vegan thesis, dresden antithesis, sin-thesis.
Sitting in the Dresden congress-center, listening to a talk about the LHC by dr. Engelen from CERN. It turns out that helium gets into the darndest places, but then again, anyone who's been to the beach will already know that. And, by "beach," I mean ultracold, synthetic environments, inside a lab, and under high vacuum.. So, really, the perfect opposite of the beach. If you have been to the beach, consider the exact opposite of that experience, with yourself as a massless, zero-dimensional test object. So, naturally, you'd expect a helium containment leak due to electrical fault. I mean, obviously.
The internet lies and there is no "vegan" in east Germany. The use of meat and cheese here, frankly, elevates meals here to a kind of ecstatic exhaltation of the substances. The phrase "they eat meat and cheese a lot here" doesn't begin to cover the nature of the practice. Of course they eat meat and cheese, but it's more accurate to say that meat and cheese are their medium. It's like some kind of goddamned church of animal products over here, only with the holy eucharist replaced with an actual dead body, and the baptismal font filled with a foul mixture of rich cream cheese and bacon grease.
Thus, as predicted in the book of revelation, those without the unholy mark of the meatLord must wander the streets, unable to buy food and starving like reviled, hungry dogs. After days of missing lunch and dinner, ekeing out a few calories in the morning by way of a bowlful of nuts and seeds at the hotel (in lieu of the english acre of offered cold cuts and cheeses), my love the 'quark and I were "treated" to a lavish reception at the conference consisting (I am not exaggerating) of fish, other seafood, a kind of seafood-curry chowder, cream puffs, cream-based desserts, and NOT A DAMNED THING a vegan could eat, with the possible exception of questionable bread. After this, the laboratory "horde" was going out to our customary dinner, which turned out to be - wait for it - at a place with not a *single* meal not based on meat or cheese. Not a place where substitutions could be made, you understand, but where menu choices like "venison in sauce over potatoes" played alongside "platter of imported cheeses," vying for "impossible to veganize" champion. And - I gave up. I ordered meat. I ordered chocolate fondue. I ordered soup with sausage. I ate until I felt poisoned by it, which, as it turns out, didn't take long at all.
So, here's an interesting point - as a vegan, I have been given nifty vegan powers. I can stay up late, drink a gallon of beer, work until the dawn, then get up in an hour and do wind-sprints without my body throwing an alarm. For my daily life, these powers combine to create voltron significant benefits for me, and I had gotten used to it. So when I say that I passed out without any conscious control on my part, and couldn't get up on time the next day, and when I tell you that I felt sicker than I have been in recent memory, I want you to understand my full meaning.
So, screw it. I can't go back. I want my body to work like the high-octane machine it's become, and if that means eating a pile of nuts and seeds to stay alive for another few days, you can call me a freakin' gold finch. Chirp, everyone. Chirp.