I was a vegetarian for two years in '90 to '91 (yes, back in college--what a shock!). Spare me the ecological, environmental, and health lecture, because I used to give it to people in college.

Look, you're more than entitled to your beliefs and their expression. My frivilous response was NOT intended to insult you, only to point out that maybe you could "convert" more people if you didn't get in their faces about it so much.

You're passionate and that's great, but there is something called the boomerang effect in psychology. If you show a smoker a photo of a blackened diseased lung chances (a shock tactic) are it will do nothing to stop him/her smoking; if you calmly give him a few statistics and facts the chances of him/her listening increase dramatically. Why? Doesn't matter, we can form our own hypothesis, the point is that people don't respond well to others jumping on their table and screaming, "meat is murder!". People don't respond well to having blood thrown on their fur (and NO I DON'T OWN FUR!). Proof of this is that when you reminded me of the economic and ecological arguments I thought, "oh, yeah, I remember that" whereas when you got snide or showed a lack of humor or told people to go to a slaughterhouse I just sort of thought, "uh-oh, just another person who wants to save the world".

I'm personally not offended by your comment, "the jokes on you", but if you were dealing with someone who was less thick skinned, that right there would make me tune out and think, "well screw her and what she has to say, she's a $#*#*$&". And no, I'm not calling you a bad name, only saying that people can respond negatively to in-your-face preaching.

This issue is something deadly-serious for you so it's hard not to have others treat it the same. But maybe if you approach them in a more light-hearted way, it will eventually become a serious issue for them. If nothing else maybe it will get thim to think about what they're doing when they eat meat. They may not stop but if you get them to think about it then that's a victory for you and your cause.

Now, I'm...I'm trying to think of how you'd see me (aside from an immoral meat eating jerk)...a lost cause? Too jaded, too amoral, too full of crap. So maybe I'm not the best candidate for you to lecture to, anyway. But I really do think you'd do better if you were able to laugh a bit. You feel so deeply I'm worried you're going to burn yourself out!