Rampant Fleshotarianism

I have a con­fes­sion to make. I ate meat (from Qwantz​.com) over Tet. It was partly just tra­di­tion, partly to please my par­ents, and partly just because I miss it. I guess it was like my own per­sonal Car­ni­val. If you don’t want the lin­guis­tics les­son, it’s a fes­ti­val in Rio and New Orleans (called Mardi Gras) where peo­ple go crazy on meat (and other plea­sures) before Lent.

And speak­ing of Car­ni­val, another show I got into recently was Car­ni­vale. I’m only through with the first of two sea­sons, but it seems really inter­est­ing. The story is set in the Great Depres­sion, as a boy in the Dust Bowl joins a trav­el­ing car­ni­val. There’s a bit of mag­i­cal real­ism — some peo­ple in the group seem to have super­nat­ural pow­ers — and a great deal of mys­tery as the boy tries to find his roots. There’s also over­ar­ch­ing themes of des­tiny ver­sus free will and good ver­sus evil. (Where is the avatar of our gen­er­a­tion?) You get a great sense of this from the open­ing alone, which is amaz­ingly done. (If you want to see all the sym­bol­ism behind the cards, check this out.)

Another really cool point about the show is how accu­rate it’s sup­posed to be of the times. For one thing, it really makes you see all the hyper­bole about our cur­rent mess for what it is. We don’t have it nearly as bad as any­one in the show. And sec­ondly, it’s inter­est­ing to look back and see how much soci­ety has changed. In a hun­dred years, will peo­ple make a show about how things are now? What will they think of the prac­tices we take for granted? And will they be more or less per­mis­sive than we are now? Maybe Utahrap­tor is right, and future soci­eties will look back in scorn or dis­gust at my vegetarianism.

Tags: Dinhternet