Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was in a cafe, a regular outdoor cafe, the circular tables shaded by the boldly patterned cloth umbrellas overhead. Sitting on the chairs surrounding the glass-topped tables were members of high class society, sipping their expensive coffee through straws, so as not to ruin the bleach jobs that has been applied to their teeth. They murmered amungst themselves, gosspied in their groups around the table, when a beatnik entered the patio. Looking around, our beatnik friend went back into the restuaunt, and comes out with a satisfied look on his face, as he walked to the corner and dropped the milk crate he had picked up. He seated himself and started to read a book while he drank his tea.

Outside of the protective railing of the cafe's outer edge, walked another beatnik, clad in a dark green t-shirt with black pants and a matching berret. He stoped infront of the cafe, and flailed his arms in the air as he screamed, "Hey! Hey you in there! All you upper-class, rich, trendy individuals. That is, if you claim to be individuals. Look at me, look me straight in the eye and tell me that you are special. Explain to me that you are one of a kind, and not a waste of my time. Let me show you how stupid you fools really are!"

With that, a wave of shock spread through the crowd. Mouths were agape as an elderly man rose and asked the man, "Now see here... look what you've started. How can you explain your actions? How can you claim to judge the intelligence and worth of perfect strangers?" The first beatnik looked a little amused, and annoyed at being distracted from his book, he continueed to read.

Our impulsive beatnik friend then smiled and addressed the croud again, "Then I am quite sure you wouldn't mind my testing it right here infront of this crowd, our audience, our jury if you may. Now...I'm sure you have heard the quote, 'I think, therefore I am.' I implore you fine sir, I think, therfore I must be. I would like you to prove to the world that I do not exist. I would like you to prove to the world that I do not have any effect in life whatsoever, and that if I disapeard tomorow, all that I know and belive will come crashing down around me and fade into nothing," and he spread his arms out like Jesus on the cross.

Shock once again filled the crowd, whispers broke out as the people tried deperately to try and prove to this man that he wasn't there, anything to get him away so they could continue to ignore the world around them. Finaly fed up with the ignorance of the people, the original beatnik calmly put away his book, walked up the audacious man behind the fence and shot him in the chest. "There you go," he said, as the man gasped for his last breaths. He went back to his milk crate, picked up his bag, downed the last of his tea, and ducked his head to the horrified people around him. "Good day fine ladies and gentelmen," he replied to the screams that were stuck in their throats. He flipped his bag over his back and strolled down the street, calmer than he had been in years.

The Beatniks I am thinking of are mainly the steriotypical starving artist from France. With their berret hats and alightly ripped old clothing, probably bought from a second hand store. They're poetic, prophetic, and artsy.
xd heart

My Essay on why Peple Shouldn't Eat Animals:
(warning: some of you may not agree with vegans vegitarians, deal with it)


Imagine yourself waking up to the smell and sound of bacon and eggs sizzling on a red hot skillet. As you heartily devour your breakfast, surely you remember of course, where it came from, and what it represents. When you eat your bologna sandwich at lunch hour, and when you inhale your steak dinner, generally you don�t stop to think what harm your doing. Not only are animal bi-products and products, such as cheese, milk, eggs, and, of course, meat, bad for you, they�re bad for the environment and, of course, the animals, which directly affects today�s society, as well as the future generations, which we raise with out eating habits and leave our earth to.

High blood cholesterol is the leading cause of obesity in North America, which leads to various cancers, heart diseases and disabilities. Two percent of vegans are obese, as compared to thirty-three percent of people who do eat meat. Cholesterol is found only in animal products, from any animal, be it a chicken, a goat, a deer, a cow, or a pig. Cholesterol is found not only in meat and fat, but the animals bi-products, such as its milk and eggs, as well as the products made from these, such as yogurt, cheese, sour cream, and mayonnaise. These not only hurt you, but also the animals, which are killed and abused for the products you are eating. Like any mammals, cows and goats naturally make only enough milk to feed their own young, not ours. In order for people to obtain milk from cows they must take milk, meant for the cows young, or keep the cows artificially pregnant by injecting them with hormones, which by the way, come out in the milk along with fat and pus from wounds on the cows utter from being hooked into machines and drained of a hundred pounds of milk a day, ten times as much as they naturally produce. Often the pregnancy hormones in the cows, and the production of so much milk causes their utters to become swollen and painful, and so heavy they sometimes drag along the ground. Famous Dr. Benjamin Spock, America�s late leading authority on child care, spoke out against giving babies milk, as it causes anemia, allergies, and insulin-dependant diabetes, not to mention sets them up for a life of eating animals products, which in turn leads to obesity and heart disease, America�s number one cause of death. Contrary to popular belief, dairy products do not prevent osteoporosis, which is caused by lack of calcium, but cause it, as the milk�s high protein count actually leaches calcium from your body. Eggs are no better for you, as they contain twice as much cholesterol as an average hamburger and are the leading cause of food

borne illness, namely, Salmonella �flu� which affects as many as 4, 000, 000 people each year. Also, since male chickens aren�t of any use to the egg industry, they are thrown into garbage�s to suffocate, killed with carbon monoxide, or thrown live into a grinder along with the females which have produced their egg quota or about 400, and made into dog food, or fed to pigs, and cattle, as well as other chickens.

Animals flesh is no better for you than their eggs and milk. First off, the hormones, steroids, and antibiotics they are constantly injected with come out, not only in their bi-products, but also in their flesh. Fish�s skin absorbs various pollutant and dioxins which are in the water they swim in. Meat does contains essential vitamins and minerals that people need to live healthily; yet, this nutrition is found also in fruits and vegetables, as well as legumes such as beans and nuts. Calcium can be found in green leafy vegetables as well as soy products, protein and iron are present in nuts, lentils and beans, and amino acids are found in abundance in wheatgrass. As well as in animals� bi-products, cholesterol is found also in the fat and meat of animals, and is only found in animal products, and it leads to obesity, heart disease, disabilities which can lead to death.

Not only are animal products bad for you, they�re bad for the environment. Factory farmed animals produce 130 times more excrement than then entire human population, which adds up to about 86, 600 pounds per second. 125, 000 feet of Rain Forests are being cut down every year to make more room for the agricultural industry, for every pound of hamburger that you eat from a fast food restaurant, 220 square feet of forest has been cut down. Two-thirds of Central America�s rainforests have been cleared already in order to make space for cattle-ranching. Agriculture uses twenty times more land to feed people who eat meat, than to feed people who do not. One-third of the worlds� energy from raw materials and fossil fuels goes towards agriculture. One hamburger patty uses enough fossil fuel to drive a small car twenty miles and enough water for seventeen showers. Water is also needed to feed these animals; over half of the water used in America is for industry. It takes 25, 000 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef, as compared to 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. In the Gulf of Mexico, there is a 7, 000 square mile �dead-zone� where aquatic life can no longer be supported due to too much nitrogen from animal manure and feed-crop fertilizer.

More than 25 billion animals are killed by the agricultural industry every year, and they are raised and killed in ways that would horrify any person that has compassion. Chickens, which are generally thought by people to be stupid, are thought by scientists to be as smart as cats or dogs, having a hierarchy of their own, and living long lives, between 15 and 20 years. On factory farms, their lives are cut short by a knife to the throat after six or seven weeks. If the chickens are not by being killed for not being satisfactory, they die on their own, in small cages which are crowded with others who suffer the same fate. With not enough room to even stretch a wing, or exercise enough to build up muscle, chickens are constantly breaking their limbs, generally their legs, from growing so fat so fast that they cannot support themselves, as well as being trod upon. To keep the chickens from pecking at each other, farmers sear their beaks off with a hot blade, without issuing any painkillers, then put back into their cages to linger in their own filth and grow abnormally fast. The industry brags that if a seven pound child was born into such wonderful feeding conditions, it would reach 1, 500 pounds when it was 18 weeks old. The beef and pork industry is just as bad; cows are branded with a hot iron, as well as castrated, without even so much as a painkiller. To make veal, baby cows are ripped away from their mothers at birth, and locked away in boxes where they are chained so tight that they cannot move, so as not to change their tenderness for the people who eat them, they are killed when they are 14 weeks old and have yet to see the light of day. Pigs, and cows which are not used for veal, are kept in much the same conditions as chickens, they�re surrounded by their own feces and urine, as well as not given enough space to exercise enough to hold their own weight. Proper veterinary care is not �wasted� on these animals, because they�re going to be eaten anyway, obviously nobody thinks, or cares, that the living conditions, and antibiotics that are injected into these animals in attempt to heal them, would directly affect the condition of the meat which people later eat. Generally these animals never see the light of day, or feel the grass under their feet unless they�re being loaded into trucks to be shipped to the slaughtering house, where they are hung upside down with their throats cut. They are killed and cut up, often while they are still fully conscious. Slaughterhouse workers need to wear masks and padding because of the damage inflicted by �dead� animals. Fish are no different, they feel pain and suffocate when they are pulled from the depths of the ocean, or if they are farmed, they, as any other


animal, get to live in feces laden water, swimming around until yanked out beaten or suffocated to death.
In conclusion, animals don�t need to be consumed by people, people chose to consume animals and their products because they�re either greedy, or don�t realize the serious risks involved with the agriculture and the consumption of animals. People who eat meat generally don�t realize that they are eating entirely too much to be healthy, and need to either cut down, or stop altogether. Every year, more and more products are coming out to replace meat, egg and dairy products; some are even made to have the same tastes and textures and are hard to tell apart from the real thing when cooked, and they�re just as nutritional. Just because we can eat animals, doesn�t mean it�s healthy, or that we should; it�s the same with smoking or any other life threatening activity.

For my next trick...I shall recite a poem from memory... a very, very old poem from two years ago and one of the poems I now use when people ask me to describe myself:

Here I am,
A metaphore on feet and legs.
Metaphoricaly speaking of course.
I speak not for the sheer sound of my own voice,
But only to make you understand.

*takes a bow*

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