The Premarin Irony by Michael Lagace

Posted on December 28, 2009 at 03h35
tags used: , ,

Then she mentioned how her doctor had initially prescribed her Premarin following her oophorectomy, but she’d chosen natural sources of estrogen instead. It wasn’t out of place in our conversation of animal abuses in society. A vegetarian and animal lover, she was put off by what Premarin was; a compound drug derived from pregnant mare urine. The horses involved in the drug’s manufacturing are kept artificially pregnant and restrained against their will while their urine is collected and used by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and because of this lack of movement, they develop many physical disabilities that drastically shorten their lifespan. She told us that she couldn’t allow herself to use this product while there was an alternative that did not harm animals.

And while she told us this, I chuckled sadly and ironically to myself, looking at the three different cheeses sitting half-eaten on the coffee table. Continued…


Underweight

My Regular Mind, December 20, 2009 at 07h53
tags used:

Yesterday afternoon I put on a shirt I hadn’t worn in a while. I was startled. So I went to the bathroom, pulled out the scale, and stood on it. This was when I became worried. It read 138.7 pounds.

I began to reduce my consumption of animals about three years ago. Much of this transition had to do with physical problems I was going through, specifically with my stomach, and since then my diet has fluctuated with a few instances of animals and continued consumption of dairy. It wasn’t until this past summer that I understood that, in line with my ethics, I had to become vegan. To my own detriment, I didn’t weigh myself when I did that, nor had I weighed myself months or years before that. I have little basis for comparison now. Continued…


A Brief History of the Human Animal’s Diet

Prose, August 31, 2009 at 11h26
tags used:

In the beginning, the human animal was hungry. It ate plants that provided all the nutrients for its survival. Then the human animal began to keep other animals for their entire lives, born into slavery for their savoury skin. The other animals ate the plants and the human animal got whatever nutrients remained after they had been digested and processed. Disease followed in the animal’s captivity, so the human animal devised medicines to cure the diseases. But the cures were imperfect. Eating other animals made the human animal unhealthy. Its blood was thicker, its body slow and cumbersome. So it devised other medicines, like adding tubes and displacing organs and connecting mechanical parts. And these cures too were imperfect, so the human animal lumbered on, searching for new ways to fix the problem it created for itself. An endless effort to artificially attain the nutrients for survival.

Some of the human animals suggested that they eat the plants instead. But of course, that’s silly. We’re much too accustomed to doing things the difficult way.


Why Bother? by Michael Lagace

Posted on August 12, 2009 at 07h59
tags used:

It’s been fiercely frustrating having conversations about animal rights lately. I have been offering myself to answer questions that friends might have, expecting to be asked about protein sources and such. But what I’ve found is that most of my otherwise rational and compassionate friends simply do not get it. While there are some genuine questions, the most frequent are ridiculous. What about insects, are they animals? What about plants, aren’t they alive? What’s wrong with eggs, and cheese, and milk, animals aren’t killed for that?

Vegans are scary. We must be, people treat us with such hostility. Continued…


The Song is Life by Michael Lagace

Posted on July 29, 2009 at 03h19
tags used:

The beliefs of omnivores have been so carefully constructed that despite how obvious its flaws, we do not question them. In elementary school, you learn about the four required food groups. You learn that protein comes from the muscle tissue of animals, but for one reason or another, they don’t mention broccoli, or bananas, or beans. We are taught not to inflict pain on other living creatures, and so we don’t. We let anyone else do it for us. And so there is a disassociation between the product and the cruelty. A child that tortures a dog is sent to therapy, as would be a child that tortures a cow. But if we move that cow into a factory it becomes a product, and despite there being no difference in suffering, we do not question that this conflict arises. If we did, we might wonder why we value certain living animals more than others. We might see the extent of our selective compassion for life. Continued…


The Vegetarian Option by Michael Lagace

Posted on June 27, 2009 at 09h21
tags used:

Any restaurant owner that doesn’t have at least one vegetarian entrée on their menu does not know how to run a restaurant. It’s happened three times in the past months that I’ve left a restaurant because of this. Three different salads just don’t cut it; neither does having a main dish with a vegetarian option, which is basically leave out the meat and replace it with nothing. Vegetarianism isn’t a passing fancy; it’s a movement that is gaining popularity. And a business that doesn’t take this into consideration is out of touch with reality.


Ending Lives

Crime of Life, June 15, 2009 at 11h01
tags used:

For me, the decision to be vegetarian came after a long flood of memory. There were three instances that stand out most.

When I was around eleven years old, I went fishing with a friend. My father and I had gone fishing many times before, so I knew the procedure. Bait the hook, dangle it in the water, pull the fish out. But after that came the part that neither my friend or I could do; hit the fish on the head and kill it. I remember trying a few times while it remained alive, flopping around on the ground trying desperately to live. Each hit was softer than the time before. I just couldn’t do it. Continued…