vegansaurus!

Yo Washington state! Your turn to ban battery cages!  »

In more excellent news, the awesome Humane Society of the United States and the awesome Farm Sanctuary have introduced a ballot initiative in Washington state that will ban battery cages and the sale of battery eggs by 2018. Tell everyone you know in Washington State what’s up and that they need to get involved so we can get those torture-devices abolished pronto!

End goal: Adorable chickens will run free and I will be allowed to cuddle all of them. JOKE! But really, what a world that would be.
[photo of rescued hens at Animal Place! And you can totally adopt them DO IT!]

From the place past depressed we believe is called “giving up,” it’s your weekend events, and some links that aren’t too upsetting!  »

[Adélie penguins at Half Moon Bay, Antarctica, via Google Street View]

Events and activities for you
Obviously you’ll be at VegFest XI sometime this weekend, but we’ve got a separate preview for that. Have you read it? Go read it.

Meanwhile on Saturday, MickaCoo Pigeon and Dove Rescue will hold a Feather Their Nests! fundraiser from noon to 4 p.m., which includes a silent auction, vegan snacks, and wine! Suggested donation is $20; see the invitation for location, directions, and details.

LGBT Compassion will protest the sale of live chickens and eggs at Heart of the City Farmers Market on Sunday, Oct. 3, from 9 to 11 a.m. The group will meet, as always, near the poultry vendor (who has a big trailer covered with blue tarps) in the northeast corner of the market, near the water fountains. More information available online.

A new SwapSF returns on Saturday, Oct. 16, which seems like forever away, but considering how popular and fun this event is, you should consider buying a $6 ticket now. What is SwapSF? What are you, new?

You might also want to register now for one of Animal Place’s chicken care classes. The next one will be held on Saturday, Oct. 16 at the Sacramento SPCA from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It will cost $10 per person, which includes lunch.

A little light reading
How about some recipes! This one, for pickled green tomatoes, is already vegan. It’s not to everyone’s taste, but the spicy pickled crunch has a singular appeal. This is an easily veganizable recipe for panade from Tartine Bread, a book which I would most definitely like to own, oh yes. And these recipes from Project Just Desserts guest chef Janet Hudson for pumpkin moonshine and pumpkin moonshine cupcakes, are out of control. If the heat hasn’t put our hopes of pumpkins off until November, we are buying one this weekend and making our own bathtub pumpkgin (y/n?).

A pair of Australian scientists postulate that, based on historical record, up to one third of mammals considered extinct may still be living, and if we look hard enough, we’ll find them again. You guys I am holding out SO HARD for the ridiculous, peaceful flightless birds (despite their not being mammals, whatever) of New Zealand, you have no idea how sweet and innocent they were. Speaking of animal-crazy people, four of good ol’ Butterstick’s biggest fans recently spent a week volunteering at his new home at the Conservation Center in Sichuan Province. These ladies went to China exclusively to clean panda cages and feed pandas, which allowed them to touch ol’ Butterstick for the first time. It’s nuts, but it’s an adorable nuts, right?

Today in self-promotion, our raw food reporter Sarah E. Brown writes about spiritually motivated vegans; VegNews discusses vegan zines, like our pals Soyfucker and Susie Cagle, and naturally our own Laura and Jonas; and Laura tells the story of Dino Bike in The Bold Italic. And if you have the Cute Overload 2010 calendar, you may note that the photo for today, Friday Oct. 1, is of this dog with whom Meave presently lives. She calls him Bosie (as in Lord Alfred Douglas) and finds him incorrigible.

Is that the pungent odor of bitter disgust mixed with maniacal enthusiasm? Why yes, it’s this week’s link-o-rama!  »

What ho, young Philip! When Your Vegansaurus leads with a bunny photo, it means there’s an adoption event this weekend, and this one is tomorrow, Saturday, Sept. 18 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at George in Berkeley! Harvest Home Sanctuary and House Rabbit Society buns will be waiting for you in the Fourth Street Shopping Center at 1824 Fourth St.—big buns and little buns, baby buns and grown-up buns, ready for you to meet and befriend and take home to love forever and ever. Wee Philip here, along with his mum and littermates were dumped outside a pet store. Wouldn’t you love to end his nightmare by taking him and a sibling home? Look at his little paws, they are chocolate-dipped!

And what else is happening this weekend, Vegansaurus?
How about dinner and a movie tonight? As in, Friday, Sept. 17! OK it’s not original, but the details are: attend a screening of Bicycle Bride by local filmmaker Hassan Zee at Maharani Restaurant, and eat your heart’s (NOT stomach’s; heart’s. stomach lies; heart encourages) content at a massive vegan buffet! Dinner is at 6 p.m., and the film screens at 7:15. Tickets cost $25, which is a good deal for ALL YOU CAN EAT VEGAN FOOD, plus a movie! Maharani is at 1122 Post St., between Van Ness and Polk Streets.

Tonight, tomorrow and Sunday are action days for anti-circus leafleting in Stockton! This is organized by Humanity Through Education, who direct you here for details. Leafleting and protesting will take place at the Stockton Arena, at 248 Fremont St., at 5:30 this evening, 12:45 and 5:30 p.m. tomorrow, and 2:45 p.m. on Sunday. Contact Pat Cuviello with questions and/or to RSVP.

If you missed the previous two discussions about “Preparing Yourself and Your Animal Companion for a Disaster,” the SFPL will present one more on Wednesday, Sept. 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the Glen Park Branch, at 2825 Diamond St. The discussion will be held by a panel of experts from the SF Disaster Preparedness Coalition for Animals. Your Vegansaurus is fine with your blasé attitude toward earthquake preparedness, but if you have companion animals, you owe it to them to be ready.

Also on Weds., Sept. 22 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Excelsior branch, check out the documentary Dark Water Rising: Survival Stories of Hurricane Katrina Animal Rescues. The Excelsior Branch is located at 2200 Mission St. at Cotter Street.

Vegansaurus, I need something to read!
Peter Singer reminds pescatarians of the massive cost of catching their dinners, in particular that “is no humane slaughter requirement for wild fish caught and killed at sea.” Of course Rick Moonen, who prides himself in serving “sustainable” fish at his restaurant in Las Vegas, is staunchly against the GMO salmon. On this single, solitary, lone point, Your Vegansaurus and Rick Moonen find agreement—this shit is fucked up. Now stop acting like serving fish is at all sustainable in any environment, Moonen, and work on developing gourment mock-fish. Then you’ll be a real ocean warrior. Oh, and do tell us how you stand on tuna?

People are so good at killing animals these days! Last week, caretakers in Kyoto, Japan, somehow caused the death of Xin Xin the panda during an attempt to collect his sperm, which they were going to use to artificially inseminate his partner Tan Tan. Chinese panda experts are investigating. Poor Xin Xin was on loan (like a vase!) from China, and per the agreement, Japan apparently owes $500,000 for his death. Goodnight, sweet prince; may heaven be a nonstop party. In Honker Bay, Calif., a contractor working for Chevron drained a 700-acre “duck pond,” and whoops, the 1,500 fish living there had no water and DIED. Sorry, fish! Chevron totally had all the right permits and everything! Well, Professional Lab and Research Services, Inc., of North Carolina won’t be torturing or murdering any animals for the foreseeable future, thanks to…Peta. Sometimes old uncle Peta stops embarrassing us and does something awesome, like shut down a horrible, abusive lab that was testing ANIMAL CARE PRODUCTS.

Adorable-drawing break! Check out Tiny Pets, the sweetest little Tumblr you ever saw! The concept is super-simple: the artist draws a little portrait of your pet! This one of Josie is noteworthy first because of her little rescued-on date—everyone loves a rescue cat!—and second because it’s reminiscent of a classic “mom” tattoo. Buy a pet portrait from Tiny Pets, whose own cat came from BARC in Brooklyn! Or at least check out the archives to see every singular pet portrait, they really are wonderful.

Now, back to the unhappiness: LGBT Compassion reports that they have identified the factory farms that supply the birds being sold at Heart of the City Farmers Market, one of which is Gemperle Farms, which used to supply Trader Joe’s with eggs until they were exposed as extreme hen torturers. For more information on this breaking news, please contact LGBT Compassion. For more information on why Colonel Sanders should be as big an icon as George Washington or Jesus or something, please read Josh Ozersky’s ridiculous column. Or not, as it may induce violent rage and you don’t want to hit the first innocent person you see. Read this nice story about poor chickens who were being “hoarded”—like pillows or toenail clippings, but actual LIVING CREATURES—but have since been rescued and now live at our beloved Animal Place.

Hey guys, don’t worry about the egg recall, or any food recalls, really: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), one of the worst citizens of our beloved country, isn’t! He’s going to stop the food-safety bill from passing, all by his lonesome, for no specific reason! Our theory: he hates you! He wants people to die from food-borne illnesses! Then there will be fewer people to vote against him in his next election! Unfortunately for Evil Tom Coburn, the longer the horrorshow of “meat production” remains a media talking point, the less meat people actually eat. So unless nightmarish conditions on factory farms allow E. coli or Salmonella to infiltrate our precious fruits and vegetables again, his plan to kill people through food defeats itself! Very slowly! Evil Tom Coburn: secretly loves irony. What we need to do is get in on this science-magic from China that grows vegetables without sunlight or soil—that will save us from runoff and soil erosion and pesticides and Evil Tom Coburn’s plan to force us to eat animal poop. Help us, China! Help us all afford produce untainted by bacteria and devils!

Happy stories time? How about a video of a three-month-old orphaned otter learning to swim in a bathtub? Right? Little Garaint is being rehabbed at Secret World Wildlife Rescue in Highbridge, Somerset; part of that involves socialization, and instead of meeting lots of people (bad!), Garaint is making friends with Mollie the Labrador retriever puppy, and another baby otter called Snuffles. SNUFFLES THE BABY OTTER. OK, now laugh and cry with this slideshow from Pup My Ride, a program by Best Friends Animal Society that takes dogs from shelters and puppy mills to “local rescue partners with highly successful adoption programs.” More weeping, you say? How about the story of The Old Lady Pigeons’ Retirement Home, which should be adapted into a mystery-solving series ASAPly. It is the sweetest story that may also cause you to cry, because life is so hard and ugly and lovely.

We may be crazy, but at least we’re not racist creeps! It’s this week’s link-o-rama!   »

Better Know a Lobby - American Meat Institute

Stephen Colbert better knows a meat lobbyist, just for us! [can’t see the video? watch in on Vegansaurus.com!]

Your vegany events!
The very first Peninsula Vegan Bakesale happens tomorrow, Saturday Aug. 21 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.! It’s at the EVO store, at 159 South B St. in San Mateo, and will benefit the Coalition on Homelessness San Francisco and Pets in Need. And the next time some jerk asks you why you care so much about animals when there are so many people suffering, you can just show them this awesome flyer and walk away like the smuggest bastard in the world.

Also tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. the House Rabbit Society is having its monthly rabbit adoption event at George in Berkeley! You can bring your rabbit/s in for a nail trim and/or to make new friends, and anyone interested in learning more about buns is welcome to stop by. George is located at 1824 Fourth Street. Remember you can preview the adoptable rabbits, and if there’s one (or more) you really want to see, email Anne and she’ll do her best to ensure s/he shows up tomorrow.

Finally, Farm Sanctuary is hosting a California Twilight Tour from 6 to 9:30 p.m. on Saturday at the shelter in Orland. Tickets vost $25 for adults and $15 for children under under 13; the Sanctuary will provide vegan snacks, including wine and beer, and live music. To register, call 607-583-2225 ext. 221, or do it online.

Wildcare asks that all California voters please send a message to the state Senate asking that those jerks pass AB 234, which would “require booms around fueling vessels in California’s open waters.”

Animal Place asks that Californians please email State Fair Manager Norbert Bartosik and politely but firmly ask him to eliminate the live birth exhibits at State Fair, as they are what some might call revolting and barbaric.

Tom Scocca reports that 100 Canada geese have returned to Prospect Park, after a flock of 400 were murdered last month. Kinship Circle asks that you please email a whole bunch of responsible parties in New York and New Jersey to ask that they refrain from murdering any more of the estimated 250,000 geese presently living in New York state, despite state biologists’ estimations that the state can hold no more than 85,000 geese.

Invisible octopus—it’s AMAZING!
[can’t see the video? watch in on Vegansaurus.com!]

Vegany weekend reading!
Let’s begin with local news! This week, some complete assholes fellow humans from the Aquarium of the Bay caught a big sevengill shark. Then Demian Bulwa wrote an article about it, full of awful puns. Sevengills live in open ocean; this one will be kept in a 350,000 gallon tank. Even the Chronicle commentariat are united in rage. In the lily pond in Golden Gate Park, evil AFRICAN clawed frogs have INVADED and are slowly INFILTRATING ecosystems as far as Sacramento and BEYOND. Some citizens want to emulate Australia’s cane toad VIGILANTES, just cold murdering AFRICAN clawed frogs like they were MILITARY INVADERS, because officials won’t listen to their demands to EUTHANIZE the KILLER AFRICAN MENACE. Haighteration reminds residents that if you are having, um, “trouble” with the gang of feral cats running that block in neighborhood (Catsterdam? no?), please get a free trap from the SF SPCA and do your part. There’s a new head of the Vicious and Dangerous Animal Unit at the SFPD—specifically, one officer in charge of animal court trials, and another in charge of investigations—in an effort to “modernize the unit.”

Gena of Choosing Raw wrote a really awesome post about the Target Bronx Community Garden, with a ton of pretty pictures (side note: I am stealing Duane to raise as my own. LOOK AT THAT FACE it is irresistable). Some doctors are using “prescription coupons” to give their patients—most often poorer people—funds to buy produce through farmers’ market nutrition programs. Some of it is anti-obesity stuff, which your Vegansaurus despises on principle, but we fully support everyone getting equal access to delicious fruit and vegetables. The tomato: “cold and moist,” reminiscent of a lady’s special area, the freakiest thing to come from the Americas in the 17th century—how did those dumb white people figure out that it was delicious?

That’s enough smiling. This week, during a corrida in Spain that “consists of getting as close as possible to the bull, without getting hurt” but not actually murdering the animal, the bull had enough of the taunting spectators and leapt into the stands, injuring 40 people (link includes video). All the people living around Lake Tahoe are having trouble with a tricksy bear they call “Bubba,” who outwits dogs and has proven immune to bullets. He even steals from church! Why can’t bears just stay in the forest area people haven’t cut down for giant vacation homes yet? When you eat church peanut butter, you make the baby Jesus cry, Bubba. Their palates bored by fried strips of dead pig, “foodies” now turn to beef, lamb, and veal “bacon” to free themselves from their culinary torpor. Your Vegansaurus wonders if do-it-yourself animal slaughter isn’t gaining popularity—not that we buy that, entirely—because of omnivores’ need to sate their bloodlust, rather than the depression 2.0, self-sustaining bullshit they tell themselves is the reason they’re so happy to hack into bunny’s head. If we’re going to eat animals, no one is better than the other. You may continue eating dog, Chinese people—white dude, out.

OK some good news: they released the first oiled turtles back into the Gulf of Mexico yesterday! Of course the article neglects to say where the turtles were released, how directly that area of the Gulf has been affected by the oil spill, and whether they expect the turtles to survive, considering just how fucked up the Gulf is. But hey! Rescued endangered sea turtles! Maybe buy a wallet made of recycled newspapers and plastic bags from Holstee—Ecouterre reports that the wallets provide “fair-wage employment, healthcare, and education for the people who craft them.” Get out of town, Holstee.

FINALLY: Look, Grub Street SF got on board the Abby train! It’s about time, pals.

East Bay Vegan Bakesale this weekend!  »

It’s that time again! Hooray! The East Bay Vegan Bakesale returns this Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m, at the same location as before, in front of Issues. Perennial baking superstars Fat Bottom Bakery, Cinnaholic (have you tried the pizza rolls?!), and more will be on hand dishing out treats to benefit Animal Place and Haitian relief efforts. 

Vegansaurus Last-Minute (totally selfless!) Holiday Gift-O-Rama!  »

It’s down to the wire, folks. If you’re anything like me, you’ve left your holiday stuff to the last minute (though, to be fair, you had the best of intentions and meant to get started in September), and now you’re faced with the seven-day holiday insanity challenge. Well, friends, I am here to help. Here it is, the Vegansaurus Last-Minute Holiday Gift-O-Rama!

1. Signed cookbooks! Famous vegan cookbook author and all-around great person, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, is selling off signed copies of all her cookbooks! The best part? 100 percent of the proceeds are going to Out to Pasture sanctuary in Oregon. Time is of the essence on this one so order quickly if you want it in time for Christmas! Shipping included, prices are $28 for Vegan with a Vengeance, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar; $32 for Vegan Brunch; and $42 for Veganomicon.

To get your signed book, send a paypal to ppkshop@gmail.com and include the book(s) that you would like. If it’s a gift, remember to include the recipient’s address! And please let them know who Isa should sign it to.

Perennial favorite Farm Sanctuary is offering holiday gift adoptions again this year! Sponsorship/adoptions range from $10 per month for a rabbit or chicken up to $50 per month for a cow, which pays for all that animal’s needs throughout the year. With your adoption, you’ll receive your adopted buddy’s photo and biography, and best of all, a VIP tour to meet them! 

3. For the salty dog in all of us, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is offering gift memberships for the holidays. You pay $25 or more in your recipient’s name, and they get a certificate acknowledging the donation, a copy of the Sea Shepherd Log, and a sticker with the Sea Shepherd logo (which is, if I may say so, badass). Your membership dollars go toward helping the Sea Shepherd keep saving those whales! There are also options for making recurring donations as well as Sea Shepherd shirts, bags, water bottles, and other goodies on the site if that’s more your thing. However you give them money, it’s going to a good cause, so spend away!

4. If you’re planning on plying someone with vegan cheese (or vegan shoes! or vegan acne medication! what! asshole!) over the holidays, why not order from Vegan Essentials and save 10 percent on any order (including sale items!) with coupon code “holiday10”? OR orders shipping within the continental USA (sorry Hawaii and Alaska! You always get screwed! Oh and every other country, sucks to be you! USA! USA!), you can get a free upgrade from UPS Ground to UPS 2nd Day Air on orders over $50 (total cost excluding shipping). Make sure to choose UPS ground as your shipping option when you check out and you’ll be upgraded at no extra charge. Both offers expire at midnight on Dec. 19 (that’s tomorrow!) SO GET ON IT. If you’re looking for more delicious vegan treats, VegNews* has a store up and running that includes some damn cute holiday cards & VEGAN MARSHMALLOWS (plus lots more awesome stuff!). Also, giving a subscription (available in tree-free form too for all you people who care about the Environment GOD) to the magazine is only $20 and spreads the vegan love all year long! Finally, Herbivore put out a gorgeous coffee table book of their art. It’s a super classy present.

5. Finally finally, just about every animal rescue takes a beating around the holidays. Whether it’s a farm animal sanctuary that experiences an influx of turkeys or a cat rescue that overflows with discarded holiday kittens, all animal charities accept donations and are grateful as hell for the help. Is that curmudgeonly aunt of yours a secret rabbit person? Donate to Save A Bunny in her name! Bam! Done! Have a friend who loves cats but can’t reasonably take in another one? Donate to Give Me Shelter Cat Rescue, and they’ll do the taking in for her. Oh, and there’s always the Physician’s Committee For Responsible Medicine,* The Humane Society, Rocket Dog Rescue,* Grey2K USA, Animal Place, Compassion Over Killing, Mercy For Animals, Animal Acres, Home At Last, and many, many others. All you need is a credit card or paypal account, and your holiday shopping is just minutes away from being done.

Happy holidays!

*Members of Vegansaurus are presently employed by/volunteer for these organizations.

East Bay vegan drinks, Keep’s sample sale, foie gras vs. puppies, ‘anus-grade pork,’ SF vegan bakesale and more in this week’s link-o-rama!  »

Tonight, Friday Dec. 4 at 7 in Palo Alto: A screening of Food, Inc. at World Centric, 2121 Staunton Ct.  Following the film is a speaker, Stanford student and eco-documentary filmmaker Matt Harnack, who will also show his own 20-minute film, Fossil Fuel Free Film. This event is free, though donations are requested to cover the cost of film and speakers. Seating capacity is about 70 people; arrive early to ensure that you will get a seat. Please feel free to bring food/drinks to share and a cushion as there are a few metal chairs.

Tomorrow, Saturday Dec. 5: the SF Vegan Bakesale, take three! Get over to Ike’s (3506 16th St. at Sanchez Street) between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. with a lot of cash, there’ll be tons and tons of baked goods, AND bunnies! BUNNIES.

Hey LA vegans: Keep is having a sample sale this weekend! From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday Dec. 4 and 5 at Keep headquarters, 418a Bamboo Lane in Los Angeles. Up to 60 percent off select styles, I AM SO JEALOUS, Keep makes amazing shoes.

A ramen truck in Hayes Valley? Opening this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., on the corner of Laguna and Hayes Streets? That appears to offer a vegan option (unconfirmed at press time)? Get out of my dreams and into my mouth. That joke is not funny, but I remain entirely serious.

Sunday, Dec. 6 at the Fort Mason Center, Building C: an Animal People Party, consisting of a white elephant sale and vegan potluck, to benefit Animal Switchboard! Not a lot of details here, except that it runs from 1 to 4 p.m. in room 260. Probably contacting Animal Switchboard would be the best way to get further information.

Miss Vegan Drinks? Of course you do! Thank goodness for the East Bay, who’ve been doing their thing on Tuesdays and want to see you at their next meeting! Mix and mingle on Tuesday, Dec. 8 at 6:30 p.m. at the Kona Club, at 4401 Piedmont Ave. at Pleasant Valley Avenue in Oakland! Details here.

Win a pound of Allison’s Gourmet vegan fudge! Enter before midnight on Tuesday, Dec. 8, on VegWeb (run by Vegansaurus’ Laura!)

According to Salon, the Humane Society of the United States has to make a choice: either it works to shut down foie gras farms, or it protects puppies from abuse. Can’t do both!

So tell us, Mr. Henry, “why can’t people live in harmony with animals without resorting to the barbarism of slaughter?” Answer: it takes too long to cook vegetables. No, really.

Adorable video: mad bunny attacks keys!

OMG RAGE: Fast food makes you fat so everyone should eat like Alice Waters, DUH! Lord save us from these simplistic dichotomies. The world is not black and white!

In Indiana and Minnesota, 24 slaughterhouse workers were sickened with “a variety of neurological and physical illnesses” from inhaling a mist of pig brains. Very, seriously sickened. Bacon is so awesome!!

Animal Place has new bunnies, a chance to win a Daisy Wares gift basket, tips on photographing pigs, and an ode to Arturo the chicken. Half the proceeds from the Worldwide Vegan Bakesale, San Francisco chapter went to Animal Place; they’re the greatest!

Not the greatest, at all: Brookestone’s Frog-o-Sphere’s. PETA2 is all over it.

Colleges are expanding their veg options! Humboldt State is currently sampling pumpkin ravioli and taquitos; the University of Houston offers falafel, pizza, and tacos.

King of the Greens Al Gore FINALLY acknowledges the impact factory farming has on the environment.

MORE RAGE: this program proposed by the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture called “Meat the Need,” which would give people extra food stamps specifically for purchasing meat and dairy products. Why? Because people are buying less meat and dairy. So obviously THERE IS A HUGE PROBLEM!! And the most logical solution is to FORCE POOR PEOPLE TO BUY MORE ANIMAL PRODUCTS!!!

And speaking of angry fucking vegans, PETA and the Animal Defense League are now “domestic special interest terrorists,” according to the USDA. No, really. Really for really for real.

Hey have you checked out the discussion going on in Laura’s post about Mission Street Food’s dead-pig-ful Food Not Bombs benefit?

SF Food Wars gets a little feature in the New York Times! And friends-of-Vegansaurus Fat Bottom Bakery’s award-winning! vegan mac-n-cheese gets a mention in the very second sentence. World domination is coming, I can taste it.

So Charles Phan “is in talks with San Francisco city officials about turning empty lots into street-food hubs similar to the popular Singapore hawker centers,” is he? Um YES PLEASE, I will never leave. Because I will have eaten all the vegan food available and become TOO FAT TO MOVE.

So that lab-grown pig meat that tastes “soggy”? Jon Stewart reminds us that it’s still five years away from being “anus-grade pork.” Ugh times a million, and also, groooossssssss.

World Veg Fest, Cupcake Camp, secret vegan pizza, uncute animals, stupid lists, idiots on the radio AND MORE in this Friday’s link-o-rama!!  »

Get busy this weekend! It’s the 10th Annual World Veg Fest, as always at the County Fair Building on 9th Avenue at Lincoln in Golden Gate Park. It runs 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday Oct. 3rd and 4th, with a $6 “suggested” (strongly encouraged) donation. Come for the free samples, stay for Howard Lyman and Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. Or vice-versa, whatever.

Also this weekend: Cupcake Camp 2k9! Happening on Saturday, Oct. 3rd from 2 to 5 p.m. at Auttomatic (Pier 38, next to AT&T Park at Embarcadero and Brannon Street). Free to show up and eat! RSVP here.

Popbitch directs our attention to Uncharismatic Minor-Fauna, a.k.a., endangered species that don’t get the love and aid that the big adorables do, “just because they look like frightful abominations of nature.” We can’t all be pandas and tigers and pygmy hippos, after all.

After three years, a 12-country, 16-institution team of scientists called the Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium succeeded in their big goal: mapping (or sequencing, if you will) the potato genome! The potato has 12 chromosomes with 840 base pairs (in comparison, the human genome has 23 chromosomal pairs, with 3 billion base pairs). Coincidentally, just two weeks earlier another scientific team announced it had sequenced the potato blight pathogen. Vegansaurus firmly believes that what we need more of is science (and potatoes)—congratulations, potato mappers!

Farm Fresh to You was featured on NPR’s “Morning Edition” this week! Turns out you may already be eating produce from the Capay Valley at your favorite restaurant, which we assume is not Nettie’s Crab Shack, because, ew. (thanks for the link, CSA Delivery!)

HA HA HA one of the Lamb Cam kids looks just like Madonna.

KPFA hates vegetarians! No, seriously: Listen to the ridiculous nonsense they aired last week about the “destructiveness” of a vegetarian diet. I KNOW. This is by Lierre Keith, an ex-vegan and author of The Vegetarian Myth, which is just the sort of book omnivores love because it allows them to eat animals and feel morally superior—they’re the ones who’re really saving the environment, not we selfish sissypants vegans and our foolish soft-hearted misguided ways. SHUT UP FOREVER, LIERRE KEITH. Everyone knows you’re wrong.

You know how much Vegansaurus loves Animal Place—here is a chance for you to show them that you love them, too: Art for the Animals! It’s a super-cool project, and artist Sheila Tajima has a few paintings up now of different residents of Animal Place for you to purchase. All the proceeds go to the sanctuary!

Look, it’s Vegansaurus’ favorite congressional representative, Dennis Kucinich! He’s discussing health care! Needless to say, everything out of his mouth is Real Talk. If every elected official were as dedicated as him, we might actually have a functional government that served THE PEOPLE. Or at least, people with fucking sense.

Wildcare’s little Northern Pacific Rattlesnake needs a name! Already taken: Cupcake; Buttercup. Sorry everyone, Vegansaurus is just too terribly creative. Can’t hurt to enter anyway!

Well well, Delfina, isn’t this cute: “Vegan Option: Though they’re loath to mention it, the pizzaiolo will come up with a special vegan pie using whatever is around the kitchen. Definitely cooler than ordering a salsiccia sans sausage and cheese.” Thanks, Hidden Menu! You guys rock!

The Chronicle’s 2009 Bargain Bites is out! Here’s the full list. The criterion: “the majority of a restaurant’s entrees have to be $12 or less.” And delicious, one hopes. Opinions?

Ooh another list: Eater’s “Essential 38 San Francisco Restaurants.” Let’s see, anything veg? No? Shocking! But Blue Bottle and Magnolia, yes, fucking essential. You guys are the best.

Heads up! Next week Friday, Oct. 9, Papalote will donate 30 percent of all sales to disaster relief in the Philippines, which is desperate for aid in the wake of Tropical Storm Ketsana/Hurricane Ondoy. Two burritos each, everyone, it’s for charity!

PS: We are not sad about this. Duh.