Carlton

Guys, are you not feeding him when you come to visit? When I opened my blog today, he was in the corner of his tank, crying. At least say "hi" to him before you exit the page.

Speaking of Carlton, it has come to my attention that I get a little too attached to non-existent things, provided that these things are adorable. For instance, Carlton. I legitimately was concerned that he was not being fed enough while I was gone for a week in Europe. I...almost asked my dad to feed him in addition to my real-life fishes.

Some of you may know that I am adicted to FarmVille on the Facebook. It is not so much that I am addicted as that I love my mini, virtual animals. I simply cannot bring myself to abandon them. In fact, my devotion to my farm served as a catalyst in my becomming vegan. No, I will never admit this outside of this blog. You see, friends, here I am playing FarmVille and I am so in love with my faux-farm animals that I cannot even refer to them as "fake" farm animals. Another friend, commenting on FarmVille, says "Why do pigs bring you truffles? Why can't they just be honest and call it bacon?" This horrified me. I would never, I mean NEVER, slaughter my imaginary pigs for imaginary bacon. I love them too much. I would not play FarmVille if pigs gave you bacon instead of truffles.

Naturally, the outrage at the thought of virtual animals dying for food made me reexamine my feelings on actual food. Then I made the fatal mistake of becoming informed. That is when meat-eater Aussie died--I could no longer ignore, for convenience nor social acceptance, the violent tug at my being to stop taking part in something that I could never truly stand behind. For me, it is "Go big or go home," so vegetarianism obviously means veganism for the likes of me.

This love of the adorable also makes itself manifest in my ridiculous gourde collection. Have you seen them? They are all itty bitty--and I name them. And when I eat things. I literally always choose the smallest, most adorable roll from the basket.

Is this really a problem? Have we reached that point, yet, where someone should be staging an intervention?