Eat Dirt

Vegetarians choose not to eat meat for a variety of reasons. Some cite the lower fat and cholesterol and higher fiber on their plates. Others for more emotional reasons: they don’t want to eat anything that smiles back at them. Hypothetically at least.

I stopped eating pork about eight years ago, after a scientist happened to mention that the animal whose teeth most closely resemble our own is the pig. Unable to shake the image of a perky little pig flashing me a brilliant George Clooney smile, I decided it was easier to forgo the Christmas ham.

George Clooney’s political bent certainly qualifies him as a pig, but I hardly think he looks like one.  Or vice versa.

If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make ’em smell so good when they’re cookin’?

Now scientists (possibly those furlowed in the recent Global Warming controversy) are telling us that vegetables should be off the table too.

we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot.

Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way.

It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.

Sorry, what? I couldn’t hear you, I was trying to bite off a chunk of my laptop battery. I think I chipped a tooth.

When plant biologists speak of their subjects, they use active verbs and vivid images. Plants “forage” for resources like light and soil nutrients and “anticipate” rough spots and opportunities. By analyzing the ratio of red light and far red light falling on their leaves, for example, they can sense the presence of other chlorophyllated competitors nearby and try to grow the other way. Their roots ride the underground “rhizosphere” and engage in cross-cultural and microbial trade.

Maybe so, but can they dance?

Plants can scream though. Sort of.

Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication [that means chewing gutter-huggers-JR] — their feedback, you might say — are volatile chemicals that serve as cries for help. Such airborne alarm calls have been shown to attract both large predatory insects like dragon flies, which delight in caterpillar meat, and tiny parasitic insects, which can infect a caterpillar and destroy it from within.

So dragon flies can eat delicious caterpillar meat but I can’t?

It’s a small daily tragedy that we animals must kill to stay alive.

If that’s not a bumper sticker yet, it should be.

Plants are the ethical autotrophs here, the ones that wrest their meals from the sun. Don’t expect them to boast: they’re too busy fighting to survive.

Well then, why didn’t the Democrats include plants in the health care bill? Don’t they care?

So as you sit down to your bountiful (hopefully) table later this week, have compassion. Remember: you can’t eat animals; you can’t eat plants. Merry Christmas!

24 thoughts on “Eat Dirt

  1. “Well then, why didn’t the Democrats include plants in the health care bill? Don’t they care?”

    The problem is that their PAC, VETOV (Vegetables for the Ethical Treatment of Other Vegetables) is very poorly run. I know this isn’t politcially correct, but if you allow your whole payroll to be run by radishes… well, you know.. I’m not saying radishes are inferior to other vegetables, but they do have a certain reputation.

  2. Don’t eat meat, farming it makes green house gas. Don’t eat fish, they feel pain and the seas are being depleted. Don’t eat plants? Is there any vitamin C in gravel?

  3. Vegetation thrives on CO2, doesn’t it?
    We need to drive more SUV’s and build more coal-fired power plants. It’s the green thing to do.

  4. I defer to Jim Gaffigan:

    “Do you know what they do to those chickens? No, but it’s delicious…don’t get me wrong I love animals, I just love to eat them more. Fun to pet, better to chew.”

  5. Get thee to Nuremberg, Buzz.

    Me, I justify my eating of meat by noting that all those pigs, cows, chickens, ducks, and deer are horrible Nazis and eat grass and other plants. They’re awful, and I punish the cows further (they eat the most grass) by buying shoes made from their skins.

  6. And let us not forget that it is possible to get an EEG (electroencephalograph) reading from lime jello similar to the EEG reading of a healthy human’s brain waves.

  7. angryclown Says: “There’s only one way to really be green: Soylent Green.”

    That’s very disturbing to me. A very good friend has been doing quotes from the movie in a Charleton Heston voice for weeks (he’s spot on with it). “”Soylent Green is people! We’ve got to stop them somehow!””

    Very-very Oogie!!!

  8. Angryclown would enjoy watching the debate between a terrified pig and a hungry DiscordianStooj.

  9. “And let us not forget that it is possible to get an EEG (electroencephalograph) reading from lime jello similar to the EEG reading of a healthy human’s brain waves.”

    Hey, just because the test subjects bought “Global Warming” doesn’t necessarily mean they were healthy. Those “brain waves” were probably the echo of all that kool-aid sloshing around their empty brain pans anyway.

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