Reay Jespersen

There are doubtless going to be questions from friends and family about what prompted the choice. I shall duly answer the six questions we were taught in grade school to ask about events in order to cover the bases:

Who?
Me.

What?
Vegetarian(ism).

When?
For about a week now, though still in transition. More on that in a minute.

Where?
Here. Everywhere. Also: me.

Why?
Well that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?
As a quick bit of background, I bought the new Rise Against album, Endgame, and was flipping through the insert — the lyrics and notes — when I noticed a quick aside prompting the reader to read the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Intrigued by the title, I Googled it, and was immediately engaged by what I found. I bought the book shortly after, and have been reading it piecemeal since then as time allows.

As for the “Why?” itself… there’s no one, quick answer to that.
I’ve always known, as all meat eaters do, where the meat I’m eating comes from. Yet it’s very easy to forget that; meat becomes just another grocery item. But as I’ve been reading Eating Animals, I’ve been acutely reminded of meat’s source. And not just in the most basic of ways, but getting in-depth detail: how meat is produced on not just a large, but a massive — a global — scale. And it’s truly horrifying stuff. Not just on a moral level of what the animals are put through (the genetic modification to make them produce more viable meat regardless of (indeed, in direct contrast to) their own well being, the standard mutilation to prevent them from damaging each other due in no small part to the inhumane conditions they endure, the drugs they’re fed as a matter of course due to the illnesses generated by the living conditions they’ve been put in), but on a philosophical one (why is it ok to raise pigs and cattle for meat but not dogs? Why do the people profiting from these factory farming processes get to be the ones to set the laws as to how their practices are done and what does or doesn’t constitute humane treatment? How much of a creature’s suffering is too much for me to enjoy my burger or chicken strips? Why kill a sentient being for nothing but the brief enjoyment of its flavour?), and a scientific one (what are we doing to aquatic life, and the planet itself, when there are 145 other species routinely captured and killed as an offshoot of fishing for just tuna? Why use six to twenty-six calories of food to produce one calorie of meat? And most notably and concerningly: all flus are fundamentally avian-based in origin — by forcing so many chickens in such close quarters and feeding them ever-more powerful drugs to combat the new strains of illnesses that are invariably produced by the nature of the system we’ve put them in, mankind is setting itself up for a far worse flu pandemic than the one we’re already long overdue for).

Where one issue of opting out of meat eating may be settled with one solution (organic, family-style farming where the animals are treated well and allowed to live in as natural a manner as possible before killing them, for instance), it doesn’t answer another (why do I need to kill that sentient being for food at all when eating in this other way will sustain me just fine?)
And as been confirmed again and again by professionals, the fact is that a balanced vegetarian diet is at least as healthy as an omnivore diet. Other than liking the taste of meat, there’s no reason to eat it. And given everything involved in letting me have that taste — the ethical, philosophical and scientific issues — I’m ok with stepping out of that cycle.
As I said… there’s no simple answer to the question of why I’m doing this. Perhaps the best way I can put it is that, all things considered, this is what I feel I need to do.

How?
Carefully. As tempting as it has been (and still is) to just change these gears to feel better about myself, I know precious little about what a safe transition to vegetarianism involves, and as with other things, making sweeping changes without the proper knowhow can be dangerous. Until I have a solid grasp of what I’m doing to make this switch safely, my meat eating shouldn’t fade completely, but more appropriately be phased out (though I am trying to speed that up).

So there’s the bulk of the scoop. I’m wide open to any questions anyone has, but to cover what may be a few of them:

Won’t you miss the taste of meat?
Hell yes.

Does this mean you’re not killing anything ever?
No. While I often try to help out living things (ask Jackie — and our neighbours — about how many spiders and the like I’ve transported outdoors rather than kill them), there are times when circumstance requires it. We had a lot of little ants that were invading the kitchen last year and already this year, for instance. Left unchecked, they’d take over the place. The larger, black ants have been coming in lately, too. They’ve gotta go, as well. But that’s of course completely different: practicality vs. killing something to eat it.

Are you going to harass me if I don’t join you in this change (into a left-wing commie pinko hippie animal-hugging dreamer)?
Not at all. As with my choice a few years back to not support Coke and its affiliated products (see killercoke.org) and in the last few months to not support chocolate manufacturers who use child labour (i.e. a lot of the big producers; do an internet search for Is There Slavery In Your Chocolate?, among others), this is about my choices for me. To each his own.

Are you joining PETA, or anything of the like?
No. PETA does raise valid points (can anyone really deny that there are animals that are mistreated, and that they should be treated better?), but their methods are extreme and sensationalistic. Anyone who’s known me for more than a day will know I’m neither of those.

Is Jackie joining you?
While she supports me (albeit with due, loving mocking), Jackie’s not on board the Vegetarian Train. Yet, at least. She’s still breastfeeding, so we agree it’s best to not to risk shocking or forcing such a change on her system when Laila needs her to maintain a status quo.

Is Laila joining you?
While now on ever-new (liquified) solids, she’s not on meat yet. Jackie and I are going to do what research we can on long-term benefits or drawbacks to raising a child as a vegetarian from scratch. At the very least, we’ll do whatever we need to do to get her hormone/drug-free meat to raise her on, and let her make her own moral choices about continuing to do so later in life. In short, we want whatever the evidence suggests is best for her.

Are you giving up anything else? Drinking? Junk food? Sex?
No, no, still trying to cut down but indulging, and dear god no.

If you were on a desert island and could only survive by killing a pig to eat it, would you?
Tough call. I probably would. Hell, those plane crash victims in the mountains years back ate dead passengers to survive. The drive to live another day makes people do things they never thought they would, or could, do. Luckily, I’m afforded a lot more opportunities in everyday life. Here, now, I wouldn’t kill a pig to survive, because I don’t need to. Nor do I need to ask someone else to do it for me.

So does this mean you’re going vegan at some point? After all, dairy products and eggs, and such, come from animals, which must be farmed to some degree, and are therefore suffering to some degree for your overeasy or bowl of icecream.
Fair point. If I thought I could make it to that big a leap in one go, I probably would. As it is, I like milk, I like cheese and eggs, and I really like icecream. This change to vegetarianism by no means wholly clears my conscience as far as farmed animal welfare goes, but it’s now one helluva lot better than it was. As my best friend Alex puts it, small changes can make a big difference. And as a guy who’s turning 40 this year and who’s eaten meat all his life, I’d say becoming vegetarian would certainly count as a least a small change.

By sheer luck, I came across an article about a new website dedicated to new and emerging Canadian writers. I checked it out briefly and saw they had a contest for short childrens’ stories. It deadlines in a couple of weeks, so I’ve got to get cracking. Happily, I seem to work much better when deadlines are imposed on me for writing. Happier still, I got an idea out of the blue a couple of nights ago that I think could work really well as a short story for kids.

Already working on it.

More updates on contests as they come up…

While having done some movie reviews for both my website and friends who don’t hit theatres as often as I do, I’m by no means a movie expert. Having said that, I tend to see more movies than most people I know, which gives me at least a bit more insight into cinematic goings on than some. And I’ve got to say, when the Oscar nominations came in, not only wasn’t anything there that particularly surprised me, but nor did any of it even really interest me. Again, I’m a movie fan; shouldn’t the Oscar nominations have generated a least a little interest for a pretty regular moviegoer?

But look at the contenders for Best Picture. I grant Slumdog Millionaire was very well done - and I think both for its small/underspoken origins and the momentum it’s gained over the last few award shows, it’ll take the Oscar as well; everyone likes a Little [blank] That Could story - but there’s nothing else in the contenders that really interests me. Slow-moving dramas and/or biopics? They’re doubless well done, but seriously… meh.

Maybe it’s just the kid in me (the one that will never grow up), but where’s all the… well… cool stuff? Why wasn’t The Dark Knight nominated? Granted, I thought it was a wee bit long (and I realize I seem to be in the minority on that), but at 166 minutes in total, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button clocks in at 14 minutes longer. And Benjamin Button is, by some recent buzz I’ve heard, a very long-feeling 166 minutes. The Dark Knight didn’t feel nearly as long as it was. How does a movie that well done, which so engrosses you that you literally lose track of time, passed by as a Best Picture nominee?

It would’ve been awesome to see a superhero movie nominated for best picture, but given its overall quality, its being passed by makes me wonder if such a thing ever could happen. Does the Academy have it out for superheroes or flash-bang action/thriller pics, even if they still manage to hold their own cinematically despite what genre they’re pigeonholed in? Does something have to be a drama (or combined genre thereof, as each of the Best Picture nominees are) to get the Academy’s green light? A quick check of the last few years of nominations would seem to suggest so.

So if you make a great movie that’s hugely entertaining and rakes in hundreds of millions across the globe from its popularity (which it’s going to owe in part to quality; word gets around and sinks even big name, super-hyped movies in short order if they aren’t well done), it doesn’t mean a thing and will get passed by for Best Picture if it’s not some type of drama? And it doesn’t stop there. The Best Leading Actor and Best Leading Actress categories are also all for dramas (again, as they have been for at least the last few years). What is it about the drama genre that makes an actor/actress somehow more worthy of a nomination than any other genre? To take a quote from arguably my favourite performance of the year, why so serious?

It’s not all about my take on things, of course - everyone has an opinion; in cases like this, based on their own tastes; and it’s the opinion of the Academy that these five movies are the best of the year - but somehow this time around I expected to be pleasantly surprised by the Best Picture nominations.

Perhaps I’m my own Curious Case. The older I get, the less interested I become in some things that older people are supposed to be into, while “younger” things become more prominent. Though doing it for research to help gear some of my own writing toward it, I’ve been reading more kids’ books in the last few years than ever before. And my wife bought me a Nintendo DS for my birthday last month, as another for instance, which I’ve been playing entirely too much. More to the point, however, I’ve got to say I’m more interested in the MTV Movie Awards these days than in the Oscars. Not only standard categories like Best Picture and Best Leads, but Best Villain? Best Comedic Performance? Best Fight? Best Breakthrough Performance?

I don’t know that I’ll care too much if I miss the Oscars this year, but with its more interesting categories and apparently broader scope of what constitutes “good”, when the MTV Movie Awards are on, pass the popcorn and turn up the volume. And hands off my DS!