this is the stuff of susie(’s)

image courtesy of the one and only Dave Warwak.

As a journalist, I’m not ashamed to admit that crazy vegans make for really fun news stories. But as a vegan, I sometimes have trouble reading past the headlines.

For the last few weeks I’ve watched the drama around school teacher and loudly proclaimed vegan Dave Warwak play out in Google News. In a soy nutshell (if you, too, winced at those headlines): Warwak, 44, went on a personal mission to convert the students in his art classes at Wisconsin’s Fox River Grove Middle School to veganism. As soon as the news hit the papes, Warwak was fired.

I don’t doubt that Warwak meant well. He just went vegan(gelical) in January, he’s used to molding impressionable young minds, and he probably thought he was doing the right thing. Tactless proselytizing looks much better from the inside–just like for religious teachers who’ve similarly been fired for leading prayers in class.

It’s not totally the media’s fault for characterizing people such as Warwak and the countless irresponsible “vegan” parents as vegan first and crazy second: that’s how they portray themselves. And when the vegan community stays quiet in implicit support it only makes it easier for the next crazy vegan to run with their unfounded moral righteousness. Even worse when they’re loud, misinformed and on the offensive defensive.

Vegans across the country have taken up Warwak’s “cause”–the same Warwak who just crashed the middle school homecoming parade, and handed out cards that said Santa Claus “is a lie,” and, “‘Naming a rock, a banana, does not make it food.’” Clearly he teaches art, not English.

Yet Warwak champions are popping up everywhere, from PETA (“Sound the alarm!”), to Meetup.org groups in Chicago, to Manhattan activist-bloggers.

Take Elaine Vigneault, for example.

“It’s yet another example of how vegans are painted as ‘crazy’ and our ideas are not taken seriously,” she writes. Unfortunately for Elaine, a lot of us are crazy: bat-shit, balls-to-the-wall, all-out freaking crazy. And the less that reasonable vegans differentiate themselves from the crazies, the more the entire world will go on believing that we are humorless ascetics.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, however, the humorless ascetics appear to be winning. Elaine says vegans “should be rude and obnoxious,” because we are the enlightened, and should spread our wisdom among the evil-doing masses. Well, that’s basically what she says. “Needlessly killing millions of animals is far beyond rude and obnoxious… And people who do it, people who promote it, and people who buy it deserve a little dose of the uncomfortable, rude reality.”

I guess that’s why not a lot of religious extremists hold teaching positions in public American schools, right? Because the uncomfortable, rude reality is just too tempting? Elaine claims Mr. Warwak didn’t have “some vegan cult he was recruiting for,” but when this kind of obnoxious attitude prevails, and the preaching continues, and converting the damned and absolving them of their sins is priority #1, that’s not truly the case. It just gives people more reason to block out, marginalize, alienate and fire the crazy.

You have to give people a reason to take your ideas seriously, especially if you’re challenging their entire paradigm. I don’t know one vegan who chose “the lifestyle” because they saw a disgusting PETA video or were yelled at for wearing leather. Making friends and influencing people is not about breaking them down. This isn’t a debate about animal rights or veganism: it’s about being a responsible, non-crazy adult.

And it’s also about not taking yourself so seriously. Because really, I for one think Warwak, PETA, Vigneault and the rest of the gang are hilarious.

Today marks the one year anniversary of my veganism (and on World Vegetarian Day, no less). So far it’s been a mostly positive experience. I’ve honed my cupcake craft, plus I haven’t gained any canola-oil-and-sugar weight, which I think counts as a win. And I even had a sweet run of it there as the managing editor of a rather vanguard vegan blog. Vegan, it turns out (somewhat to my surprise, I admit), is not a bad thing to be.

But one year and one day ago, an overpriced party at an overrated vegetarian restaurant in Fort Greene nearly convinced me otherwise.

The “Vegan Buddies” party seemed like a good enough deal. Olivia promised to set me up with a hot (vegan) guy, my friends were going, and there would be food: a Sunday afternoon trifecta.

I didn’t put much thought into the “Vegan” part of “Vegan Buddies”–how the sermons would go for a girl in vegetarian purgatory.

The VB project, the now-abandoned lovechild of UK animal rights organization Viva!, was meant to match up vegans with non-vegans to make the “transition” to veganism easier on the latter. Unfortunately for them, the organizers had drank a little too much of the Kool-Aid just prior. I guess that’s why they preferred guests to pay in advance.

It was preaching to the choir and a handful of heretics, with a 9-to-1 vegan to non-vegan ratio. Add to that a blood red nametag (peace-loving avocado green for the vegans, obvs) and unrelenting dogma: “wannabes” and “mentors,” “epiphanies” and “truth.” I thought I was being harsh when I told the kid sitting next to me with the green name tag that it reminded me of an AA meeting.

“I think it’s like Scientology,” he said, right after a reference to “taking it to the next level!” It was unclear if he meant that to be a positive commentary, so I didn’t ask.

But I’d already decided to “take it to the next level” weeks earlier. I’d filtered the milk out of my diet, started a label-reading habit and had a last ceremonious (and still enticing) grilled gouda sandwich. Lucky for Viva!, too, or else I might’ve run screaming down DeKalb (or been burned at the stake).

A few months later, buddy-less and at peak this-diet-is-blatantly-inconvenient-and-I-desperately-need-winter-boots crisis time, I came across the Vegan Buddies MySpace page, and their recent blog post. “We now have more than 500 friends here on Myspace, if every person directs one friend to the Vegan Buddies Project, we could ‘convert’ hundreds of peope [sic].”

It reminded me how I’m vegan despite vegan preachers like the VBs and hard-liners like the Vegan Freaks crew and Gary Francione. I’m not interested in converting the lost lambs, rating an individual’s veganism on a scale of murderer to absolved of all life-long sins, or rescuing every feral cat on the streets of Brooklyn. And I have enough writerly ego to think that maybe this makes my veganism even better than yours! If not, it at least has kept my parents from being totally creeped out so far.

So welcome to The Reluctant Vegan. I don’t like PeTA, I never saw “Meet Your Meat,” I don’t have any of the T-shirts and I think the best way to “convert” anyone is to make them cupcakes.

But I do really like Sheese.

A recent study by Montreal’s Concordia University has shown that rats choose mates much not at all like people: the men prefer the hard-to-get, not the slutty one. This “Montreal male” referred to in the article has clearly been schooled in the Annihilation Method: he knows what it takes to lure a quality lady these days. I’m going to call this rat… Modèle. So this Modèle, he likes a classy woman, right? La modestie, that really turns him on. Or is it just the thrill of the chase? Is it all a terrible Game?! Is Modèle playing right into the hands of those damn Rules women. “When you really don’t like a guy, they’re all over you, and as soon as you act like you like them, they’re no longer interested,” generation-spokeslady Beyonce says of the Rules. Well, shit! If only Mrs. Brisby hadn’t thrown herself at Justin all the time, maybe things could’ve worked out differently.

And: In other rat-related news, the Department of Health has officially closed the rat-infested Village Taco Bell/KFC. Shock and aww: is Gobo next?!