Evil indigestion
I’m going to tell you a story about a friend of mine… I won’t use his name, for reasons that will become apparent.
My friend, let’s call him Robin, is from a fairly small village outside of Lancaster, let’s call it Bentham.
On this particular day however, Robin had ended up in the big smoke, London.
…and whilst outside an art gallery, Robin spots someone he recognises and so walks up to him.
‘I know you’, says Robin, ‘are you from Bentham?’
‘Nah mate, I’m not,’ says the other man in a strong Liverpudlian accent.
‘Are you sure? I know you. You must be from Bentham,’ Robin continues.
‘Seriously mate, I’m not from Bentham,’ says the other man in a slightly hacked off tone before walking away.
It turns out, so it does, that the reason Robin had recognised the man was not that he was from Bentham, but that he was actually Paul McCartney from The Beatles.
I mention this because I heard that Paul thinks we can save the environment by all becoming vegetarian… and whilst I’ll give it to him that there would be a benefit if we all did this, I would also like to point out that it would sound better coming from someone who hasn’t repeatedly traveled around the word on airplanes, has not had vast amounts of equipment transported around on tour and has not been in league with Lexus.
It seems to me that even Paul has a hard time recognising himself.
Philip J Schadenfreude on 
lol. The story of your friend almost made me laugh out loud in class. I had to fight back the laughter. I can’t believe he wouldnt recognize Paul!
also i like your comics. good stuff. keep it up.
If you met Robin you’d understand… he’s a sharp and very talented bloke, but has a capacity for misunderstandings and adventure that I can only describe as admirable.
people always look different in person
so i can understand robin’s confusion.
i wonder how many people paul told
this story to? it’s great!
That’s the best story. THE. BEST.
And true too… thanks.
gRooooaaaaaan
Yeah, Adam seems to be really good at burgerisation of the english language.
Haha, I love it. Burgatory, nice play on words mate. Although like Joenis says how can you not recognise Paul McCartney. I could spot him in a crowd easy.
Hey Jerry, long time no see.
Hmm, I got a shirt with the beatles on it, I almost wore it today, nice Ben Sherman shirt.
Wouldn’t have a clue what they all look like tho, vaguely know some of their songs.
They are just another pop band.
*runs*
You might be interested in the hoax death of Paul:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_is_dead
Man, good story. Reminds me of one from the other day:
My friend, lets call him Ian, was in New York City this past weekend, standing on a street corner outside a good restaurant, waiting for some one. While waiting, he sees a guy walking up the street that has a passing resemblance to Elijah Wood (that’s Frodo, for the rest of you), and he says to himself, “My fried Amy is positively in love with Elijah Wood, and has posters of him hanging all over her dorm room (well, he didn’t really say that to himself, he knew it, but I’m saying, for the understanding of what he actually did say to himself). That guy looks enough like him, that I could take a camera-phone pic of him, send it to her, and she’d be all like, ‘OMG, you saw Elijah Wood!’ Excellent!” So, Ian walks up to the bloke that looks like Elijah wood, holding his camera out and ready, and gets as far as, “Hey, you look a bit like Eli-” before he realizes that this bloke was actually Elijah Wood. Elijah, being the nice guy that he is, laughed, and let him take the picture anyways.
The airplane thing is a source of great irritation. I really want to get out and see the world, but I really don’t want to fly about to do it. But it takes a long time to walk to, say, Japan from here. So here’s the question: does the bad that’s done by Paul touring and flying and hauling all that stuff out weigh the positive impact of all the people through all the years that’ve been influenced by what he has to say about vegetarianism/environmentalism? A better person to do this for: Al Gore. Flies all over, owns a 20-room house in Nashville (think about the energy to heat and cool that), but has convinced a whole lot of people to make little cuts. Over all, good or bad?
gee, roo, you *know* when us veggies talk
about making sacrifices to save the world,
we are talking about everyone else, not
ourselves. it’s all a matter of perspective.
I don’t know If I would totally agree with vegetarianism to help the environment. Sure factory farming is bad, because of cruelty to animals, and the spread of diseases, methane emissions and the like. Then again, crops take up a lot of space, use a lot of pesticide, and with the rise of ethanol and more wealthy people in Asia, we are already beginning to face a food shortage. So if people just switched to vegetarianism that would exacerbate the problem. Whatever though.
Errr…. think for a second about how many acres of grain it takes to feed a cow until you can get slaughter it. Now think about how many calories are in that cow, and how many people you can feed with that many calories. Now think about how many total calories are in all the grain that it took to feed the cow. How many people could you feed with that many calories?
The reality is, if I recall correctly, a ratio of 8 people to 1 person, for eating vegetables verses meat. You feed more people with the grain than you can with the cow. A lot more. The cow only takes up less space because you don’t see what goes into it. Population/food crisis is one of the best reasons to think about vegetarianism.
Roo, you’re right. I forgot about how many calories we shove in factory farmed cows. What about cows that graze in open pastures? Vegetarians drink milk and eat cheese anyway, and other farms use their manure. So maybe we need to get rid of factory farming and wasteful fast food. We use sheep for their wool; maybe before they get to old and die we can eat them. What about animals whose populations have to be kept in check such as rabbits or deer, should we kill them and throw them away? I really do not know much about this subject, but I was giving it more thought during my lunch eating raw beef at an Ethiopian restaurant. It was better than I would have thought. Anyway, it’s a good subject, and I see how vegetarianism could help a lot.
What about ppl like me? I am mildly allergic to wheat and milk, I can’t digest any vegetable with alot of protein. What are we meant to do if there is only vegetable products on the market?
Meat will be to expensive because it will be rare and a luxury item.
you might possibly resort to fish, but i hear there are problems there as well
There are problems across the board at the moment… here in the UK the flooding last summer has pretty much destroyed all local crops. We’re facing a rather bleak onion shortage at the moment:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL2245263820080122
I think that there’s only going to be more of this sort of thing in the future as most agricultural land is vulnerable to climate change, we have a ballooning population and some people are eating way too much.
No, not the onions!
I’ve always been in the anti-factory-farm-reduce-meat-consumption camp, rather than the eating-any-meat-at-all-will-send-you-to-Burgatory-for-eternity camp. A good introduction to the topic is Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, which deals with the ethical implications of factory farming, touches on the environmental side, and doesn’t actually advocate vegetarianism at all. It’s a little out dated, so you’ll need to look up some more modern info, but it’ll get you started.
Eating local venison and game form over-populated species is probably one of the best things you can do. I’m glad you brought that up another good essay to read, with regards to deer over population and environmentalism, is Thinking like a mountain by Aldo Leopold. (Link: http://www.eco-action.org/dt/thinking.html) Complete use of the animal, pasturing on land you couldn’t grow grain on, et cetera, are all steps that are important: efficiency is something America (Western culture?) has thrown to the wind, in the quest for convenience. There’s a buffalo farm up the road from me a way that’s a stellar example: free range herd, he culls it the way a wolf pack would, for the most part, and uses absolutely everything from the animal, organs, sausage, meat, skin, even the bones (which go to local Amerindia craftsmen to carve). More farms like that, and reasonable consumption, and a lot of problems could be solved.
There’s a lot of easily accessible literature out there: take a read, see what you think! I’d recommend more Aldo Leopold, E. O. Wilson, and some newer lit by Singer. Also, there’s the perk that it’s a really interesting movement, historically and philosophically. Makes the reading more fun.
And don’t forget road-kill… it’s free, environmentally sound and ready-tenderised.
Oh! Good point!
Any one in Virginia: I’ve a friend that uses fresh road kill to make jerky, and uses the skins. If anyone needs rawhide, tanned deer hide, or jerky, I could get you in touch with her.
Peter Singer was one of my college professors!
Oh, you’re joking! Man… I’m a bit jealous.
How’s he do as a teacher? Some people are really different in person, speaking, than you’d expect from their books. I went to a talk by Orson Scott Card once, and discovered that he’s a huge asshole. It was sort of like discovering that Santa Clause isn’t real.
He was a good teacher, nice and everything, but many of the students didn’t like him because he only chose books he had written for the course and that made him seem a bit full of himself.
Ah, that is a bit pretentious, isn’t it? It happens though, a fair bit. At least he was good… I’ve had one or two that have been horrible teachers, and not all that good as authors that do that too, and than you’re just eff’d.
[i]The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.[/i]
Wow. I’ve gotta find more of this.
Awright la bin down to see me ma an she says me da wants scrag end for tea !