Mirth is Murder.

I had to get up stupidly early, walked Jerk in the rain, had an argument about a bill, then got on a four hour train journey to go to a gig in a huge room with hardly any people in it and yet somehow yesterday was excellent. Oh, it was miserable for a very long time but then in the late afternoon I checked my Facebook and saw I had a message from Sharon Smith. Sharon Smith is brilliant and is worthy of constant praise and admiration. Sharon Smith has recently decided to become vegetarian.

I don’t think I’ll ever get a bigger thrill than reading that someone has turned vegetarian after hearing my anti-carnivore rant on Precious Little. It is my crowning achievement and can’t possibly be bettered. Sharon Smith is brilliant.

The rant started the day after I had gigged with a comedian in Reading a couple of months ago. I like him a lot but he did something on stage that really fucking pissed me off. He made a vegetarian “joke”.

Now, I will freely admit that I have absolutely no sense of humour at all when it comes to vegetarianism but that is mainly because practically all comedians have no sense of humour about it. How many tedious fucking times have you heard a comedian say that there are probably more vegetarians in the room but they’re too weak to put their hand up? Yes, very good. LOL my balls off. You’re absolutely right. The fictional lack of protein in our diet certainly has made us weaker than you despite your colonic cancer due to you packing your arse with beef, you murdering cunt. If vegetarians are weak it is solely down to the boredom provided to us by comedians. Comedians are cunts and Sharon Smith is brilliant.

Not that this particular comedian would ever come off with something as hack as that. But it was still incredible. I’m well aware that it was just a joke but hearing the passion in his voice and the cheer and applause of the audience just made me sick. His routine is based on things like Quorn products that claim to be chicken or beef flavoured. The end line is that “Someone had to kill and eat an animal to make sure it tasted like that, you self-aggrandising cunts!” I think you can see an audience of meat-eating fuckheads beating their chests and howling at that. But let’s actually think about it. Firstly, “flavoured”? Surely it’s “style” meaning the texture of the product and I don’t think anyone had to kill and eat anything to get the texture right for Quorn. After all, you carnivores rule the fucking planet and people who actually have a soul and can empathise with other living beings have no choice but to constantly see what it is that you’ve murdered for lunch. A billion chefs on TV. None of them vegetarian.

But here’s the bit that really got to me: “self-aggrandising cunts”. I really do have a severe problem with that for two very good reasons. Firstly, is there anything more self-aggrandising that eating dead animal flesh? How fucking important do you actually think you fucking are? “Hmmm…I’m a bit peckish. An animal must die!” If vegetarians are in anyway smug about not herding animals together, terrifying them and eventually slaughtering them then I think that’s fucking fair enough. Even in 2010 vegetarians are treated like they’re weird. STOP AND THINK ABOUT IT. You eat blood and veins and flesh. How the fuck are WE weird?

The second reason is perhaps more stupid. I have seen this comedian perform a hundred times and he often admits to his belief in God. You see? That’s my real mock-beef right there. Vegetarianism is my belief and I just find it insane to hear the phrase “self-aggrandising” being used against vegetarianism by someone whose belief is that he is a child of the one true creator. Blimey, that’s really pretty self-aggrandising stuff. Hey, at least my belief system is based on solid evidence and clear fact and not just on a dream a daft prick had a couple of thousand years ago. In a way, I hope there is a God. That whole “Thou Shalt Not Kill” commandment is going to look pretty massive come judgement day.

Yes, it was a joke and I shouldn’t take it this seriously. I am an idiot. But one for a good cause I hope you’ll see. And there really is a good reason why Quorn and other companies use phrases like “beef/chicken style” and that’s because becoming a vegetarian is a big deal. We’re brought up to not think about what we’re eating and when you realise that you’re eating Death In White Wine Sauce you want something that will wean you off meat kindly. It’s hard starting off in vegetarianism and most people are fucking thick. Me included. On my first day of being a vegetarian I put gravy on my chips and didn’t realise for a couple of days that gravy is meat tears of the dead. But I stuck with my vegetarianism because I believed in something important: I was trying to fuck a girl who was vegetarian.

Hopefully, Sharon will have something similarly important to keep her focused. And she will hear it all in the weeks and months ahead. “What you don’t eat meat? Not at all? Do you eat fish? Do you wear leather? If there was no other food would you kill an animal?” Fucking tedious. I’m not vegan (though I probably should be and admire any vegans greatly), I own two leather items (my belt that I bought when I was 18, three years before I became vegetarian, and a pair of leather shoes that my Dad was going to throw away) and if there was no other food around then I can only imagine that there are no other people either so would I kill an animal? Maybe. But as there are no other people either I’ll almost certainly fuck it first. Luckily, we have other food so the question is ridiculous but not as ridiculous as the reasons that meat-eaters give for being anti-vegetarian. My favourite one came from my own brother-in-law: “Are you trying to tell me that if cows could kill humans they wouldn’t do it?” That’s right. He eats meat as a form of defence.

Anyway, my point is that Sharon Smith is brilliant.

www.vegsoc.org

www.twitter.com/michaellegge
www.preciouslittlepodcast.co.uk