vegansaurus!

Somehow I’ve managed to become the “doom and gloom” guy around here, but the awesome environmental news just keeps rolling in this week, so what the hell, let’s go with it. I swear, on the inside I’m nothing but kitten videos and sunshine.

So, this sucks. There are no two ways about it. Over at Grist, they’re “stunned and baffled.” At Daily Kos, they’re saying that “oil drilling for minimizing carbon pollution is like fucking for virginity,” while Kevin Drum at Mother Jones goes for the measured approach, pointing out that Obama campaigned on offshore drilling. Steve Benen goes a step further, publishing an anonymous email from a White House staffer saying that there’s some kind of strategy to make Republicans look crazy by opposing Obama’s drilling plan, and using that to pass his climate bill as some kind of jujitsu move. Kate Sheppard reports that Republicans are indeed being crazy and flipping out. Treehugger just says WTF while letting the big environmental news of the day fall off their front page in favor of press releases about new cars (loving the irony).

California and all of the West Coast are spared from the plan. So, yay us, I guess. Nearly all the states chosen appear to be “red states,” so if there’s a silver lining, it would be watching a right-wing NIMBY anti-drilling movement pick up steam.

The plan is to open areas for exploration, not yet for drilling. Oil companies are famous for not using their offshore drilling leases (too expensive to get the oil) so in all likelihood, very little will change. But unless there’s some kind of grand strategy at work, every second we spend chasing our tail on oil and coal is a colossal waste of time that kills animals (holla back, harp seals!) and threatens civilization. In summary, fuck that noise.

I realized 30 seconds into The Animals Film that this was the “vegan documentary” I’d sought ever since we came up with the idea of “vegan movie reviews” a few months back. Investigative documentaries like Food, Inc. were informative but left me cold. Likewise, I thought Meat was a masterpiece, but it deals solely with the issue of meat production. None of them took a global view of the relationship between humans and other species. Turns out the movie I kept waiting for someone to make came out nearly 30 years ago. 

From what I can tell, The Animals Film caused quite a stir in its native England upon release, mostly due to a unique opportunity to be aired on the then-fledgling Channel 4. The movie apparently also had a large impact in the Swedish Parliament, which revised a lot of its policies regarding animals following a screening of the film. The controversy is hardly surprising: the film opens with historical footage of animals being abused, molested, exploited for entertainment, brutalized, pulverized, electrocuted,* and generally destroyed by humans. As if that wasn’t enough, The Animals Film sets this sequence to the Talking Heads’ “Mind,” with its increasingly desperate plea for “something to change your mind,” extremely effectively. I thought this sequence was so moving—similar to what I imagine Errol Morris would do with the topic—that I watched it multiple times. The Animals Film continues on to critically examine the exploitation of animals by humans, be it in the form of meat production, hunting, entertainment, laboratory testing, or (the one that made me shudder the most) military testing.  

The Animals Film makes a very important point that I actually feel is often lost among the animal rights/vegan discourse. I’ve had a lot of people ask me why I’m vegan, given that I’m not really an “animal person.” I’d point to the inevitable health and environmental reasons, but there was always another reason that I couldn’t fully express. Movies like The Animals Film and Au hasard Balthazar helped me explain—it’s the human reason. When humans inflict suffering on other sentient species, what does that say about us? The film’s tagline, “It’s not about them, it’s about us,” says it all. The U.S. government tied up animals on boats during the Operation Crossroads nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, just to “test” the effects of atomic bombs on biological creatures? After the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Really? Let me go ahead and give you the results of that test: NOT GOOD. How do we expect to eradicate human suffering when our way of life is so needlessly bound up in inflicting suffering? To those of you thinking, “but we have developed so many medicines because of animal testing,” The Animals Film makes an excellent point—penicillin kills guinea pigs! Fortunately Fleming and Florey never tested it on guinea pigs, or we may have never tried it on humans! Also, side note—why test LSD on monkeys? 

This is how I logically found my way to veganism without being an animal-lover. I grew tired of lying to myself about what needlessly killing animals for food told me about me. Not to sound totally pretentious and condescending (or, for that matter, like a damn hippie), but in my mind, learning to honestly treat other species with respect is the next logical step toward ensuring equality among humans. 

Seriously, I consider The Animals Film mandatory viewing for not only vegans, animal-lovers and the like, but for everyone. If I ever have the opportunity to teach that hypothetical “Animals in Film” syllabus knocking around in my head, The Animals Film would be the first movie I’d show. Actually, maybe it would be the last. I’m not sure what else I’d need to screen after this one.  

*Seriously, Edison? You filmed yourself electrocuting an elephant? Electricity has to annoy me now?

When he’s not slowly burning out his projector bulb, Zach Cincotta is an entertainment and business attorney representing awesome bands, record labels, and other small businesses. His previous movie reviews for Vegansaurus can be found here, you can contact him here, and follow him on Twitter here.

How many times have you been browsing patterns on Ravelry or clicking through the newest edition of Knitty thinking “GOD. I love this pattern but I’m vegan and I have no clue what yarn to use because the people at my local yarn shop are kind of mean about me being vegan and always try and sell me wool and then tell me that sheep like having chunks of their butts cut off without painkillers, so instead of knitting I’m going to go sit in the corner and cry.”

Yep, I’ve been through the same scenario quite a few times myself and it is not fun! The fact is, the vegan yarn market is severely underserved and being a new vegan, or knitter, or both can be quite daunting.  Well consider me your brand-new personal LYS employee who won’t scorn your ethics with a withering, condescending gaze.*

Together we’re going to go through some of the most popular knitting patterns circulating the internet today and pick out which yarns will work best for the individual projects! [Ed.: While we’ve linked to the websites of those yarn companies with websites, be sure to look for the best deals on yarns at your local stores or other, online retailers.]

Clapotis, by Kate Gilbert
With Clapotis, I feel that there are unlimited possibilities and you probably can’t go wrong. I do think a 100 percent bamboo or soy would work beautifully as they both have a silk-like, luscious drape that will compliment the bias knit quite nicely. Since it’s a scarf it’s not imperative that you match the gauge precisely, so go with whatever yarn is calling to you regardless of weight as long as you don’t mind smaller stitches. A DK weight bamboo from Southwest Trading Company would look absolutely stunning. If you’re looking for a slightly chunkier yarn try Classic Elite’s worsted weight Bam Boo or Queensland Collection Bebe Cotsoy, a worsted cotton/soy blend. If you absolutely want to stick with an aran weight yarn, then Anchor’s cotton/soy blend Bamboolo would be a perfect match!

Cobblestone Pullover, by Jared Flood
For all you male knitters out there, this is the quintessential pullover. It calls for a wooly aran weight tweed yarn, so I must recommend Kraemer’s Tatamy Tweed Worsted (40 percent cotton, 60 percent acrylic), which you may have to adjust your needle size for, but no biggie!

February Lady sweater, by Pamela Wynne
This is an extremely popular pattern that calls for a worsted weight merino yarn. It’s a lovely spring cardigan so I bet a plain ol’ cotton, such as Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton or Dyed Cotton, would work beautifully here. If you can’t afford that much per skein you can always try Lion Brand Cotton Solid or Knit Picks Simply Cotton. If you’re worried about shape retention then try a cotton/acrylic blend such as Lion Brand Cotton-Ease.

Fetching, by Cheryl Niamath
The Bay Area is the perfect place for fingerless mitts, especially for all that bike riding and stuffing our mouths full of food we do here. Make sure you’re prepared for the fall and knit Fetching. Crystal Palace Bamboozle (55 percent bamboo, 24 percent cotton, 21 percent elastic nylon) has just the right amount of bamboo to keep your hands toasty and plenty of elastic nylon to help them stay snug on your hands.

Monkey, by Cookie A.
If you haven’t knit socks yet, you simply must. They’re fun, quick, and turning the heel isn’t as scary as people make it out to be! This is a striking lacy pair of socks that any of the vegan Crystal Palace sock yarns would work well with. There is Maizy (82 percent corn fiber and 18 percent elastic nylon), Panda Cotton (59 percent bamboo, 25 percent cotton and 16 percent elastic nylon), or Panda Soy (49 percent bamboo, 33 percent soy and 18 percent elastic nylon) all of which come in both solid and variegated colors (choose variegated! Really!).

Owls, by Kate Davies

I’ve wondered just about twice a day my whole life why I don’t have a sweater with owls around the collar, and now here it is! The original pattern calls for a bulky weight wool yarn so Garnstudio’s Drops Ice (55 percent cotton, 45 percent acrylic) seems to have been made just for this pattern. Having a little acrylic blended with the cotton is important because you don’t want those owls to lose their shape and be sad, do you?!

As vegan bulky yarns can be a bit challenging to come by, I want to recommend a few other more budget friendly options, such as Berrocco Comfort Chunky or Knit Picks Comfy Bulky; both are cotton/acrylic blends.

*I have had nothing but amazing experiences at Bay Area yarn shops, but when I travel farther from our vegan paradise I tend run into downright bad manners.

Kristen is a graduate of San Francisco’s Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising and is now stuck in the city without a paying job. Luckily, she recently landed a great internship with a local yarn company and is working towards becoming a knitwear designer. She spends most of her free time knitting, eating vegan food, and petting her cat named Cooper who surprisingly does not bother her while she knits (which is pretty much all the time, it’s kind of ridiculous). This is her first post for Vegansaurus, but she has her own fabulous vegan knitting blog, Tree Wool. Check it out!

Oh happy day!!! Ami bones are now being sold at veganessentials.com! DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?! We don’t have to rely on those damn Brits (who are a culturally rich and adorable people) to get them from Italy for us anymore! Is this all over your head? Let me break it down for you because I’M THE NICEST KID EVER!

My dog Figaro likes him some chews. If your dog likes biscuits, you jerks got plenty o’ options. But vegan chews…they’re hard to come by. I mean, you’ve got several sweet potato chews to pick from but really, they take a measly five minutes for Fig to get through (though now he thinks he’s too good for them, goddamn princess) (actually it’s OK because he is just regulating his own weight for me! For real, I asked the vet why he wasn’t finishing his food and she seriously gave me Fig’s internal monologue: “Hmm, I think I’ve had enough calories today.” Who knew he was so reasonable?! Not the wino on the corner he snaps at on the daily! It’s so cute, I’m the only alcoholic he puts up with).

Then one day I found this super-dope website, veggiepets.com, that has ALL KINDS of vegan dog chews! Frickin’ hedgehogs and crocodiles—it’s a damn vegan chew jungle! They also sold Ami bones—VEGAN dog bones! Yeah, so, problem: these bones are from Italy. It’s not that I hate Italians, it’s that they just didn’t sell them in god-blessed America. See, veggiepets.com is a BRITISH site, and it’s not that I hate Brits, it’s that shipping is STUPID expensive. But I did it, people; I got fed up with not having good chews for the Notorious F.I.G. and totally ordered a crapload of the various chews all the way from the UK. It cost like U.S. $80 BILLION in shipping! I AM NOT EXAGGERATING! VERY MUCH!

Still: the chews went over really well; they probs didn’t last as long as a rawhide does maybe but rawhide is DANGEROUS FOR YOUR DOG! AND ANIMALS WITH SKIN! And Fig totally liked the veggiepet chews. They were just SO expensive to ship. Like, never-do-it-again expensive. Now, however, we can at least get the Ami variety from veganessentials.com! This is like basically a victory for all Americans. God bless us, every one.

[photo illustration by Megan Rascal!]

Nightmare blog: Fed Up with Lunch, in which an anonymous public school teacher buys lunch every day in the cafeteria, photographs it, and discusses how in/edible it is. She also has guest-bloggers, and supports the Healthy School Lunches program, because seriously this “food” is vile and nearly inedible.

Fun-times vegan-style events!
Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution premiers tonight on ABC at 8 p.m. (Eastern/Pacific), and you can watch the first episode right now online, too.

Tomorrow, Saturday Mar. 27 Mission Street Food is having a vegetarian night, with many vegan options available! We know, we know, and you don’t have to go, but when they make vegan food it is very good, so.

The LGBT Army of Compassion will hold a “peaceful demonstration” against animal cruelty on Sunday, Mar. 28 from 9 to 11 a.m. at the Northeast corner of the Heart of the City Farmers Market at U.N. Plaza. Click here for further information.

Greens is throwing a huge party for its 30th anniversary, which is a huge deal, as Greens was the very first haute vegetarian cuisine restaurant. The “gala” will be at the San Francisco Zen Center on Saturday, Apr. 10 from 7 to 10 p.m., preceded by a reception at 5:30 p.m. Tickets for the “pre-reception” cost $50; tickets for the gala, $200; combined, $225. If you want to take me, I’ll go—I have lots of nice dresses and shoes! Though there’s a better chance of my putting out if we just go to Millennium, because hi, all that’s vegan.

Items of social and political import!
Do you live in the Berkeley area? Do you need a part- or full-time job? Maoz Vegetarian is hiring!

Tobey Maguire helped open a Teaching Garden in Inglewood, Calif. this week, in support of the Child Nutrition Act (Healthy School Lunches Program, what!). Hooray!

Food banks like Meals on Wheels have been delivering pet food along with human food, because broke people can’t feed themselves or their animals.

Help save wolves, before Sarah Palin guns them all down for high ratings on the T.V. You read the news, you know I am not kidding.

Would you like to hear a story about the popularity of chicken wings? It’s vile! Especially the part about how they make “boneless” chicken wings, puke.

How about an odd, lovely essay regarding hummingbirds and mid-19th-century American writers?

The talented, beautiful, amazing Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart of Vaute Couture has a feature on vegan fashion on Oprah.com.

H&M launched its Garden Collection this week, clothes made of organic and recycled materials. Go on, look at the pretty things. [link from SuperVegan!]

This is the titular Oliver, of The Daily Oliver, not enjoying riding the subway in his “travel case.” There are pictures of him looking happier but come on, THAT FACE.

It’s conclusive: high-fructose corn syrup is much worse for you than regular sugar. Unfortunately science proved this by feeding obscene amounts of HFCS to rats. The scientists who performed the experiments sure look happy, though!

Foreign Policy would like to know why it’s cool to protect elephant ivory but not bluefin tuna or sharks. The answer: the economic/political status of the countries on either side of the issue.

In China, the latest national economic bubble is in the garlic market, while gangs are smuggling saffron into India.

In Taiwan, the Ministry of Education has recommended schools serve one vegetarian meal per week, for environmental and health reasons.

Ol’ Gavin Newsom wants to convert unused public land in San Francisco into gardens, which is great, but also “easy-to-assemble chicken coops,” which is ridiculous. Let Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns tell you about how raising backyard chickens is not all scattering feed from a bucket and communing with your hens.

Kombucha: it solves all your health problems, forever, and you can make it in your closet. All the hippest hippies in the Bay Area are brewing it.

The state of Maryland is really pissed about oyster-poaching, and has seriously increased the penalties for violators. Poachers blame the crackdown for their poaching, because everyone loves a good “vicious circle” argument!

Mormons love Jell-O! Especially things like “shredded carrots, peas, and cubed ham—in gifts of Jell-O molds.” This is the Lord’s Food, y’all.

Would Mormon Jesus want you to “green up” your sex life? Vegansaurus does, duh.

PETA wants to give schools in Kentucky free veggie burgers in exchange for advertising on their teeter-totters. The advertisement? “Tot Teetering on Childhood Obesity? Go Vegan!” You know the fools at PETA were all, “OMG HILARIOUS PLAY ON TEETER-TOTTER OMG HIGH FIVE!!!”

Ugh, this kills me. I know getting upset about PETA’s press releases is completely futile* but still I rise. Can you imagine a little fat kid (who, btw, is already teased mercilessly because kids are the motherflipping MEANEST) coming to the playground and seeing those teeter-totters? Stunts like this don’t turn kids vegan but I bet they could turn them suicidal. Further, how many fat kids do you know who venture near a teeter-totter anyway, it’s already ground for public humiliation. Way to know your audience, PETA!

And what of all the thin kids with malnutrition and fast food diets? There are tons of them, believe it. Just because they’re skinny, they get a free pass? Thin does not healthy make. What a crappy lesson all the way around. Oh and way to hold the veggie burgers hostage, PETA. If PETA really wanted kids to eat healthy, they’d give the schools veggie burgers anyway. Withholding food from schools until they give you precious advertising space? Who does that sound like? Oh that’s right, every asshole fast food and soda company who have targeted schools since our nation lost its godamned mind. What really drives me crazy is that PETA is theoretically playing for the good team. I’m vegan and I want to support them but when they’re pulling stuff like this, it makes it soooooo hard. Further, please GOD, get a Terminator.

PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman says in a letter to the schools, “Students will get a delicious, healthy, fat- and cholesterol-free meal and a lifesaving message about how unhealthy it is to eat meat. The best thing that people of any age can do for their health, animals and the environment is to go vegan.”

What does PETA’s message have to do with health? NOTHING. Also, she’s lying because what veggie burger do you know (that’s edible) that’s fat free? Lady, vegan food has tons going for it already, the vast majority is healthier than it’s non-vegan counterpart, no need to lie. It’s things like this that make us all look like idiots.

I hate to give them any press but PETA’s war on fat is cruel, embarrassing and the exact opposite of compassion. And then when you attack kids? Unforgivable. It makes me want to go give every little fat kid in that school a sundae made with coconut milk ice cream and be all, “look, this shit is delicious and animals weren’t hurt making it.” Kids have a natural compassion for animals, why not tap into that? Because PETA only cares about press! All press is good press! Except when it makes all animal welfare and rights activists look like fringe idiots! GO PETA! 

*like sending letters to Santa Claus! Nothing doing, kids! Nobody’s home!

Haven’t you always wanted to spy on some owls? Those sneaky fuckers have it coming after all, am I right? They’re always swooping down on unsuspecting prey, silent like ninjas—turnabout is fair play!

Actually, though, this is the cutest thing. These guys are newly hatched and there are more eggs about to hatch any day. I can’t figure out where this webcam is broadasting from, though, anybody have more info?

Thanks, Mark!