A week ago today a group of my best buds from NYC and Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary and I were marching in a thing called the Veggie Pride Parade, carrying a thing we called "The Colon of Truth."The parade was the first of its kind in NYC and we weren't sure what to expect. We figured there would be lots of people dressed as vegetables and farm animals (a habit I have personally never found appealing), so we wanted to try a different approach.
I'm not a big believer in the ability of parades to change anyone's mind about their lifestyle, but we wanted WFAS to have a presence. Small non-profit organizations depend heavily on people knowing they exist. For this reason, we wanted an attention-getting display of some kind, something that would be funny, edgy, true, and memorable. The Colon of Truth was just the ticket.
A meat-eating friend of ours, Matt Davis, actually suggested the idea of creating a meat-eater's colon, demonstrating some of the health hazards of eating corpses. Since I'm the one with the colored markers and glue gun, I was elected to design and build it, with the help of my assistant and CHNW. I did my research, of course, to make sure our claims were medically substantiated, otherwise it would not have been The Colon of Truth, but rather The Colon of Specious Claims or The Colon of Deliberately Misleading Propoganda.
The poop chute of verity worked like a charm and attracted all manner of attention, mainstream press included. Mentions and photos popped up here and there the next day. Woodstock Sanctuary's co-founder, Jenny Brown, was quoted in the New York Daily News.(Along with people dressed as vegetables.) Doug Abel, the other co-founder, and I appear in a video on New York Magazine's website. (Most notable about the video is my frank talk about my bathroom habits. No idea what's with the artificially nasally tone of my voice here. I sound consitpated.)
I'd also like to mention that the woman in the video who says "most vegetarians are almost teetotalers" is not hanging out with the right vegetarians. Virtually all of the ones I know drink. Not as much as I do, of course, but enough to have police records and prison tattoos.
At right, my assistant, Mo Wyse, and I slaving feverishly over the colon in my Brooklyn living room.
Below, The Colon Of Truth, in all its glory, as carried by our local posse of vegans. CHNW is at the extreme left with her colon-colored hair, and yours truly is in the red plaid. Much to my chagrin, I'd forgotten my hat that day.
Yes, that was a pile of paper turds weighing down the bottom of the colostomy bag. As you know from reading my cartoons, I value realism.
