Five to Read (or hear) for Saturday, April 26

* Every Day Is Like Wednesday: Meet the super-apes of Grant Morrison's Gorilla Galaxy (via Johanna)

* On the Media: Comics on the Stand (audio)

* Friends of Lulu: 2008 Lulu Award Nominations (via Heidi)

* Peter David.net: "They Think He's Seth Green"

* The Comics Reporter: One Last Essay About NYCC 2008

Two-Wheeler

I'm a big fan of bicycles and scooters and buzz the streets of NYC on both each week. A reader of this blog who has a bike blog of his own, recently posted some pics of me and my vehicles (or "babies," as I call them when we're alone) and I wanted to share them with you.

Here is a small part of a photo of me and my wacky Copenhagen bike that Jon posted on his site. Can you even tell what it is? Hint: that black thing is protruding from my crotch. Check it out at the link below, to see if you were right.

Also on his site is a pic of me and CHNW on our Vespa. I bought it new in 1981 and have been its only owner – very rare for an old-school scooter these days. A comment in a previous post labeled me as "crazy" for riding it in NYC. Most people think so, but the truth might surprise you. Because traffic here is heavy, it tends not to move very quickly. I usually find myself cruising along at 30mph, passing the cars stuck in traffic. Also, NYC is filled with so many pedestrians, bicycle messengers, scooters, motorcycles, rollerbladers, etc, that all drivers are constantly on high alert not to kill someone. So in the end, this is the safest place I've ever ridden. Much safer than my previous Dallas location, where traffic often moves very fast and the roads are full of SUV-driving Soccer Moms who seem not to notice anything smaller than a Lincoln Navigator. I was nearly killed on a weekly basis there.
http://grinderswheels.blogspot.com/

Flesh Eating Zombie

There have been a lot of great comments lately on various blog entries herein. Just wanted you to know that although I rarely leave a message in the comments sections, I read them all.

My comments about the environment as it relates to vegetarianism mentioned a few things I want to clear up. I'm actually vegan (vegetarians eat no animal flesh, vegans eat/buy no animal products of any kind, including dairy, eggs, leather, wool, etc.), and my sole reason for becoming so was an epiphany I had six years ago, while visiting a farm animal sanctuary. I found the animals there to be much smarter, more emotional, individual and affectionate than I had previously imagined cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, goats, etc. to be. I realized that their level of sentience was no different than dogs, cats, or human toddlers, and immediately lost my sense of entitlement over them. I wouldn't torture and kill my family dog or my neice because they tasted good, why do I pay someone to do that to animals I haven't met? I quit that day and have not regretted it for an instant since.

Up until that moment, I was an inveterate meat-eater who thought that animal-rights people had too much free time. I ate meat all three meals each day and didn't even like vegetables much. It was scary to give it up so abruptly and I worried it would be very painful, like quitting smoking. As it turned out, however, the learning curve at first was quite steep, but in the long run, changing my diet was much easier and less painful than I feared it would be. I don't miss any of my old favorites now as I've replaced them with similar if not identical vegan foodstuffs.

Later, I began to read about the health, environmental, and geopolitical aspects of veganism and became an advocate of those as well. These are all excellent reasons in their own right, but my main concern was and still is, compassion toward other beings.

That being said, there have been many medical studies (which appear in medical journals but don't make it to CNN Headline News) which show strong connections between almost all cancers and heart disease, and the consumption of animal products. True, Linda McCartney was vegetarian and died of breast cancer, but she ate dairy products, which are among the most unhealthy substances in the modern diet. Many modern internists treat a variety of chronic illnesses with veganism, with amazing results. Studies have also consistently shown than vegans have an enormously reduced chance of suffering from a litany of chronic illnesses, including cancer and heart disease.

As I said, I'm vegan purely for compassionate reasons, but I have come to believe through my own experiences and reading that it is far and away the healthiest diet for humans and the planet. Some folks argue that vegans don't get enough "this" or "that," but you'd be hard pressed to find a legitimate medical study that backs those claims up. B12 is the only thing missing from a vegan diet, and you can get that with one tiny vitamin pill a week.

For more info on the medical benefits of a plant-based diet, see these two websites, both run by big-brained doctors of all sorts: PCRM.org http://drmcdougall.com/