Honey and salt

For a given deginition of 'steal' I steal toothpaste. If I see it lying unused and forgotten in a hostel shower it finds its way into my natty little washing bag, which, by chance, I also happened upon on a bathroom surf. It was in the bin and woul'dve gone to landfill. This is bad. Do some research on plastics, read The World Without Us, and tell me you don't hate the idea of every bit of petrochemical product you see lying around and still being there in 100,000 years.

Where you and I might differ though is that I like to do something with those feelings. I feel disdain and contempt for humanity as a whole at we what we do to the world, this rock we live on, and am glad I won't be around in a hundred years. Perversely I wish I were around in a thousand years to see what science fiction world Earth is populated by. I'm trying to limit my impact on the world; everyday is a battle with my ethics. It's not easy and I sometimes fail but I try and that, to me, is what matters. What drives me most is the stupidity of the arguments put forward in favour of things I abhor. I try not to live in judgement and allow others the freedom of choice I demand in return but dear god some people and their actions are vile.

I was recently in Bogotá. It's a nice place, I enjoyed it. About an hour away is a monument to sculpture. Some people decided it'd be a good idea to carve out religious iconography and make a huge salt mine into a cathedral. It's beautiful. Good work, team. At the end you watch a video and this video explains there's a huge salt mining operation going on all the time. They're basically carving out the mountain in long sections just so you you can have salt on your chips. Now I don't add salt to my food; I think it's disgusting stuff, it adds nothing nutritious (Yes, you need salt in your diet but hey! It's already in bloody food - have an orange) and the effort isn't worth the result (carbon footprints, cost etc) but each to their own. We all kill the planet and ourselves in our own special way. I've taken a large number of flights; the shortest flight used more fuel than you ever will in your car. Maybe. But it's all fine.

Except the mine people have come up with a new way to remove the salt. How they used to do it hundreds of years ago, in a way that made sense, was cheap and was ethical, is they let sea water form a lake, waited a bit, the water evaporated, and hey presto, lots of salt was left behind. Now, they've realised they can fire water at the mountain (oversimplified for the over simple) and it'll dissolve the salt. And to do this they're using fresh water. Fresh water? Are they insane?There's only so much to go around. People are dying of thirst right now and you're using a precious commodity just so someone can dull their taste buds? I think it's fucking immoral and if you can read that and not be affected by it then you're....not being judged by me.

However, if you exist in certain corners of the internet however and eat honey that's a different story.

See, I've become a vegan. I was vegetarian for awhile and felt I should be vegan. I felt bad every time I ate an egg. I felt I was a hypocrite. All the chemicals that go into the meat, all the bad practices still affect the eggs and milk. But I liked ice cream too much. I felt I'd be punishing myself too much. But last week I decided to give it a go. I'm doing quite well. Helped by the fact I rarely bought cheese, milk and eggs anyway (expensive and unnecessary). It's hard when you're offered free eggs for breakfast and walking past all the fucking cake shops in Colombia is hell but I'm coping. Also, while I'm waking down far fewer aisles in the supermarket, the amount of time I'm there has increased - never have so many packets been scrutinised in such detail by so few for the sake of a few chickens. But I feel healthier and I'm happy with the decision.

So I'm in the shop looking at bread. It shouldn't be hard, right? Oh, but it is...eggs, powdered milk...but I find one without. Hurrah! It's only walking out I realise I made an error: miel aka honey. And thus starts a moral quandary. Is honey acceptable? It's an animal product but it's kind of hard to exploit a bee, isn't it? Hello, Google! There are two sides to the argument. There's the reasoned vegan argument that explains certain farming practices (queen bees get their wings ripped off, colonies starve when you remove the honey they live on for the winter and other pleasantries) and then there's the non-vegan inernet moron argument (vegans are fucktards, honey is yum so fuck the bees). I'm offended by that. Big time. Ignoring the obnoxiousness, the moronic tendencies of the average Internet troll (average age = foetus) and the overall tone...no, not ignoring that. That's why I'm offended. When the argument is out across by such people I'm going to not eat the things they extoll. So, thank you twunts; I'm not eating honey.