hey strangers

this morning as i was trying to wake up i flipped on the news and my eyes were met with a big block of butter that an OCAD student was carving at the royal agricultural winter fair. there were dairy cows in the background and i thought back to when i used to love going there.
my favourite memory is of a cow licking my arm and hand. i'll never forget how slimy that was! her big beautiful brown eyes stared back at me and i instantly fell in love. i stood with her, petting her face and letting her smell me and lick my hand for as long as i could, until the other curious fair-goers started edging their way between us. but i didn't want to leave. alas, i got irritated with all the kids and adults elbowing their way in so i wiped her saliva on my jeans and walked between the opposite rows of cow bums, trying not to get too attached.

and that's the problem; we don't want to get attached because then we'd have to feel.

of course, i don't go to the fair anymore, i'm too far from toronto and i don't want to support it anyway. what i didn't know back then was that those cows aren't living a blissful life at all. they're living a life of slavery. they'll end up as hamburger and steak when their short life is deemed "over". that is, when they're no longer useful to the humans that enslave them.

it makes me sick to think about. and it made me even sicker to see that girl carving the butter. talk about wasteful. it's not even going to feed any of the millions of starving people on this planet. i bet she doesn't have a clue how that butter is made - what goes into the production of it, the mastitis, the pus, the PAIN. whole lives of misery and it's not even being used for food. male calves being torn from their mom and stuck in a tiny, dark pen where they're chained and not even able to turn around or get away from their own feces.
what a fabulous life that is. all for butter and milk and profit. i hate it. i hate that my friends and family don't see it - no, i hate that they won't see it. it's amazing how selfish humans can be and it makes me really really sad.

and i was once one of the blissfully unaware humans. and even though it gets rough having the knowledge, there's not a day goes by that i'm not intensely proud that i'm vegan.

for world vegan day this week, i sent a bunch of links to videos and recipes and writings and cheery vegan day greetings to some family members hoping against hope that they would read them. i would bet my life that not one of them did. one person wrote back and wished me happy vegan day in return and another person said she'd go vegan for a day. but i don't think she really knows what that means and neither one of them asked how they could. one day does make a difference, but she'll go back to cheese and meat and torture the next day.
still, i hope she thinks about it more. i hope they all do. and i hope that if you've stumbled across my blog and want to know more about veganism and what you can do to stop the torture, you'll check out some links or ask me about it. because i would love to help you out! :)

http://www.vegansociety.com/html/animals/exploitation/cows/dairy_cow.php

http://www.worldveganday.org/

http://www.vegansociety.com/html/

http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=unhappy-cows