The choice to become vegetarian in the first place, six months ago, was purely a psychological/moral one: People don’t need to eat animals to live, so why kill intelligent creatures to consume them needlessly? However, as many of you have heard when I’ve discussed it with you, it was always a struggle for me. I still wanted to eat meat, I just curbed myself from doing so because I’d decided for myself that it was wrong. But the temptation remained. It’s hard to overcome a nearly 40-year habit, after all.

However, one of my aunts is taking a nutrition course and mentioned in passing several weeks ago that her instructor told the class that, in his opinion, vegans may reduce their lives by as much as one third due to not consuming a proper, broad enough range of foods. Granted, I was never vegan, and the opinion is an extreme one I’d never heard before and could be wildly inaccurate, but the point of it stuck with me: what if, in seeking a higher moral ground and denying myself – my body – a specific type of food, I was actually doing myself more harm than good?

It’s clear that humans evolved over time to accommodate whatever kind of food they wish to eat. We have the range of tooth types to prove such accommodation (biting, tearing, grinding…), and our jaws can move to deal with whatever type of food we’re eating at the time. But that’s just it: we aren’t designed to eat any one kind of food. Not just meat, not just fruit, not just vegetables… but a variety of each. And recalling something that had already occurred to me many years ago, it seemed to me now a bit foolish to be second-guessing millions of years of evolution. We have come to be this way for a biological reason. So yes, we can of course choose to eat (or not eat) whatever we wish, such as meat, but physiologically speaking, should we?

The issues of eating meat I had were two-fold: the philosophical/moral question, and the health question. For the former, my friend Alex, ever-practical and insightful, suggested reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which in part touches on the moral issues of vegetarianism vs. omnivorism. The book goes on at some length as the author questions the morality of eating meat, but most pointedly, states that 1) even outspoken animal rights activist Peter Singer doesn’t feel confident about standing against eating meat from “good farms” (i.e. those where animals are allowed to live their lives freely and normally, without drugs or cages or crowding… without, that is, the matter-of-course suffering imposed by factory farming) because ultimately such a natural farm setting has created more animal “happiness” in the world than if the animals had never existed, and 2) that the same “happy life and merciful death” line is how Jeremy Bentham, “the philosophical father of animal rights”, also justified eating meat. So the philosophical question, for me, was pretty much resolved: eating “happy animals”, even to animal rights figureheads, is morally defensible.

For the issue of my health, I spoke with my friend Jenny, a holistic nutritionist. Her conclusion was that there’s no particular “best” diet that can paint everyone, as it were, with the same brush. It can’t be said that vegetarianism is (or isn’t) a more healthy diet for everyone, because each individual’s body will react to diets differently. Some people can’t handle meat well, while others don’t play nicely with lactose, or nuts, or grains… it varies according to the individual (perhaps even within the blood type group that the book Eat Right For Your Type explains). And while I can’t say six months of vegetarianism didn’t agree with me in any broad sense, my system certainly didn’t seem to benefit from it in any notable way. I didn’t have more energy (in fact, felt at times more tired), I didn’t feel “lighter” or healthier in any discernible way, my mind seemed to work no differently… and yet I was jumping through hoops not just daily, but multiple times daily, in order to maintain the vegetarian lifestyle in a house with a wife and baby who both eat meat. That, plus trying to stay on top of finding new, interesting recipes, plus the time to shop for the needed ingredients and then execute those recipes… all while being a stay-at-home dad for a one-year-old, and in accounting for a working wife who doesn’t have much time to make her own food.

Vegetarianism was, in short, demanding extra time from a lifestyle which simply doesn’t have the needed amount to spare, and was doing it without any clear health benefits. In fact, perhaps the opposite: eggs and cheese, two handy go-to protein sources I had initially counted on when I became vegetarian, may’ve had unhealthy effects on me. The Forks Over Knives Twitter feed recently posted a link to a study that found that men who eat more than 2.5 eggs per week increase their chances of prostate cancer by 80%. And cheese, as one of my uncles pointed out, is worse than meat for your body to process. All of which only added even more stress to a diet that was already proving stressful to try to maintain. And as Alex put it, yes, authorities and figureheads are constantly changing opinions on what food is good or bad for you seemingly from one week to the next, but the one thing they can all agree on across the board – one thing that never changes trends – is that that stress is bad for people. So all things considered, was I truly doing myself any favours by trying to maintain a vegetarian lifestyle?

All of this was crystalized for me when my father-in-law died unexpectedly in late October. He was suddenly taken away from his friends and family; from my wife, and most poignantly for me, from our daughter, his one-year-old granddaughter. A man who had taken care of himself all his life – a professional dance instructor and NHL prospect, whose fitness seemed unquestionable – still died unexpectedly. And it was made clear to me that if I wanted to be around as long as possible for my daughter, which I very much do, I’ve got to start taking better care of myself than I have been for… well, let’s face it, for the bulk of my life. I need to cut down on junk food, get more exercise and more sleep, and perhaps most important of all, eat a healthy diet… or at least a healthier one. One that, to say the least, cuts back on my stress.

However, even back to eating meat, I realize that in taking on the only eating “happy animals” approach, I’m still a far cry from being able to eat meat to the degree I’d become accustomed to up until six months ago. Most restaurants, of course, use factory farms for meat to keep their costs down. So unless I’m eating outside the house and can be assured that the meat being offered up came from “good farms” or that the animals otherwise lead normal lives and died quickly (and really, how often can that happen?), the vegetarian diet will still be applied wherever practical and wherever my health isn’t compromised by doing so.

Precisely what I will or won’t eat in a given situation is still being considered – if I’m handed a pork chop for dinner at someone’s house and don’t know where it came from, am I going to make everyone feel awkward by pressing the host on the issue (and then what, whip up my own non-meat meal on the spot or not eat at all)? Even if it came from a factory farm, the deed is done; I’m not supporting the system by buying meat from it, but is eating such meat that I didn’t buy still supporting that system? The animal’s suffering has come and gone; my eating the pork chop or not won’t change what’s already happened, but is not buying but still eating it knowing the animal’s suffering justifiable? In a world where people are literally starving to death on a daily basis, is it more globally conscious to eat the food I’m lucky enough to be offered, or turn it away (perhaps even risk it being wasted) despite its source? – but all that is being worked on.

I hope to post an update on how all that goes, this time shooting for less than six months from now. In the mean time, as always, your comments and feedback, good, bad, or ugly, are welcomed.

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.

I flashed back to that first night at the club. I was there to catch a hot new piano player – a colored kid name of William James Basie – but was typically early. Only a few people around yet.
I was half way through my second Coke at the bar when Penny slid in beside me. At an empty bar. She was always blunt that way. She started talking, and I started listening. Kept listening, even when I caught Papillon and the musclehead coming down the stairs with the club owner, a guy I knew named Russ, who was looking nervous. My detective alarm was clanging at the back of my head.
“Are you even listening to me?” Penny asked.
I turned back to her. “I am,” I said honestly. “Just wondering who those two were, with the owner.” I glanced back to see the three of them heading out the front door.
“Probably best to not know,” she said.
I looked at her. “Oh?”
“I’ve been here a few nights a week for a while. I’ve… seen some things.” She half-shrugged.
“Things? What kind of things?” Russ was a good guy. Straight shooter. Wouldn’t even get into the speakeasy racket he’d told me about one night, even though it would’ve meant big money for the place, which I knew was having some money trouble. Maybe that was what the other two were here about.
She shrugged again. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head, sucking her juice and soda through the straw. “And I don’t want to know. You know what they say: ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you.’”

I smiled.
Even with the gun barrel stuck in my mouth, I smiled.
Penny frowned down at me. “What are you smiling at?”
I smiled wider. She was upset now. “Stop it.”
And then it came: from deep within me, a tiny laugh.
“Stop it, Johnny.” Getting angry again.
The laugh grew.
“You stop it!”
And grew.
“Goddamit, stop laughing! Stop it or I’ll –… ” Past angry now, into hate; this woman who I’d loved, and who’d loved me.
What you don’t know can’t hurt you.
And it erupted from me: the biggest belly laugh I’ve ever had… cut short.

SPOILER WARNING

Iron Man 2 opens by introducing a new villain: Whiplash, aka Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), the son of a just-dead Russian engineer whose work on the arc reactor that powers Iron Man (and indeed, Tony Stark himself) was allegedly stolen by Tony Stark’s father. Vanko sets to work building a powered suit of his own, and hunts down Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) to get his revenge. The attempt proves short-lived, and he’s sent to prison.

For his own part, Stark is fending off attempts by the government - spearheaded by weapon design technician competitor to Stark, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) - to obtain the Iron Man technology. Stark has also found out that he’s dying; the arc reactor that replaced his heart is leeching toxins into his body. He wants to keep it quiet from assistant/would-be love interest Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), so transfers control of the Stark empire to her under the pretense of her being able run it more effectively. Enter Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson), the overseer of the legal transfer of the company to Potts’ control, and now assistant to Potts.

Hammer, meanwhile, has faked Vanko’s death in order to spring him from prison and has put Vanko to work on Hammer’s own line of Iron Man-like suits, which Venko turns into robots.

As he faces his own mortality secretly, Stark’s behaviour becomes more erratic and dangerous, finally pushing his friend Lt. Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) to take control of one of the Iron Man suits in order to keep Stark in check. As his downward spiral continues, Stark gets a wake-up call from the past in a recorded message from his father informing Stark that he alone has the key to finding something very important; something that will change the world. And something, as it turns out, that will also save his own life.

Woven into this, we find that Rushman isn’t just a rep from legal who can handle herself in a fight, but is in fact an undercover SHIELD agent working for Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).

It’s only when Hammer’s robots are put into action at Hammer’s very public product launch that Vanko’s real plan is revealed.

Robert Downey Jr. does a good job in the revised role as Tony Stark, but the subplot of his tailspin of behaviour from knowing of his imminent death didn’t feel like it fit the character as well as it may have. Stark’s life has always been about complete control, so his acting out at losing control over his own life ending too soon makes some sense, but not to the degree he depicts. The result, which borders on too long, comes across as somewhat contrived.

Gwyneth Paltrow was more likable in the first movie, here having far fewer endearing moments, coming across instead as cold and uncaring. Granted, Stark’s unaccountable behaviour pushes her there to a point - to paraphrase her, she’s an assistant trying to run the company that Stark should be running - but it would’ve been nice to see her try to care for him more and distance herself less.

Scarlett Johansson was good, but felt like she was too downplayed. When she finally flies into glorious action during the movie’s climax (the fight choreography for her is quite well done), it’s all too brief a release from the prim and proper - though seductive - guise she’s held.

Don Cheadle’s Rhodes felt less friendly and more official than it perhaps should’ve (and may have, if Terrence Howard had been brought back to revise his performance as the character).

Sam Rockwell was good as Justin Hammer, but the character felt a bit two-dimensional.

Mickey Rourke was the real surprise here, putting on a performance which was not only noteworthy, but at its best, stole the show.

Overall, most performances weren’t what they could’ve/should’ve been, but the core idea of the story, the action, the other subplot of Tony re-discovering a new element as passed down to him by his father - that which will change the world and which literally gives him new life, and notched up presence/relevance of the Avengers all still make for an entertaining movie. It isn’t as good as the first on a number of levels, but is still worth seeing on a big screen by old and (like me) new Iron Man fans alike.

And yes, Virginia, there is a teaser after the credits. Worth sticking around for, though its snippit of a hint may be lost on those not at least passingly familiar with other Avengers.

The armies were recalled and put to use, the war machines disassembled and remade into more practical tools. Blackthorne oversaw everything. From his window high in the castle, he could look out and gloat over row after row of apple seeds as far as the eye could see; no mean feat.
He sat on his throne, fingers steepled in front of his face, with a glint in his eye and a dark smirk of certain victory. All he had to do now was wait for his world domination to come to fruition.

Forty-three minutes later, the door was broken in with a ram, SWAT making a quick, efficient sweep of the entire premises.
“All clear,” the captain said as Special Agent Jamieson stepped over the threshhold. “Proctor reported something you should see in the bedroom.”
Jamieson made a sweep of his own, scanning around the living room and dining room from where he stood. “Thanks,” he said.
Brianne Tremblay, Jamieson knew even as he stood at the bedroom door and saw her in the bed. Forensics was already at work on her body, but he knew what they’d find: the same thing they’d found each time. Like the cereal bowl. Like the coffee and newspaper and hair in the shower drain.
Now fourteen victims and counting.
They were getting close to catching Daniel Hayes. But not close enough.
Not yet.

I’ve been writing stories on and off all my life, and have explored various different formats over the years. I’ve learned from books on honing writing skills and have attended seminars relevant to my work; studying, in short, how to be a better writer. A big part of that studying, of course, is reading.

When you read, you learn how to construct sentences, paragraphs, and stories. You learn structures, nuances, and styles. You learn what works and what doesn’t (and more importantly, why it does or doesn’t). And even if you don’t deconstruct what you read - consciously tear it apart to see how and why it works - reading gradually influences how, and the quality with which, you write.

However, as the saying goes, you can’t unlearn something. Once you’ve read up on, say, techniques to help make a scary scene more scary, it’s all too easy to find yourself reading scary scenes and mentally ticking off techniques that have been used rather than being swept away in the story itself.

It doesn’t happen to me all the time, of course. There are writers - Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, George RR Martin, Terry Pratchett, Elmore Leonard, and James Ellroy, to name a few off the top of my head - whose work is so well written and engrossing that it’s only when I put their books down between readings that I pull back from the tales they weave to consider how they managed to do what they do (invariably with envy).

Which brings me to the conundrum: is it possible for writers to at least mute their writer-ness long enough to enjoy anything at all that they read to avoid this intermitent, disruptive studying of the material, or is it only personally preferred writers and (types of) stories that we can look forward to enjoying purely as its intended entertainment?

So I’d be interested to hear: if you’re a writer, do you have this same problem with some of what you read? Which authors don’t you have this problem with? Whose work do you find yourself blissfully engrossed within, be it for particular stories or again and again? Might we be able to learn from them? Is just being a good writer enough to potentially be this distractingly engaging to other writers, or can we learn specific lessons from the masters about how to be this engaging?

What are your thoughts?

Spidery trees clawed the sky from the fog-laiden ground, and all was deathly quiet. I pushed myself hard for long stretches at a time, stopping only when absolutely necessary. I was perhaps half way through to the far side when a beautiful woman in tattered clothing approached me, stepping – almost forming – out of the dim fog. She seemed familiar, possessing some aspects of my late wife, yet at the same time strange.
She cupped her hands, imploring. “Good sir, may I please have some food?”
But what little food I had brought from the distant village was lost as I fell into a stream I was crossing much earlier. I had nothing for myself, let alone to offer to others. I told her I could not help her.
With that, her demeanor changed drastically: her beautiful face became twisted and hateful, once-beautiful eyes suddenly blazing with anger. She closed her fist, opened it again, and blew a fine powder at my face. My eyes stung and my breathing was reduced to choking gasps.
Everything went black.

I awoke as if immediately to find myself bare and leather-strapped to a wooden table. Candles, books, glass jars of oddities, and small, rusty farm tools were everywhere in the room, whose smell turned my stomach.
“You don’t like your new home?” An old woman’s voice croaked at my expression. I turned to see a mockery of the woman I had seen on the path, now decades older; bent and twisted. She wasn’t looking at me, but was instead focused on her work as she pushed a ladle around a cauldron hung over her large fireplace.
“Where am I? Who are you?”
“You should never have entered my domain,” she said, sparing me only a brief glance.
Tales of the Dark Hag flitted through my mind. No longer myth. No longer stories for children to scare each other with. Alive and before me and holding me prisoner.
Then, remembering what the tales said she did with her prisoners.
“Free me, fiend, or you’ll pay dearly when I’ll escape,” I informed her.
“Escape?” She asked. “And how, pray, will you do that?” She glancing at my legs before turning back to her cauldron. I looked down the length of my body to see my legs had been cut off above the knee, now ending in stumps with bloodied poultices wrapped against them.
Yet rather than of myself, I thought of Ilsa. Without her medicine, she would now certainly die… utterly alone. Tears welled up, and though I don’t recall doing so, I must have uttered her name.
“Oh, not to worry,” the old crone said. “She’s doing very well. Aren’t you, dear?”
All in a moment, cold, rasped metal encircled my small finger just before pressure was put upon it, and with a crisp snap, a blinding pain shot through me. Vision swimming as unconsciousness vied to take over, I looked down to see Ilsa wrapping a poultice to the wound she had inflicted, where my finger had been. The blood flow stemmed immediately.
I wanted to say her name, call out to my only child. But in my shock, I could do nothing but watch. She took my finger to the old woman. “Yes, Mother,” she responded. The Hag dropped my finger into her brew, stirring it in as Ilsa watched.
First heart, then body, and now mind broken, I finally let unconsciousness take me… hoping to never wake again.