Bad Punchline: Waiting in Line

I realized something the other day and had been waiting impatiently to see one of my coworkers so I could share this observation with her. "I realized something mildly creepy." I started. "You're so hot there's a waiting list to ask you out when you become single again. Two different guys I know have asked to know when you're single again if that happens." True story. Two different male friends of mine have asked to be informed if she becomes single again. Sadly for them she mentioned to me today that she's past the point in her life where she'd be willing to date a non-vegetarian.

Bad Punchline: Three Vegetarians Cook a Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the United States and anyone else who follows crazy American traditions and happy twenty-fourth of November to everyone else. Between the fact that today is a national holiday where I live (my job is closed and everything) and that I am still banging my head against the fifty thousand word total needed to successfully complete NaNoWriMo and the exceedingly early hour at which this was posted you might be able to tell I wrote this post up in advance. (Over a month in advance, actually.) But also six weeks ahead of schedule I came up with a (hopefully) funny joke for you to enjoy.

Today, for the third year running, my parents are coming up for Thanksgiving. Despite the fact that my brother, sister-in-law, and myself are vegetarians we believe that family traditions are important. Thanksgiving just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without a giant meal cooking in the kitchen. Not only that but all three of us feel the need to include the standard dishes our families had when we were kids. Even though both our families are from the same state we have very different idea of what Thanksgiving dinners ought to consist of. The first year we not only poisoned my nephew (we hadn't yet learned he was allergic to peanutbutter) but also ended up with enough pie to eat for a month. Last year we had our friend Sean over and I remember very doggedly telling him a story I can't now recall as I tried to ignore my mother throwing up in the living room. This year for non-family members I had a special invitation message: "Bringing food or alcohol is mandatory because we're poor. You may also need to bring a chair. We ask that you kindly leave your age at the door but entertainment should be well-covered because what could be funnier than three vegetarians trying to cook a turkey?"

The Vegetarian Religion

I've said before that I don't want to be called a vegetarian for the same reason that I dislike being referred to as white. Both things are, ostensibly, true. I do not eat meat and I am pale enough that I practically glow in the dark. I do not like to be called white because that word is never attached to the good things that Caucasians have done. You hear white power and white supremacy and you hear that white people came and conquered and that white people subjugated others. If I could avoid that stigma entirely then I would. I'm not saying that all white people are bad- that's obviously not true and I'm not saying that all or even any vegetarians are bad. When I make that comparison I draw it because people have a very solid perception of what they think a vegetarian is and what they think a white person is. Understandably, perception is not going to be the same as reality.

The reason I don't want to be called a vegetarian is because there are a number of the tenets of the Vegetarian religion that I disagree with entirely. Some of them I can agree with and have no problem agreeing with. I can agree that people in modern times eat more meat than they really need and that it would be better for them to eat less. I can agree that CAFOs (that is, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) are bad for the environment and bad for animals and almost certainly bad for the consumers of the meat as well. I can agree that humans can live without eating meat. I can agree that raising animals requires more arable land for the same number of calories and proteins and important things like that than if we used plants for those same calories and proteins. I can agree that I am healthier as a person because I do not eat meat. I can agree that there are many people with health conditions that could be managed through a meatless diet instead of with pharmaceuticals.

But one of the tenets of the vegetarian religion is that organic is better. One of the tenets is that all GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) are bad. These are things that I do not believe and cannot agree with. Organic produce is better in the sense that since pesticides and fertilizers are not used there will be no pesticides and fertilizers that run off from that land to contribute to the giant algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico. Better because it means that food will not contain traces of chemicals that will build up in our bodies and poison us slowly or mess up our hormones. But the "organic" label on the food in the supermarket doesn't mean what you might expect it to mean. In essence it does not mean organic. Organic in America at least is a niche market that big corporations know they can charge more for and then spend that money on lobbying efforts to create bills that undermine the values of organic. Organic in the United States is a set of rules set in place and enforced by the government but, like anything else in America, is defined by Capitalism. The way things are presently creates a situation where meaning to do well by buying organic probably isn't helping to do anything but make your wallet lighter. Another thing about organic is that it's still shipped thousands and thousands of miles before it gets to you. If you really wanted to reduce your carbon footprint you'd buy local produce regardless of whether it is organic or not rather than buying "organic" from the supermarket.

The other major tenet I disagree with is about GMOs and that all GMOs are bad. I will say that there are some things that Monsanto has done with genetically-engineered crops that are not particularly wise or good but drawing the conclusion that all GMOs are bad is irrational and irresponsible. For thousands of years humans have been modifying our food. If it were not for people tending it corn, for example, would not exist. Corn comes from a grass. Grass, you know, like the kind you grow on your lawn. It was a very fortuitous moment for one mutant maize stalk that somebody thought to cultivate it. Over the years that one mutant stalk of maize has become all the corn we eat today. Every food that we cultivate has been changed by human hands to be larger, tastier, to grow faster and in worse climates and weather. Growing the part that we happen to eat larger and better-tasting is not something that most plants do naturally unless they rely on having their seeds eaten in order to spread them. Every living thing on earth, at it's base, is comprised of the same thing. We're all written in the same language. So if there is a word that was created by one species and is used to that species' advantage why is it wrong for people to take that word, that gene, and add it to the vocabulary of genes that makes up another species? Why is it okay for us to breed natural genetic mutants to create more mutants but it's not okay for us for us to do it in a laboratory? That is an irrational conclusion to make.

The other thing about finding GMOs unacceptable, putting aside the fact that every food we eat is genetically modified and that finding it not okay to do in a lab is irrational, is that we cannot hope to live in the world we've created and feed the people that live here with us if we try to farm organically and without using GMOs. When you say that GMOs are not okay because they increase crop yield without using fertilizers and allow plants to grow in places that are normally inhospitable you are taking a stand that says that you don't care about humanity as a whole, just about the privileged few that can afford to do things and grow things in a way that, to you, is moral. If you say that you think that it might be better if we all spontaneously decided to cast aside technology and go back to living the way things were hundreds of years ago you, by thinking that, are also giving your blessing to the idea that it's okay that millions of people will die because of this. You are saying "fuck you" to anyone unlucky enough to be born in an inhospitable region of the world. I, myself, don't find that to be acceptable. I do believe that overpopulation is a problem we should be far more concerned with than we are but if we hope to continue living on this planet barring some kind of catastrophic event occurring we are going to need to utilize technology, including the genetic modification of foodstuffs, in order to produce enough food for people to live.

So no, I am not a vegetarian. I am not a vegetarian not because I eat fish or because I do it for health reasons. I don't eat meat because I lack a gallbladder and that lack causes me to have serious acid reflux and indigestion that could lead to other problems if left untreated. I don't eat meat because I am one of the millions of uninsured Americans. I have neither the luxury nor the money to turn off acid pumps in my stomach with Nexium or Prevacid or some other pill. I don't eat meat because if I don't eat meat I don't have heartburn and if I don't have heartburn I wont develop other preventable health complications that can arise because of acid reflux. I am not a vegetarian not because I don't think it's healthier or because I think CAFOs are okay. I am not a vegetarian because vegetarianism is not a diet. Vegetarianism to most people is an ideal, a belief and ongoing practice a person engages in to shape their character or improve traits of their personality. In other words to most people there is no difference between vegetarianism and the Vegetarian Religion. So my problem with being called a vegetarian has little to do with vegetarians themselves or the fact that I technically fit the definition- it has to do with ideological differences.

Making Fun of Omnivores

      Well, I had wanted to write another post making fun of vegetarians but I thought that since I had already bashed on them once I should take the time to be fair and make fun of omnivores because everyone knows omnivores have it easy and no one makes fun of those idiots. A little objectivity never hurt anyone after all. I like to be an equal-opportunity jerk and poke fun at everyone, including myself. If you're a vegetarian you should enjoy this post. If you're an omnivore I hate to say it but you might enjoy this post just as much as the vegetarians.
      First of all we'll explain omnivores. I like to break down scientific words into Latin components for the sake of confusion when I begin to clarify and define things. Omne means all or everything. Vor comes from the verb meaning to eat or devour. Literally omnivore means to devour everything. Dirt, metal, vegetables, fruit, powdered bone slime, gasoline, meat, plastic, sexual organs, everything would be in the diet of an omnivore if it were translated literally. A quick Google search for "define: omnivore" will reveal that the general definition is much narrower and comes down to a person or animal that eats or can eat both meat and plants. The same quick Google search will reveal that, apparently the term was popularized by Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. This, as you should immediately realize, is a load of crap. Saying that Michael Pollan popularized the term "omnivore" is like saying that Stephanie Meyers popularized the term "twilight" with her Twilight Saga.
      Omnivores do not obviously live up to their clinically-defined name. You don't eat petroleum or rocks. You're not going to devour someone's cotton shirt. But if you consider the generally-accepted definition everyone is an omnivore. Vegetarians can eat meat just because they choose not to. Someone who lived on a strict diet of chicken nuggets and french fries could not be not considered an omnivore just because they never had anything else.
      Eating is as much evolution and availability as it is a choice. Our ancestors survived because of their ability to consume many different things instead of fitting into one very small niche which might have easily been wiped away. A socially-conscious person who doesn't have a lot of money, despite wanting to help out local farmers by buying their produce is trapped into continuing to go to the big boxes to get groceries because they don't have the means so that food is not available to them. People who are vegetarians (generally) have the ability to get and consume meat but choose not to for moral or physical reasons, it doesn't mean they don't have the physical capacity to digest meat (boctoe) so they are technically omnivores.
      Now let's make fun of the omnivores. If you are a human omnivore you have almost certainly at some point in your lifetime consumed: Bugs, feces, dirt, metal, plastic, petroleum, sexual organs, fish bladders and powdered bone slime. Sounds like the recipe for some kind of terrible witch's brew, doesn't it? And how have you eaten these things? Wouldn't you know if this was in your food? Shouldn't it be listed on the ingredients?
      You've probably consumed an insect either accidentally while sleeping or awake or possibly intentionally but it's basically unavoidable not to eat one on accident. If you've ever gone to the bathroom and not washed your hands before preparing your food or ever eaten food someone else prepared for you then you have eaten feces. If you've ever eaten a vegetable that was not well washed before you ate it you have probably eaten feces then as well as dirt. If you have ever eaten any kind of meat, any number of vegetables or taken a vitamin containing iron you have eaten metal. If you have ever eaten any kind of food packaged in plastic you have eaten both plastic and petroleum at the same time. If you have ever eaten food that was fertilized by a petrochemical fertilizer or eaten an animal that ate any plants that were fertilized with a petrochemical you have eaten petroleum. If you have ever eaten a clover or broccoli or any other kind of flower you have eaten sexual organs. If you have ever had a beer or wine made with "isinglass" you have had fish bladder. If you have ever eaten jello or anything else that contains gelatin then you have eaten powdered bone slime. If you have ever had anything containing High Fructose Corn Syrup you have eaten a product that comes from a wet mill and could not exist without human production.
      If you are an omnivore of any kind and you have the capacity to think about what you put in your mouth the only reason you haven't is because you thought you knew. If you're happy eating a processed food that has several ingredients on the list that you cannot comfortably sound out or you cannot say what they are or where they come from I challenge you to look up some of those words. You might think you're safe by not eating processed foods but that's not the case. What part of the word does the coffee you drink or the lettuce you eat come from? Are you comfortable with how it got into the country or how and by whom it was grown. Are you comfortable with the conditions under which the chicken you eat lived it's life? Or would you rather clear your mind and play dumb?
      Omnivores enjoy being in the majority and feeling very much that might makes right. Everyone else is doing it so it must be okay. Being in the majority is not a good argument for anything. If the majority of a town is christian but a devout Muslim moves to town it does not give their neighbors any right to suggest they should go to a christian church just because everyone else in town does it. If you're going to eat meat, and fruit and mystery ingredients in your crackers that is fine with me as long as you have a good reason to do this other than the fact that this is what you have always done.
      Omnivores also tend to be food addicts. If you choose to willfully ignore where your food comes from or what it contains because you cannot give up a certain type of food then you would be considered a food addict. There's nothing wrong with being a vegetarian but the reasons you do it for are important. Similarly there is nothing wrong with being an omnivore if you have good reason to do so.

Pseudo-Vegetarian

      Vegetarianism is a tough subject. Being Vegan is even worse of a subject to talk about. There are only two sides to this debate. There are the vegetarians and vegans and there are the people who think vegetarians are stupid. I know exactly what you are thinking at this moment. You are either thinking that you agree with me because you are very obviously in one of the above groups or you are in denial that you are in one of the two groups and would like to claim that you support vegetarians but don't want to be a vegetarian yourself. There is no such thing. Vegetarianism is a moral argument. It's either moral in the sense that you care for animals and don't want them abused on CAFOs or it's moral in the sense that you think it's healthier for people to not eat meat. You are not allowed to be a vegetarian solely for the sake of the environment or to claim you would like to be a vegetarian in order to help the environment or to claim that you support vegetarians because they help the environment but you drive a prius so you've already done your part. That is not acceptable. Either you really do support vegetarians and actually want to be one but just don't have the willpower or you secretly mock vegetarians for not eating meat but no not admit this outloud probably because one of your deceptively strong vegetarian friends wold hit you if you did.
      Now that we've established that there are no other options you can either abandon this as boring or continue to read under the premise that this will be interesting as I continue to discuss the strange levels of being vegetarian. This post is mostly digression and not a lot of funny. It is a lot more funny if you live through the digression. You can be vegan or vegetarian, pretty much everyone knows that there is some kind of difference between the two even if they were not certain precisely what. But there are actually different levels of being vegan. By definition a vegan does not eat any meat or animal products such as eggs or milk. But many vegans also do not use animals products such as leather also. Some vegans take the term "animal products" to go as far as avoiding eating honey because it is produced by bees, certain vitamins because they are derived from animal products and even certain brands of wine and beer as they contain something called isinglass.
      And here we have an important digression. My first encounter with isinglass was in Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series where it was a kind of glass that was used. My mother told me it was mica, which is a mineral formation that can be broken into thin, transparent sheets. The kind of isinglass they put in your beer isn't the same innocent mica kind, it's a tasty (and when I say tasty in this context you should be reading it with a 'n' instead of a 't') and obviously unnecessary ingredient derived from fish bladders.
      Other vegans are happy to simply not eat meat, eggs or dairy and, like the rest of you beer and wine drinkers, presumably concentrate very hard on not thinking about what their beer contains. Then, after the extremist vegans versus the laxer vegans you have vegetarians. Vegetarian is an all-encompassing term for people who do not eat meat so people who are vegetarian but not vegan are often called lacto-ovo to indicate that they consume eggs and dairy products and possibly use leather and eat honey and such. But even those are a fairly decent distinction. But after that it becomes the kind of debate in which Warren G. Harding becomes the Republican candidate for president because they couldn't differentiate between the first two options and ended up going for the guy who looked like a president.
      Yes, I'm talking about Pescatarians or Pesca-vegetarians. Pesca-vegetarians eat fish. Most people would agree that fish are, in fact, meat but because the only meat they eat is fish and typically not a lot of that pesca-vegetarians become vegetarians in the minds of most of society who, frankly, aren't particularly intelligent because we've got them so busy trying to remember the difference between a vegan and a vegetarian that they see anything that appears to be a vegetarian to hold all of the morals of a vegetarian.
      And, I couldn't tell you the lines that pescatarians use when explaining to real vegetarians why they don't feel morally obligated to not eat fish but I think it has a lot to do with the fact that fish are ugly. It's hard to empathize with something slimy and cold that doesn't even breathe air. Fish aren't cute and they don't make noises or display intelligence and so they're okay to eat. That's what I figure, anyway.
      Then you have flexitarians. I don't even want to talk about them. They're some kind of absurdity. From what I understand as I have never bothered to look up a so-called definition for this term is that, basically, flexitarians are vegetarians who sometimes eat meat. In other words they get up in the morning (or maybe in the afternoon like everyone sane and internet-using) and say to themselves: "Today I will be a vegetarian. I will have cereal for breakfast, a salad for lunch and a nice vegetarian soup for dinner. I will eat potato chips for a snack because potatoes are, after all, a vegetable." Potatoes are not a vegetable. Technically, yes, but nutritionally, no. They are a starch and your doctor will tell you starches are bad. Except possibly in different terms unless you are under the age of twelve. Or a flexitarian wakes up in the morning and thinks: "I think I'm going to scarf down a hamburger today because I'm a flexitarian." And outloud I (having read their mind, of course) finish with: "By which I really mean I am an omnivore because flexitarian is one of the most moronic terms ever described."
      I am a flexitarian by all definitions I can discern. And by that I mean I am an omnivore. I am, at the very best, a lacto-ovo vegetarian but I'm not that pretentious, either. I do eat meat about once a week but I could forsee giving up meat entirely as I continue to do a worse job at deluding myself about the world and my body continues to function at less than peak capacity without one of my memorable organs.
      Out of my desire to distance myself from any real defining term and labels I didn't invent in general if my dietary habits come up I introduce myself as a pseudo-vegetarian. Ideally I would be saying this to someone who isn't totally sure what pseudo means and has enough knowledge of vegetarians to understand that there are several levels because they would then ask me what kind of vegetarian that was and I could respond: "Not a very good one." This is funny because pseudo means "fake" so a fake vegetarian would not be a very good vegetarian. No one has ever laughed at this joke. It's because this scenario has yet to happen. It's one of my advance-comebacks. I have still used this term to describe myself upon occasion and I have also used the phrase: "I don't really eat meat." The latter phrase comes up a lot more often.
      I have never claimed to be an actual vegetarian but on multiple occasions members of the general public who are, for the most part, (as you may recall) not particularly intelligent, have made what Malcolm Gladwell calls in his book Blink the "Harding Error" and referred to even me as a vegetarian. I remember a couple of days ago distinctly when we got a new book in at work and someone began to gush to me: "I know you're a vegetarian but you should see this book, Seduced by Bacon." And now, not only am I a vegetarian but for some reason vegetarians are apparently still supposed to be interested in cookbooks that focus solely on meat.
      So I've come up with a new comeback. If someone asks me if I am a vegetarian I will explain to them that of course I'm a flexipescalactoovovegetarian. I will make every attempt to say this with a straight face. If anyone asks me what this means I'll say I'm an omnivore, just like everyone else regardless of what my actual current eating habits include because being a vegetarian (and I don't mean not eating meat here, that's easy) is way too complicated.