Forks Over Knives

I love groundhogs: especially juveniles.

That's the title of the documentary I watched last night.  I'm not claiming it's the best movie I've ever seen, nor the most compelling, but the basic message is what's most important.  Eating meat and dairy products is bad for your health.  It can lead to the development of diseases like heart disease and cancer.  Eating a whole foods, plant-based (vegan) diet is good for your health.  The movie is similar to Super Size Me (except in reverse), in that several people switch from a typical American diet to this whole foods, plant-based one.  All of them lost weight, felt better, and had more energy.  One of them was a man who was overweight and taking several different prescribed medications.  He was able to stop taking all of the medications and he felt better than when he was on them.  He also underwent a very impressive bodily transformation.  On meat and dairy, he had a typical pudgy, out-of-shape physique.  After switching to the vegan diet, it looked like he was in better shape than a lot of men who are half his age.  It certainly seemed like he was much happier as a result of ditching the meat, dairy and medications for fresh vegetables.
I had suspected this myself for a while.  Be good to animals (by not eating them), and as a result, you'll have good health and you'll be more likely to have a slim body.  Don't care about animals and contribute to their suffering (by eating them), and you're more likely to be overweight and have poor health.  Pigs, chickens, and cows are closely controlled by people.  They don't have much of a chance to strike back at their tormentors (humans).  However, they often end up doing it posthumously by negatively affecting the health of those who eat their flesh.
This isn't about my opinions though.  As this movie shows, several studies support the film's message about the importance of the right diet.  Also, several doctors have found this to be true.  One of these doctors, a firm believer in the evils of a diet which includes animal products, estimated that health care costs, which dwarf the defense budget in America, could be reduced by as much as 70-80% if everyone switched to the whole foods, plant-based diet.  That's not all though.  Switching to this diet is better for the environment.  The meat industry contributes to global warming more than the transportation industry does.  And I've mentioned it before, but it was included in this movie, and it's worth stating again.  Do you consider yourself a compassionate person?  Do you care about people, especially children, who are starving to death?  If so, become a vegan: or at least a vegetarian.  If enough people became vegetarians, then it would reduce the demand for meat, so less livestock would be intentionally brought into the world (for human consumption).  Currently, massive amounts of (vegan) food is grown for livestock.  If we reduce the amount of pigs, cows, and chickens brought into the world (for the purpose of being eaten), then more of the corn, soy, etc. that had been allocated for these animals would now be available for human consumption and could be sent to hungry people around the world.  In short, if enough people became vegetarians or vegans, we could end world hunger.     

Suicide

A Crude Noose

It's an epidemic, and I suppose it always has been.  It's always one of the leading causes of death.  Yet it's something that gets swept neatly under the carpet.  Many suicides occur everyday, but the media usually doesn't report them unless a celebrity was involved.  They are routinely covered up by friends and family members who wish to hide the true cause of death.
If someone killed him or herself because he or she was miserable, and he or she was basically a decent person, then I wouldn't even think of insulting the memory of this person in any way, shape, or form.  It's a horrible choice to have to make.  In a perfect world, no one would even have to consider it.  Unfortunately, many people are miserable on a daily, or near daily, basis.  I believe firmly that everyone has the right to take his or her own life.  There are exceptions, however.  If you have kids, especially young ones, I believe it is wrong to kill yourself.  If someone has at least one pet, then I likewise think it's wrong for such a person to commit suicide.  If you have no kids and no pets, then it's your life, and it's up to you.  It's a hell of an ugly thing though.  The way I see it, it's the mind killing the body.  The mind wants to die, but in many cases, the body will struggle to survive during a suicide attempt.  It will thrash around at the end of a noose or frantically try to avoid drowning for instance.
Over one million people commit suicide every year.
I used to think that George Carlin was the best stand-up comedian of all time.  I no longer think that.  He was always cynical, but he eventually became super cynical.  In the last HBO special of his I saw, he made fun of people who have depression, and he even made fun of people who have committed suicide.  The idiots in the audience just kept laughing: not me.  That was where I stopped laughing.  I really don't see the humor in laughing at people who are suffering, especially those who have resorted to such extreme, unpleasant, and final means to end their pain.

Breaking News: The World Has Been Blown Away!

Young Groundhog in the Sun

You heard it here first.  It seems like it just keeps getting windier and windier.  Sometimes, the wind blows so strongly, it's ridiculous.  This seems to be happening more frequently.  What a cold, godforsaken world this is.  I believe that the world, as we know it, will be blown away by raging, out-of-control winds.  I'm no meteorologist, but it seems to me like hurricanes and tornadoes fall into the category of wind.  It's wind that blows cars and trucks around.  It's wind that destroys buildings and scatters the resulting debris with the greatest of ease.  I predict it will get worse.  It will eventually get so bad that it will blow skyscrapers over, and once that happens, it will be the beginning of the end.
Prepare now.  Prepare for the end of the world.  You have been summarily warned.  I'm not sure what summarily means, but it seems to fit here.  The end of the world, as they know it, has already occurred for the squirrels who used to live in front of my apartment building.  Recently, all their nests, that had been supported by tree branches, came crashing to the ground.  I sincerely hope that none of them were hurt when that happened.  Sadly, they have moved.  I used to feed pure in-the-shell nuts to them.  They used to chase and corner me for my nuts.  That hasn't happened in weeks.  I still have a lonely bag of nuts sitting on my kitchen counter.  That sack of nuts is a constant reminder of how we will all be brought to our collective knees.
You have been warned.