karlhubris

Actually the car and shoe thing aren't the right context...I had a choice to eat the peanut butter cups, I know it was weakness and selfishness...who should I turn my vegan mmembership card in to? Or do I just pay a fine?

I don't recall saying I ate them to "bulk up"- I ate them because they are a vice- like a riding in a car fueled by animal products, or wearing shoes held together by glue made from animal products... It is impossible to be 100% vegan, the world around us thrives on animal exploitation...but I agree that the goal is too inspire others...sometimes peer pressure to do better and not give into vice is good...sometimes it seems its a contest to some folks...those contestants usually move on to their next trend in a short time.

As for fighters...has anyone heard of Genki Sudo, I think thats his name...I think he fights in Pride Fighting...He seems like a pretty cool fighter...I get the feeling he's a bit of a "pacifist" type, wierd but he seems like he's a real peaceful guy...he beats the hell out of people, helps them up, bows to them them pulls out a banner that says "love one another" or "world peace". I 've only seen a few of his fights tho, anyone else know about him? Amarillo has TONS of fighters. Evan Tanner & Paul Buentello from UFC are from here, so is shootfighter Steve Nelson...Brandon Slay (Olympic wrestler-rasslin' for Jesus) is from Amarillo...pro-wrestlers Terry Funk, Ted DuBeussey (Million Dollar Man) and some others are also from here...it makes sense, this is a very agro town...it seems all people want to do are fight or fu..., well, you know what I mean.

I myself am a recovering Catholic... I find myself in the very peculiar and uncomfortable position of defending Catholicism quite often here...these self righteous evangelicals and Baptists are fond of saying Catholics are not Christian! Don't dare try to tell them that they sprung from it....no,no,no...Protestants have existed since Paul! What the hell are they "protesting" then?! But facts only confuse them and make them violent...

Have any of you heard of Aikido? I was pretty hardcore into it about 7 years ago, somehow I fell out of it, but I've recently started picking it up again... Before I started up again I looked into some jujitsu, I discovered most of those guys are just out to kill people...this one guy I spoke with spent 15 minutes telling how great he was, then to top it off he used some racial slurs...I politely told him he had told me all I needed to know about his school. My old Aikido instructor was pretty cool, when I first asked about his school, he said very little, pretty much just said check it out for myself...he refused to self aggrandize, that was a good sign. Our sensei was a guy named Tohei Sensei out of Chicago, he trained to be a kamikazi pilot in WWII when he was 17, the war ended before his mission. It devestated him and then he discovered Aikido and it gave new meaning to his life. When he was in his 70s I watched him manhandle 10 men in their prime, many were armed with boken (wooden staffs) He was like a tiny tornado...in oorder to get any rank we had to test in front of him...quite intimidating...so intimidating to me that I never tested, even though I had hundreds of hours of training! I'm back to the basic basics again...too long without training...but that will be remedied...

here's the scoop...PeTA had some airhead playboy bunny go on the Bill O'Reilly show to debate animal rights...she didn't know anything...at one point O'Reilly held up a piece of paper he claimed was research that said if everyone was vegetarian there wouldn't be enough farm land to grow food for everyone...now that was one of the first things I learned about veganism...80% corn & 90% grain goes to feed livestock not people...blah-blah-blah, I'm sure you know the statistics...but this idiot was like "Really?' I didn't knowe that... Bill obviosly made that up, he's notorious for that...then he some how got her to say that animal testing was good, and at the end of the interview he asked her to go out and have a steak with hinm and she AGREED!!!!!!!!!! I was jumping all over my house!!! Her argument was basically that animals are cute.....AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

maybe he WASN'T thanking you for those treats!!

Yeah, I know you weren't blindly praising them...like I said earlier, they are a great vegan 101. Are you aware of that O'Reilly interview? That just bummed me out so bad. I had finally decided to renew my membership and I saw that...it was horrible. I remember alot of vegetarian/vegan message boards talking about it for days...what the hell were they thinking?!

I figure all the pee and poo keeps me humble...and like you said earlier about PeTA...even tho there are some f**ked up people there, the animals appreciate all the help they can get...

They do some good, I can't argue with that, but there are some out there who believe they can do no wrong, that's a bad attitude to have...I think thtas called...oh yeah...hubris

concerning 7 Day Adventists...I had some friends here who were vegetarian from birth, their folks were 7 day Adventists. I believe thats what Kellog was ( the cereal founder)...on the flip side, Branch Davidians are a splinter group from 7 Day Adventists.

I can see it as the best lousy job...honestly I only just started recently...I was a bit apprehensive at first, like I said mostly run by old Republican ladies...the way I see it, dogs and cats aren't republican or democrat...but they might be socialists, so that works

That sounds like a good deal...I've heard that people who are "undernourished" tend to live longer...I can't remember the particular calorie count, but it was pretty low...and of course they eat a plant based diet...it seems priviledged people tend to get obese... I work for the SPCA here...it's kinda wierd...their mostly supported by rich cattle families, and BBQ joints help with alot of their fund raising...it's like working with the devil, but I have no say, I just clean shit and piss and make friends...

You know he is for prayer in school, that's a tough one for me...but he's pro-gay marriage too...so at least he's trying to be fair. Not that it will make a difference, I've already had a few words with the Amarillo school district for sending home church propaganda from my daughter's pre-K!! They give out lots of pro beef and dairy stuff too...I had a nice conversation with her teacher about that too, she was actually very cool and understanding about it.

I'm not sure about that losing a year per litter...I know that animals used for breeding have their bodies ravaged, but I don't think you can call -or imply- natural reproduction is "deadly"...I was very oppossed to my dog Barbell getting spade, I thought it was far worse to mutilate her body. Unfortunately she was a very promiscuous young lady and after the 3rd litter I decided I had too...she's 14 now, by that logic she, if she dies tommorrow she should have lived to be 17...she's a large dog and has already outlived her vets expectations...but I do know that taken to the extreme it can ravage an animal's body...as for chickens, they'll lay eggs regardless, just a regular menstrual cycle...NOW I DON'T EAT EGGS, I'm not trying to defend it, I'm just saying I can understand how some people can justify eating eggs that are raised "humanely"...again I don't eat them, but I can see their logic, not that I would do it, I'm just saying, for the sake of arguement, that if my dog laid eggs, and they were all around the house, and I ate eggs, and I was so inclined, I might eat it rather than throw it away...if I ate menstrual cycles... Oh yeah, and plants spend their energy for the survival of their own species too, not for us... I'm just saying... I guess I'm being difficult..

To continue that thought...anybody remember the band Youth of Today? They had a song about such an issue...I think the song was called "I thought we were on the same side" The point is if we start doling out rank on veganism it divides rather than unifies...I appreciate helpful peer input, but not judgement on whether I'm "giving all to the cause"...I've noticed that the loudest, most judgemental and hard core zealots are usually the same that bail out the quickest. Not always, but 99% of the time. The same folks who condemned me when I was "only" lacto ovo years ago now enjoy steaks. Just recently I "inspired" a friend to go vegetarian and he last about 3 months. He got real preachy and then suddenly gave up, he used some lame excuse about muscle pains that he felt were a sign of too little protein. He then went on to tease me for eating portobella burgers at a BBQ. If the vegan police want to get me...they'll never take me alive!!!!

Does anyone remember the Simpson episode where a character called himself a 5th level vegan-doesn't eat anything that casts a shadow...pretty funny. I think making an attempt to live without animal products is good enough...it is an impossible task...technically you couldn't be on this forum now because animal products were used somewhere in the manufacture of the computer, or transport. Sad to say we live in a world fueled by animal exploitation. Obviously there are some boundries, that I think all would agree on, like people who call themselves vegetarian because they don't eat red meat on Fridays, they're actually Catholics.

Yeah, I was just giving you a hard time about mammals not being able to be vegan...that's very interesting about the Egg snakes, I knew about them, but I thought they supplemented their eggs with small rodents and insects... As far as eating eggs goes, I don't really buy that it's a life, really just a menstral cycle. That's just gross! We've had friends that had chickens, raise them more like pets, and have offered us eggs. I can't bring myself to eat them tho, I've stayed away for too long. Some of those good habits are too hard to break...my wife does eat eggs and cheese, tho she was vegan for a while. Part of coming to this forum was to be inspired by others, I know no other vegans locally. Did you (veganpotter) say at one time you raised reptiles?

That is an excellent point...I think it is the truest definition, but even that causes problems...technically if you use fruitarians as a model, true vegetarians would only eat vegetables. I finally just checked the dictionary and it agrees that veganism is a whole lifestyle, vegetarian is the diet. As for the snakes, don't even egg eating snakes eat small rodents and insects? And just to be difficult, aren't all mammals technically incapable of being true vegetarians due to their dependence on mother's milk. And sometimes the get it from females that are not their own mother, in cases where some animals adopt or rear the young in groups (a friend of my wife has 2 cats that just gave birth to 2 litters at the same time, they just group feed with no distinction) I'm just being difficult. When people ask why I don't drink milk I always say its cause milk is for babies.

He's the only jewish, pro- gay marriage person I could ever imagine Texans voting for! I hope he pulls it off. Has anyone ever heard any of his old stuff? When he was in The Texas Jewboys they had a song called " They Don't Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore"-that is hilarious!!!!!!

as for that phrase...I worked with alot Germans at the Emelia Earhart hotel, and all posts were made in English und auf deutsch, the sign orignally read " Please keep the break room clean and orderly"...by exchanging a few words it became quite humorous!

where are you in Germany? I noticed some get together in Frankfurt. Like I said, I lived in Wiesbaden, but I went to Frankfurt and Mainz alot, mostly for concerts. One of my friends has informed me that the old Schlacthof by the Bahnhof in Wiesbaden is now a concert venue. Are you familiar with it?

Yeah, I'm voting for Kinky...I know about his dog rescue place... I figure its a win/win deal if he wins...either he'll fix this dump, or drive it straight to hell, either way its better than slick perry!

Peeking around I just realized how many people were from Germany!!! I lived in Wiesbaden from '86-'91. (my dad was part of the US occupational forces) One of the first vegetarians I ever met was German. His name was Ollie Bertram, he was the drummer for a German hardcore band -SUCKSPEED. I was in a hardcore band with some German friends and we toured with Suckspeed, we were called Phobic Instinct. Mem von Stein from Exumer was also in the band. Small world, I met a guy here in Amarillo, Texas who was German and saw a show we played in Rudesheim in 90. I loved Deutschland and want to go back and share it with my family. I have many metal memories there... My German was always horrible...I never made an attempt to learn until my last year there when I finally realized how rude it was to expect everyone to speak English. However, I can still remember how to say "Mien schwanz ist sauber und ordentlich!" My German friends always thought that was funny...I learned mostly by putting dirty words into German phrases I read at work.

You know, I didn't really buy their argument either, but I thought it was interesting...the lengths we can go to justify ourselves! I have to admit, I sometimes miss my leather jacket (being a reformed metalhead). I'd like to get a vegan substitute but I haven't found one that's quite right. I can do without tho.