Aimee Baldwin's creepy/beautiful vegan taxidermy.

So you want to be in the know enough to one-up that obnoxious hipster barista, but you’re too busy/lazy to actually read the news?  Stuff your face full of information with our weekend link-up, then go forth and spew it all over that organic-shade-grown-fair-trade-coffee slinging know-it-all (who is possibly a girl or maybe a boy, which you are totally cool with).

Martha Stewart jumps on the vegan show bandwagon!

Not that we’re complaining or anything, just, you know, Oprah totally did it first.  But whatever, it’s awesome!  America’s lifestyle-media divas are bringing vegan living to the mainstream.  Apparently Biz Stone was the life of the party – I did not know who he was before this show, such is my resistance against/ineptitude toward new social media evolution (I JUST FIGURED OUT TWITTER OKAY NOW THERE’S THIS COLOR THING WTF!?).  She was joined also by the lately-ubiquitous-I-think-she’s-attempting-world-domination Kathy Freston, and Gene Baur of Farm Sanctuary who is possibly the nicest human being alive and always seems to be snuggling some sort of animal, the lucky bastard.  Megan Rascal over at Vegansaurus (who was actually in attendance at the taping and thus whose word is law) reports a brief honey in the granola fiasco, but as honey is somewhat a point of contention even amongst vegans, I believe this is a forgivable offense.

Here’s what we learned from this show: Go vegan and you will a) be a model, b) co-found a wildly successful and culturally transformative social medium, and c) snuggle a piglet.  Informative and accurate!

GoDaddy CEO Bob “Douchebag” Parsons murders an elephant and is a total asshole about it!

WARNING: Link contains graphic video of the elephant being murdered. Probably don’t watch it.

Bob “Fucktard” Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy (the web hosting company with sexist and borderline pornographic TV ads), paid some insane amount of money to go kill an elephant with a gun so that he could feel better about his tiny, ineffectual penis.*  When confronted by basically the entire world saying, “What the fuckity fuck!?”, Bob “Egomaniac” Parsons responded by trying to spin the hunt as a humanitarian expedition.  Riddle me this, Bob: If I am paid a large sum of money to murder someone’s baby, and then I donate all of the money to starving Zimbabweans, was it morally acceptable for me to murder that child?  No?  First: there are many more effective ways of helping the people of Zimbabwe than paying huge sums of money for the “privilege” of murdering an elephant; second, it’s very unlikely that any money actually gets through the government and to the people themselves; and third – say it with me folks – IT IS NOT OKAY TO MURDER A SENTIENT ANIMAL FOR ANY REASON, no matter who benefits.  Christ.

Annie, the abused and arthritic circus elephant, gets rescued and re-homed!

After an undercover video [WARNING: Graphic content] showed her being horrifically beaten, public outcry and activism was so great that Annie is being removed from the circus and given a new home.  A small but meaningful victory for people who speak out against cruelty.  This is a good time to remind your friends and family that circuses fucking suck, and no one should ever patronize them for any reason ever.  Animals are not here for our entertainment, and they don’t prance around and balance on shit for our applause because they like it; they do it because they get the shit beaten out of them.  Also, go read Water for Elephants.  (I can only vouch for the book, not the movie, which appears to also use – shocker – trained elephants.  Facepalm.)

Crazy French people kill their baby; also happen to be vegans.

That’s what the headlines should have read, but instead, it’s all “VEGAN DIET KILLS BABY!”  The 11-month old baby was fed exclusively breastmilk, which is perfectly normal and healthy.  The parents were vegans, apparently the mother (and her breastmilk) was vitamin A and B12 deficient because SHE WASN’T DOING IT RIGHT. But what killed the baby was bronchitis, because the parents refused to treat her with medicine and instead used a clay and cabbage poultice, camphor, and garlic oil.  So maybe the headline should really read “HOMEOPATHY KILLS BABY!”  This is, of course, the exact kind of thing we have to spend stupid amounts of time arguing against.  Some vegans are idiots, and some idiots are vegans.  It’s not related.

In case you’ve forgotten, we’re still all going to die from outbreaks antibiotic-resistant bacteria!

Thanks, chicken farms!  If you have a strong stomach today, scour the comments for the guy who seems convinced that people will WITHER AND DIE if they don’t consume animal products.  Watch out, long-term vegans!  Apparently you’re already dead!

Aimée Baldwin does vegan taxidermy!

This is a weird combination of “creepy” and “sort of neat.”  I dunno, you decide if it has far-reaching ethical implications or whatever – I would still be weirded out by a thing that looks like a dead animal staring at me all the time.

We’re all pretty much totally over the fucking “hegan” trend!

It comes mostly from people outside the vegan community, it perpetuates stupid and useless gender stereotypes and a damaging notion of masculinity, and it’s completely unnecessary.  As our Mark wrote so eloquently, there is nothing manly about being brainwashed by advertising and consuming animal flesh that someone else has killed and prepared for you.  Plus, my vegan boyfriend could totally beat up your omni boyfriend.  Just saying.  The one thing I like about the word “hegan” is that it reminds me of “hedonism” and also “He-Man,” so I basically picture a bunch of mostly-naked muscular dudes with blonde pageboy haircuts rolling around in piles of alcohol and vegetables.  Ahem.

That’s it for this week!  If you come across interesting, important, or infuriating stories, send ‘em my way for next week!