EXCITABLE BOY: You Don’t Make Friends With Salad

I’ve never understood veganism. I have several friends who are vegan, and it has always baffled me as to why anyone would go to such lengths to avoid eating products that might contain part of an animal. One of these people goes the easy route and specifically eats only foods that grow out of the ground. This other guy, though, he’ll eat snack foods and the like, but he always checks the labels to see if there might be milk or some other non-meat animal product in the ingredients. No cheese, no eggs, no succulent rack of soylent green, no nothing. This is a description of my own private hell.

You see, I believe in the food chain. I’m sure all of the vegans out there have heard this argument before, but I have never personally received a valid counter-argument. Why won’t you eat this chicken wing? Because it’s not fair to the chicken? But what about, say, wolves that eat chickens? Are you going to scold a wolf for having a turkey dinner, perhaps with a side of mashed potatoes and a nice white wine? I think not, and for the same exact reason that you should not chide me: superior debating skills. Yes, like myself, wolves are known throughout the animal kingdom for their exceptional argumentative abilities and are second only to the badger.

Which brings me to my second point: It is important we eat the dumber, slower animals, or the smarter, faster animals may beat us to it. It took us millions of years to reach the top of the food chain, and I’m not about to give up now. Wolves may not be able to use guns, but I’m almost dead certain a race of Sasquatch are out there in the woods somewhere, waiting to take over the instant we let down our guard. Fellow carnivores, we cannot let this happen! Should you see a bigfoot, it is imperative that you slaughter and eat it instantly, stopping only to freshen your drink.

I have no pity for the small (and sometimes big-footed) creatures that hippity-hop through the forests and fields of the world. I take great joy in knowing my meal was violently murdered and occasionally request when dining out that my hamburger come from a cow that was hacked to death by a small hatchet, verbally taunted before its grisly end. Are these images disturbing to any of you out there? Certainly not as disturbing as shopping at the grocery store and having to root through every goddamn bag of buttered popcorn to find the one that doesn’t contain real butter, and then later realizing that no, you can’t buy the cookie dough because it contains eggs, and eggs come from chickens, and chickens are animals and God hates me.

Why torture yourselves, vegans, when it’s so much easier to torture pigs, chickens and the occasional small, delectable kitten? These animals are meant to be consumed in mass quantities or else they wouldn’t be so delicious. You know for a fact that bacon tastes 100 times better than the carrot sticks you’re eating, so why fight it? I’m not necessarily telling you to stop eating vegetables. Sure, you can have a salad with your meal. Plants are good for you.

And that’s the thing: so are animals. They provide tons of essential vitamins and minerals (particularly when battered and/or deep fried) that can’t be replaced by your so-called “nourishment supplements.” When you pass up that bag of Doritos because it contains what appears to be a cheese-like substance, you are depriving yourself of a healthy lifestyle that millions of others are embracing. Like beer, cigarettes and coffee, animal products help to build strong bones and sharp, intelligent minds, and without them, you will never achieve your goal of finally conquering Ireland once and for all.

I applaud your efforts to be different and choose what you think is a healthy way of life, but in the end, people are going to make fun of you and call you names. Being a vegan means being an outsider, and if you continue the path you have chosen, you will eventually be labeled a communist and a homosexual. If you are already homosexual, you will be branded heterosexual and Republican. If you are already a Republican, you will be sucked into a timeless void and forced to spend the rest of your life in a purgatory-like state, forced to watch nothing but reruns of “Good Times.”

So vegans, for your own sake, heed my advice, and do not wind up like my friend, whose entire wardrobe has been mysteriously rubbed with beef jerky, so that the tantalizing smell of spicy, dried meat follows him wherever he goes. Like I said before, he was asking for it.