funny vegan.

firstly, i would like to say that i am a hypocrite.  this is due to the fact that i eat meat.  i don't eat it with every meal.  i probably don't even eat it every day.  but i like it, and being that i haven't made an attempt at being a proper vegetarian or a proper vegan, i am able to justifiably claim that i feel like poop if i don't eat meat (i would probably feel fine if i took supplements and made other necessary changes in my diet, which makes nothing of what i'm saying actually justifiable).  the real hypocrisy here is that i honestly believe humanity as a whole would be better off economically, spiritually, moralistically, culturally and in terms of average physical health and over-all enjoyment of life, both ours and theirs, if we were all vegan.

i believe this firstly because of the inherent and necessary suffering the animals we eat, wear and sometimes sleep with endure as they involuntarily yet flawlessly play out their role as the commodities of man.  secondly because of the sheer labour and costs involved in raising animals such as livestock and poultry.  they say spending money is good for the economy... this seems invariably to include the wasting of it as well.  which brings me to my third reason for believing veganism is the way, which is space.  it is absurd how much usable landmass the industrial agricultural sector takes up on the surface of our planet.  what's more though, is the amount a farmer yields when he raises animals, and the amount of food a farmer yields when he hangs out with a much smaller amount of animals and raises crops.  i'm not an expert on this subject by any means, but from what i understand, in terms of weight, the animal-raising farmer yields hundreds if not thousands of times less than the happy and radiant veg-heads.  it's no wonder the raising of these animals (aka LIVING BEINGS) has been over time methodically bent and shaped into a streamlined very efficient machine which cares for nothing but to move and turn just as it was designed to do... which was, of course, to make money.

all in all, us meat-eaters, all a bunch of real assholes.  or just plain ignorant.  one or the other.

anyway, this was all just some preamble before getting onto my anecdote.

so i'm talking to this vegan.  we'll call this person a girl with the name of Al (short for 'animal lover').  i was jokingly saying that she shouldn't use the railroad anymore given that a man died as every mile was built.  al told me that this is the same argument people make about plants having feelings.  at this point an interview i'd read some years ago popped into my head about plants having feelings.

in a book of interviews, ones conducted by Richard Metzger in this compilation entitled Disinformation, on the publishing label by the same name, is an explanation of a study warranting the notion that plants do indeed have feelings.  i don't even remember if it was a botanist or what who collected the data, but a man decided to hook little electrodes or EMF wave readers or some other science-ish thing to measure the fields of energy being put out by plants.  then he decided to put two plants in the same room, with the whole room between them, and diametrically opposed.  plant A had all the electrodes on it and nothing would happen to it other than constantly having its mind read.  plant B would have no electrodes on it but instead have a timed apparatus nearby ready to drop a cinder block (or something just generally heavy and crushy) on it.  he timed it basically to just drop the brick when no one was around to the effect that if the plants happened to react energetically to the presence of other life, that factor would not affect these results.  the possible botanist concluded that it is highly likely that plants are aware of life in three dimensions made demonstrable by the screaming plant A.  that's right!  when plant A was crushed, plant A registered on the meters as flat out screaming.  how fuckin' weird is that?

two questions: what do we eat now?  and, why did Al tell me this was bullshit?

 she just wouldn't have it.  regardless of any lack of logic and whatnot, i just thought it was funny that Al doesn't think plants could possibly have feelings.