I'm writing this at the airport

...but I'm not posting it until I'm back from my trip. I'm really paranoid about advertising on public forums that my home is empty and will be for some time. But, I wanted to write about my driver to the airport. A while ago there was a groupon (technically, a Team Buy) for a discounted ride to the airport. It is not cheap to take a cab to the Halifax airport, so I bought the coupon and used it for my ride today. The driver (named....wait for it.....Leslie) called 10 minutes before he was supposed to arrive and asked where my street was. Then, after parking in the middle of the street to let me in and load my bags, he proceeded to take a wrong turn off my street and didn't seem to notice that we were driving away from the most obvious route to the highway. I mentioned that we were on the wrong street and he turned in the direction of the correct street, but when we reached it, he still proceeded to the non-obvious highway entrance. Based on that, and the fact that he was driving an American car (i.e., speedometer in mph, not km/h) I'm guessing he's new to our fair city.

But that's not even why I'm writing about him. I'm writing about him because he is perhaps the worst self-professed vegan ever. In his defense he described himself as "85-90%" vegan, in that a couple of times a year - for special occasions - he likes to gorge on seafood or a steak. Nothing says "Happy Birthday To Me" like betraying your own personal belief system!  He then went on to describe vegans as people who don't eat things with faces, or stuff that comes from things with faces. So, he's a vegan that eats scallops and urchin roe (and possibly lobster). I mean, sure, they don't have faces per se (although scallop and lobster have eyes), but they're still living, gas-exchanging, reproducing creatures. Just because they don't have features which are easy to anthropomorphize doesn't mean they're vegan-friendly.  Oh, and he also told me about how he used to catch sharks and pay some guy to make them into dog food.

Clearly, the English language needs a new word for all of those people who call themselves vegetarian or vegan but still eat animals. "Hypocrite" is already taken.

08 July