Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark:

Putting aside the gorey details (sorry) for a moment, a brief aside: I think I’ve talked about this before, but until only a few years ago, I didn’t really know that bullfighting involved killing the bull. I suspect I’m not alone in this, at least in the generation that grew up with stuff like this:

Sure, maybe the bull would get tricked into running into an anvil or something, but every kid knows it’s hard to get an anvil in real life, right? The idea that swords would be used in a manner that actually hurts and kills anything seemed so distant a possibility that it didn’t even enter my mind. After all, the average person sees swords in real life about as often as she sees an anvil.

This is where the internet has been a help, along with a hindrance – it’s a lot easier to see everything about everything these days, so the truth is definitely more in your face, but there’s a bias towards the absurd stuff that you’ll forward to your friends (like, say, pictures of bullfighters getting stabbed in the hey now,) so even though it’s right in your face, it’s hidden on a level that your brain can’t always uncover.

Sadly, I have no information on the medical condition of either the bull or Mr. Purple Pants. I suspect the bull’s long dead, and I’m less than pleased about that but I’ll be the bigger man and offer the obligatory helpful advice to Cornholio here: a high fibre vegan diet would be a great idea right about now – trust me, you really don’t want to have to deal with constipation on top of everything else you’ve got going on. Oh, and since you need new pants, I recommend, as always, the hammer pants.

(via PETA)

I used to work in a job that did marketing promotions online for various media companies.  Usually these were pretty benign campaigns, but from time to time the secondary sponsor would push my sense of ethics a bit.  There wasn’t anything too bad (amazingly I avoided the dairy boards and big fast food during my 5 year tour of duty,) but once or twice I’d have to do something I wasn’t terribly comfortable with.

Anyway, I’m out now, and if I ever get another job I’ll be looking for something that’s safe from that kind of thing – I just didn’t like the conflict between my desire to do a good job and my desire to completely destroy what the “payer of the bills” stands for.

Still, there are times, often daily, where I see something and can’t figure out if it’s sheer marketing blunder or if there’s another vegan out there who chose route B.

Your case in point for the start of this long weekend: last month we talked a bit about a McDonald’s campaign involving super heroes.  One group’s approach was to complain that the action figures were violent.  Another group, apparently, either infiltrated the company or implanted subliminal messages to make Happy Meal toys like this one:

(and yes, I know Batman isn’t a Marvel hero.  It’s probably another campaign.  I can choose to watch what McDonald’s does every second of the day or what Batman does.  Batman usually doesn’t make me throw up.  OK, maybe a little.)

There are backstories to things like this that almost make me want to get a job in marketing again and deal with all the ethical crap, just so I can hear the tales. Someone had to have known what this would look like. Was it a dare? Did nobody want to speak up? Or was this actually on purpose?

None of this matters, really – McDonald’s is going to keep doing what it does, and people are going to keep eating there. A wanking Batman just doesn’t have the power to massively change consumer behaviour. It’s just funny, and if you can’t laugh at stuff once in a while, animal activism can get pretty depressing.

Via Brook, about whom I was going to say nice things until he got this song in my head:

I always mean to eat more tabbouleh, but it’s typically in a restaurant setting and there are always other things on the menu that grab my attention. Still, a lot of those options are fried or oily (someone needs to deep fry baba ganoush!) and the salad seems more likely to scrub my insides clean than the standard North American iceberg lettuce crap. Here’s a recipe if you’re feeling ambitious. I highly recommend playing this song on a loop while you’re making it. Or just, you know, if you’re at work and you want to piss off your entire office.

Oh, and you’re going to see this in the related videos anyway, so let’s just address the elephant in the room, shall we?

(Have I linked this one before? It gets hard to tell sometimes, what with all the hummous rap songs on the internet…)

Greetings people of internet! I’m digging my way out of some project-related holes (not VP related, but once they’re done I look forward to working on some exciting new stuff,) but deputy pornographers Brook and Colleen have come up with some links and whatnot to fill the gap.

First, in response to the increasingly popular manliest salad ever video, Brook found the film that it’s from. Like all great mysteries of life, this trailer asks more questions than it answers:

And in response to the State Fair and deep frying post, I did some research by going to our local exhibition, where the lineup for deep fried butter was long and I didn’t care because hello, butter, but Colleen found a fried product I might actually have a use for. OK, probably not, but it’d likely get better the more you eat. Ladies and gentlemen, behold the majesty of deep fried beer.

That’s all for right now, but as a quick not-so-subtle hint: if you see something that might be pornable, send it in so I can look at it without reading a whole lot of internet – time’s a little tight this week for research mode!

Angela sent this to me, and it’s like they made a movie about my life without me knowing it.  I’m not the greatest at recognizing faces, so I’m glad this guy has less hair than I do, and the woman’s blonde, because otherwise I’d have to search the kitchen for hidden cameras:

(Originally found at College Humor)

A brief warning to those of you who, like I did, watched this first thing in the morning: no, you haven’t had a stroke, they just aren’t speaking English, is all. At least I hope they’re not speaking English, because I eat a lot of manly salads exactly so I won’t have a stroke, so that would really suck if I had one anyway. Not that I regret eating my manly salads though.

By the way, I’m not kidding about the salads. OK, maybe our preparation styles vary a little (I try to capture a little more hip motion, frankly,) but my salad bowl is what most consumers call a 2 Quart Glass Batter Bowl (yes, it’s an affiliate link, because I deserve a kickback for changing your life from small salad to Big Salad ways.)

Now I need to learn that language they were speaking. I’m pretty sure they reveal some Truths in there amidst the manliness.

They had me at hello.  If by hello, you mean this, of course:

I have a running joke (with myself) that I try hard not to swear on VP because the purer the site gets the funnier (again, to me) the site’s name is.  Which makes it hard to talk about the zine soyfucker, but they invoked the power of hammer pants, so we all must make sacrifices for the greater good.

And the good is greater than it would seem: two American dollars gets you the electronic copy (there’s a paper copy if you’d prefer the artifact in your hands, which I respect, and it’s only $2 as well,) it features all vegan artists, and the money for issue 2 goes to the Deep Roots Sanctuary in Indiana.  I can’t think of a way to make this more of a win, so please check it out – it’s a collection of stories, and not all of them were “for me,” but at 32 pages I feel like I would have gotten my money’s worth even if the proceeds went to something silly like rent.

But wait, there’s more!

OK, I want to try something here, so I’m going to sweeten the deal: if you buy the paper or electronic copy of soyfucker, forward your receipt email to jason at veganporn.com and I’ll email you a webcomic from back in the early days of VP (maybe circa 2003, but that’s a guess.)  It’s the semi-infamous “dill dough” strip, which some of you may remember, and some of you have asked for in the past.  I don’t think it’s available online anywhere, and this is your only official way to get this anytime soon.  Oh, and you can edit the receipt as needed if you don’t want me getting your address and stuff, and I’m not going to do anything with your email other than send you the comic.

So, to recap:

1. Go buy the comic.
2. Email the (possibly edited) receipt to me.
3. Get a bonus comic while helping out a sanctuary and encouraging vegan art projects.

All it’ll take is two dollars and probably less time than it took to read this post.  And do it before Friday, August 27 because, as Vince says, you know we can’t do this all day!

(discovered via the always enjoyable vegansaurus)

Someday I'll be able to link 'recall' with 'it's not a tumor'

The veganiverse is all a-fluffered* with talk of the massive egg recall, which now appears to affect 380 million eggs. I don’t know how many might still be out there, since the US Food Safety and Inspection Service recommends people eat eggs within three to five weeks of purchase, and the issue occurred in May.

In other words, if you’re still holding onto an egg from the start of the outbreak, recall or no recall, I’m not sure anyone wants it back.

To be fair, the outbreak started then, but has presumably continued for some time, so there’s probably value in a recall beyond poking the producer with the ol’ “law stick.” But that’s not really what I want to talk about today anyway.

There are many ways to replace an egg in cooking, and yet eggs continue to be sold in very large quantities, so as deep thinking activists of the Institution for Innovation in Innovative Innovation, we (meaning I, because you can’t spell innovation without I, but there are two Is, so you can help too) sat down and thought about what people must be using those eggs for.

Obviously, it’s protest.

There was a time when a whole lot of people spent the weekend protesting something (I think it was the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia) where the US embassy in Toronto was egged beyond belief. I’m not kidding, the walls went from smooth concrete to stucco, and the designer protesters in the crowd injected paint into some of the eggs, so it really was quite striking.

And that’s when it hit me. Not an egg (ewww,) but an idea:

The Vegg.

Some kind of biodegradable shell (from corn, perhaps) with a gooey centre that could be used in place of an actual egg in protests, because while we don’t condone violence, it seems absurd for an animal rights protester to use actual eggs to complain about the treatment of chickens, for example. Not that that’s ever happened, but as I mentioned in yesterday’s porncast, I haven’t been sleeping much.

Anyway, this device doesn’t exist, and I’ve since moved on from the concept, but part of me, the really insane part, wonders if this egg recall could have been avoided if I’d only gotten off my butt and innovated innovatively.

In other related news, here’s the money quote from the original article that sparked this whole post:

With all the various studies linking animal product consumption to just about every disease out there, when do you think someone in charge will notice that people are getting sick from those too? I eagerly await the announcement of all animal foods produced since, well, ever.

* (I don’t think that means what I want it to mean)

At long last, another porncast – and I made a video version for you as penance!  Fear my disheveled visage!

A little rambly, but let’s be honest, it’s caffeine’s podcast, not mine at this point.  Sleep deprivation has never been so rewarding.

Links from this show:

• Donkey donkey donkey!
• Warren Ellis on cannibalism & vat meat
• 10 Vegan Lunch Ideas
• Support TVA at this year’s marathon – run with them or sponsor a runner
• You might like Shake & Go Smoothie if you’re not a Vega fan – here are the ingredients for smoothie vs Vega. I get a commission if you buy through the Amazon links, but seriously, Vega seems like a really good deal to me, and I honestly love the products.
• And no porncast would be complete without mention of a milkshake that tastes like pancakes. No, probably not vegan, and not big on my list of life’s regrets.

Sorry it gets a bit rambly, but I’m incredibly proud to say that this week’s show is exactly 30 minutes long. What, you’re going to watch that rerun of Friends for the 40th time instead of this? You can direct download the audio version here, or subscribe in iTunes to get them delivered automagically.

And of course, there’s a handy widget thingy to listen right now, in case the video version is offensive to your eyes:

Let me know what you think about video versions in the future (assume production values improve) – should we make more? Put ‘em in iTunes? Facebook? Let me know in the comments!

Following up on last week’s adventures in deep frying, I’m somewhat mesmerized by this video of Paula Deen making deep-fried cheesecake:

In case you can’t bear to watch, it’s cheesecake wrapped in a wonton wrapper and then deep fried. Oh, but she adds chocolate to the inside. Oh, and then she dips it in powdered sugar. Oh, and then she adds a scoop of whipped cream the size of an orange, which, in case this has made you forget things from nature already, is a fruit. Oh, and something’s messed with Paula’s concept of nutrition, because then she adds “the vegetable,” which is what I’m calling the money shot.

We watched this and couldn’t help, well, exclaiming, at each step deeper into absurdity.  I’ve just ruined the experience for you by spelling out what happens, but I think this is one of those things that you can’t prepare yourself for and it’ll hit parts of your brain that you just can’t protect.

As an aside, “avoid fried foods” always confused me – I grew up thinking that a fried food was something that was heated in a frying pan, independent of any use of oil, and the only alternative was baking or boiling (or raw,) and all these so-called healthy cookbooks were trying to kill me.  Is “fried” mixed with “deep fried” in a regional manner the same way “pop,” “soda,” and “coke” are mixed up in some parts?

This has sat in my “write about this” folder for about 2 weeks now, but you know what’s awesome about writing for vegans? You don’t have to be all that timely with your advice, at least not when it’s about how to safely handle raw chicken.

The British Food Standards Agency is now advising consumers that they should not, repeat, not, wash raw chicken before cooking it. It turns out, and this sounds remarkably straightforward when you think about it, that trying to wash the deadly bacteria off the chicken before you cook it only serves to spread the stuff around the kitchen.  Food safety people are fond of saying that chicken’s perfectly safe as long as it cooks thoroughly at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time, but nobody has, to my knowledge, come up with a way to cook an entire kitchen to ensure it’s clean afterwards.  I have a hard enough time figuring out the dishwasher, frankly.

So, as the title of this post suggests, remember to avert your eyes when in the presence of raw chicken, lest it infect your soul.  Again, not something I have to tell the readers of a vegan site, because that stuff’s kinda a turnoff to begin with.

In years past, I would have jumped on this story as yet another example of why people are completely utterly insane to even contemplate eating animals, but I’ve since come to the opinion that this is just another thing that technology will solve one way or another.  We’re still early in the discovery phase where we as a society are still figuring out cause and effect with food preparation, but as illnesses and deaths get linked closer to certain practices, somebody’s going to figure out a way to bypass the risk.

In fact, I believe that the future of food safety, at least when it comes to poultry preparation, has been staring most of us in the face for more than 20 years now:

I don’t know how or why the chicken will be made into glowing green cylinders but that’s what we call the price of progress for a society.  For the individual, there’s always the option of taking yourself out of the insanity and eating the most healthy and compassionate foods you can, which will only increase your lungpower as you laugh at the hoops the rest of the world has to jump through to maintain a way of life that, upon inspection, might not be so awesome when it involves suiting up in full protective gear just to make a sandwich.