Being in the right mood I whipped up a batch of crepes. Remember; when flipping a crepe the important thing is to marshal your courage and flip swiftly. Loosen all the edges first while the center is cooking up too, that helps I think. Anyway I happened to have some (pizza) white cheese blend and pepperoni so when I was eating the crepes leftover I decided to make some crepe pizzas by just putting some of that stuff on and heating the lot up in the microwave. This was not my greatest experiment. I think that having cheese on a crepe isn’t bad, but the whole thing ended out sort of funky and greasy in the bad way.
Other than this someone gave me some Darbo syrup and it was not to my tastes. I am critical of everything but there wasn’t a single thing I liked about it.
In an interesting plot twist, new evidence has come to light that the reason everyone thinks I look jewish, whatever that means (I think they’re just ridiculing me, but I know they’re mocking jews with those remarks), might be because I’m descended from Romani. Which might more commonly be known in english as “gypsy” and not to be confused with roman. I don’t really know a lot about that matter, but at the least going back to the nazis there has been lumping together of the romani with the jews. Which ended out being much to their lasting detriment, hard enough to recover from genocide as it is only to end out having your identity ignored. Who knows how many roma children were mistakenly thought to be jewish and misplaced? I don’t think the opposite would be as much the case but I guess I don’t really know.
But on to the fun Q: “Is Togashi Yoshihiro dead” A: Togashi Yoshihiro is the author of the mysteriously popular manga series “Hunter X Hunter” which was on hiatus for close to 2 years if I recall correctly, only to go on hiatus again within a couple months of resuming. [update: apparently the moment I said this a new chapter of HxH came out but whether this means that serialization has actually resumed at the old rate which included frequent breaks for months at a time or just a fluke is not known] Well officially he is not dead. I had previously speculated that there was no way to tell who was drawing the last chapters before the hiatus because they were little more than glorified scribbles. But in the recent batch of new chapters before this second indefinite hiatus the art was clearly his, and of fair quality at that. It remains a matter of speculation exactly what his problems (serious illness is presumed but that could be anything) are that have interrupted serialization, some skeptics don’t believe that there’s anything wrong him, but nothing has been forthcoming. Frankly while it is not anyone’s business aside from his beleaguered employers exactly what is going on, to followers of his work it would be nice to know whether his problems are terminal or not. I think that Shueisha, his publisher, is entirely aware of what is going on, but is intentionally covering things up in order to maintain interest in the work. Frankly if I didn’t think the series was going to end before Togashi I would give up on it and I don’t think I’m the sole holder of that sentiment.
Q: “I want to be a vegetarian but I have absolutely no idea how to go about it” A: If you’re really serious about being a vegetarian, I recommend seeing a dietitian and making a gradual transition. Just as people typically fail at giving up drugs all at once, so do people fail at giving up meat all at once. You might start by only eating meat once a day, and then graduating from there to only eating byproducts once a day before eliminating those. Decide where your morals and aesthetics lie on the matter between being a fake vegetarian, one who still eats poultry and fish; a real vegetarian, one who doesn’t eat meat but still eats eggs and dairy and such; and fake vegan, a person who does their best not to eat anything with animal products in it but who ultimately fails because of feasibly inescapable cross-contamination. A note on that last part, if you order a tempeh burger and your friend orders a cheeseburger… Or failing that, even if you’re at a vegan restaurant how much meaning in it is there if the guy preparing your food snacks on prosciutto?
Well the other day someone asked me to refute vegetarianism so I might as well jump all the way into this one. For a person who desires to be vegetarian you will inevitably fail if you try to eat vegetarian versions of the same foods you usually do. Vegan sausage for instance. While there are a few substitute products that are quite good, veggie burgers and margarines have come a long way for example, most fall flat. Instead the best thing to do is totally revamp your diet with all new vegetarian dishes. There are a lot of great vegetarian oriental dishes, chinese and indian in particular, which I enjoy and won’t leave you wanting as the veggie steak will.
Which brings me to the second key to vegetarian success: you have to be both able and willing to prepare almost all of your own meals. This probably breaks people even more than changing their diet. Most people really can’t cook great in the first place, but in our bottom line driven world even people who want to become better at cooking simply don’t have the time or energy to dedicate towards cooking. I would really recommend finding the reserves somehow to prepare your own food as much as possible though, taste and/or budget issues aside it really is a lot better for you to eat things as minimally processed as possible. So let me say that if you and/or your household aren’t cooking a lot now and don’t think that you can change that, don’t even bother trying to become a vegetarian. You just won’t keep it up.
The third key to success as a vegetarian is to do it with others. If it’s just you converting and not your spouse and/or children or other dependents (perhaps you take care of your ailed parents, I don’t know) and you’re the only one cooking, it simply isn’t going to work. Well you could try telling these others to fend for themselves but that’s a bit cold if we’re talking about children. It’s bad enough preparing one set of meals, but to have to prepare two? You’re not in a better position in any kind of unit even if it’s not you preparing the food. It’s a bit selfish to say “you guys eat this and by the way I need you prepare this for me” don’t you think? Probably the equation is just too difficult with children in the picture in any case though. Now even if you have no romantic partner or dependents it is still easier to convert to any kind of diet (this actually would apply to the last one as well) if someone else is going along on it with you. For moral support if nothing else. People are pretty pathetic, can’t really do anything on their own, so you need the moral support to succeed.
So saying those things, the main reason to forget about vegetarianism is because it goes against human nature. Not that eating meat is a part of human nature so much as being opportunistic is. I think that moral reasons for vegetarianism are mere sophistry if not in fact hypocrisy. I could give examples or elaborate but you can probably use your own imagination other than reiterating that just because you don’t think you’re eating or using an animal’s byproduct doesn’t mean that you aren’t. As to economic reasons for vegetarianism, they’re questionable. I think it was Gandhi who brought up the point that it doesn’t make sense to feed something else just so that you can eat it instead of just eating what you were going to feed it in the first place. However realistically a lot of domesticated animals eat things that people won’t or in some cases even can’t eat. And the opposite is also true to some extent. But I do think that we could make better utilization of animals we feed on at this point and that there’s a lot of waste resultant from the process. This is also a form of sophistry, if you’re going to eat the fish you might as well eat its eyes too instead of just its fillet.
Recently environmental concerns have been raised about livestock processing and some people give this as a reason for becoming a vegetarian. I do not think that the pollution resultant from the livestock industry (mostly transportation emissions, but deforestation is also an issue) is the worlds biggest concern but it could be a part of it. Similarly some people cite a poor diet as reasons for giving up meat. I don’t think it’s the steak’s fault that it tastes so much better than a piece of lettuce that you would rather eat a big steak than a salad. Most recently a trend I’ve seen is people switching to vegetarianism because of health concerns. This is probably pretty stupid. Anyone can see sense in cutting back if you eat a diet especially high in fatty cow byproducts, but for the most part people stop eating meat because they’re afraid of some sort of animal disease. I thought it was divine comedy when there was a big E. Coli (I think) outbreak in the US in spinach or something like that last year. God was laughing about that one all year let me tell you. So that one is somewhat bunk as long as you’re sure of your government’s control on meat. If you’re not maybe it isn’t such a bad idea though who can say. Other general health benefits are questionable.
Long time readers (do I have any?) might recall that I was on a vegetarian diet for a period of months last year. Initially I was doing everything right, following my outlined suggestions (other than how I was doing it all on my own), and I did feel physically better at first. But eventually I was back to feeling like crap as usual. In my case I think there was a psychological element to it. For me it’s pretty demoralizing to eat a meal without meat for various reasons. One other remark I could make about my improvement and subsequent decline is that when I started out on the diet I was preparing almost all my own food, but by the end I was subsisting almost entirely on prepared foods. Granola, cereal bars, frozen meals/burritos, stuff like that. Having recently gone through a cooking resurgence (everything I’ve eaten in the last week was made in my home) I have similarly been feeling better. I think that this is something experienced by other people so the fact that the food doesn’t have meat in it might be incidental with the real positive simply being preparing it yourself. In other words your diet does affect your health, and your mood, but that has less to do with whether there is meat in your diet and more to do with the freshness and quality of your food in the first place.
Another thing, a lot of vegetarians start taking vitamins when they make the switch. In reality if you’re eating more fruits and vegetables then you’re already getting more vitamins. So you might actually be overdosing on supplements which typically results in an initial wellness peak before being followed by a steep drop-off. Or if no such thing is going on, your improved wellness might be resultant from your supplements instead of your diet. Ugh what the hell was I writing about again? I got distracted by some other shit. Oh well.
Just remember that everything in the world exists for your amusement. So if it amuses you to eat a bloody slab of some animal’s corpse then go right ahead. And if you like mapo tofu (I love mapo tofu) but hate eggs (I hate eggs) then roll with that too.
