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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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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Update, 12/17/08: Build a monster for every occasion – click here for more recipes!

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My favorite FSMas decoration by far is the festive Flying Spaghetti Monsters I created last year. They’re really easy to make, too; in fact, once you’ve got the process down, you’ll be birthing these babies like guppies. Recruit a friend or two, and y’all can get an assembly line going: a few Pastafarians to weave the noodles together, and another heathen to glue on the pom poms and googly eyes.

Surely I jest, right?: If they’re soooo easy to make, you ask, why did I wait until today to blog the instructions? Well, because it’s a huge pain in the ass to take pictures for illustrative purposes while your living room floor is covered with pipe cleaners and pom poms, and there’s a glue gun smoking in the background, and your nosy doggehs are running off with half-finished monsters stuffed in their maws. In other words, please excuse the sub-par photo quality. The pictures I took on Friday didn’t come out quite as nicely as I’d hoped, but there’s no way I’m doing a reshoot. I have monsters to make, peoples!

For this project, you’ll need:

* “Chenille” pipe cleaners, preferably in sparkly shades of red, green, gold and silver (for the noodley appendages)
* Pom poms (round, cushy balls), also with a metallic sparkle, preferably in matching colors (for the soya balls)
* Googly eyes (um, for the eyes)
* Either a hot glue gun or a very strong glue (to keep it all together)

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While working on my FSMas cards this week, it occurred to me that this is the first year I’ve made “generic” cards – that is, photos with generic, non-personalized season’s greetings on the photo itself. Mostly, this departure is due to technical reasons (not enough horizontal white space on which to include text); however, a unexpected side effect is that this year’s cards – all four – are suitable for Pastafarians of all surnames, not just the Garbato-Brady’s.

I’m not yet ready to unveil 2008′s cards – what would I post on FSMas day, then? – but today I did go back and rework my 2005 and 2007 FSMas cards, removing all the personal info and replacing it with non-specific FSMas holiday messages. Feel free to download and use these for your own (*cough* non-commercial *cough*) saucy CriFSMas purposes, especially proselytizing to and converting your non-believing friends and family members. (Click on each card to supersize it via Flickr.)

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Last year, the Mr. and I started a new holiday tradition; rather than celebrate Festivus or x-mas, we decided to observe FSMas (or CriFSMas, if you prefer) instead. Whereas FSM = Flying Spaghetti Monster, the holiday basically revolves around two things: pasta and pirates.

Since this is somewhat of a fringe (spoof) religion (for now, muahahahaha!), you can’t exactly go to the Buy More and purchase decorations off the shelves. So also last year, I started blogging my FSMas decorating ideas, if only to amuse myself, but also in hopes of giving all y’all other heathens out there a kick in the pants and away from traditional Christmas festivities. We’re in a War on Christmas, peoples – pick a side.

I started out with the best of intentions in 2007, but didn’t get to blog many craft projects before the season was over. Given that it’s already December 8th, 2008 is shaping up to be a real world busy / internet sparse-y year as well, but I promise I’ll try to blog as much as time allows. (Suddenly, starting the season a week or so before Halloween doesn’t seem like such a buzzkill.)

To recap last year’s FSMas yummyness, we had:

* FSMas cards (two, yo!);

* Magical FSMas Vaginas (for the tree, natch);

* Pasta, pirate and FSM magnets for the fridge (i.e., Her Noodliness’s Tomb);

* Community/college bulletin boards, lined with all manner of FSM propaganda;

* Flags, flags and more flags;

* Flying spaghetti monster photos, displayed in – what else? – macaroni-lined frames; and

* Pirate booty galore.

I’d intended to write about the most important of FSMas items (that would be the tree, silly!) tonight, but I ended up finishing the decorating instead. So here’s an easy one: Noodles on a cross.

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Lifelong atheists, the Mr. and I have had an increasingly ambivalent relationship with Christmas. On the one hand, x-mas is undoubtedly *the* biggest holiday of the year – and yet, it’s also a very *religious* holiday, crass consumerism and Santa hats aside. July 4th, President’s Day, Flag Day, St. Patrick’s Day…no secular holiday can compare. Even Thanksgiving and Halloween carry religious connotations. Besides protesting the holiday by spelling it with an “x” instead of a “Christ” (the weakest of protestations, I might add), what’s a godless blasphemer to do, hmmm?

In ’06, we tried celebrating Festivus in conjunction with x-mas. Given that Festivus – having only appeared in one episode of Seinfeld – is a pretty sketchy holiday, our Festivus was “Festivus” in name only: we still decorated the house with a Christmas tree, red-green-gold-silver tinsel, stockings, Santas, etc., dressed the dogs in holiday apparel, and opened presents and devoured vegan eats on December 25th. What were we gonna do – display an aluminum pole and yell at one another over dinner? We weren’t kidding anyone: it was CHRISTmas, more or less.

Last year, I had an epiphany – why not celebrate FSMas instead? We could decorate the house with pasta and pirates, and perhaps even celebrate on a day other than the 25th. And that’s what we did – I made macaroni ‘garland’ by stringing pieces of penne together, hung maroon satin bulbs (soy balls) and red lights on the tree, framed photos of His/Her/Its Noodliness, made a pirate alter in the front window, and created festive mini Flying Spaghetti Monsters using tinseled pipe cleaners, pom poms and googly eyes. We ‘officially’ recognized the holiday on December 24, so we could lounge around and relax on the 25th. (In between phone calls home, of course.) The dogs dressed as pirates, and Kaylee posed for our FSMas card surrounded by gold doubloons and Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum.

We had so much fun that we’re doing the same this year, only bigger and better. I’m reusing many of the decorations I created last year, and hopefully I’ll find time to follow up on some other ideas (especially that Noodle House – like a Gingerbread House, but with lasagna and the like). While the general theme is pasta and pirates, I’ve kind of relaxed the rules a bit from last year. As a for instance, I stuck to red (red sauce) and gold (gold booty) tinsel last year, but am also including green (pesto sauce) and silver (silver booty) tinsel this year…because I’ve got a ton of the stuff. X-mas themed stuffed animals are also allowed out of the closet this year, but only if they agree to wear pirate hats, eye patches, and gold hooks. Pirates are again all the rage, but whereas “pirates” meant eye-patched, sea-faring thieves in ’07, the definition of pirates has expanded in ’08, to include much beloved space pirates as the crew of Serenity. (Where do y’all think we got the names Kaylee and Jayne, hmmm?)

Anyway, I’ll be blogging it all on Smite Me!, so if you’re interested, keep an eye out.

Also last year, we began a tradition of starting the FSMas decorating the weekend after Thanksgiving. Which got me thinking about Thanksgiving, and whether I want to recognize a holiday that commemorates the genocide of millions of Native Americans with the genocide of millions of birds at all.

I’ve never been a big fan of Thanksgiving; doubly so since I went vegetarian roughly 12 years ago. Those early years, spent at my father’s mother’s house, I was lucky if there was a dish or two I could eat. I was both allergic to milk and ethically repulsed by meat, so there were precious few foods suitable for my diet. Later on, the Tofurky worked its way into pop culture consciousness and onto our table. But even then, my options mostly consisted of the Tofurky, olives (which my grandmother, having lived through the Depression, rationed out as though they were caviar) and salad. Not exactly the stuff of a feast.

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Thanksliving has come and gone, but if I might, a late menu and some food porn – if only to give y’all a few ideas for next year (or, better yet, this FSMas).

Since my father’s a vegetarian, I’ve been eating Tofurky for Thanksliving every year since I went veg – which is roughly a dozen Save-a-Turkey Days, give or take. Up until last year, I (and my mother before me) always roasted it using the “traditional” OJ and soy sauce baste from Turtle Island Foods. Last year, the Mr. and I decided to mix things up, so we went with a newer Turtle Island recipe, Tofurky with Caramelized Onion and Cherry Relish. It was delish – but, not wanting to fall back into our habit of falling back on familiar recipes, I started searching for another baste recipe a few weeks ago. Dissatisfied with the Google results for “Tofurky recipe,” I had that aha! moment: why not search for turkey baste recipes? Surely I’d find a wider variety of bastes and marinades, most of which could be veganized, yeah?

Hells yeah! In particular, I came upon this recipe for Maple Roast Turkey Tofurky that sounded awesome. Previously, I’d been eying Turtle Island’s Tofurky Maple-Pecan Roast, but was afraid that the chili paste and 5-spice powder might make the dish too hot for my taste buds. The Maple Roast recipe, then, sounded like the perfect compromise.

And perfect it was! Of the three Tofurky recipes we’ve tried thus far, this was our favorite. And, even though the syrup has to cook and cool longer than the OJ/soy sauce marinade and caramelized onion and cherry relish, it wasn’t especially difficult to make. Not as mapley as I expected – perhaps I’ll try adding more maple syrup next time around – but yummy nonetheless.

As for the other dishes, Shane made our standby Vegetarian Stuffing (which is actually vegan), as well as Cranberry Apple Potato Dumplings, while I was in charge of the white dinner rolls and apple pie. My menu isn’t nearly as impressive as those of other veg*n bloggers (you should definitely check out Elaine, River, Isa, and Jane and Lane’s Thanksliving Day offerings), but it was just the two of us, and we’ve got enough leftovers to last the rest of the week.

Menu

- Maple Roast Tofurky with potatoes and carrots (recipe below)

- Vegetarian Stuffing (recipe below)

- Cranberry Apple Potato Dumplings (from Turtle Island Foods’ Tofurky Feast)

- Rhodes white dinner rolls

- Mrs. Smith’s Deep Dish Apple Pie (frozen) with vanilla So Delicious ice cream

- Beverages: watermelon juice, Silk Pumpkin Spice, Silk Soy Nog, Bigelow’s Earl Grey Green Tea, apple cider

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This Thursday, you have choices – the most obvious of which, is the choice between consuming this

and this.

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Because slapping a gaudy yellow ribbon on the back of your SUV simply won’t do.

1. Volunteer to foster a soldier’s companion animal(s) while he or she is stationed overseas.

There exist very few programs to help members of the military care for their companion animals while they are stationed overseas. Unless soldiers can recruit a family member to house and care for their “pets” while they are away, soldiers are forced to relinquish their animals – to a “pound,” a shelter, or an adoption group.

Between 6 and 8 millions dogs and cats enter U.S. shelters every year. Of these, half are euthanized murdered.

By fostering a soldier’s companion animal(s), you can save an animal’s life, and also ensure a happy reunion between a soldier and her furry friend(s) when she returns from serving her country – i.e., you.

How it works: many of the programs I’ve seen match potential foster homes with soldiers in need, based on a number of factors, including location, type of animal, and caregiver preferences. These groups are generally nonprofits, and finances are limited; consequently, veterinary and food costs, as well as terms and conditions, are usually negotiated between the soldier and caregiver.

To get started, check out Guardian Angels for Soldier’s Pet and Operation Noble Foster.

If you live near a U.S. military base, you may also want to check with local veterinarians to see if they can help match you up with soldiers in need locally. Alternately, you can coordinate with your local veterinarians to start a grassroots foster program in your area – even if you yourself are not in a position to foster an animal.

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