Just kidding. But I’ve decided not to continue crossposting my piggypiggypiggy entries here. I didn’t anticipate posting as much on that site as I have been, and the whole point of posting there was because I didn’t want this to be a vegan blog — which it’s sort of de facto becoming with all these crazy crossposts. I’ll still be tweeting Twitter notifications of new piggy entries, and you are of course welcome to read and respond to entries over at piggy³.

Every morning when I make oatmeal, I try really hard to not let any of it spill when I ladle it into the bowls. Naturally, every morning exactly one little glop spills onto the countertop.

I thought I'd take a break from pontificating speaking my truth about veganism and go back to a topic I started to write about back in December: The New Sincerity.

Jim posted a thoughtful response in the comments of my previous entry (“Who Are You?”) that naturally caused me to write a damn novel in response, so I’m posting it as a separate entry. And yes, I disagree with Jim on this. But I think he makes reasonable points that I want to address, at great and tiresome length, but also, I hope, convincingly.

We live in a society that offers more cheap, easily obtained opportunities for diversion and amusement than any other in history. And yet, so many of us are depressed, unfulfilled, bored, and unhappy.

Michael Keaton is one of those actors that just doesn't exist for me in any recognizable way. I'm aware that he lives, and that he has a career, and I've never thought he was a lousy actor, but he's not someone I either seek out or avoid. I just looked up Michael Keaton on IMDB, and it turns out I haven't seen him in a movie since Out of Sight, in 1998. 1998! And that was just an uncredited cameo!

I ‘m up way past my bedtime, but I didn’t want to let the day pass without saying something about Howard Zinn, the legendary historian and progressive activist, who died today of a heart attack at 87.

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Let me say up front, so you know where I’m coming from, that I’m not the child of San Francisco hippies, raised on sprouts and tofu. I’m a lifelong meat eater. Veganism is something that has not come naturally or easily to me.

I ‘ve been pretty quiet for the past couple of weeks, because I’ve been working on a new weblog. Yeah, I know: another weblog. But this is something that’s near and dear to my heart, and the subject I’ve been feeling most passionate about of late.

I ‘m trying to write one of those witty political satire songs, but I can’t find a good rhyme for “Fuck you worthless shitheel Democrats who can’t yank yourselves off the corporate teat long enough to do one decent fucking thing for the suckers who keep electing you in vain hopes of finding just one of you self-serving whores who actually possesses a human soul.”