So You Want to Be a Vegan?

The makes-your-tongue-itchy granola, the tasteless tofu that leaves your mouth dry, the lumpy soymilk that clumps up your throat like mucus---these are the delicious menu items a vegan encounters day after day because eating already-dead animals is cruel and inhumane.

Perhaps your juicy hamburgers and double fudge ice cream sundaes are just so unappealing that you, too, will become a vegan. Maybe you are afraid of offending a pot roast's ghost and have decided that it's time for you to stop eating anything that once ;mooed,' even if it 'moos' no longer. But take heed, my aspiring hippie! Becoming a vegan is far more complicated than simply restricting your diet to cardboard-flavored foods. Becoming vegan means changing your whole lifestyle. So keep these pointers in mind to decide if you truly wanna be vegan...ya know, just so you fit in with the rest of the sunflower seed munchers:

*Pierce your body: Because while it's not okay to hurt a chicken, it's okay to hurt yourself. Be sure to choose the most painful spot on your body to symbolize that you alone will suffer for all of the pigs humans have slaughtered over the past 30, 000 years.

*Wear thrift shop clothes: Why? 'Cause it's cool and cheap and makes you seem a lot less vain than you really are because being vegan isn't about upholding a radical chic image at all. And of course it's far more likely that clothes designed before synthetic materials were even invented would contain said materials. After all, it's not like they used wool in the 1940's.

*Eat a donut: Let's be honest, folks. No one can survive solely on lemon grass and buckwheat, so it's okay to cheat once in a while. Go ahead---grab that donut, even if it was deep-fried in creamy animal fat. At least it's not a rack of lamb! Besides---who's gonna know?