not only do people regularly eat death, they adorn themselves with it. quite frequently, without even being aware, they drink it.
i'll tell you a funny story.
last night i broke my piggy bank open and doled out a few bucks for the skafest folk who'd organized a fantastic night of music at market square. i love music, especially when it's outdoors and danceable. it's a wonderful relief from the world of doom and gloom that we activists face day after day as we watch the mad desperation of those who worship death drive our planet, and all the life it supports, to the brink. so i got to the event early and began to inquire about the variety of beer and cider they offered for sale inside their alcohol cage.
i find the alcohol cage funny all by itself. i just don't see the logic of it. don't they realize that people remain intoxicated when they leave the cage? i imagine it's the bad drunks they're concerned about, those who get loud and obnoxious. i've worked in a pub, and i have enough life experience to know that most people get happy and silly, but some people really are angry drunks and should just probably stay away from the stuff. fair enough ... if they're inside a cage their behaviour is more easily monitored. but they don't instantly sober up upon leaving. i don't get it. the europeans seem so much more mature in their approach to alcohol and other substances.
so anyways i asked around about the cider, because i know for a fact that lighthouse beer is not vegan. it says so on the trusty website, barnivore.com. i had forgotten to check on the cider. i found someone who knew -- the king richard's perry (or some such monarchical name) cider is definitely not vegan, he said. then he launched into a completely illogical and insensitive and absurd speech about how vegans are such a small demographic it's really not worth considering us. really, i thought. it's not about the whole issue of veganomics, it's just that as consumers, we're not all that important. i explained the simple logic .... non-vegan people are able to consume vegan products, and often quite enjoy them or, in the case of alcohol, don't even know the difference. how many people know that some breweries use gelatin in their beer production cycle? or that there's shellfish components in wine? the ska representative didn't care. he just poo-pooed the whole notion that vegans are worth thinking about when planning such an event. why don't i just go smoke some weed, he suggested.
gotta love the west coast, eh. i suppose that's an option, i said. but it's not the point. and it wasn't the kind of buzz i was after.
i took my arm stamp and considered my options. swan's brew pub is nearby, but their beer isn't vegan. and besides, i can't afford pub prices anymore. the capitalistas make us poorer and poorer so we can't participate in their stupid economy. the liquor store had small mickeys of vodka for $13, but it was a brand i didn't know the veganism of. the other liquor store had even smaller bottles of absolut, a bit cheaper. sold. i discretely wandered back into the ska fest, a small bottle of potential dynamite tucked into my inner jean jacket pocket. it's okay ... i'm a happy drunk, and discrete, so i wasn't concerned about getting into any trouble.
i spoke with randy (cfuv's fantabulous station manager) and his lovely partner geraldine, and learned that cfuv supported dane the first few years in creating the ska fest. then they set up a society, which randy sits on the board of. i commented on the set up in the square, wondering why there was so much space behind the alcohol cage and between it and the row of shops. maybe it's a safe zone, a place for time outs if someone gets goofy? it seemed a waste of space. randy told me in previous years they'd arranged the square differently and people would climb the stairs and jump over the fence and into the alcohol cage. again, the notion of this alcohol cage seems absurd. we're grown ups, aren't we? do we really need to be caged? it certainly didn't stop me from enjoying a happy buzz.
the music was great, the people were mostly younger than me (i notice that happens more and more with each passing year) though there were too many people smoking cigarettes (it's that death culture thing again) and hardly any of the sweet scent of weed in the air.
near the very end of the evening i began to leave, to avoid the rush. a man was being escorted out by two police officers, a man and a woman, both youngish (why is everyone suddenly younger than me?). the man in question was calm and quiet, and i began to wonder what the problem was. others seemed similarly concerned, and we climbed the stairs up following them. on the sidewalk outside the square the man was handcuffed. handcuffed! i began to unlock my bike, located nearby, and began to comment. "he doesn't seem to be confrontational," and other such observances. i guess it's true that the bottle does offer a bit of courage. normally i'm scared silly of police. i've experienced their seemingly unassailable power personally, and heard too many stories about them from the streets. but this seemed outrageous. the man was calm, he was willing to leave, it was the end of the evening. he didn't appear intoxicated. and they were going to lock him up?
eventually the police unlocked the man's handcuffs and let him go. and i rode away, in as straight a line as i could muster, in a strange way thankful that i had been denied entry to the alcohol cage. i'd saved some money, and i hadn't been treated like an infant in need of some kind of protection.
i hold fast to my dream .... that some day saner, kinder, gentler, vegan souls will prevail on a planet where all of life is respected and nurtured, and there's no need to cage any wild animals. i have a vivid imagination.
