A vegetarian friend was trying to explain the ins and outs of her curious eating habits.
She explained that while animals were off the board, some animal products were game, such as milk or cheese or the incredible edible egg.
Vegans, she explained, are vegetarians who have graduated to the big leagues. They don’t eat animals or animal products.
“Egg?” I asked.
“Neg,” she said.
“Honey?” I asked.
“Hard no,” she said.
“Wow,” I said.
“I know,” she said.
This reminded me of an old joke about a grizzled overall-ed guy in a café who asked for the day’s special, and the waitress said, “Beef tongue. It’s good.”
“Beef tongue?!” the guy said. “I won’t eat anything that’s from an animal’s mouth. Good lord.”
“Suit yourself,” the waitress said.
The man said, “Just fry me a couple of eggs.”
Think about it …
Anyway, my veggie friend said that basically, she doesn’t eat “anything that has a face.”
Period.
Has a face … won’t eat it.
She will remain nameless and faceless here because some people have a hard time understanding that other people just don’t want to eat meat. The rest of us consider anything animalwise as fair game — the “Faceless is Tasteless” majority — although we do enjoy a faceless salad before a steak, providing it has a decent personality.
To each his own. Eat and let eat.
Sharing this info got some of the carnivores I run with to thinking about what does and does not constitute an animal face. Scallops, clams, oysters, and mussels appear to be faceless; if they have faces, they must be very, very small. A single lipstick could last a female clam a lifetime.
You have some who think shrimp have faces but crawfish do not, and some think just the opposite.
One lipstick could also last a lifetime for a chicken, which does have a face but no lips, similar in some respects to the simple potato, which can have eyes but never a face.
Interesting argument.
No one in this bureau wants to offend vegetarians; while we DO have a face, though not a very good one, we don’t want it slapped by a vegetarian coming off a bad batch of seaweed, tofu, or any other coagulated extract. We make the following argument for only one reason, and that’s so if you come up on a starving vegetarian one day, you’ll have a fighting man’s chance to rustle them up some decent grub.
Shrimp: Various species have different life cycles, but all have faces, though some faces are easier to spot than others (those of the Jumbo Shrimp species, for example). One group, the pandalids, begins life as males. At around age 2, they change to females. It is easier to see their faces then because they start wearing a little makeup.
Octopi: They have faces, frightening ones, with large, shiny eyes and hard, skinny jaws. Oddly enough, most of the main gear of an octopus is in the front, and his face, like the engines of those old Volkswagens, is in the back. But it’s not back far enough. I side with my vegetarian hombres on this one. Pass the octopi — pass it right on by me.
Crawfish: They have faces. (Look right above their shirt collars.) In fact, on face alone, many cite the crawfish as one of your more handsome crustaceans.
Worms: Thousands of kinds, but no faces. Some species have a sense of sight with eyes or eyespots. But none have a jawline to speak of, or noses or ears, which is why, despite their poor sight, worms seldom wear glasses. In theory, a vegetarian could eat worms until his heart was content.
Chickens: Oh, they have faces, all right. They have the face that launched a thousand frying pans. It’s just that, as we previously opined, they have no lips. These things happen.
Squid: They have faces, although they’re clever about keeping them hidden. For starters, 10 arms surround the squid’s head. And for closers, the squid can change colors to protect itself. And shoot ink. This is why you seldom see one square in the face. I grew up near the beach and HAVE seen the face of squids. Don’t know what squid tastes like, but it looks like chicken.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
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