehow related to animal rights.  Go ahead: build a reading list and see what your local library has in stock (or just walk and browse the shelves – start at Dewey Decimal 179.3).  Read something that you may not agree with.  Challenge yourself.  Read outside of your comfort zone.
  9. Give a talk.  Here’s one I’ve been meaning to work up the nerve to do for a while now.  Ideally, I’d like to find a group of young or beginning vegetarians to talk to about veganism, like a high school or college animal rights group.  Spread the knowledge!
  10. Stay healthy, like Dead Prez said.  One of the best ways to promote veganism is to be happy and healthy.  Don’t turn into a vegan cheerleader necessarily, acting bubbly when you’re not feeling it, but eat well, be positive, and be a good role model for veganism.  Three cheers for the non-cranky vegan!

links for 2007-06-21

On Fishing and Entitlement

A few weeks ago, I was sitting out near the man-made lake by the building where I work.  The lake is home to a number of extremely large koi, large enough to swallow your small child whole.  This particular day was “Bring Your Daughter to Work Day” and a father was walking along the lake with his daughter (who was not eaten by the fish) and a co-worker.  The man pointed out the koi to his daughter.

“See those really large fish?  They get that big because they don’t let people fish in this lake.  So the fish just eat and eat and eat because there’s no one there to catch them.”

I was a little taken aback by this.  The tone he said this in wasn’t one of, “See how happy fish are when you aren’t screwing with them?”  It was more of, “Fish need us to catch them and eat them so they don’t get so huge.”

This sense of entitlement is pervasive among omnivores defending their meat eating.  From the brutish “If we’re able to kill them, we should be able to eat them” to the awfully assuming “God put them here for us” to the it-stopped-being-clever-when-it-became-a-bumper-sticker “God wouldn’t have made animals so tasty if He didn’t want us to eat them,” the underlying theme is that it’s our right as The Mighty Humans to eat what we want, when we want.  We see it when there’s a backlash against a foie gras ban when restaurants that fight against these bans are looked at as freedom fighting heroes rather than purveyors of the most obvious of cruelties.  It’s a very different case from being entitled to use animals because we need them to live: we don’t.  We just want to eat what we think is exotic or what tastes good.

I think that feelings of entitlement are also behind the “they need us to [hunt/milk/catch] them or else they’ll [overpopulate/burst/get huge]” arguments that frequently come up.  In a sense, those arguments are saying, “We’re doing them a favor, so we should be able to eat them.”

I wanted to say to that guy, “Trust me.  Fish definitely don’t need us to catch them.  Just like cows don’t need to be milked and deer don’t need to be sniped.”  Alas, I think my comment would have fallen on deaf ears.  And it might have gotten me thrown in the lake.

Site update

If you’re actually visiting the site and not seeing this in an RSS reader, you’ll notice that the look and feel of the site has changed again.  I was never totally pleased with the earlier version and when I came across this theme yesterday, I decided it was finally time to switch it over.  Ideally, I would have designed my own, but with how tight time is these days, I figured it’s better to devote attention to content rather than the appearance.  So, I’ll be using this theme for the foreseeable future and making small tweaks to it over time.

Let me know if you stumble into anything that looks really awkward or goofy.

links for 2007-06-16

links for 2007-06-14