i heart mmw's yuppie self-loathing. mostly because i feel it so intensely each day myself.

i love how he calls himself an asshole, and everyone else a douchebag. so awesome.

i hate eschewing the normal ideals and then pretending that my rustic ones are so much more authentic. i still want to own a home one day, to never have to worry about money, to have a shiny macbook pro, and travel endlessly around the world. but it's so much easier to pretend that i'm better than everyone else by making my own knife bag (or having my mom make it for me) instead of just going to sur la table and buying one. or making my own whatever instead of buying one--i mean, most of the time it's because i'm too cheap, not because i am more authentic.

why do i suck so much?

i just spent the last few hours interrogating a vp at niman. so many questions have been floating through my head since the mackey class, and since i asked mp if he only eats grassfed beef, and since i started researching more in depth what actually happens at niman, and it was just so good to finally be able to get some straight answers. every time i see bill niman, we start talking about ideals and individual cows and mutual friends and whatever (last week it was trader joe's vs. whole foods), so i never get any answers. it was really good to get some actual facts. one thing that worried me was what happens to the cows when they are being moved from the grass to the feedlot. what are the conditions on the truck like? is there enough room for them to move around? do they have anything to eat or drink? are they stuck on those trucks for days straight? i was really worried about this stuff, and talking to this guy (who i really like) settled a lot of these issues for me. bill told me that i could go up anytime and see the ranch and a local feedlot. this is something i absolutely need to make time for. i might be able to squeeze in a trip between bouts of self-loathing. we'll see.