Hold onto Your Butts

It’s one of the famous lines from Spielberg’s 93 classic Jurassic Park. Technology, the driving force that brought the park into existence by means of various different sciences, has malfunctioned and shut down. As Ray Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson) smokes his cigarette to the filter and shuts the system down I find myself wondering what would happen if technology shut down here, not a remote island in the pacific but throughout the entire United States.

Programs like this exist. March 31 hosts Earth Hour. The goal is to have everyone across the country, across the world, turn off their lights for one hour. So far the program, which started in San Francisco, has been a success. The problem is, it’s only one hour.

There are tons of things a willing individual can do to save energy, so why wait an entire year for one hour? Plug your multiple appliances into a power strip and turn the whole thing off when you’re not using it. Turn off lights you aren’t using. Use compact fluorescents. Wash your clothes in cold water instead of hot- it reduces energy costs and washing your clothes in cold water helps them to stay vibrant and last longer. Do these things every day, then go even further and pull a Jurassic Park and totally unplug. No TV, no phone, no internet. Yep, sit in the dark. See if you can do it for one hour.

The END OF THE WORLD

Hello internet.

I've been doing a lot of reading on you lately and some of it is not so good. There seems to be a rather hostile contingent that agrees that the internet will spell the end of the world. I'm a pretty big Terminator fan so I gotta agree, you machines make me nervous. How not? With your blinking lights and your electric chords... no way man, no way.

However, lately I've also been reading some interesting things to your defense. There are online communities that are making a pretty significant difference on how people interact and communicate that isn't all that bad. Hell, I used to go to chat rooms and stir up trouble, and I'll never forget the time me and some high school buddies got drunk and played chat roulette in my sister's princess castle. Fun times. So lately I've been thinking you've been getting a bad rap.

Now, I'm an earth hugging hippie chick bent on destroying the cold and truncated means in which we communicate but if information will save the world, this is the quickest way to get it. Patton Oswald calls it ETEWAF (everything that ever was, available forever) (Wired mag, citation pending...) and that seems okay, lots of sifting. But even if everything that ever was, was available I doubt that most people would care to look it up. I guess it comes down to who you put your faith in these days, humans, or machines.

If you're reading this, you are the resistance.

In Sum

So, veganism.

It's been a week since I quit. Mom's grilled cheese tempted me away. Sometimes no matter the circumstance, close at hand is close at heart. If comfort is what you crave the best thing may be to simply go home. Or no, depending on where the bread's coming from I guess.

I didn't exactly make it the whole month, either. It wasn't really that big of a deal, one day I stopped eating meat and dairy and another one I started again. I guess even I could argue that the whole thing was pretty pointless, except I learned a few things, and I found in the week that has past that I have questions. I could argue both sides.

First of all, a diet that consists mostly of produce is expensive. Fake meat isn't cheap either, and you need to eat a lot of it. Nuts and beans will only get you so far. This is a part that I wasn't that great at. Another thing is that you have to be able to cook a lot. Not well necessarily, but you need to at least have the patience at the end of the day to do the prep and then cook the actual meal. Sometimes this works ok, sometimes not. On-the-go food is pretty hard to come by and a lot of on-the-go stuff for vegans is crap. I have to thank Sil's here for being the fastest way to a vegan dog and supplying me with quick junk that's probably still pretty healthy for me. I did not ask if the bun was vegan.

That's another thing I'm a little unresolved about; that there is so much stuff out there that contains egg, or dairy, that doesn't really necessarily have to be in there. I find this troubling. If indeed these things pose some future threat to humans in the long run, be it through existence of free radicals, or growth hormones, or just lots of fat, then WTF? Are they really a threat or no? What about all the claims about soy lately? Is there really a better way to eat?

In some ways, I did like the way this diet makes you think about what you're eating. I looked at nutrition facts all the time. It really narrows the amount of options you have, kind of simplifies decision making. I didn't mind that. I also can say with 100% confidence that eating this way made me feel great. A week and a few buckets of chili later I'm back to the regular problems with my guts. I actually think I may have discovered that I'm lactose intolerant, something that I have yet to come to terms with.

In some ways I kind of miss it. Since quitting, I've looked for ways in my day to eat vegan, the discipline just isn't there. Maybe it's something that I'll move back to. My mother showed me an article, shortly before I caved and ate the grilled cheese, about a woman who went vegan and took several years to do it. Obviously I did not do this, but I think that if I were to again, for real this time, that I would do it in this way.

Meat by Vegetable

So it's been a few weeks, one week to go. By far the most daunting obstacle presented by veganism is the common hangover. Most hangovers require protein to cure. Buttery, cheesy, meaty protein. Oh, how I've pined. Beans and potatoes are a ready enough substitutes, but lack a certain punch. Maybe it's just that this experiment has an expiration date that makes me dwell on such solutions as superior, maybe not.



I have found love for a few vegan specialties; vegan butter is barely distinguishable from its counterpart, and vegan mayo is roughly the same. Admittedly, I don't use mayo often, so if that is your condiment of choice you may notice but I don't. Vegan cream cheese is ok in consistency and texture, but it is less tangy than real cream cheese, a mild minus. I also have grown fond of vegan staples like seitan and tempeh. Seitan is a wheat gluten based protein that walks and talks like the real deal especially in soups, stir-frys, and rice dishes. It's easily seasonable but has soy sauce in it so it's noticeably salty to begin with. Tempeh is a little more difficult to describe. It's a bean based protein that usually comes in a brick. It's very firm and kind of curd-y. I ate this with rice and didn't like it. I put it over a salad and loved it. I also hear that it's good for making faux BLTS (called VLTS) but I have not tried that yet. There is also a lot to be said for the Smart "Meat" or Simply "meat" products. I can't tell you exactly what they're called because I've eaten them all. These guys really know what they're doing. I like their (not) dogs and their "sausage" and "ground beef" products and used them before this experiment to make vegetarian tacos and so on. Texture and taste is great for not being actual meat. I do think the irony of vegetarian products making things that taste like meat for non-meat eaters is ironic and amusing, but you can't beat that it cuts down on cholesterol and other assorted yada yada known for being in most meat.

Some things I've found surprising, however, is that this "diet" has done almost nothing to clear my skin. I've attributed past problems with this to eating lots of cheese and meat which turns up on my skin. Turns out this is not true, sorry Grandma, but it has entirely cured the problems I was having with my guts. I haven't had a stomach ache all month. At this point I would recommend veganism to anyone suffering from food related allergies (except wheat and soy), stomach problems, and people looking to in a sense "clear out their system" after the heavy eating holiday season ect.

Comfort Food at a Premium.

I can tell my caloric intake is suffering when...


Everything I eat is a damn vegetable. This is healthy, this is good, this is just a temporary experiment to see what I would feel like if I were a vegan. Today, however, the heat was out at work and it was shipment day. So all day I was putting away stock to raise my body heat (the store was just over 50 degrees) and now, I would about kill for a hot cheese anything. I even made a preemptive attempt to quell this post-work feeding frenzy by going to the local vegetarian deli and getting a delicious looking tofu stir-fry and a mint chocolate vegan cookie. Then I realized I forgot my wallet at home. I'd walk back, but it's 15 degrees and I have had it with being cold for the day. Now I don't know whether to console myself with peanut butter or wait for the "sausage" to thaw so I can have some with more rice. There is a greater side to this: I'm noticing a habitual trend to eating, especially when it comes to comfort, wherein lies a fruitful dialogue on consumption and habits and stress... but I don't wanna think right now I wanna eat.

Elements of Seasonal Change

Greetings inter-space,

Minor computer failure and some complete updates:

A tip of the hat to Richard P., who saved my computer from the brink of utter destruction. If you have (or had...) AVG anti-virus software, that 2011 update is a doozie. Unless you are a friends with a computer savvy individual or are one yourself, you might as well hit your computer with a car. It's cool though, worlds end all the time. We're still kicking.

Two months have yielded some good tidings, some bad. The holidays are over, that's a relief, now what to do with all this free time? Go back to school! The classes are interesting and the resources are handy. Let freedom ring!

I am now a published journalist! Check out my green living page at Examiner.com All articles are to be posted in a format relevant to living in Milwaukee, so my next challenge is to not sound like I'm advertising all the time.

Here, however, will be the platform for my next experiment: going vegan. Vegans have been assimilated into such groups as idiots, extremists, and PETA, company that I assure everyone I do not keep. Aspects of veganism include not eating any animal products including honey, dairy, meat, and so forth; not wearing any animal by products like leather or fur; and sometimes includes a frowny attitude toward pet ownership. My version, or what I'm paring it down to, does not exclude pets, honey, or leather (I just bought a rad pair of keens for the extensive Wisconsin weather, it's practical, ok?). This is more of a dietary experiment, in honor of my forefathers, and greatly in the key of greater physical harmony. As a disclaimer, I'll mention that I do not begrudge philosophical vegans their distaste for leather, honey, pets, whatever; I know all about the meat and dairy industry. It's sick and wrong and should be regulated by ethical peoples with concern for the well being of all beings. I continue to hope and aspire toward such Utopian times, as is my lot in life, while I enjoy Stilton bleu on rye sesame crackers. Life is too short. But this month, I fast.

So far, I think I'll only really miss cheese, which I put on almost everything; and yogurt, which I use to help regulate intestinal problems; another reason for this move. The vegan butter I had this morning on toast was pretty comparable. Butter to my knowledge isn't one of those things most people can readily discern from one brand to another unless it's margarine, which of course is not butter. We'll see, this is only day one.

Bring me to your leftovers

Oh yeah, and you thought Thanksgiving happened only once a year.



For the record, that's cranberry juice. Yep.

This is the dark part of the year. With Thanksgiving over and the next holiday being mass marketed to death, I find this time of year useful for one thing; hibernation. My cats don't care if I want to stay in bed all day, so why bother? If being a human didn't call for having a social security number and required a paycheck (in part funding my netflix addiction) at this time of year I would be positively bedridden. That's not to say I haven't been getting my fair share of things done. It's mostly just prep work though, and I am in a prep work induced torpor. Maybe it's all the starch and turkey I've been eating.

So, What is the Rainbow Vortex? Well, it's a land carved by a bike trail, near a county highway in Burlington, WI where you leave M&Ms for the faeries and the elemental guardian spirits that dwell there. There are giants, too big to be seen, and ghosts. There are also angels, aliens and sometimes, if you're in a state of rare luck, the devil stops by just to say hey. I know how this sounds. You think "a $25 flimflam fest into the woods so some hippy freaks can blind you with repetative camera flashes and shout at you while you freeze your holy parts off?" Well, skeptic, I say onto you, can you explain this?: