Guest guest Posted July 26, 2000 Report Share Posted July 26, 2000 And God said unto Toronto, lettuce pray DOWNTOWN Toronto has gotten the word from on high - about three storeys up. Not exactly nosebleed altitude in that part of town, but the instructions on the billboard come from the top guy in the organization - God - and He wants us to go vegetarian. I predict the city will respond in unison: ``Bite me.'' As the latest celebrity spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, God made his debut last week at the corner of King and Princess Sts., holding a handful of carrots, His message emblazoned beside him on the sign: ``I said, `Thou shalt not kill.' GO VEGETARIAN.'' This ad was intended also to run on billboards in meat-loving western cities from Edmonton to Winnipeg, but the PETA pitchmen in those towns were all turned away; some of them may even have been eaten. Folks here are more civil, of course, and the movers and shakers downtown could be expected to kiss up to God, a being so powerful He's practically a Weston. But the Almighty can't really expect the heart of Toronto to accept the rules so readily when it's a neighbourhood with more lawyers and stockbrokers than, well, Hell itself. They're born loophole hunters, even in the Sixth Commandment, and the arguments here are pretty obvious: A. ``Hey, I didn't kill anything. I don't know how this poor cow met its end. That said, it would be shameful to let it go to waste; instead we must respectfully bury it deep in my colon.'' B. ``What do you think will happen to these animals if we don't eat them? They'll be eaten anyhow. It's not like chickens and pigs in the wild tend to die of old age, surrounded by family and friends urging them to `go toward the light.' Being torn apart by a wolf IS dying of natural causes when you're a rabbit; they don't run fast because they're trying to catch a streetcar.'' C. ``By eating lettuce and cabbage, I'm actually taking food out of a starving rabbit's mouth.'' D. ``If that no-killing commandment really does apply to animals, why doesn't it apply to vegetables? You killed those carrots when you tore them out of their homes in the dirt, and took them away from their friends: the weeds, the weevils and the bacteria. Sure, it's an alternative lifestyle, but who are you to judge?'' At that point, the dissenter is probably silenced by the appearance of boils on his tongue the size of cane toads, but the point's been made. Maybe PETA and the Lord were hoping vegetarianism would appeal to the self-consciously sophisticated menus in Toronto's better restaurants. Meat-free options abound for diners here, but insofar as I can tell that's accomplished by subtracting ``beef'' from any given recipe and replacing it with ``most obscure cheese available.'' As a recent arrival in the big city, I'm baffled. Where I last lived, even the vegetarian restaurant had a menu livened up with a dead chicken here and there. (In fact, its best-selling vegetable product may have been Pilsner.) But the bills of fare at tony eateries here, wary of the pleasures of the flesh, load up on dairy rarities instead: Asiago cheese, warm goat cheese napoleon, shaved bocconcini, agitated Port Salut, composted Cambozola, palpitated platypus provolone. They can't all be good for you, even the ones I made up. With a diet that rich, even a vegetarian lifestyle could end up killing a pig - and that pig would be you. Straining even harder to avoid meat can't be what God intended. After all, what were those people on Noah's ark eating - Fruit Roll-Ups? Torontonians may be a bit too savvy to fall for a billboard deity who, the more I think about it, looks more like David Crosby than the Creator. The Bible records just one incident involving the eating of an apple and nothing good came of it, not even pie. This despite the waiter's recommendation. If Adam and Eve had wised up and eaten the snake, wouldn't we all be better off? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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