My vegan week isn’t due to some sudden desire to save animals that would otherwise end up on the tip of my fork. I’m not opposed to saving animals –– if a cute puppy were to cross the street in front of me, I wouldn’t run it over –– but this adventure is purely an experiment. I’m doing it just to see if I can.

In preparation for my weeklong meat, dairy, and gelatin-free adventure, I searched the Internet for vegan-eating rules and information. When I Google searched “veganism,” the pull-quote from Wikipedia read: “Vegans are the result of a conspiracy among the liberal elite to create a new race of inbred, herbivores.” I’m nervous already.

Sunday

12 AM: My vegan week officially begins. I am immediately hungry. I fix myself a bowl of oatmeal. Basically, I’m eating a bowl of mush for dinner. Not satisfied.

Monday

Breakfast: Oatmeal, again, but this time I flavor it with maple syrup and it tastes a lot better. My usual skinny cinnamon dolce latte from Starbucks is replaced with a soy latte. It’s good, and because they use Vanilla Silk, I don’t need any sugar.

Lunch: I’d heard good things about Jax Vegan Café in Westwood, so I go hunting for it. I drive up and down Westwood Boulevard for thirty minutes before I find it. It’s closed on Mondays. Just my luck. I go to plan B and drive to Santa Monica to go to Real Food Daily, another vegan restaurant. It’s closed for construction. Can’t a girl catch a break? I am frustrated and downtrodden, which requires a trip to Ross to cheer me up. But finding ridiculously cheap and cute shoes ($4 for a pair of high heel sandals!) that are made of leather (definitely not vegan) just worsens the situation.

Dinner: I finally find vegan food! I go to Swingers in Santa Monica where I get a vegan burrito: tofu, beans, quinoa, and spinach inside a wheat tortilla with a chipotle-style sauce to top. The spinach is a bit odd, vegan rice would have been better than quinoa, and I get extra sauce to add some more spice and mask the odd ginger flavor (from where? Who knows?!).

Overall, the day wasn’t great, but it could have been a lot worse. I managed to get a filling vegan meal, but Swingers’ vegan burrito is a poor substitution for the real thing. My sister suggests I keep a vegan power bar in my car for the next time I can’t find a quick veg bite. I wonder if power bars are vegan?

[photos from swingersdiner.com]

When I have a bad day, I’ll stop by their two-story store in Union Square and buy myself an adorable will-rip-in-three-weeks-but-who-cares- because-it’s-so-adorable shirt. When I have a good day, I’ll push through the crowds on Broadway and purchase a bright sweater that 17 other girls probably have, but because it’s so bright and cute, I don’t care. Yes, Forever 21 is my fountain of cheap and trendy.

But it may also be my Bible Study Group in disguise.

What am I talking about, you ask? Well, the other day, after throwing one of their trademarked yellow shopping bags onto my bed, I happened to catch a glimpse of the underside of said bag. What I saw there stopped my spiritual- yet-vehemently-non- organized-religious heart dead.

John 3:16.

There it was, in tiny, black letters. A Bible verse. A freaking Bible verse!

Screaming for my roommate, I had her verify that what I was staring at was indeed one of the more pro-Christian verses out there.

“For God so loved the world”, John 3:16 begins, “that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Oh yeah. There’s no denying. Forever 21 is all about the Big Man Upstairs.

Apparently, stamping their bags with “evidence of faith” is not a new development for Forever 21. Don Chang, the “deeply religious” owner of the chain, began putting his favorite verse on his bags after realizing that the California fast-food restaurant In-N-Out Burger had been doing the same thing for years.

Now, I consider myself a tolerant human being, and even though I really don’t do organized religion these days, I did spend 18 or so years as a Roman Catholic, so I know that all the controversy and suffocation of big religion is often countered by beauty and acceptance. But look, I feel weird buying clothes from a store that propagates messages I don’t agree with.

Every time I buy a shirt, does Forever 21 donate money to a specific church group? To a big business or politician associated with a church? Could they be using my money for missionary practices? I don’t agree with most missionary practices. Could I actually be funding something I don’t agree with simply by buying a tank top?

So many questions, and nothing but a pile of clothes for an answer.

Help me out here, precious readers. Religious or not, I want to hear your take on this whole John 3:16 debacle. Is it no big thang, or does it freak you out?