Category: vegan

Elephants In Pinnawela: A Crappy Adventure

swimming baby elephant in sri lanka sanctuary

I was recently sent to Sri Lanka for a work project, and my main plan was to visit the elephant sanctuary in Pinnawela.

I was told that there are wild elephants hanging out, many of them were orphaned by poaching and military action. This is true, and they’re fed from bottles and you can ride ’em (I didn’t), and they’ll have their picture taken with you, but the reason they do that stuff is because there are dudes poking them with big, nasty bullhooks.

I swiftly fell out of love with the concept. It’s a mixed bag- it’s tourist money that feeds these guys, and there’s the an old blind elephant being taken care of, and there’s an elephant who lost a foot in a landmine whocouldn’t survive in the wild. On the other hand, they’re just as penned in and abused as elephants in the circus. They also appear to have a breeding program going to generate the babies that tourists, myself included, love. Yes, you do get to pet a baby elephant for tips, which feels good, but dirty. I don’t know how much more for a lap dance, but you’re advised to have a very strong lap.

blind elephant

The first elephant I petted was this old blind man, with giant curvy tusks like a mammoth. He felt like a hairy handbag. After I petted him, an Australian lady took her turn and he bellowed and peed all over her. I said to my friend, Oh, I’m glad that wasn’t me. After he had a nice piss, he got an erection. Against my best judgment, I took, like, a million pictures of it. I’m not proud, but nor could I help myself.

Here we can see the ginger, bearded hipster outside his natural habitat of Billyburg, meeting an elephant while a prick holds a bullhook.

hipster with elephant in pinnawela

It’s not that the elephants weren’t beautiful, or that the babies weren’t adorable and the dusty navy of blueberries. They were.

For a vegan to drive three hours through the jungle to watch animals be abused is a real letdown.

They don’t have animal rights in Sri Lanka, they barely have human rights. Still and all, I felt like a giant asshole.

In Memoriam: Goth Juice

Last week I headed to Lush, the store that makes soap out of food, to restock one of my primary staples- along with soy lattes, I am  propelled through the world by Goth Juice, the vegan hairstyling product inspired by the Mighty Boosh that I first loved here. 

I stood in the middle of the store and looked around, casually, and then with ever-growing confusion, until a nice girl with a fashionable haircut broke the news to me- Goth Juice, Made from the Tears of Robert Smith, had been dropped from the LUSH offering.   I  dropped to my knees and started gasping like a trout, and  regretted the carefree, sloppy vigor with which I had dispatched my last tub of product. 

If I had known, I said, I would have made it LAST, maybe frozen a little bit for a special occasion, like my marriage to Noel Fielding, or the funeral of the person who discontinued Goth Juice.

Purple.  Slippery but dry, like the SLIME toy that was sold in the 80’s until every carpeting had SLIME mashed liberally into it.  It smelt like pine trees, or like a linoleum floor that had been washed with something that smelt like pine trees.  Lightweight and evoking Vince Noir and gravity-defying satsumas.  Infinitely superior to the greasy King of the Mods, which inexplicably survives.  If no-one else loved you, Goth Juice, I loved you.

 

Reflections on Bumbershoot

Over Labor Day Weekend I was afforded the opportunity to perform as part of the Famous Mysterious Actor show at Bumbershoot.

I held My Pet Monster and told jokes to people who were really not extremely sure what was going on. I don’t know what my facial expression is about, but I’m sure I thought I was doing something different.

Before the Show

I really enjoyed the show, and having “quality time” with some of my comedy pals from Portland, Salem, and Seattle. I liked having an Artist’s badge, which meant that I didn’t wait in lines with the “rubes”, and people looked at me, curious to know if I was famous at all, which I am not.

After the Show

After the show, I leapt out onto the gangway, eager to suck all the life out of the Bumbershoot music and arts festival for FREE.

Within five minutes, I was shocked and appalled to realize: I HATE MUSIC FESTIVALS! I was surrounded by young people who were over-bandanna’d and facial-haired, and excited about seeing bands called things like Leather Wolf Eyes and The Bambi Sluts. I escaped the grounds and headed out to eat delicious Seattle vegan foods at Pizza Pi.

Even Later

It was worth it to see Billy Bragg play a show in the warm twilight. He had a sore throat, but soldiered through to play a great solo set. He made fun of my laugh, which he has not done since I saw him at Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in 1992 when he played for an environmental activist’s rally. MEMMOORIIIES! Oh, and I found all the old people. We were all at Billy Bragg. Hilariously, not one but two concert-goers yelled at him that he should play music and not talk politics. GO TO A DIFFERENT SHOW. 

Thanks, PROK! FMA! Bumbershoot!

Bowie vs. Prince


I joined a Pedalpalooza event for the Bowie vs. Prince ride on Friday night. The idea is that a bike ride cruises around and occasionally stops to drink and dance to a biked sound system. I decided to express with my outfit the question, “what if the harlequin from Scary Monsters was really just a big-boned gal in a bike helmet?” The fantastic DJ Rhienna was also in attendance.

It was fun, although the music that started as very Bowie and Prince and quickly devolved to generic hip-hop, and I had hoped to see more awesome outfits. I did see 300 hipsters, 1000 cans of PBR, and about 80 helmets! There was a Screaming Lord Byron in attendance, and inexplicably, a Michael Jackson.

Strange things yelled at me on my bike:

1. Hey, do you have twenty dollars? Well, do you?

2. Hey! Your face!

3. Hi Virginia Jones! (not so strange, really)

300 people in the Safeway parking lot-like a flash mob, but more shambly and random.

We visited the bran’ spankin’ new Eastside Voodoo Doughnut, for those of us too drunk or lazy to go downtown to get one. Thank you, Jebus!

In the end, it is clear that Portland’s sympathies lie with the Thin White Duke and not the Purple One, but it was close. Prince is still the universal #1 artist that drunk girls request at parties.

Goth Juice: The Most Powerful Hairspray Known To Man


I don’t know the last time I was just an out-and-out shill for something, but I was pretty excited to pick up a container of GOTH JUICE last weekend, the new hairstyling product from Lush. It’s purple, it’s powerful, and it’s inspired (along with a companion product called King of the Mods) by the fantastic UK comedy, The Mighty Boosh.  Each tub claims to be “Made from the Tears of Robert Smith.”

Confidential to Gabe Dinger and Pete Ellison: Robert Smith is *still* not a member of the Smiths. Oddly, none of them were called Smith, which makes them the opposite of the Ramones, who were all named Ramone.

POSTSCRIPT:

I loved this product and used it when my hair was short, and then one day, I went to Lush to pick some more up and my friend Andrea, who is now the lead singer of the great band Holy Grove, had to break the news that it was discontinued, and comfort me because I was crying in a soap store.  Zen teaches us that loving something means one day you will lose it, and you must always prepare yourself for that loss.

The Weirdest Argument I Have Ever Had


I had an all-day meeting at my soulless corporate job, and it was determined that we only needed a fifteen minute break for lunch, since it was catered. We have a great food service at work, and the cafeteria always has delicious vegan options, and I was dismayed to find that the meeting I had my choice of sammiches: turkey, chicken, and salmon.

I ran out to grab some food, an said sweetly to the organizer, it would have been nice to get a vegetarian option up in this piece, and she said, oh, you’re vegetarian? You can eat the fish. I have a lot of vegetarian friends, and they all eat fish.
Thank you for telling me that. I have only been vegetarian for TWENTY MOTHERF*CKING YEARS, vegan for six, and I am so INTERESTED to know that I can eat fish.
But really, it’s my fault. People used to give me the “I’m vegetarian, but I still eat fish” crap, and after repeated ridiculous conversations, black eyes, and hurt feelings, I gave up arguing. I gave up, and through years of misuse, the word has lost its original meaning and understood implication, which is that you don’t eat animals.

Bad Dog Alert!


Her name is Lola, and she’s a showgirl. She’s been spotted causing trouble and shoplifting at local vegan grocery store Food Fight. She claims that there have been misunderstandings, and that she just has what are known as “sticky paws”. Sometimes a cute face hides evil intentions.