Day 9: I'll TAKE It!

Bacon Water Is A Real Thing
So, as I mentioned yesterday, there's a small office lunch outing tomorrow. I did some advance work tonight, calling the BBQ joint to ask them all the questions I'd rather not hold everyone up asking tomorrow. Lasted about 30 seconds.

Self: "You guys fry the french fries in the same oil as the meat?"
Employee: "Yeah."
Self: "Do you load your mashed potatoes?"
Employee: "There's cream in 'em."
Self: "Thanks, that's all I need to know."

Hello, green salad.


I Guess I Can't Watch "Footloose"
In CHIKARA news, UltraMantis Black has been steadily building his squad to take on the amassed BDK for The Dark Ciberknetico in Easton next month. So far he's got Mike Quackenbush, Jigsaw, Icarus, and STIGMA (formerly Shane Storm). UMB is heavily pitching Hallowicked, but the Great Pumpkin is not biting.

This still leaves a couple spots. Eddie Kingston wants in, but UMB is not interested. Odds are looking like Quackenbush will convince Hallowicked to join on the condition that Kingston join as well. And that still leaves one slot open...how many CHIKARA originals are left to be recruited? Fans who remember that far back say it'll be either Larry Sweeney or Chris Hero. I don't know much about Sweeney, but I do know a thing or two about Hero. He's all kinds of close with BDK stalwart Claudio Castagnoli over in Ring Of Honor (where they currently hold the tag belts as the Kings Of Wrestling), and I bet it would be appealing to both of them to work on opposite sides of the ring for a change, and that pop would be HUGE. Here, look. Here's them going on a road trip, along with BDK schildmaid Sara Del Rey.



Anything Shy Of Cease-And-Desist And A Restraining Order
Oh, and here I've saved the best for last. So, obviously, Project UMB has demonstrated my belief that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing to the greatest measure possible. In this context, that certainly includes presenting it to the man(tis) who inspired it all, and what with social networks and CHIKARA being relatively small and very fan-friendly by any stretch, it was a definite possibility. I debated for a time whether I should wait until closer to the Halloweens to send it, but as Shakespeare says, if you're going to do a thing you might just as well pop right at it and get it over.* So I sent him the link, along with some flowery words of support for the struggle against the BDK and a quote from The Art of War. About two weeks later, the reply:

I am in awe of your journal! Perplexed slightly - but in awe!

Clearly the highest praise I could ever have possibly expected to receive. HUZZAH!



*Wodehouse, Sir Pelham Grenville. "Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit". Liberty, Dec 24, 1927.

Day 8: Release The Rice-A-Roni From Cruel Captivity

Finally, early on Day 7, I was able to back the truck up to the grocery store and just load my poor sedan down with vegan-friendly cousine. And today, I had my first PBJ in...I don't even know how long. And it was delicious.

There's a birthday in the office, and on Day 10 we're going to a BBQ-type joint for lunch. These are people that don't know me very well yet, and mmmmmmaybe one of the first personal things they find out about me shouldn't be the finer details of Project UMB, which might just come forth once I order a house salad sans cheese amidst their bleeding ribs and cheeseburgers and such. We'll see how it goes.

So tonight, being deprived for the first time in nearly 2 years of the pleasure of cooking the San Francisco Treat for my evening repast, I turned instead to a recipe for vegan chili recently thrown together for me by a friend of mine over at this inebriate-friendly cooking blog. Despite my total lack of cooking instinct, it was good enough to get a decent-tasting dish out of me. Oh, I was missing an ingredient or two, and I threw some pasta in to account for the lack of thickening that meat's supposed to cause (apparently they call that "Cincinnati Chili"), but on the whole it turned out very well, and that's now 8 days in the books that I am getting by just fine without the pillaged spoils of Kingdom Animalia.

Day 6: I Think I'm On Some Kind Of List

So, a couple weeks ago, UMB's Ministry of Propaganda (twitter feed) issues this communique:



And, strapped for cash though I may be, couldn't resist the offer. So I promptly put my Order in. (nyuk nyuk nyuk)

Couple days later, I got a package in the mail with the following contents:

Shirt, one: displaying Order Baphomet logo.
Sticker, one: displaying two cartoon mice and the slogan "100% Cruelty Free"
1980s WCW Trading Card, three: Lex Luger, Teddy Long, Jimmy "Jam" Garvin.
1980s WWF Trading Card, one: Ax of Demolition.
Issue, one: Bite Back Magazine, a must-see-it-to-believe-it publication tracking and advocating eco-terrorism, heavily sponsored by the organizations ELF and ALF (which I'd learned about during a paper I wrote on domestic terrorism like 7 years ago).

Crazy shit! It's a...bit too radical for me, but as with every other part of this project it's a new perspective all the same and at the very least, helpful character research.

Day 4

So, here we are. Been going pretty strong since Monday, so far, so good. I haven't even been craving meat, but as I posit about all cravings, once you want something even more that is mutually exclusive of that craving, it's the easiest thing in the world to avoid.

I also started the new job on Monday, so changing my environment helped with the dietary transition. There's a bunch of food places downstairs, which fortunately have kept me stocked with lunches on hummus stuff and salads and the like. And I have enjoyed them. But they are EXPENSIVE as hell.

Normally I'd bring my lunch, but my local supermarket has seen fit to spend the WHOLE DAMN WEEK resurfacing their parking lot. Open spaces are hard enough to come by but now it's just impossible, and for once it's the kind of trip where I need all the space in my car. Or at least more space than a backpack or three. I'm gonna have to take care of that come Saturday (Day 6), or else I will go broke in a big effing hurry.

Dinners have been even more costly but more delicious as well. Crystal City's famous Kabob Palace does more than skewer God's beasts, they make awesome rice and chick peas. Unfortunately I also have to pass up their sauce, it's like tzaziki, I forget what they call it but it's really good, unfortunately it involves yogurt. Oh, and then last night I walked into a pizza joint and got a tomato pie, just pizza without cheese, and had em throw on some mushrooms and onions. Fact: Liked it more than most cheese pizza I've ever had.

Cereal and soy milk is pretty delicious. Haven't been drinking much coffee because I'm trying to become less dependent, but I still drink some. And that means that I have now become that guy I always made fun of at Starbucks, ordering his Grande Soy Latte and getting snippy when they've run out of raw sugar.

On The Eve Of Battle

Hey all, and self, tomorrow it begins in earnest. I'm sitting here packed full of meat and dairy, and right now I feel like I don't want to eat any of those things ever again. Or eat anything at all ever again.

It was my birthday this weekend, and so I did a lot of traveling, a lot of socializing, and almost no sitting still and taking stock of things.

Last week I started a new job, very exciting but it cut VERY deeply into the time I'd normally spend putting up blog posts and telling everyone how many more runs the Phillies scored than the Pirates each week.

And now, I'm so stuffed I can barely sit up, but I will simply report that I'm ready to do this shit. Fun updates coming this week, which could probably lumped into a running featurette called "Guess What's Coming In The Mail". But much to discuss.

Excited.

Don't Tell Me Any More About These Non-Vegan Donuts

I had some Dunkin Donuts this morning, and though it's been...what, a month since I had those donuts from Vegan Treats, I can still say without question that they are better than the Dunkin variety.

Life On The Road, Kage, Life On The Road

The most important part of prepping for the upcoming switch to veganism (10 days, shit) is the modification of my daily self-prepared meals. However, this was also the easiest part to research, as all it really took was the subbing of milk and pork. I eat string cheese at lunch usually, but I don't mind just dropping that altogether.

I travel often on the weekends, even moreso during the run-up to Halloween what with my birthday and 4 costume parties (and hopefully counting) on 4 weekends. That means that for at least 2 days and nights per week I've got to sustain myself on restaurant and convenience-store food. VERY little of what I get in those situations is vegan. Fortunately, I've found some pretty impressive websites to help me out. Get ready to be bookmarked on my smartphone!

First, there's I Can't Believe It's Vegan, which is part of PETA's website. They have an impressive list of food arranged by category (Dry breakfast, snacks, baked goods, etc.) that is PETA-approved. Is there a vegan authority out there more tight-assed than PETA? Probably not, so I'd say this list seems pretty safe. Thing I love most about it: Fritos are vegan! Me and Howard Hughes are thrilled (oh, he's totally still alive).

Also frigging critical is Vegan Fast Food Options, a continuously-updated post from the blog My Life As A Vegan which lists the vegan options from a very long list of fast-food restaurants.

Most of them involve specially ordering things. Vegan nachos are pretty funny, they require the removal of everything that makes them nachos. Jack Nicholson would have made a great vegan.



I understand that for many vegans, simply giving money to McD and BK is an abhorrent thing, regardless of what's in the food they order, and I can sympathize with that a lot more easily than I can with the honey thing or the procreation thing. Still, I thought it was interesting to mention that the baked apple pies at McDonald's and Burger King, as well as various grocery-store-bought variants, are vegan according to these lists. That calls for a video re-posting! Poor pre-BDK Tim Donst, looks like he was on the path of righteousness after all.

Aww I Always Get Stuck With Dazzler

Between RR and Fallout: New Vegas, this is going to be one of my personal favorite gaming Autumns since...1990?

Holy Poop

CHIKARA is billed as a family-friendly wrestling promotion. In addition to being staffed and booked like a Marvel comics series, the action itself seeks to impress through technical mat mastery and high-flying lucha shenanigans. Not counting intentional slams into ringposts and rails, it is very rare that foreign objects are ever used--I only stop short of saying "never" because I watched Drake Younger put Vin Gerard in a garbage can at Chikarasaurus Rex (he might have also hit him with it, I'll have to go back and check).

This is the environment within which UltraMantis Black operates, but all that means is that he is easily underestimated. Oh, you don't think UMB can play that CZW nonsense when he has to?

Here's a highlights clip from a deathmatch he wrestled for some indy promotion called FTW (heh) in Tennessee, I'm guessing in about 2007, with two guys who both appear to be discarded jobbers from 1999 WCW. Neither of them are fit to lace UMB's boots, so my guess is that the match was part of some Neo-Solar flagellant obligation. All the highlights are worth watching, but if you're pressed for time, just skip to the Death Valley Bomb through a barbed-wire table (0:57) and the match-ending spot (1:41).