Something I thought would be fun for the first anniversary of this site would be to repost some of my favorite entries from the past year and react to what I wrote. Because, after all, I'm usually the only one who reads this shit.

Here's a screed that I wrote September 25, 2002, about vegetarianism:

I admire anyone who can adhere to a strict diet. Vegetarians and pescatarians who can actually stick with it have an iron will that I admire. I tried my hand at vegetarianism for a full year. I even called myself a vegan for two of those months, which I gave up for want of milk and honey. But I didn't feel any better than when I did eat meat. And since I was only a vegetarian so I could pick up cute, dope-smoking hippie chicks and I hadn't gotten laid in six months, I gave it up. The cheeseburger I ate that night was the best cheeseburger I've ever eaten.

Vegans are committed to something so difficult, so impossible, that the fight is quixotic at best. I have yet to read a convincing argument for completely eschewing the byproducts of animals.

If you argue that veganism is about health, then why do you have to work so hard to get the right balance of legumes and grains to approximate the necessary proteins that occur in meat? No one is saying that if you are omnivorous that you have to eat a pound of ground pork every day.

If you argue that human beings are not designed to eat meat, then, yet again, why do we need the proteins that are found in meat? Why are my cuspids so pointy? Why do our stomachs -- and we each only have one, not four -- produce hydrochloric acid? Sure, our intestines aren't short like a carnivore's, but a typical herbivore's digestive tract is far longer and more complex than a human's. We're in the middle because we're omnivorous.

If you argue that we should not enslave and misuse living organisms this side of plants, enjoy your life living in a cave. You cannot spend an entire day in modern society without at some point utilizing the byproduct of an animal. Your cat or dog cannot survive as a vegetarian. And isn't the keeping of that pet an act of animal slavery, too? Aren't mules and horses used in farming fruits and vegetables? In fact, you've probably consumed something today that has a living organism in it; for example, alcoholic beverages require yeast. I'm sorry if you feel guilty for being at the top of the food chain, but that's where you are. Deal with it.

If you're a vegan, you're doing it to prove a point, and I defy you to disagree with me on that point. I'm all for heralding a cause, but don't belabor a point just for the sake of being different. There aren't any excellent reasons to be a vegan other than to think it makes you cool and unique -- much like smoking or being a communist.

Don't eat hot dogs and cheeseburgers every day. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Reduce your fat and calorie intake. Drink more water. Eat healthy, but don't eat insane. A balanced diet is one thing, but extremes in either direction are not what your body is designed for.

By the way, I'm all for genetically modified food, too.

Well, I've changed a little.

After reading Fast Food Nation, I gave up cheeseburgers. ALL cheeseburgers, not just McDonald's. It's so impossible to cook a patty of ground beef thoroughly enough to kill anything that may be lurking inside of it without making it taste terrible. Oh, not anything inherent in the meat -- I'm talking about the e.Coli from the cow poo that gets on the meat and gets ground up all up in there.

As for genetically modified food, I'm okay with it if it doesn't affect humans, something which should be studied over a long period of time. The existence of bovine growth hormone in beef is one factor in the obesity rate in America. If people want to get fat, fine. However, the untold costs on insurance companies is, I would suspect, a factor in the difficulties of obtaining healthcare in this country. (Of course, this is coming from someone who smokes, so who am I to talk about social disease that negatively affects the healthcare industry.)

So I see the health angle of a vegetarian diet a little more clearly, though I have yet to entirely embrace it. I still believe we need to eat meat.

And as I've said before -- if Mother Nature didn't want us to eat animals, she wouldn't have made them delicious.