“I’m a vegan.” Though you are seeing those words on the internet, I am fairly certain you have a mental image of the girl you ascribe them to. She probably has long hair, perhaps in dreadlocks, and there’s not a doubt that she drives her Prius to Omega for summer vacation, right?

Wrong.

I have never fit that description but for 6 months I somehow adhered to veganism, an experience that proved to be much different than I ever thought it would be. So how did I transition from a lifestyle wrought with skim milk and Hamburger Helper to one without any foods from animal sources? Well, by now we all know that college has some very strange effects on the mind . . .

Just before I started college, I cleaned up my eating habits quite a bit. Once there, I stood in line with my plastic tray in hand, standing on tiptoes to see what was waiting behind the sneeze protectors. It dawned on me that I didn’t want to touch any of the meat in the dining hall. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing tastier than a well-stuffed pork chop, but where in the world was this meat coming from? Were the animals coming from a place that would gross me out if I had seen it in person? I couldn’t be sure, and so I decided to bypass traveling tacos and mystery meat until further notice.

Around the same time, I was (unfairly) blaming the dining hall food for the terrible cramps and bloating I had begun experiencing. I talked to a good friend and health food guru about it. “I don’t think it’s the food that’s bothering you,” she insisted. “It’s dairy. You know that stuff’s no good for you. Don’t have any for 2 weeks and see how you feel.” Read More »

• Oh Mary Kate Olsen, if there’s one thing I didn’t want today, it was a visual in my head of you running around naked wearing only jewelry. Real visual? Maybe. (People Magazine)

• Am I crazy or have I been seeing satin shorts in Forever 21 for at least a year? Take that Vera Wang. (FashionchickNYC)

• So now all the smug vegans can drive around in their hybrids feeling smug for yet another reason! Good for them! (Yahoo News)

• “People would walk past the serious work I was doing as a painter and want to see the Etch-A-Sketches.” Ummm…Etch-A-Sketch is serious work. (UK DailyMail)

• If you’re unhappy you get more ice cream! But then what if you’re happy and don’t get as much…doesn’t this make you unhappy? Yes it does. Genius! (wemakemoneynotart.com)

Prepare to have your heart broken: “As she put him into his cage for the night last Thursday, Dr. Pepperberg said, Alex looked at her and said: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.” He was found dead in his cage the next morning…” (New York Times)

Does every art teacher have to be a hippie? I mean, c’mon! That’s like saying all female gym teachers are lesbians… (Chicago Tribune)

What if universities called your house every time you missed class? What if they called your entire school? For some reason I don’t think my mom would have done what these moms did. (tampabays10.com)

$160 = a 5-year supply of Ben and Jerry’s. You just have to find a criminal. Wasn’t this a Nancy Drew book? (local6.com)

Just in case you’re like, the one person who doesn’t check PerezHilton everyday and haven’t seen his own ads on his own site, his show is on tonight. So, you might as well watch so you know what the hell he’s going to be talking about all day tomorrow. (VH1.com)

By definition, vegans don’t eat animals or any animal by products. They one-up their vegetarian friends by completely scratching dairy and eggs from their daily intake.

Vegans in New Zealand, however, are taking it one step further: They won’t even DO IT with someone who eats meat. Apparently, the vegansexuals are all over the Kiwi continent.

I understand completely someone’s personal decision to remain meat free. I was a non-red meat eater for eight years myself. There are a lot of factors and personal vindications that come with being a vegan or vegetarian.

My old rule used to be that if I wouldn’t kill it with my own bare hands, then I wouldn’t eat it (because, yes, if I needed to I would kill a turkey with my own hands).

This totally went out the window when I realized how delicious beef, pork and lamb were. Which works out well now that I work at a Texas BBQ restaurant. Mmm, meat.

But, I digress.

The whole vegansexual trend reminds me of this really weird article I read a while ago about a man dating a woman that required him to wear a full body condom-like plastic suits to have sex. And he did it. And he described it. It was totally weird. Read More »