Monthly Archives: January 2020

Road to Being Vegan in Modesto (if you want)

  1. Recipes

    1.  Breakfast – vegan sausage, vegan bacon, vegan tofu (for vegan tofu scramble, for example or peanut butter or oatmeal

      1. https://minimalistbaker.com/southwest-tofu-scramble/

      2. https://tasty.co/recipe/the-fluffiest-vegan-pancakes

    2. Lunch/Dinner – soyrizo is good

      1. steamed veggies, rice, fried/bake tofu

      2. stir fry with tofu (or tempeh), rice, veggies, noodles

      3. vegan chili (suggested items below)

      4. pizza (homemade or not) – daiya cheese or pre-made, easy-bake daiya pizza options

      5. vegan mac n cheese

    3. Other items – almond milk, vegan lunch meats great for easy-make lunches

  2. Easy prep meals

    1. vegan mac n cheese (available at sprouts), best mixed with veggies and soyrizo

    2. vegan chili and corn bread

      1. vegan chili ready-made available eat sprouts

      2. cornbread easy made at sprouts

    3. daiya frozen vegan pizza (several options)

  3. Vegan fastfood isn’t bad when you’re short on time

    1. Beyond burger at carls jr

    2. Beyond avocado tacos at del taco

    3. Impossible burger at burger king (make sure to specify vegan, ask them to take off mayo and double check that they put it in the microwave)

    4. Taco bell vegan option – black bean al fresco bean burritos with lettuce

  4. Vegan restaurants (slow food)

    1. Bauers – burgers, other options

    2. TNK Vegan

    3. Churchkey – pizza, burgers

    4. Red Robin – vegan burger

    5. Indian Food or Falafel (at mediterranean places)

  5. Replacers

    1. eggs can be replaced with applesauce if baking

    2. butter can be replaced with canola oil

    3. daiya cheese is more or less a good replacer for cheese

  6. Nutrients

    1. Eat lots of peanut butter or legumes for extra protein (I eat lots of protein bars and meat replacers)

    2. Drink almond milk or take a multivitamin to make sure you’re eating lots of b12

Note – Most of the items I list are available at sprouts and to some extent at winco

Second note  – PETA Is annoying, but their resources are good

– https://www.peta.org/living/food/making-transition-vegetarian/

– https://www.peta.org/living/food/making-transition-vegetarian/top-six-tips-vegetarian/

Deformation

What tinder seems to do to dating:

“You haven’t idealized mankind…you have deformed it, mutilated it…that is your legacy”

– Dan Dreiberg to Adrian Veidt, Watchmen

My Hero Carl

Carl Brutananadilewski is an interesting character. A working class, lazy, lonely, hilariously-lewd New-Jersey-shore type who is one of the main characters in Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a late-night, young-male-adult-targeted cartoon show, Carl, while problematic in his words and actions, is a fairly self-actualized guy. Even as he says terribly un-PC things such as “you own a wife…use her,” or “I love them women: that’s why I pay them $40 to have sex with me,” he is admirable and intriguing for his level of self-knowledge, his willingness to say what he feels and the relatively little self deception involved in his spoken and lived relation to the world.

In our world, this level of self-knowledge is uncommon, and even discomforts us, and we are often so concerned with how we appear and how we are seen that we forget who we are, how we feel and what we want.

In one of my favorite quotes, he says “it don’t matter, none of this matters,” while his marriage is underway, in response to inquiries about how to pronounce his name and that of his Russian mail-order bride. In this moment, it is disclosed that Carl has no misconceptions about the meaninglessness of everything, and even a simple mispronunciation is a comedic but nihilistic bridge to this type of commentary.

While Carl does not live a happy life, and he is often found masturbating with his sweatpants down on the floor in front of the tv, he is nevertheless himself, clear on his self, who he is, what he wants and what he willing to do and not do. This is something in a world of deception and distraction such as ours.

Surplus Product, Capitalism, Possibility

The surplus product is the difference between what it costs to produce a commodity and what it is sold for.

Marx argues that, over time, capitalists accumulate what is called “surplus value,” the difference between what a commodity is sold for and what is actually costs to make that commodity. When you work for $15, materials, labor and etc cost $15 and the product or service is sold for $100, there is $60 of surplus value. Capitalists decide what to do with this value, and, as long as workers lack control over what to do about this value, there will be unequal ownership of wealth, as some get to decide how this value is utilized. Creating a social formation in which all get to participate in how profits are utilized would be a social formation in which equality could be possible, and socialism or cooperatives would get us at least part way there. The question becomes: how?

One possible direction could be the creation of workers cooperatives, in which workers get to decide how profits are utilized, invested, distributed. This would be not be popular under american capitalism given that we are so focused on the reinvestment of profits for their growth that actual social outcomes are disregarded. Increased returns do not translate into increased social good.

What would make this shift? How do we convince corporate entities to relinquish power or change their structure so as to make worker concerns the general concerns? Where do we start?