So this is the message I received from a woman I had written to on an online dating site:

“You seem interesting especially the art thing. My main prerequisite is that the person I’m involved with is a vegan. That’s my religion.”

My actual reply, done just now;

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. Once I hear that someone is a vegan I have a rush of sorrow that they are missing so much of the world and ostracizing themselves so unnecessarily thinking that they are actually making a difference or somehow making the universe a less vicious place. You’re not, by the way. You may think that 7 billion humans would hold sway on the state of the nature of the universe but, again, you’d be wrong…we are vastly outnumbered—on the order of trillions—by creatures great and small who obtain protein by eating other creatures.

Last time I saw, it was called “nature”…you might’ve heard of it.

Anyway, you seem amazing; intelligent and of course quite stunningly beautiful but your ideas of what you eat having such a huge and overshadowing effect on your ideology are simply and sorrowfully wrong. I don’t feel bad telling you this, someone should have years ago, but I do feel bad that you will take it as a spiteful and misogynistic message versus the helpful little note it’s meant as.

It’s not that vegan’s, on the whole, are literal pains in the ass and pontificating bores, they are, it’s because you’re so evidentially wrong that it’s amazing that you have the elemental basis for intellectual life. How do you make actual daily decisions if the one you tout as bordering on the religious is so demonstrably in error yet you keep prodding forward as if it is etched in stone?

I could go on and on about this but knowing how firmly entrenched you are in your religion I’ll choose better and more productive uses of my time…that said, however (and I’ll borrow for a moment the great tool of vegans; pedantic and ceaseless droning), I will end this little diatribe with some less harsh (?) words…the next time you introduce yourself to a possible companion or even a new friend, try something like “Hi, my name is (insert your own name of course); I like a healthy lifestyle, playing with puppies and long walks on the beach…what’s your name?”

The accusations of knowledgeably murdering other living creatures can wait to the second date, yes?”

Today is a success…so far.