I LIKE TO HEAR THEM SCREAM (C)1989 Alan M. Schwartz I have always found it a sparkling ray glinting off carved leaded crystal, that sublime and startling realization that here is something new I have just made a part of myself. Sometimes it is a bit of arcane professional trivia, a technically sweet glissando like "deuterons are bosons tending to collapse into a degenerate quantum fluid." Sometimes it is a passing wisp, such as "Our Vice President, J. Danforth Quayle, is a white Anglo-Saxon pinhead." Most recently I came upon the term "vegan," not as a generic class of UFO passengers from a bright star in the constellation Lyra, but as a bunch of new and improved outliers added to our existing collection of traditional self-actualizing noisy weirdfolk -- Theosophists, Third World food activists, Amway hustlers, New Age wombats... A biological term, rear-gut fermenter, seems especially pertinent. No form of life on earth more advanced than single-celled protozoa or fungi is capable of digesting cellulose or using it as anything other than inert material to bulk out bodily waste. Cows, horses and animals of like ilk are subleased culture vats seething with flagellated microbial slime oozing enzymes and reactive chemicals to minimally convert consumed cellulose into some usable form of caloric sustainence. An even cursory comparison of what enters the animal versus what exits makes clear that for all the chewing and digestion, cellulose in mostly results in cellulose out. The processed bulk can be staggering in its volume, hence the publicity attendant to Bandini Mountain. Local vegans (as opposed to visiting Vegans) not only deny the consumption-as-food of meat, dairy products, eggs or other animal tidbits, but also eschew the mere patronage of any animal-derived substance in their own life, period. Revere the fauna, exploit the flora. As every aspect of commercial food is contaminated by insect or rodent components, the orthodox vegan is nicely bracketed by continuous involuntary treason on the one side, and unending guilt on the other. I suspect that vegans, through trauma or happenstance, just lack friendly feelings toward vegetables. Short of growing and retting your own flax, there is no fiber or non-woven purchasable vestment in whose manufacture some animal- derived product is not involved. "Ah," but you say, "wool is merely trimmed from sheep." "Ah," but I say, "see the mutton squeal in terror and torture as it is sheared. Have no doubt that the animal does not pass into a contemplative retirement and a respectful funeral service, but is economically and terminally processed into a carnivore's sustenance." Down the gullet of dog or man, if you wear the wool you share the responsibility. Essentially every consumer chemical you buy is tested for safety upon human contact by the emotionless exposure of lab animals who are filled with the stuff through every available natural portal, and a few man-made, to cover manufacturer liability. My personal feeling is that I would just as soon have some rabbit's eyes melt than mine melt if shampoo gets in them. All pharmaceutical substances undergo rigorous animal testing during discovery and manufacture. It would seem that the orthodox vegan is apt to be rather primitively attired, perceptibly ill-groomed, and subject to termination by adventitious infection. Can they wander incognito among street people? Imagine a freshly harvested green pepper, turgid and crisp. Consider its taut skin aglow with the diffuse scattering of ambient light. Relish its complex aroma, its smooth touch, its organic totality in ripe perfection. Savor the sensation of your teeth explosively crunching into its resisting green bulk, the juices slathering your tongue in pungent ecstasy, the vapors caressing your nose, the sound titillating your ears as you are enveloped in sensual pleasure. I think it is all a bunch of hooey. I tear into green peppers because I like to hear them scream.