I have now gone for 24 hours without consuming the flesh of an animal. This isn’t a particularly amazing feat as, hell, I’ve gone for several days without eating anything but snickers bars, and those aren’t even made from anything terrestrial. For my meals today I had lots of salad, fruit, veggies and some french toast. Which was already my bad. I also had some muffins. I figure until my “hard start” date of June 1st, I’m just going to do my best to not eat things with meat, but something with eggs like muffins and french toast I’ll try to avoid but c’mon, I dont know if I can quit cold turkey.
Still I did well, I was tempted often by the scrumptious smell of cooking meat and was somehow able to avoid it’s siren call. After a long day of meat avoidance I came home to see if I had developed any kind of animal-empathic superpowers and low and behold, I found some strange dominance over the animal kingdom previously unknown to me. In the interest of no one believing a damn thing I say I took pictures. Now I can’t shoot out tendrils of quickly growing vines like Poison Ivy or anything awesome like that, but Aquaman’s super power is he can talk to whales. If that counts, mine totally counts too.
Defeated with my mind
Of course some of you are probably saying… that’s fantastic, you succeeded in making a dog lie down. Well to you naysayers I offer the following FURTHER proof of my animal mastery!
This fish is bent to my will
Ok, so the superpowers I’ve gained from not eating meat kinda suck, but I’m hoping that as they continue to develop they won’t degenerate into just listening to Phish and wearing Patchouli oil wherever I go, but actually manifest themselves into something that will help me rob banks or otherwise make up for the lack of tasty steak in my life.
On the topic of which, I wanted to address a few points raised by concerned readers. (most of whom commented on Facebook rather than here, also horribly paraphrased
Conrad: You should kill an animal, then eat it, then try to kill it again later to see if you’ve become desensitized to the act. You should also let me know when you’re planning on eating Panda meat
I have noticed that generally we don’t consume other predators. Coyote, Panda, Tiger, and Sexual all seem to avoid being on the list of things to devour, and I wonder if part of the reason here is to avoid accidentally eating yourself. I’m sure there’s more to it than that and this merits further exploration, though along those lines I doubt I could ever kill a Panda bear, but I would love to eat Panda meat just because it’s got to be the most rare thing you could consume on earth. Further, I like the idea of trying to kill something again down the road after doing it the first time. I’d be interested to see if I was desensitized, oversensitized or unchanged to the act. Though guessing by the non-challance with which slaughterhouses opperate I can guess the end result.
Peter: (Fuck Paraphrasing this self-confessed Vegetarian)I support this, but unless you’re going to go the flaccid route, I think you need to take this _all_ the way up the food chain. Because deciding whether it’s OK for you to eat something by assessing how you feel while killing it, while laudable, requires a prior ethical assignation of your subject into the “OK to try and kill to see if killing it … Read Moreis OK” category. More clearly stated: why is it OK for you to kill a chicken to see how you feel about killing chickens, but not OK for you to kill a person to see how you feel about killing people?
I don’t know what the flaccid route is, but it definatly sounds like something I would like to avoid. I have enough problems with that as it is (routes). I agree that there is some ethical supposition going on here, but I’m approaching this from the bottom up, rather than the top down. My goal isn’t to simply butcher everything in the animal kingdom, whether or not I’ve eaten it before, simply for the sake of deciding that which can be butchered shall be eaten. But rather a re-examination of my current diet, using my ability to go through with the act of ending it’s life as a gauge for continuing to eat it. It is a totally randomly assigned ethical code I’m enacting here, and I have previously debated whether or not, if presented with the most deadliest of game (dudes), I would in fact be able to eat the meat of that which I had caught. On one hand, I would be curious to see what person tastes like. On the other, I’m fairly horrified. Because what if you love the taste of person? And I -do- love the taste of steak. So now we need to see if I already bear a forbidden hunger within myself.
Bill: “I know some guys who can help you kill things. Also, if you kill something you’re responsible for it’s family”
Beyond writing some loving Haiku about whatever I eat, I don’t think I’m going to be taking care of it’s family. Just from a strictly realistic perspective. I’ll either be hunting for things in their natural habitat (in which case I dont think I could blast bambi infront of his mom), or purchasing something live to slaughter for consumption. In either case, usually the option of tenderly hugging it’s family afterwards and consoling them on their loss is likely going to be a non-issue. And I’ll for sure hit you up for assistance on your meatfriends when I get closer to needing their aid.
That said I advance to day 2 with considerable trepadation. Already my mom has invited me to dinner and already I was dreaming of the delicious lamb schwarma I’d be consuming at Daphne’s. At least the medeteranians have a fair share of non-meat products to consume.
Superpowers Developed: Mild Animal Empathic Control
Consumable Flesh: None
Meat Craveosity: Medium
on the topic of eggs …
i have a friend who only eats meat he would kill. he eats fish because he has caught and skinned them in the past.
as far as eggs go – “i have no problem cracking an egg. so eggs are fine.” does that help?
As someone else said, I know eating an egg is sortof just like eating a chicken period but that doesn’t really make it any better.