vegetarianism

i need to find out the environmental footprint of the stuff i eat. r introduced a totally obvious idea that had never crossed my mind before: dogmatic divisions of food into meat and not meat are pretty arbitrary, especially when you're eating animal products. what's more, in the process of eating because, well, you have to fill yourself up, in forgoing the dense nutrition of meat you're forced to eat more eggs, wheat, lentils etc, all of which have their own, distinct bad effect on the world. so really, i've gotta find out what those imprints are, how much more egg, wheat etc i'm eating and how that would compare with denser imprint (both in protein and in pollution) of meat. i hope the former is significantly lower, i expect it will be. it was great and a little funny talking to k about this because she got uncommonly riled up because she kind of hates r and feels so strongly about these things, it's wonderful to watch someone care so ferociously.

it's freezing in montreal and it makes me mad because i've sent almost all my sweaters home and we are all so reluctant to turn on the heat because we've already turned those to zero emotionally. when we learn about all the wildlife and plants that are hilariously fucked up by global warming because they start to emerge or slumber at the wrong time of year because they've been duped, we are getting duped. never have i felt so betrayed, so lied to on such an immense scale. it's like a parent having an affair or a government bugging the telephones of its citizens. who do i appeal to? this kind of weather calls for civil disobedience and hunger strikes. i feel epically wronged.