Weekend

Long-time-friend NRG is in town, so we’ve had many activities this weekend.

First, we all went to the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival. Totally free, and lots of fun stuff. I got a bumper sticker that says “There is no mad tofu disease.” redmed got a shirt that says “Eat like you give a damn.”

Also, lots of not so fun stuff … including belligerent animal rights activists. It’s a hard balance for me these days. I find that I frequently agree with some protest or consciousness raising … but I don’t have the mental energy to get angry or even to engage with the righteously irate. This puts me, superficially, in the same group as “people they really need to shock.” Then they wind up trying to piss me off in order to get a reaction.

I’ve decided that tending to my own state of mind is an important and valid pursuit. I’ve realized that the horror available in the world is well beyond my ability to consume it. I can only stare into the void (be it animal cruelty, people cruelty, or the general state of nature being beyond our control) for so long. Every time I do, I have to sit and think about the goodness and light for a while, lest I go insane. This means that sometimes, I’ll simply walk away from a protest with which I happen to agree.

What I mean to say is that I, personally, can’t spend all day, every day, looking at pictures of animals being tortured. Sometimes I need to look away from that sort of horror. It’s not that I don’t know, and it’s not that I don’t care … though perhaps I should care more.

I just wish that I could get a card or something indicating that my momentary lack of interest is not that of the sleepwalking masses. I know that evil lurks … I was just taking a day off from focusing on it. Sorry guys.

Anyway, we also stopped off at the Tiffany store and looked at some seriously high end jewelry. Wow. Shiny.

Then, it was off to a Boston Bruins hockey game. The game was tied at the end, and proceeded to a 5 minute overtime, followed by a “shootout” in which a member of each team took a solo shot on goal. Our mighty hometown boys defeated those scummy out-of-towners on the final shot. I found myself on my feet and shouting … which was pretty cool.

Finally, we walked all the way from North Station to Chinatown, and had a big, spicy dinner at Shabu Zen. There was another game on, in which the Red Socks got ahead of some other scummy bunch of people from not-around-here by, like 10 to 1 very early in the game.

All in all, good times.