I started to think about this year’s FSMas feast well before November. Since we’re talking about a (spoof) religion which revolves around pasta and pirates, a noodle-based dish is basically a given. Last year, we had lasagna…the same as every x-mas before. What can I say? The pasta, I loves it. That, and I’m not especially adventurous in the kitch.

But in the spirit of Vegan MoFo, I vowed to try out a new dish this year – but what?

Stephen Colbert to the rescue! (@ 2.27):

Communist Manipesto – that’s the ticket. Naturally, a “Communist Manipesto” dish must involve manicotti and pesto. And sundried tomato pesto is the shit! Blend a pesto recipe with a little tofu for bulk, stuff it in a package of manicotti, and there’s a FSMas dinner to (not) die for!

So I started by Googling around the internets in search of sundried tomato pesto recipes, finally settling on this one from All Recipes:

Ingredients

* 4 ounces sun-dried tomatoes
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
* 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
* 1/4 cup chopped pine nuts
* 3 tablespoons chopped onion
* 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
* 1 tablespoon tomato paste
* 1/3 cup crushed tomatoes
* 1/4 cup red wine
* 1/2 cup olive oil
* 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
* salt to taste

Directions

1. Place sun-dried tomatoes in a bowl and cover with warm water for 5 minutes, or until tender.

2. In a food processor or blender combine sun-dried tomatoes, basil, parsley, garlic, pine nuts and onion; process until well blended. Add vinegar, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes and red wine, and process. Stir in olive oil and Parmesan cheese. Season with salt to taste.

Of course, this was only a starting point – I had to modify the recipe a bit to make it vegan. And, you know, adjust certain ingredients according to what I did and didn’t have in the pantry. And add a few extra steps.

Here’s the final version of the recipe…well, the final version of Chapter 1, anyway. I’m not in love with it, so likely there will be additional “Chapters” forthcoming. More on that below!

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Last year, when I initially conceived of FSMas, one of the first diy craft ideas to pop into my head was that of building a Noodle House. (Think “gingerbread house,” but with uncooked pasta instead of cookies and icing…and not at all edible, natch.)

I finally found some time this month to experiment with my first noodle house. Even though it turned out to be a bit of a flop – I spent a good half hour yesterday dismantling what I’d made, so I could at least recycle the cardboard frame – I’m going to blog the process anyway, share what worked and what didn’t, and hopefully hammer out some new ideas for the 2009 holiday season.

OK, well, where to begin? I started with two smallish-medium square cardboard boxes. The larger box, the dimensions of which were slightly longer/wider than the length of a lasagna noodle, formed the base of the house. I taped the top and bottom closed so that all the surfaces were level.

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I founded and moderate a local freecycle group; for practical reasons, we don’t allow live animal listings, although “meat” is acceptable (conflicted emotions, I has them). Recently, a member requested unwanted meat, as well as…unwanted livestock and sick or dying animals. I deleted the post and removed her from the list, as this was her second strike.

Naturally, she took issue with the strike. This is a direct quote from the email she sent in reply:

The other issue you have with me I don’t understand because any meat is any meat whether it is in frozen form or live form.

Let me repeat:

The other issue you have with me I don’t understand because any meat is any meat whether it is in frozen form or live form.

“Meat is meat” whether it’s already dead, slaughtered, prepared and packaged…or is walking around, nibbling on grass, playing with other “meat,” and just generally living life.

“Life” is simply a transitional state on the road to consumption.

Wow. Just…wow.

I wonder if she has visions of drumsticks while conversing with other humans?

Echoes of (the ghost of) Bobby, anyone?

Sometimes I’ve just got to laugh, otherwise I’d never stop crying.

(Crossposted.)

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare meat life ethics the colbert report stephen colbert stage manager bobby video pop culture medianimals quotables

I’d wanted to feature Ralphie and Rennie on this year’s holiday card, but they weren’t exactly cooperative during the photo shoot; Rennie wouldn’t sit still, while Ralphie, laying listlessly under the tree, resembled a piece of roadkill dressed in pirate gear.

Luckily, Peedee saved the day! While we were taking pictures of Booty and the Beast, we had the office door closed so Peedee, Kaylee and Jayne couldn’t distract our would-be cover dogs. But as soon we finished up with Ralphie and O-Ren, I opened the door and in ran Peedee, who promptly plopped himself down right in front of the tree. First shot, and bam! Perfect. There was our FSMas card:

Because I had so much fun making Peedee’s card – and I didn’t want to leave any of the dogs out – I created a few similar cards from the “outtakes.”

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The Saturday before x-mas is reportedly “the biggest puppy buying day of the year,” according to In Defense of Animals (IDA). In response, the group has designated today the 1st Annual Nationwide “Adopt, Don’t Shop!” Day:

The Saturday before Christmas is the biggest puppy buying day of the year. This year, In Defense of Animals is teaming up with activists in dozens of cities around the country to educate the public about the horrors of pet factories and encourage people to adopt a homeless animal from a shelter or rescue group instead of buying one from a pet store.

What: December 20th, 12-3 pm
Where: Your local pet shop

Almost all pet stores around the nation are supplied by inhumane commercial breeding facilities (aka pet factories) where the breeding animals are imprisoned for life and used as breeding machines. Meanwhile, it’s estimated that nearly 5 million healthy cats and dogs (many of them purebred) are euthanized in American shelters every year simply because there aren’t enough homes for them. Make a commitment today to take action for the victims of pet factories and companion animal overpopulation today!

Join In Defense of Animals and friends at your local pet store to help end the abuses of pet factories.

You can find a list of events here.

Over at Vegan Soapbox, Elaine has a list of suggestions for online activism, including posting profiles of animals available for adoption on Petfinder and such. Which is a great idea; but first, let’s tackle a few myths about adopting vs. buying animals.

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Burger King’s latest ad campaign – Whopper Virgins – is a convoluted mess of racism, sexism, speciesism and colonialism, all crammed into a a series of 15-to-30-second ads.

To wit:

Let’s dissect, shall we?

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Now this is why we moved out to the sticks.

(Click here for a more closely cropped – albeit much blurrier – version.)

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Tagged: my first place fox wildlife flickr photos

Update, 12/21/08: Nina M., guest posting at Reclusive Leftist, has an excellent dissection of Obama’s “talking points” on the Warren issue. Go read now!

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard that Obama’s chosen the homobigoted, woman-hating pastor Rick Warren to give the Inaugural invocation. Setting aside the issue of whether an invocation, delivered at a government event, is even appropriate, it’s really shitty of Obama to choose Warren, friendship and shared ideologies aside.

As PFAW President Kathryn Kolbert noted,

Pastor Warren, while enjoying a reputation as a moderate based on his affable personality and his church’s engagement on issues like AIDS in Africa, has said that the real difference between James Dobson and himself is one of tone rather than substance. He has recently compared marriage by loving and committed same-sex couples to incest and pedophilia. He has repeated the Religious Right’s big lie that supporters of equality for gay Americans are out to silence pastors. He has called Christians who advance a social gospel Marxists. He is adamantly opposed to women having a legal right to choose an abortion.

I’m sure that Warren’s supporters will portray his selection as an appeal to unity by a president who is committed to reaching across traditional divides. Others may explain it as a response to Warren inviting then-Senator Obama to speak on AIDS and candidate Obama to appear at a forum, both at his church. But the sad truth is that this decision further elevates someone who has in recent weeks actively promoted legalized discrimination and denigrated the lives and relationships of millions of Americans.

The Obama camp’s “leaked talking points,” as reported in HuffPo, are, well, laughable:

At his press conference on Thursday, Barack Obama for the first time addressed the flurry of protest that has erupted over the choice of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation.

Stressing his own advocacy of equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans, the president-elect raised a relevant anecdote from his biography as a defense.

“Advocacy of equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans”? What the fuck is he smoking? A supporter of “civil unions” – for reasons that basically amount to religion and “tradition” – Obama is a-ok with allowing individual states to decide whether GLBT couples should be granted the same civil rights that heterosexual folks enjoy. How’s that advocating “equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans,” again?

A reader at HuffPo said it best:

I was very enthusiastic to have Obama as my president for the most part but I always had reservations about his commitment to GBLT issues and this is more than disappointing. I wonder if people would be saying, “it’s not that big of a deal, give him some slack” if someone of the ilk of David Duke or a virulent Holocaust deny-er was invited to give the invocation, you know, in the spirit of unity and to be open and inclusive. Why is it ok for a spokesperson of the anti-gay movement to be included and not recognized as a step too far into so-called post partisanship ? Why is Warren’s AIDS work supposed to mollify angry GBLT voters? Is AIDS still only erroneously considered a gay thing in America, so if you are doing work for that you are, by default working for the gay community? Why can’t even progressives understand what a stinging slap in the face to the GBLT community it is to have a vocal, active, and powerful homophobe given a platform no matter how large or small that platform may be?

Somehow, I doubt it.

* Bah, it isn’t even “change.”

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Tagged: barack obama rick warren glbt homophobia homophobe misogyny misogynist abortion reproductive rights inauguration

I’ve been trying to take a bit of a break from the internets lately – too many kerfluffles to suffer, I say! – so this week I’ve kept myself occupied with two of my favorite things: FSMas crafts and Lost. On Monday, I churned out a Duggar family’s worth of Flying Spaghetti Monsters – a bunch of festive holiday ones, mostly, but I also experimented with some other colors and holiday themes. Since I didn’t elaborate much on this in Sunday’s tutorial, I thought I might share some family snapshots to give y’all a better idea of how you might diversify your brood of FSMs.

First, those festive FSMs.

You can make a larger monster by twining two (or more) pipe cleaners together before assembling the monster. Or, you can birth a baby by cutting the pipe cleaners in half first. Here’s a “giant” monster I made, along with a wee little FSM:

It’s a little hard to see in that photo, but the giant FSM’s noodles are super-long and, well, kind of undulating and hypnotic:

I also gave her a set of extra-large googly eyes, and used faux cranberries for the soy balls; the cushy pom poms were just too small for this BBW.

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Just for the record: I’m not particularly fond of the latest PETA2 ad featuring Khloe Kardashian. However, it’s not Kardashian’s state of (un)dress that bothers, rather, it’s the way in which PETA’s photographers have posed her that irks my feminist sensibilities. Though not as bad as, say, the Suicide Girls series, Ms. Kardashian is somewhat pornified in this ad: here, her body is turned away from the camera, so that it appears that the audience is following, ogling, stalking, sneaking up on her from behind. (From a racial perspective, I also find it interesting that PETA chooses to depict one of their few women of color models with a teased, “wild” hairstyle; while I know little about Khloe Kardashian, it doesn’t appear as though she normally wears her hair this way.)

Now, if this were just one of a handful of PETA ads that resemble a Playboy layout, I’d dismiss it as inevitable; PETA recruits a number of celebs to pose for their print ads, and no doubt some of these women (and men) will prefer more sexualized poses (in our pornified society, after all, women do trade on such images in order to get ahead; and I’d much rather criticize the culture which makes such compromises necessary, as opposed to the women doing the compromising). Yet, the ad fits a larger pattern wherein

women are more likely to pose in the nude than men; and, if you were to objectively compare the PETA print campaigns which feature nude men and women, you’d see that the portrayals are drastically different. Strip away PETA’s logo and slogans, and the women’s photos look like they were pulled straight out of a recent edition of Playboy. Young, white, thin, feminine, (conventionally) attractive women are displayed on all fours, backs arched, gazes vacant, faces and torsos turned away from the camera, submissive in posture, ready for a good fuckin’. In contrast, the men’s shots are fun, funny, inspiring, humorous, and full of personality.

So yes, I do think there’s more than enough room for a feminist critique of PETA’s ads, print and otherwise. That said, I don’t at all trust feminists who objectify non-human animals (by eating, wearing, gawking at, or otherwise exploiting them) to offer an unbiased critique of an animal advocacy group’s objectification of women. Assuming that PETA is indeed sexist*, speciesist feminists are no better: both objectify a group of living, sentient beings based solely on group membership.

Furthermore, these women have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo vis-à-vis their relation to (i.e., domination of) non-human animals: if they were to accept PETA’s premise that non-human animals have rights and interests equal to those of human animals, they’d have to reconsider their meat-eating, leather-wearing, dog-buying ways. In short, they would have to acknowledge (and thus, renounce) their human privilege.

So, how do the women at Feministing (et al.) claim moral superiority, again? While they may sometimes be correct in their interpretation of PETA’s campaigns, this veg*n feminist finds them no more trustworthy than an openly, unabashedly racist white feminist criticizing civil rights leaders for their misogyny. While their conclusions may be correct, their reasoning and motivations are forever suspect.

Just as they insist that PETA needs to lose the sexism before feminists will take them seriously, they need to lose the speciesism before they can expect veg*n women to give a damn about what they have to say.

* Which is a gross generalization, considering PETA’s vast membership numbers; better still to say that president Ingrid Newkirk and/or other higher-ups is/are sexist, and the organization is sexist to the extent that Newkirk/those in charge influences their hiring and PR policies.

(Crossposted to.)

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare peta people for the ethical treatment of animals peta2 sexism misogyny fur Khloe Kardashian flickr photos pornified women feminism speciesism