you could easily ask, what came first the zodiac or the animal? animals have always been an integral part of human life.

the chinese zodiac consists of a circle of animals. this was created in ancient china so that the peasants could better understand the astrology that their emperor (and themselves by extension) practiced so religiously. which incidentally was not based on constellations, but on calendar years. because most peasants did not know how to read or write, an animal was created to symbolize each year. hence we have year of the Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Boar.

Up until last year I thought I was a boar. Then I found SUZANNE WHITE’S website and voila, I’m a dog! Turns out… suzanne did a little research (ok, a lot) and found that it was not enough to simply go by the year in which you were born. as in western astrology, you might have been on the cusp, like me. I was born in the first week of the year, so i thought i was the chinese animal for that year. not so. i am actually the chinese animal for the year before. i suggest you make it a life priority to confirm you are the correct chinese zodiac animal!

in western astrology, more than half of our zodiacal constellations take the form of animals. leo the lion, sagittarius the horse/man, pisces the fishes, aries the ram, capricorn the goat, taurus the bull, scorpio the scorpion and cancer the crab. these soular animals are somewhat revered, especially by people like me!

so revered and so abused. the point of my post today is to celebrate WORLD WEEK FOR ANIMALS IN LABORATORIES.

A Landmark Agreement
In February, 2008, three U.S. government agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Toxicology Program (NTP), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), signed a five-year agreement to create innovative and animal-free methods to evaluate the safety of drugs and chemicals with the goal of phasing out animal tests entirely.

The NRC’s Groundbreaking Report
In July, 2007, the prestigious National Research Council (NRC) issued a report, “Toxicology for the 21st Century,” which outlines a new approach that would rely less on animal studies and focus instead upon in vitro methods. According to the report, “Over time, the need for traditional animal testing could be greatly reduced, and possibly even eliminated someday.”

Broad and sweeping changes are slowly being realized for animals, and now is the time to speak out. they ARE listening! all it takes is one letter, one phone call, one action… to make a big difference.

click here to see how you can help lab animals.

see how easy it is to shop cruelty free here.

read about the recent government scam over animal testing in the WASHINGTON POST

(photo credit)

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i’ve always had a thing for snakes. they’re just sexy, dark, and much of humanity doesn’t care for them, which makes me like them all the more. of late, an abundance of all things snake have hit the market. here are some of my faves:

ABOVE: faux python cocktail shaker and bar set from KIM SEYBERT at ($85 SAKS FIFTH AVE)

RIGHT: reversible snake goblet from VIVRE. ($375-$450) but think of it as two glasses for one. a martini on one end… flip it over and it becomes a oversized goblet on the other.

these amazing glazed python coasters from KILN have become some of my most prized possessions. porcelain & cork; hand fired in brooklyn; ($90/set of 4) check out the incredible detail below:

and remember kids, real snake is BAD.

fake snake is GOOD. the former is often nailed to a tree and skinned alive. i wouldn’t wish a death like that on my very worst enemy. ok, my second to very worst enemy ; )

don’t miss the most barked, er, talked about party of the season… join THE NORTH SHORE ANIMAL LEAGUE in new york’s trendy soho, wednesday april 23rd from 6-9pm to promote TOUR FOR LIFE 2008. cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, conversation, good times, and great dogs! feel free to bring your own pooch to the event… RSVP here.

VIA SHECKYS

this is too cute! green beer dog cookies and pink cosmo dog treats. just perfect to serve the pooch in their new cocktail shaped food bowl! and don’t forget the DOG BEER!
source
VIA HAPPY TAILS PET BOUTIQUE
cookies from POSITIVELY PETS

a little over a year ago, the Sunday Times featured a meat cocktail recipe. up until now, i’d only seen the use of flesh laden tipples in old cocktail books. but now, Pork margaritas were being served in brooklyn, and selling like hotcakes too. bacon-infused tequila in pork rind rimmed glass - ew. the fact that this occurred in the trendsetting city of brooklyn had me worried, for when brooklyn does something, new jersey follows suit. you know what that means: chicken daiquiris in applebees.

fast forward about a year… no chicken dacqueris at applebees yet, and the NY Times is again reporting on flesh. this time with an incredibly revealing piece on the business of meat. like the millions of cows that pass through its doors, this industry’s days are also numbered. YES!!! but, don’t worry flesh-hounds… it’s gonna take years. plenty of shell steak still to come, you’ll just have shell out a bit more for them. the article was written by a non-vegetarian and is therefore as unbiased as one can hope for. mark bittman simply reports the facts as they relate to the environment. no other industry issues (of which there are many) are discussed at length. it is such a truly enlightening read, especially if you are trying to “go green,” and i implore you all to consider spending your next free half hour doing just that. here is the link.

every bad girl likes a good sausage tipple. but sorry gals, these grade D cocktails are on the way out, so enjoy them while they last. meat is so last season… veggies are hot, flesh is not. enough redoric though, read for yourself about the uncanny medicinal power of a plant-based diet.

ONTO THE MEATY RECIPES:
my fave, COCK ALE from “Old Time Recipes for Homemade Wines, Cordials and Liqueurs from Fruits, Flowers, Vegetables and Shrubs” by Helen S. Wright


mad cow bunnies from “The Cocktails of the Ritz Paris” by Colin Peter Field.


BULLSHOT from AMERICAN BAR by Charles Schumann


from the COMPLETE HOME BARTENDER’S GUIDE by SALVATORE CALABRESE


CHILLED GINGER CAVIAR MELON MARTINI from death’s door spirits more on cruel caviar…



INFUSED CHICKEN VODKA from INFUSIONS OF GRANDEUR


BLOODY MESS from IMBIBE MAG


CRAPTAIL VIA CHOW


how about some meat stir sticks? add these pencil toppers to chop- sticks.


and last but not least, make your MEAT’TINI last longer…

happy birthday paris. i never thought i’d grow to like paris, but none the less, i unexplainably kind of do now, where i never did before. it all started with her seemingly sporadic fondness for elephants… it’s easy to make me your loyal fan - just align yourself with any animal welfare cause, and i’m yo’ bitch. it’s just as easy to make me your enemy, by doing the reverse.

like say, hillary clinton, who imbibed in some very profitable insider trading. she probably used half of what she made to shut the media up. but it happened… about ten years ago she turned $1,000 into $100,00 on some innocent factory farmed beef cows in less than a year. she should have been sharing a cell with poor martha. that why peeps, hillary is a lyer, and if you vote for her, you’ve been swindled. obama is the shit - vote for him. BTW, if you vote republican you deserve to piss warm beer for the rest of your life.

ok, back to paris… i believe paris hilton is the epitomy of aquarian energy. for starters, she’s a blond. and as i’ve said, if constellations had hair, aquarius would be a blonde. she’s completely misunderstood for an utter bimbo, which is of her own doing of course. however, the inability to coherently express oneself is an aquarian trait, and i believe paris wears this one well. this bubbly blonde may have gotten screwed out of her inheritance by gramps (i can’t blame him one bit), but she’s only got more gigs lined up. just one of them is her new champagne endorsement, where “paris is selling sex in a very tasteful way.” how interesting is it that this aquarius is selling champagne in a can? aquarius is the sign of strange and you can’t get stranger than that. why, she’s gonna have more money than her gramps at the rate she’s going! and if she continues along her new “do good for the world” path, then who are we to complain? alledgedly, a percentage of sales from the new RICH PROSECCO champagne, will be donated to charity. cut her some slack peeps, she’s not as awful as she seems! vote: people for paris : )

we all know i have a soft spot for animals, and now i also have a soft spot for stella artois. the brand created a limited edition collection of it’s NOBILLIS beer which sold to AOL canada for about $15K, all of which went to WILDAID. this organization strives to end the illegal wildlife trade, and has garnered major celeb support with the likes of angelina jolie, kate hudon, charlize theron, woody harrelson, bo derek, ryan gosling, samuel l. jackson, ralph fiennes and jacky chung, among others. WAY TO GO STELLA ARTOIS!!!!

VIA LUXIST

the budweiser owned PURUS, out of italy, is the latest organic spirit to hit the market. PURUS is made with locally harvested organic italian wheat and water from the italian alps to create an organic vodka, that they claim, is without rival. i say, the more organic spirits on the market, the merrier! right mike?

ECO PROMOTION:
one sapling tree will be planted somewhere in america for every person who registers on the PURUS website and plants themselves a tree in the PURUS virtual forest. this is so cool! AMERICAN FOREST will plant up to 100,00 trees in of areas of need in California, Texas and Florida. at the time of this post there had only been 168 planted — so get plant away my zodiacal intoxicants!

DISSECTION OF PACKAGING:

• PURUS boasts that their bottle is 100% recyclable glass. that does not mean it’s RECYCLED at all, and actually, ALL glass is 100% recyclable! that’s one of the best things about glass… it can be recycled over and over again without loosing any quality whatsoever. this is not always the case, as many products degenerate after each lifecycle. take paper for instance, it can be recycled about three times and that’s about it. at least when it does become completely unrecyclable, it will biodegrade. now let’s take PET plastic, which is an example of downcycling. once plastic is recycled into a PET plastic product (which is infinitely better than sending it to landfill), it can never be recycled again. that is the end of the product’s lifecycle. it’s not really getting the most out of a material. which brings us back to glass and the fact that there are several factories right here in the USA all ready making recycled bottles.

• TREE-FREE LABEL, meaning recycled, meaning no precious rainforest was chopped down, meaning one more arangutang gets to live. yes, in case you haven’t heard, the extinction of polar bears is old news. now its the orangutangs who will be gonzo in twenty years. this is because they’re being evicted from their habitat due to logging ancient forest. save the orangutangs!
and see who’s choppin it down…

• SOY INK PRINTING. yes, this is good. however, low impact ink or vegetable ink would be better. reason being, soy ink is invarioubly made with non-organic soy, which means GMO soy, which means, it’s killing bees, monarch butterflies, silkworms, and most likely-us. give it a few decades, i guarantee they’ll figure it out. stay away from anything GMO if you value your health. that’s not easy though…. GMO (genetically modified organism) products do not have to be labelled. unbelievable yes, but true none the less. the only sure way to know you are not ingesting manipulated DNA is to eat strictly organic. organic products must be GM-free.

• WATER-BASED ADHESIVE… well, being a vegetarian, i love this of course for obvious reasons. but the not so obvious reason is that using animal products is one of the worst things you can do to the environment. HERE’S WHY: the methane gas from the animals is no good for the ozone, unless it’s captured and turned back into energy, which a rare farm actually does. also, animals require gross amounts of land, water, energy, fossil fuel to grow and transport. and the animal, once slaughtered, must be stored in freezers and transported, requiring yet more energy. eating lower down on the food chain will lessen your carbon footprint. as will of course, using water based adhesive.

HERE’S MY MEAT ADVICE, in case you were wondering (ha!):
buying meat from smaller, local or organic farmers, usually means the animal has had a decent life. it also enables a small business to exist. family-run farms are on the verge of extinction, why not support them? abstain from purchasing factory farmed meat, because more than likely, the animal lived a life devoid o joy. factory farmed animals spend their miserable existence in small indoor cages or over-crowded feed lots; barely able to move, and forced to eat an unhealthy diet. for example, cows are made to eat inordinate amounts of corn which is not at all native to their system at all, leading to chronic illness. pigs, chickens, and calves are not even aloud to turn around in their cages! and just for the record, PIGS ARE SMARTER THAN DOGS? would you allow your dog to be treated this way? and let’s not even talk about the possibility of diseases like E. Coli! bottom line, the best choice is to limit your intake of meat, and use water-based adhesive.

–SUSTAINABLE CORK CLOSURE. now that’s just impressive. harvesting cork from forests that moniter the harvesting to make sure the forest is not destroyed.

PURUS is available now in NY, RI, DC, DE, MA, MD, NY & NJ.

are you and your pooch looking for something to do this friday night? how about clinking glasses (or water bowls) with howard stern’s BETH O, and their bulldog? countless celebrities and their “well-mannered” dogs will convene in new york city for the second annual DOG CATEMY AWARDS GALA. All proceeds to benefit the NORTH SHORE ANIMAL LEAGUE; friday, november 29th; tickets $350 a head-or tail.

and you thought paris liked to drink? no, ellie’s got her beat with a soft spot for rice wine. an incredible story off ECORAZZI reports the sad fact that elephants can be alcoholics too. apparently, while foraging for food, asian elephants discovered vats of fermenting rice wine. they drank it, and have now gotten into the habit of actually seeking it out. can you blame them? thing is though, a pack of drunk elephants wandering around the streets of a small rural village don’t mix well. both peeps and pakaderms get hurt. i have such mixed feelings about this situation. i am saddened by it of course, and can’t help laughing either. but the shock i felt when paris was touched enough to get “involved”, well, i think she might have learned something in the big house after all. or it’s all that chillin with hottie eco celeb adrian… yummy like rice wine!

VIA ECORAZZI