Nina Paley

I am an ex-vegan. A vegan apostate.

But:

Despite eating dairy products and fish, I still eat a lot of vegan meals. I don’t actually like meat, and while I consume yogurt and cheese, I suffer some lactose intolerance.

I recently chatted with a friend who has been vegetarian for 6 years and wants to stop. He wants to eat the same things as his wife, an omnivore; he wants more protein; he believes some meat in his diet would improve his health. “But I just can’t,” he said. 6 years off meat has made him squeamish.

I am squeamish too. That’s my main reason for refusing to eat birds and mammals: the thought is simply too icky for me. I eat fish occasionally, which is icky enough. I need to build up some real hunger for it to overcome my aesthetic aversion. When I really crave animal protein, it’s fine; anything less and it feels gross.

How fortunate I am, then, that I don’t have to eat fish, let alone other meat, every day. I have all kinds of plant options readily available at my local mainstream grocery store. Despite my criticism of vegan “fake” foods (especially simulated dairy), I happen to love “fake meat,” especially “Chick’n”. Not because it in any way resembles chicken, but because it doesn’t. It’s just toothy concentrated plant protein wrapped in a salty oily coating, calorie-intensive and tasty the way only highly processed junk food can be. I keep this stuff in my freezer and enjoy it about once a week. It was almost impossible to get 25 years ago, when I was a practicing vegan. Now I can get it at my local Meijer.

I have vegans to thank for this. Vegans who worked very hard pushing fake meat into the American mainstream. I hear investments in these idealistic plant-based food companies are drying up; that would be a shame. Hardworking, annoying vegans made these options possible not just for other vegans, but for me and you and everyone. Hardworking, annoying vegans — vegans who work hard at being annoying — got a number of fast-food outlets to place vegan offerings on their menus. They are the reason I can get an edible “Impossible Burger” at most American restaurants, instead of being stuck with some grain-based “veggie burger” which is basically a bread sandwich.

My squeamish friend bemoaned his reliance on expensive protein shakes. “Oooh have you tried Soylent Creamy Chocolate?” I evangelized. “These save my ass on long bike rides!” He couldn’t believe a plant-based shake could taste good, so I broke open a bottle and we split it. Why did I so enthusiastically push this highly processed vegan beverage on my friend? Not because I want either of us to be vegan — we were both discussing how we want to move AWAY from veganism. No, I was pushing it because it’s an excellent product and I love it.

Once again I have vegans to thank. Who else would painstakingly formulate this concoction, figure out how to make it tasty AND shelf-stable, and create a viable company to distribute it throughout the USA so I can get it easily? Thank you, vegans!

Many vegans are annoying. But the squeaky wheel gets the avocado oil, and by being squeaky for all these years, vegans have improved and expanded food offerings in America’s lavish markets. Thus, they have made our capitalist lives better. They may condemn our non-vegan impurity, and we may ridicule their idealism, but we all benefit from having more and better choices at the grocery store.

So thank you, vegans. You’ve improved the life of at least one animal: me.

Human beings exploit the earth and each other. We torture, kill and eat animals. We cut down forests and poison the soil and water. We make war. We drive filthy cars and pave the world. We pollute. We bully and scapegoat. We hold crazy beliefs and belong to irrational cults and religions. We don’t think for ourselves. We long for freedom while enforcing repression. We censor and suppress and police and call out and turn each other in. We rip each other new assholes while covering our own. We all think we’re better than the rest. We are hypocrites who are appalled by hypocrisy.

For meaning in our lives, we may fixate on one human evil and try to rise above it. Pro-Environment. Animal Rights. Freedom of Speech. Christianity. Communism.

The more we embrace these virtues, the more insufferable we become.

It’s human nature to try to rise above human nature.

There is simply no way out of being human. There are billions of us, each individual a node in an incomprehensibly complex network, a brain cell in a Great Brain. Sometimes we convert our neighbors, which gives rise to cults or religions or nations which then butt up against each other and go to war.

We might clean up our own little space: grow our own food, avoid filthy money by bartering, bike instead of drive, don’t eat meat. Little pockets of purity in a polluted world. Somewhere else, something worse is happening to compensate. Thank you for lowering demand of farmed animal products: now the price goes down so more can consume them. Thank you for biking instead of driving: now there’s more room on the road for another car. Thank you for Not Breeding: now someone else can, plus there’s a panic about “population implosion” and the culture is more pro-natalist than before.

While we’re doing all this Good, we try to persuade others. We never think we’re actively proselytizing, just taking opportunities for “teaching moments.” For sooner or later someone will notice our behavior is a little (or a lot) different and ask us about it. Maybe we’ll even convince them! Score! Now our cult is growing, and if it grows enough we’ll be able to clash with competing cults, more repressively enforce the purity of our in-group, and perhaps go to war with an out-group or two.

I call this The Law of Conservation of Evil.

I have clung to many causes: Environmentalism, Anti-Natalism, Vegetarianism/Veganism, Bikes Not Cars, Free Speech. I have been insufferable. Still, I am human, and humans need meaning in our lives, and that which lights us up the most can also make us the most insufferable.

I’m currently interested in how to avoid cults. I fear and condemn cults. If I develop a good theory of cults, and argue persuasively, I might create an anti-cult cult, just as Antifa creates fascism and anti-racism creates racism.

Back away from Identity

“Back away from Identity” advised Third Way Trans, a desister from the transgender cult, before he deleted his wonderful blog. That’s the rare idea that might be cult-proof.

Humans cannot rise above our evil, which is also our humanity. We can shift it around a little from locality to locality, just as we shift our “recyclable” garbage from our local landfill to somewhere in the ocean. The best we can do is back away from identity, from the need to be “good” or better than our fellows, and to acknowledge and accept Reality.

But don’t let me get too attached to convincing you of that! Carry on, world.

Last month, when I did a mail-order experiment  (password = “yum”), many people requested vegan Terffles. Recently I created a successful ganache using coconut cream instead of the dairy variety, so I decided to buy some expensive specialty ingredients to make a 100% vegan batch of Amaretto Amarena Cherries and C3 Spice, the most popular Terffle flavors.

Vegan dark chocolate is easy enough to find; Trader Joe’s 72% Dark suffices. White chocolate, with which I make the Amaretto ganache, is harder to find in vegan form, but not impossible. There are many vegan “white” “baking chips” but most are made with palm kernel oil, not cocoa butter. I ordered Pascha “Organic White Rice Chocolate Baking Chips” which do contain cocoa butter, but haven’t tried them yet. I also ordered a bag of straight-up cocoa butter, figuring I could adjust my ganache recipe and let the coconut cream, almonds, and sugar make up for the missing milk and sugar in the product itself.

Everything was going along fine…

…until I absent-mindedly mis-measured the coconut cream and Amaretto, accidentally doubling them. Whoops! Soon I was doing seat-of-the-pants cooking-by-taste (don’t worry, I never double-dip tasting spoons, I am after all a Certified Food Handler) while creating a mess:

The resulting ganache is now chilling in the fridge, and I hope to form it around Amarena cherries later tonight.

The C3 Spice ganache will be made with coconut cream and 72% Dark chocolate, but it needs something resembling milk chocolate for the coating. This was very hard to find. I eventually settled/splurged on a kilogram of Valrhona Amatika 46% Single Origin Almond Milk Chocolate, which arrived today:

It cost over 4 times the very good Aldi milk chocolate I usually use. Is it good? Yes. Have I had better? Also yes. But it’s better than cheap American Milk Chocolate, and really is quite good for what it is.

I actually think just a tiny bit of salt would improve the taste, so I will add some when I melt it for coating, along with freshly-ground cardamom.

Less awesome chocolatiers than myself would skip the pure cocoa butter and use palm kernel oil instead. They would also use dark chocolate even to coat a dark chocolate ganache, caring nothing about balance as long as it’s vegan. But I am not a less awesome chocolatier, I am my awesome self, and life is too short to eat mediocre chocolate. Even if it’s vegan.

Stay tuned.

Update March 20 2026: First batch of vegan terffles NOT AS GOOD as non-vegan ones. Taste too much like health food. I’m finding cocoa butter weird to work with. May have to re-do it from scratch.

My cat, George, destroyed my favorite artwork, “Air,” a white wholecloth art quilt stretched like a canvas to heighten its sculptural qualities, like a frieze. I made it with a domestic sewing machine in New York. It depicts a nude. The model was me.

George has apparently been climbing up this quilt like he climbs up window screens.

I caught him near the top this morning, hanging onto the nude’s face by his claws. He dropped down, leaving a scratch so large some batting came out of it. Claw holes are evident all over the piece.

When I made “Air” in 2011, I partly wanted to preserve an image of my youth. I wasn’t all that young then — 43, actually — but I was aware as ever that I was only going to look worse from there. I often imagined my future self, aged and decrepit, recalling my younger firmer body. Better make a marker in time to facilitate that, I thought. And here I am today, behaving exactly as predicted.

Is my quilt ruined? Or is it still in progress, like my body itself? Perhaps George isn’t its destroyer but a collaborator, adding his own marks to my former image.

George is destructive. Cori calls him “terrorist.” He’s a naughty cat.

Also I love him. Should I waste energy being mad?  George’s arrival after my beloved cat Lola’s departure was the only bright spot in a horrible year, clarifying that love was more important than order, clean rugs, or intact artworks. “Air” might be ripped up, but my heart isn’t…Actually my heart is; Lola and Momo left claw marks all over it. But unlike the quilt, my heart regenerates. Scarred, sure, but it only gets bigger, making ever more room for more cats and their claw holes.

My body, aging and decrepitizing as it is, also regenerates. It’s falling apart faster than it’s rebuilding, but it has a long way to go before it’s ruined beyond repair. Maybe I should let George keep ripping up “Air”. Maybe it can serve as a protective charm, like the Picture of Dorian Gray. Let my image be ruined while my actual body lives.

Coincidentally I just installed another white wholecloth quilt stretched on a frame, “Shiva Natraj,” at a friend’s house (without pets). Shiva represents destruction and creation. George entered my life when Lola left. I would have clung to Lola forever, but cats die, like all living things. Whatever is created is destroyed. Lola is gone; George is here. Someday George will be gone and if I’m still alive and able, another kitten will be coming up right behind him. That’s how life works: not through eternal preservation, but through regeneration.

Yes, I think I’ll leave “Air” where it is, to become a scratching post for George. Whatever is created is destroyed. That goes for me, and George, and every living thing, and every physical thing, and Art.

I have now drawn all 54 “Disabling Impairments” playing cards! Next I will set up pre-orders on my store, which will determine how big a print run to order. Pre order here! I still have to design the box, but at least I have the blurb for the back:

THE CARDS WE ARE DEALT

52 unsettling illustrations (plus 2 ironically healthy Jokers) sampled from the Social Security Disability Insurance Blue Book, a compendium of maladies that might*, should they cripple prior to retirement, qualify for disability payments. From nerve damage & amputations to organ failures & immune disorders, these Impairments represent a mere fraction of the wondrous calamities that, sooner or later, befall every body. Enjoy them while you can!
*Talk to a lawyer

Pre order here!

Here’s the whole set:

Continue reading “Disabling Impairments from the SSDI Blue Book”