Vick Go Vegan!

Dear Michael Vick,

It’s been a while since the dogfighting thing, and the public is still mixed on their feelings toward you with your recent success. I’ve been a fan since you were at Virginia Tech, and I still am. Obviously, the dogfighting was horrendous, but I have rationalized over time that your actions against animals are no worse than that of most other Americans, and your punishment was excessive within that context.

In a society where torturing and killing animals was considered morally reprehensible, your punishment would have been far greater, but in our society, only a select few animals are granted respect. Hypocritical Americans will continue to demean you as a vile individual, while they participate in animal cruelty on a daily basis. Your football success won’t change that.

By the way, you aren’t reformed. Your lifestyle still causes the deaths of hundreds of animals, even if your participation is no longer quite so direct. True reform would be giving up animal products and all other activities that harm animals. You’ve only stopped engaging in one form of cruelty. So, go vegan. It’s the only way to truly clear your conscience and be a moral person.

Also, it would make everyone shut up. Think about it.

Sincerely,

Stephen Bollich

My Cat is Still Vegan

I have not commented on Stanis’ vegan diet recently, just as I have not commented on anything at all lately through my WordPress portal to the outside world. And of course, there is still no topic I am more obsessed with.

Stanis has consumed a plant-based diet for over a year now, with no adverse side effects. The major breakthrough that occurred only weeks ago was the discovery of Evolution’s “Gourmet Vegetable Stew Entree” that comes in a yellow can. Holy crap. Dude’s bananas for it. It’s actually the first vegan food he seems to genuinely enjoy. It appears to have improved his quality of life immensely, and I don’t have to feel guilty anymore about compromising his happiness. I like it OK too, but it’s a little gritty and bland for my palate.

This discovery would have been made in the very beginning, when I bought the vegan cat food sampler from vegancats.com or VeganEssentials. I forget which. Actually, wasn’t “vegancats” consumed by VeganEssentials at some point? I think there’s some reference to it in the second edition of Obligate Carnivore and I recall VeganCats linking to VeganEssentials when I bought the food.

OK, regardless, I bought some vegan cat food. I guess this would have been Summer 2009. They got the order right except one item. They put Evolution yellow can dog food in the package. I gave that can to my dog-owner roommate, as I figured that was the better solution than going to the trouble of exchanging the cans. Plus, since it turned out Stanis did not like green can, I assumed he would similarly despise yellow can.

Boy was I wrong! And for that Stanis, I apologize. If I hadn’t haplessly bought both flavors on a whim at Spiral Diner two or three months ago, I would have never realized my mistake. Thank you Spiral Diner – Fort Worth, for being the only retailer in the state of Texas that sells Evolution. It’s actually really amusing. That place is swimming in vegan cat food now.

I buy Stanis’ crack-in-a-can for $48 plus shipping (comes to about $60) on Amazon.com. That’s 24 cans. It lasts about two months. Well, at least it used to. He seems to eat more of it each day.

Evolution is actually the only company I feel comfortable buying my cat food from at this point, which means I’ve had four options: yellow can, green can, blue bag, red bag. All we had tried him on until recently was green can and red bag, and red bag had been our food of choice during the majority of Stanis’ vegan existence. I’m not sure blue bag was out at the time we began this adventure, but at the very least it wasn’t in the starter pack.

Regarding other brands, Ami Cat has a questionable D3 source, VegeCat is a hassle (the supplement mix you use to make your own food), and there are actually a few more obscure brands produced overseas, but as far as I can tell they are all prohibitively expensive.

We still haven’t had any reason to take Stanis to a vet, which would be about a year and a half now. And let me reiterate, I do not believe there is any reason whatsoever to be concerned about feeding a cat a vegan diet. The supplements in commercial vegan food are nutritionally equivalent to that in non-vegan brands. More importantly, one participates in the mass genocide against non-human animals with every bonemeal, chicken fat, organic pork chop, cow brains, et al meal you feed to your furry refugee companions. The nuances of my cat’s health do not outweigh the slaughter. Plus, “Vegan eats is just fine,” says Stanislav Schimke Grakowski, decorated veteran of the latter stages of the 10,000 year war on animals.

In conclusion, yes. Vegan cat food.

Gluten

I’ve been avoiding gluten the past week. I would be 100 percent, except I didn’t realize rye was just as bad as wheat. Apparently it’s rye, wheat, barley. I tried to go gluten-free a few months ago, without much success, but I’m taking it a lot more seriously this time. I’ve been reading that gluten is bad for IBS sufferers, which I am, so this gives me more confidence that gluten may be one of my triggers.

I’ve also been avoiding (less religiously) soda, refined sugar, coffee, alcohol, nuts, fried foods, and probably a few other things I have read are foods to avoid with IBS: http://ibs.about.com/od/ibsfood/a/triggerfoods.htm.

I made some delicious gluten-free cupcakes. Bob’s Red Mill definitely has the best gluten-free cake mix I’ve bought so far. The main flour was garbanzo, and I could taste the subtly hot, bitter flavor of the bean in the batter, but once they were baked and covered in frosting and sprinkles, the bean was barely noticeable.

My most recent goal is to make good gluten-free biscuits with sausage, and I guess some gravy too. I’ve been having fun attempting to make my favorite foods gluten-free now. I’ve given up on making my own bread, after a disgusting, dry product I made on Saturday. If I try again, I’m definitely going to use yeast.

I was excited to find some gluten-free vegan sausage, and I’ve also discovered that Tofu Pups are apparently gluten-free: http://www.bookofyum.com/blog/gluten-free-veggie-burger-reviews-576.html. I need to check to make sure this information is still accurate. But yeah, that would make things a lot easier.

Going gluten-free is like going vegan again, discovering all the products I can find to replace my previous diet. I’m finally looking at all of my food choices and how they effect my body. As far as I know there’s no one writing about the vegan IBS experience so maybe I’ve found my niche. We’ll see. I’m just glad I’m finally being pro-active.

I will not shut up about my vegan cat.

I do not give a shit how healthy a vegan diet is for a cat. I care that my cat eats, continues to behave like a cat, poops regularly, and seems to be okay. As long as I have that covered I have no concerns whatsoever about continuing to feed him vegan. To believe that it is wrong to kill animals for personal consumption but somehow it’s okay to feed them to a companion animal is absolutely inconsistent. Our cat Stanis is a very picky eater, and he has liked both Ami Cat and Evolution cat food just fine. We transitioned him in a matter of days to each of those foods. Granted, he’s only been vegan for a couple of months now, but we have seen no ill-effects.

I’m just really tired of hearing vegans say that they don’t have enough information yet to feel that a vegan diet for their cat is the most healthy. Who cares? I don’t believe a vegan diet is the most healthy one for a human. If I wasn’t vegan I would probably eat honey, eggs, and fish – but I don’t, because it is fundamentally immoral to do so.

I can understand that people are sentimental about their pets. But look. A cat is just one life. Over the course of a cat’s life, eating a typical diet, he will consume the equivalent of well over one hundred animals. It strikes me as obvious that it’s better to drop the cat in favor of all the other animals. I can understand the sense of personal responsibility for the cat, but this is still totally irrational behavior. Maybe I’ll feel differently if my cat starts to have issues, but for now I continue to be upset with most vegan cat owners, many of whom have never even bothered to try out a vegan diet for their cat.

If you are a “vegan” dog owner who feeds your canine meat, you have absolutely no excuse. You are not a vegan.



My First Ever Webcomic

Stanis the Vegan Kitty

OK, so my cat’s vegan. That I even own a cat is an unusual circumstance, and I should point out that I am co-owner, along with my girlfriend Britty, of this animal. This month-long process has been a very important period in my life, probably one of my most esoteric and personal. The whole idea of “owning” someone bothers me, so sometimes I rationalize the relationship by imagining we are just two beings, inhabiting the same space. But we get to leave, and he doesn’t. We provide for all his nutritional, emotional, health, and sanitation needs. He’s more or less a slave.

My primary point in writing this was to offer a brief synopsis of the Stanis saga, but my yet to be diagnosed ADHD has different plans. Instead, I’m getting tied up in my predictable self-deprecation and vanity. That’s the thing about all of this; it’s all about my ego. I think that because I have a vegan cat, I am by extension more vegan, even though I am perpetuating the species-based hierarchy by holding a less capable mammal hostage. Still, I have to agree for now with a number of other vegans I’ve argued with over the issue of whether or not domesticated animals should be liberated immediately, seeing as Stanis in particular is old, complacent, and declawed. He would not fare very well at all in the wild, and I know he would not be happy. I should point out that he was declawed many years ago by his idiot former owner. We had nothing to do with it.

Maybe it’s better that I have a cat, since I know that everyone else isn’t going to stop adopting them any time soon. If I can show other cat owners that it’s not that difficult to feed their animal a cruelty-free diet, especially if they are already vegan themselves, maybe I can end up helping out more animals in the long run.

The Left Does Not Own the Animal Rights Movement

I haven’t been nearly as involved with radical politics lately. My girlfriend’s pregnant, I’m finally nearing the end of my AmeriCorps contract, and my animal rights activism hasn’t extended much beyond making vegan breakfast tacos for my mom when she stopped by my apartment yesterday morning. I also tend to be turned off by the views I encounter when intersecting with the “radical” left.

So, I wasn’t all that surprised by one particular moment at a recent discussion of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) at a radical bookstore in Austin. After discussing the federal crackdown on animal and environmental activists, including an ongoing case involving a group called the “AETA4,” the organizer for the event had this gem (paraphrased): “One thing we need to be aware of is the double-standard for activists on the right and left. People seem so concerned with nonviolent left-wing activists fighting for animals and the planet, while you have right-wing extremists involved in much more destructive activism. For example, at town hall meetings extremists have engaged in violence against fellow citizens and even a congressman.”

One of the events he’s probably referencing is this one: http://forums.goupstate.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8661098265/m/5461065409/r/3631066409. In fact, it was a conservative activist who was attacked by unionists. However, based on a quick Google search, it appears both sides, liberal and conservative, are getting out of control. Regardless of who is to blame, calling establishment Republicans “extremists” is on par with the sort of rhetoric I tend to expect from Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. It doesn’t fit the level of discourse I expect from what are supposed to be intellectual discussions. I definitely have not heard anything about violence against a congressman, but I know that many have been quite annoyed recently: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/washington/stories/080409dnnathealthcare.40bfa03.html.

Instead of directly confronting his comment, I argued in favor of a non-partisan approach to combatting the AETA, since opposition to the act has tended to revolve around the belief that it violates the First Amendment. That’s something both left and right should potentially be able to get behind. Another way to confront the act is to argue that it violates the Tenth Amendment, because prosecuting animal liberationists has nothing to do with Congress’ power “To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” It’s also a reason to oppose most federal legislation, but that’s definitely more of a conservative tactic.

I apologize for not going into more detail about the act. I also don’t know much about the circumstances surrounding recent town hall meetings on health care reform. I’m kind of rusty.

TV news not my cup of tea

More reasons for me to turn off the tube and avoid contact with liberals

I watched Washington Journal this morning and Connie Schulz of the Cleveland Plain Dealer was one of the guests. In response to a caller who pointed out that Obama’s approval ratings are not as high as Jimmy Carter’s were during his first hundred days in office and that Obama is not as universally loved as the mainstream media would have us believe, she chose not to answer the question. She responded that she did not believe the caller represented very many Americans. Connie believes that nearly all of them trust the president, whether or not they voted for him, because things are so bad. In other words, Obama has scared the public into buying into his program. How noble of him.

She used another common liberal rhetorical device when someone asked about how government intervention will raise the cost of health care. All she said was that the caller’s concern was unfounded and that Obama will lower everyone’s health care costs.

Something most people don’t seem to understand is that when the government spends money, it means you’re spending more of your own money. When the state intervenes in the market, to subsidize some industries over others or institute price floors and ceilings, it disrupts the market, perhaps the clearest example being that increases in the minimum wage raise unemployment. But liberal talking heads like to say things like, “Oh, but the evidence on that is inconclusive.” No it’s not. It’s obvious. Your arrogant tone and claims of majority acceptance do not make you right.

In an especially disturbing moment, she stated that it is unpatriotic to disrespect the president. She suggested Ed Gillespie, the guest prior to her who said some unfriendly things about Obama, needs to “shut up.” Another gem from Connie was this one, “To me, being a liberal is an act of gratitude.” To put it into context, she said that because she benefitted from government programs as a child, “she didn’t have much choice but to be a liberal.” This woman scares the hell out of me. I can definitely see why it is more accurate to label the elite as statist rather than socialist.

Seriously, and I’ll try to make this clear to everyone, regardless of political identity, Nothing has changed. This country has not changed. This government has not changed. The state still uses coercion to push its agenda. Troop levels are higher, not lower, since Obama took office. The government continues to be the enemy, not your friend. Stop liking the president.

Now she’s acting upset that Rush Limbaugh wants Obama to fail. That it’s hateful to want him to fail. Hateful? Is it hateful if I want to protect people from further intrusions into their personal life? Is it hateful if I want bureaucrats to stop stealing people’s property? I see politicians as the hateful bunch.

What I’ve decided to take from this is that I find watching political commentary distasteful, but it does give me something to write about. Maybe I should try harder to pay attention than I have been lately.

So you want to be an anarchist?

Over the past year, as I’ve tried to further define my ideology, I keep referring back to a few essays that I’ve come to use often in the defense of my beliefs. Three of them stick out more than the others.

• “LIBERTARIAN ANARCHISM: WHY IT IS BEST FOR FREEDOM, LAW, THE ECONOMY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, AND WHY DIRECT ACTION IS THE WAY TO GET IT” by DANIEL C. BURTON (Sorry about the all caps. That’s how it was in the original and I don’t feel like going to the trouble to change it.)
  • http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/polin/polin168.pdf
  • What I like most about this essay is that it blurs the line between libertarianism and anarchism and that the author comes from a distinctly left position.
  • Perhaps best of all, he defends private property and attacks collectivism, while managing to have purple hair at the same time.
  • He uses socialism as a pejorative term.
• “Are Libertarians ‘Anarchists’?” by Murray N. Rothbard
  • http://mises.org/story/2801
  • He simultaneously attacks mainstream libertarians and anarchists, because neither of them oppose the State enough.
  • My favorite part is his assertion that to be a true libertarian requires one to support complete abolition of government in all its forms.
  • He identifies as a conservative.
• “Karl Hess: the Left-Right spectrum” by Karl Hess
  • http://wconger.blogspot.com/2005/08/karl-hess-left-right-spectrum.html
  • Karl Hess was Barry Goldwater’s speechwriter.
  • He was a conservative who fled to the far left, but retained right-wing ideas to go with his left-wing rhetoric.
  • His Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Hess

Blagojevich!

So, I haven’t updated for a while. Sorry. I moved to Austin about two weeks ago. I’m an AmeriCorps volunteer working for Goodwill. That’s all I’ll say for now, but it’s probably the best job I’ve ever had.

I love Rod Blagojevich. I’m a big fan of corrupt politicians in general, but he might be my favorite. There’s a comedy group in Chicago that’s putting on a play about him. I think it looks wonderful:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100294869

I’ve been on a semi-raw diet the past week. I’m training for the Cap 10K.

I’d really like to write more, but I just don’t feel like it. Maybe later.