Nice To Meat You...wah wah wah

Last night I went to see Dan Mathews promote his new book 'Committed' at a bookstore in the West End of Brisbane called 'Avid Books'. Dan Mathews is Senior Vice President of Peta and talked about how long he's been into vegetarianism and animal rights and the escapades he got up to whilst pursuing this cause. One being put into a mental hospital after being arrested in France.

As well as being an entertaining book reading, it reinforced to me why I'm vegetarian and after it had finished, myself and Nina, feeling quite pekish and in need of some dinner, went to, what has become one of my favourite little cafes over here, a place called 'The Forest Cafe', to prove to the world exactly how 'Committed' we are, by eating food that doesn't contain animals. If the revolution starts in the kitchen, then I'm like a white Martin Luther-King on a gap year, meeting up with Nelson Mandela, hi-fiving each other then turning to swear at a picture of George Bush, whilst Che Guevara is standing opposite a McDonalds crossing his arms, shaking his head and simply uttering in an unimpressed tone the soon to become battle cry, 'No way'...but in Spanish.

They do incredible tempeh burgers and tofu salad, plus you can order Coopers Green there too, which is completely rad (more about Coopers in a bit). Anyway, the sticking point about the place is that you have to listen to a white guy with dreads playing bongos, whilst a girl whose name is probably 'Pangea' or 'Yeast' or something like that, pretends she's singing in some form of ad-lib free for all Sanskrit.

It's great that we're all rooting for the same cause as it were, but I guess I missed the bit where compassion towards animals means that you think not washing is awesome. The thing is, this is the most common stereotype of Vegetarians and Vegans, where in reality, I don't think this is the case nowadays. For instance, all of my friends that are Vegetarian or Vegan aren't hippies...Regardless, I think if people saw Dan Mathews, a good looking, well groomed chap, they'd surely not believe that he could possibly have had this diet for almost 3 decades. Plus he's about 6ft 5 or something...who knew vegans could be tall! (I think Steve knew they could be, but Steve is always being smug about these type of things...bloody Steve).

Anyway, the 'commercial plague' * that is christmas is being promoted here just as early as it his back home in the UK and apart from the obvious of not being with my family this holiday season, I'm also going to be missing my customary Tofurky. Although in reality, the thought of a roast dinner in temperatures that I'm expecting to reach over 30 degrees, isn't actually that appealing. However, like I discovered when I was over here in May, Australia is home to probably the best bottled beer I've ever tasted. It's called Coopers and it's brewed to the same strict standards as all the decent european ones. No preservatives, no filtering through fish guts, just completely awesome booze. So that will definitely be going into my holiday hamper. Another thunderstorm has just started here and it's peeing it down and there's thunder and lightning and all that (it's vaguely comforting, in that it reminds me of home), but I'm still contemplating nipping to the shop at the end of the road to get some.

*I reckon white guy with dreads would be my friend if I told him 'that's what I thought christmas was' but would then probably suggest we form a gang called 'The Rebellion Brothers' and use interpretive dance as an assault weapon, that will 'make people think yeah!'...I won't tell him...

I left this post for half an hour, braved the elements and got a free Coopers glass with my purchase...WOW...

On a side note. The new 'Band Of Horses' album 'Cease To Begin' is piggin amazing!
The first line of the first song 'Is There A Ghost' says 'I could sleep, I could sleeeeeeeeeeeep', which is what I intend on doing now. Night night...

xx