Finally, someone has the courage to confront this atrocity. I will join at once, adding that membership to my personal, pet cause, V.E.A.L. (Vegetable Enlightenment And Liberation). At V.E.A.L., we call upon all compassionate and enlightened beings to stop the senseless slaughter of vegetables. These gentle and misunderstood organisms have suffered too long! It is time to call for a ban on vegicide and require all humans to subsist exclusively on meat.

STOP THE MADNESS!

A SALAD BAR IS A SLAUGHTER HOUSE! FOR THE LOVE OF MERCY, EAT THE BURGER!

DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN!

I could go on, but I have exhausted my monthly quota of exclamation points and capital letters!

(Note: if you do not post this on your blog, and demand that every reader send it to everyone in his or her contact list, you are a do-do head!)

David, I would forward it to everyone in my contact list but I’m conflicted. I like lettuce on my burger. What am I to do?

Shame on you! Don’t you realize that by putting that innocent piece of lettuce on your burger, you are seeking brief, trivial, fleshly pleasure from the crushed and mutilated corps of a noble creature of the earth? (And don’t get me started on sesame seed buns!) We must resist the patristic specieist bigotry that allows us to think that we have some kind of dominion over our chlorophyll bearing brethren just because we are, you know, conscious, sentient beings and they are, well, essentially bundles of cellulose and water.

Hmmm. I think I need to polish up that last argument a little.