Why I Became (A Very Spiteful) Vegan - Thanks Facebook!

Quick back story on me (you can see a slightly longer version of this on the "About Us"(link) page)...

When my dog, Stewie, got hit and killed by a car in 2008, I was devastated. Though I had never had a dog before Stewie, I considered him to be my first born (really hairy) son,and was depressed for several months (Man, this is one weird way to open a new website that's supposed to emphasis the funny).

Eventually, my wife and I decided to foster Kilo (link to my blog entry))  (yes, he was a pit bull), a dog that was about to be euthanized, which we ending up adopting. Realizing that saving that dog's life didn't make up for feeling guilt and sadness about Stewie, I joined an animal rescue to help save more lives.

Long story short, my wife and I eventually decided that the best way to honor Stewie wasto start our own rescue/foundation, Stewie to the Rescue (link), which we did in July of 2010. By the way, as you can probably guess, the “short story long” version would include a lot of arguing and how insane people in animal rescue are.

Soon thereafter, I started feeling hypocritical about my dietary choices. Here I was, saving some animals from death, and yet, I was eating others. To make matters worse, Iknew about the abuses in the meat and dairy industries. I mean, c'mon, we all do. At this point, if anyone really thinks the animals are treated well before (or during) beingslaughtered, they're only kidding themselves in an effort to at least publicly keep their conscience clean. If there wasn't widespread, sometimes illegal, animal abuse going on, the Big Meat lobby and their beholden Congress members wouldn't keep trying to pass Ag-gag bills, curtailing undercover videos. Speaking of...

As a comedian (link), I had been on Facebook for marketing purposes before my animal rescue "career," but soon, I had over a thousand "friends" just from Animal Rescue Nation (fyi - not a real nation), thanks to my impact as a rescuer (link to NY1 video) andmy activism (link to Wall Street Acct vid). Why is that part of this blog entry?

It's because anyone with even a cursory interest in animal rescue/welfare will be bombarded with those aforementioned undercover videos on Facebook. I couldn't escape them, video after freaking video depicting the horrible abuse suffered by animals in our nation's farms (dairy and otherwise) and slaughterhouses. Holy crap...Day after day... week after week... month after month... (presumably) vegan "friends" posted all the latest undercover videos, shot by Mercy for Animals (link) or PETA (link) or whomever. At first, I ignored them. Again, I pretty much knew what they would show. I also know that I didn't want to see them because I knew what they would show. But then I started watching them. And you can't un-see what you’ve already seen. Then, I read Rolling Stone's recent expose (link). Good God. And that was it. The proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

So, here I am, currently about three weeks into being another smug, self-righteous vegan. Everyone keeps asking me how's it going, and I answer, "So far, so good, except around mealtime."

The truth of the matter is I'd prefer not being vegan. I don't like seitan. I hate gardein.(someone told me it tastes like chicken. The only way that tastes like chicken is if you've never had chicken before.). Tofu must be firm and doused in soy, miso or teriyaki sauce(I guess any Asian sauce) to make it edible.

I miss chocolate and other candy more than I miss most of my relatives. I also seriously miss Coffee-mate in my six cups of coffee that I drink daily, taking a slice of cheese out of the fridge every once in a while and the seven or eight slices of pizza that I ate a week.I also miss steakhouses and bacon, oh God, do I miss bacon. I used to have contests with friends about how much bacon we could eat (same with buffalo wings).

But I don't care. I’ll never eat them again. The meat industry sucks, the government doesn’t give a shit and I refuse to enable it. Fuck them.

If you stick around, you may will read blogs about me bitching about vegan food (heck, I already did) but I won't go back.

You can’t unsee what you’ve already seen.

Harris