vegansaurus!

Top 10 links of the week!  »

RIP Knut. Knut the polar bear died this week and it’s very sad. But don’t worry! He’s going to be stuffed and mounted! Vegetarian Star has the details.

New York is crazy for veggie burgers! The New York Times is totally in love with veggie burgers this week. I’m like, way to be late to the party! But welcome all the same.

Laura busts heads. If you didn’t read our Laura’s response to that lame Ecosalon piece, read Luara’s response to that lame Ecosalon piece.

Laura plays nice. AOL City’s Best interviewed our own Laura! She’s blowing up. I’m not the least bit jealous—her coattails suit me just fine! You go, girl.

Tsunami dolphin saved. There have been some bittersweet animals stories coming out of Japan, not the least of which is the rescue of a little baby dolphin in a rice field. There is a picture on the other end of this link, boy is there a picture.

Breast milk from cows. Um, in China, they are totally creating cows that produce human milk. I’m sure they are treating the cows really great too. People seem grossed out but how is it any grosser than drinking regular cow milk? I ask you. Both come out of cow nipples.

Saber-toothed vegetarian? Everyone is so excited about this new discovery: a saber-toothed vegetarian monster! (Monster is the scientific term).

More oil, more problems. Nightingale island, home to half the world’s population of northern rockhopper penguins, is covered in oil. People are working to save the cute, funny-haired penguins but there is a lack of supplies and help on the remote island. This is a bummer. I don’t think I’m getting a joke out of this.

Get ready for kitten season! Kitten season is just around the corner and Paw Nation has ten really great tips on caring for your new bundle of indifference.

New York City murders geese. New York is set to kill more Canada geese, see what you can do to help stop them!

Hello, friends! It’s WTF Wednesday!  »

So I was reading the Facebook this week (this is how my parents refer to websites, by the way. They put a “the” in front of everything and say adorable things like “Hey Mark, you need cheap plane tickets? Did you look on the Twitter? I hear this where good deals are!”) and my friend Stephanie had this amazing article about a baby deer that is wearing a fucking headscarf! Okay, first of all, check this out: The Deer was rescued by St. Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital, which I thought was a joke until I googled it. Is this not the best name for a hospital ever? Of course it is in the UK and is for animals so my insurance won’t cover it, but if I were an animal I would know I was in good hands with a hospital with a name like that! So this deer, right? Her name is “Bless Her Little Heart” and she lost both ears in a dog attack. Then the folks at Tiggywinkles rescued her and put her in this amazing (and on-trend) headwrap that makes her look like she is about to do something awesome, like star in a movie or release an album of heartfelt R&B covers. And then she fell in love! With another baby deer! His name is Max, and they are boyfriend and girlfriend and look fucking adorable together and should probably have their own Disney show about overcoming adversity and then lifting other people’s hearts by being a beautiful soul and then also having two personalities: “Bless Her Little Heart” when she’s not wearing the headwrap and “Hannah Deertana” when she is!

I have figured out a way for you guys to live through the zombie apocalypse (if it happens) and live forever (or to a reasonable age) if it doesn’t happen: vegetable soup! Don’t believe me? This one billionaire is extending his life and health by eating mostly vegetables. He’s even spent $500 million on a research institute that is working on proving his belief that eating HELLA PLANTS is the way to LIVE FOREVER. Here’s what his lunch looks like: “a six-fruit smoothie; a mixed-leaf salad with toasted walnuts, fennel and blood orange; a soup with more than eight vegetables and beans; a sliver of grilled Dover sole on a bed of baby carrots, broccoli and brown rice. ” The sole is disgarsting because you don’t need to be scarfing fish to be healthy, but the rest of it doesn’t sound so bad. What I also like about him is that he is all about making grandiose claims and then also being stern with people who don’t eat everything on their plates. That’s how I want to be when I’m old, all ornery and telling people what to do. Being a billionaire would be nice too, but they don’t pay you too much to fight off zombies with your vegetable-induced superpowers!

We are on a pretty happy roll here: zombie apocalypse averted, deer getting fashionable and finding love, SOUP! The problem is that I’ve been thinking about this marriage equality thing and I am really concerned right now. I used to think it was ridiculous when people were all “Dude, if gays marry then soon men will be marrying their horses and shit!” I would be all “No, that wouldn’t happen because horses can’t consent and also humans and horses are completely different species so that is a specious (GRE WORD!) argument.” And then I saw this and all of my own arguments just went out the window:

It’s a fucking raccoon carrying a cat over the threshold to their new house where they are going to start a whole new life together! What’s next, dogs and hamsters? Rabbits and pigeons? Where is it going to end? Look at that cat! It is all “I am nervous about my first time, but this is also true love so I think it is going to be OK!” and the raccoon is all “I have gone through so much garbage (literally) to find love and I am so excited to be starting my marriage in this beautiful home with its own fire extinguisher!” Actually, never mind: I’ve decided that any marriage this cute can’t be held back by hateful rhetoric and invective. I wonder where this couple is registered!

That’s it for me this week! Please send me links for next week and have an awesome Wednesday that doesn’t smell like burned beans because Allen doesn’t know when to take things off the stove so our whole house smells like I set fire to it again. Awesome!

SF feral cats need feeders! Help?  »

Feral cats get a really bum, fucked-up rap, and people are extra-shitty to them. Not only are they run over and abused, they’re often poisoned or simply starve to death. Wow, way to bring the site down, Laura. SORRY. Anyway, maybe you can help? If you live or work near City College of San Francisco, USF, Stonestown Mall, or Golden Gate Park, maybe you could help feed them? You don’t have to commit to doing it every day, even one or twice a week would be AMAZING. All of the colony cats are spayed/neutered and vaccinated, so they just need fresh food and water. Kittens need your help, people. KITTENS.

Contact the following people if you can assist in their areas:

• If you can do USF and/or City College, email Azian
• If you can help with Stonestown area, email Brigid
• If you can help with Golden Gate Park, email Liliana

[snuggle kitten pic from ScadRadio]

Hello, friends! It’s WTF Wednesday!  »

So Valentine’s Day happened, and it was pretty awesome, right? Any holiday that allows meto eat as much chocolate as I want and force Allen to take me out to an expensive dinner accompanied by many presents is a good one for me. Allen is actually kind of screwed this time of year because as soon as he is done paying the credit card bills for all of the presents I demanded in the name of commercialized romanticism, there’s my birthday! And our anniversary is only 13 days after that! I am going to need to rent another apartment just to be able to contain all of the presents I will be receiving (if Allen knows what is good for him). And Allen is going to have to pay for that apartment. And bring all the presents in. And fan me as I lay on a couch and eat bon-bons, because that is what you do when you love someone. Or at least, that’s what the Hallmark cards say!

While Allen spares no expense in order to keep me happy, a city in the nation of Kyrgyzstan is taking a decidedly different approach when it comes to the thousands of stray dogs living inside its walls. Stray dogs, friends, are a huge problem; I agree. Therefore I am glad that the city of Bishek is building shelters for these dogs and making sure they find proper homes. Just kidding! Bishek officials have decided that this is too expensive and have chosen instead to send teams of hunters out to shoot the dogs early in the morning and late at night. Approximately 10,000 dogs will be murdered due to budget constraints. That’s 5,000 more than last year. Bishek City Hall Spokesman Pavel Klimenko urges the world not to consider the act barbaric. Oh, OK then! As long as you asked! I really wish it worked that way. I bet Lindsay Lohan would also like to tell the boutique she stole from that she understands what she did doesn’t “look good,” but she urges them to not view it as theft. Problem solved! Trial canceled.

Listen up, Bishek, you don’t get to do that! What you’re doing is, in fact, incredibly barbaric and wrong. I get that you’re an impoverished nation, but what are you doing to control the breeding of all these dogs in the first place? Obviously not a lot considering that you “had” to kill 5,000 last year. Why don’t you get on that? Perhaps once you’ve stopped committing barbaric acts you won’t have to worry as much about assuring us that everything’s fine. 

Surprise, surprise: More bad shit is happening over in Ciudad Juarez. This time, it’s 35 animals who froze to death in the Chihuahua Zoo! So much for the idea that Mexico is a sunny wonderland year-round! This really sucks. Not only does it suck that the animals are in the zoo, but also because they’re in trapped in cages and wouldn’t be able to do anything about their predicament even if they knew what to do—which is doubtful, because they don’t really teach you how to live outside of captivity in the zoo. Beyond that, where were the people who were supposed to be taking care of these animals? Was it too cold for anyone to show up at the zoo to see that all the heating was cut off? Did they attempt to do anything, or did they just suppose that fur would keep these animals warm during the coldest period Mexico has had in the past six decades? There are too many questions and not enough answers that don’t make me want explode like a dormant volcano, raining fire and brimstone on the people in charge of this debacle!

Here’s some more about animals freezing; luckily this time we know who to blame! Remember last week when we talked about that woman who sent a dog in the mail? Yeah, she was bad and we are super glad she is not getting her dog back, but what about breeders? Breeders send animals on planes all the time! Then they breed more animals, and I’m sure many of these animals end up in shelters because people decide they don’t want them anymore, and then they die because people don’t get pets from shelters but from breeders, perpetuating this horrible cycle of animal death and cruelty. Then kittens die. Adorable hairless kittens. So who’s to blame? The breeder who recklessly sent an animal in the cargo hold of a plane from Utah to Connecticut? Delta, for leaving the kitten on the ground in seven-degree weather for 50 minutes? Or the new owners, who would have “thrown a tantrum if they knew their cat was dying,” but didn’t think it more prudent NOT to have a cat a flown to them in the first place? The kitten’s name was Snickers! Let that be on your conscience, breeders and people who buy from them!

Thanks for sending me links, Tim, Alexandra, and Megan Rascal! Please send me more links for next week and have an awesome rest of the week. Thank god it’s a three-day weekend!

[Mark Bundy from Laura!; Homeless dog in Kyrgzstan from RIA Novosti; Hairless kitten photo from Consumerist]

SFACC Needs Towels for the Animals!  »

If you have any extra towels laying around, please bring them to SFACC (1200 15th Street at Harrison). They’re open from 11 am to 6 pm everyday, and until 7 pm on Wednesdays (that’s TODAY!). They don’t care if the towels are frayed or stained, as long as they’re clean! If you can help with this critical shortage, you are a superstar and the greatest and will be rewarded with many pit bull kisses when you inevitably get to heaven!

[pic via FunnyCoolStuff]

Holy cat!  »

What comes to mind when you think of god (or God, depending) showing signs that he exists? Is it a bleeding statue of the virgin Mary somewhere? Is it the face of Jesus in a potato, a pice of toast, or a grain of wood?

Whatever you are thinking, YOU ARE WRONG!

When some higher power decides to prove he (or she. I don’t know!) is the real deal and kicking it up in the sky somewhere he (or, again, she) knows that the way to get our attention is with ADORABLE KITTENS. And the way to do that is by writing CAT in the FUR OF A CAT! How meta is that?!

Polly is a tabby, and apparently all tabbies have an “M” on their foreheads, which has something to do with the virgin Mary and/or the prophet Mohammed. Polly was recently adopted from a local shelter and is now enjoying the high life with a middle-aged British couple.

Just another reason why adopting animals from shelters is awesome. If rescuing an animal who has not has had an awesome life isn’t enough, now you can look forward to messages from god. AND ADORABLENESS!

Thanks to our sponsors, two sad dogs and cake in a jar, it’s this week’s link-o-rama!  »

A long-tailed macaque living in Bali adopted a lost kitten! He just found the kitten wandering around his home in Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary in Bali, and brought the kitten back to his troop (“a troop of macaques”), and now they are pals. Please excuse your Vegansaurus, whose eyes have begun leaking. [photo by Anne Young]

Events! Events events events!
We already told you about Dusker tonight at Hayes Valley Farm—really, why aren’t you there now, hippie? And tomorrow is Sábado Gigante!, a.k.a. the start of Oakland’s Eat Real Festival. Now here are even more ways to spend your time!

Vegans in the Washington, D.C. metro area should head out to the annual Columbia Heights Day, which happens tomorrow, Saturday Aug. 28 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Harriet Tubman Elementary Field at 11th and Kenyon Sts. NW. Why? Because at 3:30 there’s a Sticky Fingers cupcake-eating contest on the second stage!! Live out one of your Vegansaurus’ dreams! Or at least take a photo for us DEAR LORD.

VERY IMPORTANT: Dino Bike at the Hemlock on Sunday, Aug. 29 at 9 p.m. Pay $5 and see our Laura, Jonas and possibly Jordan—plus other guaranteed-cramazing humans—do things on stage that you could not possibly imagine. There will be vegan cupcakes for free and booze for sale and all the money raised goes to pay for sweet, sweet Hazel’s nauseatingly expensive surgery. BE THERE!

On Monday, Aug. 30, the Green Arcade bookstore in San Francisco will host a free discussion with Chris Palmer, author of Shooting in the Wild: An Insider’s Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom. It sounds like Chris Palmer does our favorite thing: “pulls back the curtain on the dark side of wildlife filmmaking, revealing an industry driven by money, sensationalism, extreme risk-taking, misrepresentation, staging, fabrication, and even abuse and harassment of animals,” actually naming names! Of course he also offers solutions and praises the people who are not total dicks (hint: Bear Grylls is not on the “good” list). The discussion begins at 7 p.m. at the Green Arcade, 1680 Market St. at Gough Street.

On Sunday, Aug. 29, LGBT Compassion will hold a peaceful demonstration against animal cruelty—specifically, the live-chicken vendor—from 9 to 11 a.m. at the Northeast corner of the Heart of the City Farmers Market at U.N. Plaza. For further information, visit their website, and please RSVP if you plan to attend!

West Contra Costa Adult Education will offer a series on vegan cuisine this fall, beginning on Sept. 14 with “Italian style.” Each class meets once for four hours at the Richmond campus and costs $45. Enrollment is limited to 16 students, so you might think about registering sooner than later. Chef Panos Ly of Symphonie Vegan Restaurant in Point Richmond will lead the class.

News! Articles and essays and news!
A woman was caught attempting to smuggle a tiger cub from Thailand to Iran. The three-month-old cub had been drugged and stuffed in her suitcase—along with some stuffed toy tigers, for camouflage? He’s now recovering at a wildlife conservation center in Bangkok, and DNA testing should reveal more precisely where he came from. Residents of Taiji, a.k.a. “the place from The Cove where they murder all the dolphins,” are totally nonchalant about the documentary and its effects. “They’re not going to stop the hunts,” says a councilman, basically because it’s tradition and also dolphin is tasty. Neat! “You race camels, why not milk them?” Excellent question, Occident-man! And what was Orient-man’s response? He didn’t have one, so the western dudes went out and began camel-exploitation for themselves. Now they are milked in metal stalls by automated pumps, just like number-one most delicious American cows! It can’t come to the U.S. fast enough. What we won’t get, because the FDA are total Puritan prudes, are eating-cows fed with wine to make their flesh taste even better when we devour it. I mean, pigs get to drink beer, why can’t cows have some red wine with their all-natural COWFEED 3000?

What’s been going on with the Great Egg Recall of aught-10? This week we learned that the FDA rejected a vaccine for hens that British egg producers have been using for over a decade and that would have cost “less than a penny per a dozen eggs.” Ha ha whoops! Your Vegansaurus loves the cheap choices: “We have a problem with Salmonella infecting these eggs!” “How can we solve it?” “We could stop feeding chickens bone meal, maybe.” “But that’s like recycling! And it makes them grow SO FAST!” “What about making the cages we force the hens into a little larger, or not smashing so many of them into those tiny cages at once?” “And lose production space? No way!” “What about pasteurizing the fuck out of the poisonous death-eggs, then putting them in ice cream and mayonnaise?” “BRILLIANT! We won’t even have to disclose that on the food labels! The company is saved!” A deli meat company recalled nearly 400,000 pounds of its products due to contamination with Listeria, but that was really hard to pay attention to this week.

Hey L.A., have you been to Millions of Milkshakes: Our Brianna writes: “IT IS SO FUCKING YUMMY I WANTED TO CAMP OUT THERE. I went two times in the span of four days. Yeah, it’s really tacky, but I think it pretty adequately encompasses LA culture. I got a peanut butter-oreo shake the first time, and a peanut butter-banana shake the second time. Best milkshakes I’ve ever had.” Ooh, celebrity vegan shakes! Ooh again: a totally polite and helpful thread on Serious Eats about cooking for vegans and omnivores in the same kitchen—they even discuss sharing pans! How heartwarming. Hey Las Vegans (har har), your life just got better thanks to Steve Wynn, who’s expanded (read: brought into existance) the vegan dishes on all his hotels’ menus. Finally, an interview with Jack Norris of Vegan Outreach by (the infamous) Rhys Southan. Naturally your Vegansaurus recommends ignoring the comments, one of which implies that nectarines are certain squirrels’ only food source and that to eat said nectarines is tantamount to murdering said squirrels.

One of Scott “model-senator” Brown’s staffers found a cat on the street in Washington, D.C., and she has since been named Lucky and become the office kitty. Look, there are photos! This is arguably the most selfless act performed by any member of the Senate in several years, and Scott Brown didn’t actually rescue the cat himself. Even suffering the pressures of political life, Lucky is considerably better off than nearly half the pets in Coachella Valley: 44 percent of the 40,000 animals who have been left at shelters in Riverside County were euthanized this year, and Save-a-Pet of Desert Hot Springs, a no-kill shelter, has no room for animals. Thanks, Depression 2.0!

So which would you rather eat: Magical salmon genetically engineered by AquaBounty Corp. to grow twice as quickly as evolutionarily engineered salmon by natural selection; or willingly donated human meat? Whatever, our “agricultural empire” is DOOMED, DOOMED anyway, let’s just eat (easily veganized and very tasty) jar cake to keep the end-of-the-world panic attacks down for another day.