n i c k y n a x . c o m

This is week four in my personal “If… Project” in which I answer questions from the book “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)”

There are 125 pages of this book, each with four questions. I plan to take one page each week and answer the questions as thoroughly and honestly as I am able. In addition, I invite you to answer the questions along with me, whether it be in the comments section, your own personal blog, or just within your own thoughts.

Perhaps in doing so, we will get to know each other better, but even more importantly, get to know ourselves better.

This week’s questions:

If you could change one thing in the world right now, what would you alter?

I would make the entire world a Vegan world. There are just so many benefits to living a Vegan lifestyle that it blows my mind that people still choose to eat animal products. Not only would our personal health be better than most people could ever imagine, but (as you can see from my last blog entry) it would literally save the planet as well. And I won’t get into the animal rights and animal cruelty aspects of it, because that just causes me to get really passionate and upset. And if you needed just one more reason to convince you, it’s been proven that Vegans taste better. Yes, there was a study.

If you had to assassinate one famous person who is alive right now, who would it be, and how would you do it?

Simple. I wouldn’t. I’ve never in my life been a violent person and never felt that violence was the solution to anything and there’s nothing less attractive in a person than being violent. I don’t care if this is just a hypothetical question either. There’s not a soul alive who I feel has done anything to warrant me assassinating them. You may feel different, but it’s just something I personally believe in quite strongly. I can’t even imagine taking the life of another human being.

If you could permanently alter one thing about your physical appearance, what would you change?

Well, isn’t this one interesting? This one isn’t so much an “If” at all, because I AM altering the thing that has caused me a lot of unhappiness with my physical appearance. I’ve always hated my smile and my less than perfect teeth, and I finally did something about it. About six weeks ago I began the Invisalign process. I should be receiving my first set of aligners within the next week or two, and then once the treatment is over, I will hopefully have that smile I always wanted.

If you could have stopped aging at any point in your life up to the present, how old would you want to remain?

Hmmm. Gut instinct is to say something young, as younger has a much better stigma in society than older does. But up to this point, I’ve never really felt “old” so there hasn’t really been an age that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed living. I suppose I’d say 25 though. Can’t really pick a good, logical reason other than it’s a nice round number. And old enough to be taken seriously in most things, but young enough to still be considered young by most accounts.

Those are my answers for this week’s questions. What are yours?

I wanted to write something in honor of today being Earth Day. I feel like everyone knows that as far as the current state of our environment is concerned, we’re holding a ticking time bomb. And everyone wants to be environmentally aware and “green” these days, but when it comes to the one thing that we can all do that will have the greatest positive impact on the planet (and our health, for that matter), people completely it. Perhaps ignorance is bliss.

Instead of trying to recycle facts and try to sound eloquent myself, I figured it would just be much more realistic to find an article that already existed and said everything I wanted to say in a much more organized and concise way. So that’s what I’ve done.

The following comes from an article called Vegetarianism in a Nutshell by Bruce Friedrich and appears on the GoVeg.com website. There are several sections of this article ranging from Human Health, Human Rights, Animal Welfare, Animal Rights and Environment. This is what appears in the Environment portion of the piece:

The best thing that any of us can do for the environment is to adopt a vegetarian diet. Raising animals for food is steadily and rapidly depleting and polluting our arable land, potable water, and clean air. All animals need food to survive. For example, a 200-pound man will burn off at least 2,000 calories a day even if he never gets out of bed. As in humans, most calories that go into an animal are burned off; only the excess calories are available to make milk, eggs, or flesh.

It’s bizarre, really: You take a crop like soybeans, oats, corn, or wheat, which are all high in protein, fiber, and complex carbohydrates but devoid of cholesterol and artery-clogging saturated fat. You feed them to an animal and create a product with no fiber or complex carbohydrates at all but with lots of cholesterol and saturated fat. It makes about as much sense as taking pure water, running it through a sewer system, and then drinking it.

E, the respected environmental magazine, noted that more than one-third of all fossil fuels produced in the United States are used to raise animals for food. It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of animal flesh! If we have to grow massive amounts of grain and soy—with all the tilling, irrigation, crop dusters, and so on that are required—truck all that grain and soybeans to factory-style farms and feedlots, feed it to the approximately 10 billion land animals who are raised for food in the U.S. each year, truck those animals to automated slaughter facilities, truck the dead animals to processing centers, run the processing and packaging machines, and then truck the packaged meat to grocery stores—well, there’s a lot of energy being used up at each one of those stages.

If all this energy is being used, all these fossil fuels are being burned, and all this manure is being produced, of course, we’re talking about serious air pollution. Many environmentalists would sooner walk or ride their bikes than drive in order to decrease air pollution in their area but then will happily eat meat, eggs, or dairy products without a second thought about the fact that they are paying for gas-guzzling animal-transport trucks, refrigerated meat trucks, pollution-churning processing plants, and so on.

A friend of mine says that where the environment is concerned, eating meat is like driving a huge SUV or an 18-wheeler. Eating a vegetarian diet is like driving a motorcycle, and eating a vegan diet is like riding a bicycle or walking.

A similar analogy holds for land. According to John Robbins, the average vegan uses about one-sixth of an acre of land to satisfy his or her food requirements for a year; the average vegetarian who consumes dairy products and eggs requires about three times as much, and the average meat-eater requires about 20 times that much land. We can grow a lot more food on a given parcel of land if we’re not funneling crops through animals.

And think about water. According to the National Audubon Society, raising animals for food requires about as much water as all other water uses combined, even as many areas are experiencing drought conditions. It requires about 300 gallons of water to feed a vegan for a day. It requires about four times as much water to feed a vegetarian and 14 times as much to feed a meat-eater. Of course, if you have to feed animals, you have to irrigate the crops that you’re feeding them. You have to give them water. Factory farms and slaughterhouses have to be hosed down with water. It’s a water-intensive operation.

Raising animals for food is also a water-polluting process. One dairy cow produces more than 100 pounds of excrement per day. The animals raised for food in the U.S. produce 130 times the excrement of the entire human population of this country. Their excrement is more concentrated than human excrement and is often contaminated with herbicides, pesticides, toxic chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and so on. These massive farmed-animal factories generally don’t have waste-treatment plants. Instead, the manure is poured onto land or into giant lagoons, where it often spills over into local waterways, kills fish, and poisons the drinking water. Streams and rivers all over the middle of our country that once were clear and full of fish are now filthy and lifeless because of manure runoff from factory farms. There’s an enormous “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico now, where no fish or other animals live. This is largely because of the enormous amount of animal waste that has flowed from factory farms down rivers and streams and into the gulf.

Two of the most pressing environmental issues of the day are global warming and the destruction of the rain forest. In 2006, the University of Chicago published a major report stating that adopting a vegan diet is more important in the fight against global warming than switching to a hybrid car. This is because of the enormous amount of methane and carbon dioxide produced by farmed animals. Methane is a molecule that the EPA says is 20 times more effective at creating climate change than carbon dioxide. Animal agriculture is the largest source of methane in the U.S.

As for the rain forest, most people know that the rain forest is being destroyed to create grazing space for cattle. But Greenpeace published a report in 2006 indicating that the new trend is for huge companies to clear rain-forest land to raise crops to feed to farmed animals. It specifically blamed the chicken industry for leading the way in the destruction of the Amazon.

Of course, anyone who reads the papers knows what factory-fishing trawlers are doing to our sea beds and ocean floors. One super-trawler is the length of a football field and takes in 800,000 pounds of fish in a single netting. Trawlers scrape along the ocean floor, destroying coral reefs and everything else in their way, and hydraulic dredges scoop up huge chunks of the ocean floor to sift out scallops, clams, and oysters. Most of what the fishing fleets get isn’t even eaten by human beings. Half is fed to animals who are raised for food, and about 30 million tons each year are just tossed back into the ocean, dead, which greatly disturbs the natural biological balance. Commercial fishing fleets are destroying sensitive aquatic ecosystems at a rate that is beyond comprehension. A major study found that in just the last 50 years, commercial fishing has reduced the populations of all large fish species by a staggering 90 percent.

Then there is aquaculture, which is increasing at a rate of more than 10 percent annually. Aquaculture is even worse than commercial fishing, because, for starters, it takes up to 5 pounds of wild-caught fish to reap 1 pound of farmed fish. Farmed fish eat fish caught by commercial trawlers that aren’t used for human consumption. Farmed fish are often raised in the same water that wild fish swim in, but fish farmers dump antibiotics into the water and use genetic breeding to create unnaturally large fish. The antibiotics contaminate the oceans and seas, and the genetically altered fish sometimes escape and breed with wild fish, throwing delicate aquatic balances out of kilter. Researchers at the University of Stockholm demonstrated that the horrible environmental influence of fish farms can extend to an area 50,000 times larger than the farm itself.

The choice is clear: We can demonstrate our environmental values every time we sit down to eat by eating a vegan meal, or we can trample over the Earth in a Hummer by eating meat, dairy products, and eggs. Really, a true environmentalist doesn’t eat animal products.

I hope this has opened your eyes to some things that perhaps you didn’t know before, and I hope you will think about these things and consider a change in your diet. The planet is our home and the damage we are doing to it is startling and such a simple change in lifestyle can literally change the world.

So, on this, the day where we take an extra moment to think about our planet, I encourage you to go Vegan. You’ll not only save the planet and the lives of thousands of animals single-handedly, but you’ll also save your own.

This is week three in my personal “If… Project” in which I answer questions from the book “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)”

There are 125 pages of this book, each with four questions. I plan to take one page each week and answer the questions as thoroughly and honestly as I am able. In addition, I invite you to answer the questions along with me, whether it be in the comments section, your own personal blog, or just within your own thoughts.

Perhaps in doing so, we will get to know each other better, but even more importantly, get to know ourselves better.

I’ve discovered that another benefit to doing this weekly is that during times where there isn’t that much exciting and noteworthy going on to blog about, at least this gives me a guaranteed entry once a week.

I’m of the mindset that I don’t want to post blog entries just for the sake of posting blog entries. I want it to be because there’s something I actually feel like saying and sharing. Not to fill a quota of entries per week/month/whatever.

I realize though, that as readers of a blog, you want quantity in addition to quality. So, hopefully these If… entries will be the best of both worlds for all of us. It will give us at least one entry per week during those slow times when there isn’t much else to talk about, but will hopefully also result in being of a quality that I actually feel a little bit of pride in publishing.

So, without further ado… this week’s questions are:

If you could alter one physical characteristics of your mate, what would you change?

First of all, I don’t really feel qualified to be making physical changes to other people when there is still so many things about my own physical appearance that I’m not happy with. I mean, I’m currently paying thousands of dollars just to fix my teeth. And if I had the money, there are other things I’d like to fix too. Nothing radical and extreme, mind you, but small improvements that could be made here and there. That being said, and keeping with the idea that I HAVE to pick something to answer the question, I would have to pick his height. I have no qualms about his height, as is, but I’ve kinda always had a thing for shorter guys. So, I guess if I had to pick something, I would make him about 5′6″ to 5′8″ instead of his current height. But just for the record, I’m happy with him just the way he is.

If you could dine alone with anyone from any period in history, which person would it be?

Ok, so far a good portion of these questions are starting to sound very similar to each other, and thus could end up getting pretty boring pretty quickly. I haven’t read ahead so as to keep my answers as fresh and spontaneous as possible, so I can’t yet say if these sorts of questions last throughout the duration of the book, but I’m hoping they don’t. It’s just really hard to keep coming up with new people. I’ve already had three or four questions about wanting to meet and spend time with people from history and I chose them then for a reason. I still choose them now. So, I guess if I had to choose one yet again, it’d be Walt Disney.

If you could, in retrospect, change one thing about your childhood, what would it be?

I’m guessing that most people that know me might think I would change my parent’s divorce from happening. But when I really stop to think about it, that’s quite possibly one of the last things I’d change. Sure, having your parents divorce at the age of one isn’t awesome. Having a single mother raise three kids on a single income isn’t ideal. Having one of your parents virtually forget that you even exist isn’t something that one desires growing up, especially when he’s one of those deadbeat dad’s who refuse to pay child support. While growing up, I constantly felt like I was missing out on something and that I wasn’t a complete person because of it.

I remember one of the first times I ate dinner at a friend’s house. I ended up eating very little food because I found myself just sitting there watching her family interact with each other over the dinner table. It was such a foreign experience to me, and one that I wish I personally had growing up.

But now that I’m older and know a little bit more about life, I don’t think I would go back and change it. I am the person I am today because of that. If my father had stayed, who knows how my upbringing would have been different. Maybe he would have been incredibly strict and possibly violent. Maybe my parents would have fought a lot and I would have had to witness that emotional and possibly physically abuse. There’s just no way of knowing what would have happened and how it would have changed who I grew up to be. It’s entirely possibly that it would have been an even better upbringing for me and I would be and even better and stronger person today, but that’s not something I’d be willing to risk if ever given a real opportunity to go back in time and change that.

I’m very thankful, now, that I had that aspect of my childhood and was able to witness the strength and tenacity that my mother displayed in raising all three children into fully functioning and thriving adults all by herself. It’s an example that I’ve learned a lot from without even realizing how big of a life lesson it was.

Wow, four paragraphs and I haven’t actually answered the question yet. Obviously this question struck a chord and resonated on some level.

I guess if I wanted to change something, I might choose that I was born and grew up in a larger town. Perhaps a suburb of a large city. This is not to say that I regret growing up in small town Iowa, because I don’t. There were aspects of that which are and were very wonderful to experience. I’m just thinking that perhaps there might have been more opportunities at hand had I lived closer to someplace like New York or Los Angeles. Also, living in such a place would have afforded me the ability to grow up in a place that is much more accepting of the gay lifestyle than my hometown was, and I think it would have been a huge help in my coming to the point of personal acceptance and helped to ease a lot of shame and fear I had growing up.

If you could have any room in the world become your bedroom from now on, which room would you choose?

Gut instinct is to say the suite in Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom, but that’s not because of the room itself. Mostly just because of the location of the room. I actually think the decor of the room would drive me crazy after a short period of time. Too fantasy gothic and extravagant for my tastes. But I can remember even as a child wanting to be able to live in the castle, so if I was given a choice, that’s what I would pick. But I’d get a new interior decorator in there immediately.

Those are my answers for this week’s questions. What are yours?

This is week two in my personal “If… Project” in which I answer questions from the book “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)”

There are 125 pages of this book, each with four questions. I plan to take one page each week and answer the questions as thoroughly and honestly as I am able. In addition, I invite you to answer the questions along with me, whether it be in the comments section, your own personal blog, or just within your own thoughts.

Perhaps in doing so, we will get to know each other better, but even more importantly, get to know ourselves better.

This week’s questions:

If you could have lived through any war in history (without actually fighting in it), which would it be?

Well, for starters I’d just like to say how glad I am that it says I don’t have to actually fight in it. That’d be a deal breaker for me, as I don’t think I’d ever be able to fight in a war. I admire greatly those who are able to do it, but it’s just not something I am personally cut out for. That being said, and with my complete lack of historical knowledge to guide me, I guess I’d pick the Revolutionary War. I think it would been interesting to see the genesis of this country and actually witness the birth of our nation.

If you could eliminate any one type of insect permanently from the earth, what would you get rid of?

I’d pick the one insect that ruins the lives of most New York City residents, the cockroach. Not only are they so completely revolting, but some of them also fly, which also freaks me out. And if that weren’t bad enough, I once had one rear his ugly face during one of the worst possible moments. And for that, I seek the ultimate revenge. I would eradicate cockroaches from the earth.

If you had to eliminate a single type of animal forevermore, which would you choose?

Well, if I want to be snarky, I could merely point out that insects are animals, so I’ve technically already answered this question in my last answer. But for the sake of the game, I will pick a non-insect animal. I would either choose spiders or snakes, because both of them freak the shit out of me more than I can even put into words. But if I were forced to pick just one, I think it would be spiders. Just seeing them on television or in a movie is enough to elicit an emotional reaction out of me, and I start to feel them crawling all over my body.

If you could have an elegant dinner alone with anyone presently alive, whether you know them or not, who would you want it to be?

The middle part of this question kind of confuses me, as I feel that if I know the person, then I actually already can have an elegant dinner alone with them. The only thing stopping me is that we just haven’t decided to have one. So, I’m going to pick someone I don’t know. Initially I had a lot of trouble coming up with someone because I was confusing “elegant” with “romantic” when, in fact, they are two completely different things. So, once I got that straight in my mind, I settled on Samantha Brown. I think she is very cultured and experienced in elegant situations after all of her world travels and experiences so I could just sort of follow her lead, but also so down to earth as a person that the dinner wouldn’t be too hoity-toity, which is something I’m personally not comfortable with due to lack of experience. Plus, I adore her as a person, so it would be nice to sit down and talk over a nice dinner. And naturally I would end the dinner by begging to be her personal assistant while we had dessert.

There are my answers for this week’s questions. What are yours?

This was Bossy Bear’s first vacation, and while I was hopeful that he would have a good time, I had no idea he would have as much fun as he ended up having.

He visited so many places and all of the people we encountered fell in love with him. The reactions of others toward him ranged from amusement to one woman who became slightly obsessed with him. A restraining order is being drawn up.

I finally got around to uploading some of his pictures from the trip and wanted to post a slideshow of his vacation here for you. He’s such a photogenic little bugger, but I was able to weed it down just the best pictures. Enjoy!

I’m baaaaack!

I had a great time in Orlando this past weekend despite the torrential downpours that tried to dampen (haha!) our spirits.

We made great use of the Flip Cam and got a lot of fun footage which I’ve spent the past two nights trying to compile into a full montage of the trip. I say “trying” because the first two times iMovie decided to crash and/or freeze on me when I tried to save the final product.

I learned my lesson the third time around and saved it after each step of the process and ended up with a little film I’m pretty proud of. Especially considering this is the first time I’ve edited actual video footage.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed filming it!

Earlier this week I was doing some Spring Cleaning which consisted very little of cleaning and more of rearranging the clutter. In reorganizing my bookcase I happened across a book that I had completely forgotten I owned.

The book is called “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)” by Evelyn McFarlane and James Saywell. It consists of five hundred questions that all start out “If…”

According to the jacket of the book, “If… can be a wonderful after-dinner parlor game; it can serve as an icebreaker between new acquaintances; it can even help you better understand yourself, your dreams and aspirations, and the mysteries of life.”

The introduction of the book goes on to say, “If is the ultimate book about fantasy. Each of its questions is meant to spark and tantalize the imagination. They are a celebration of the human spirit, which loves to dream and needs to hope, but which can also fear and even grow angry. Our ability to imagine is the remarkable gift we have been given to lead us into joy and aspiration and out of despair or sadness, because common to all of us is the idea that there could be a different world, perhaps a better one.”

“And so, aside from the truths that are revealed, the contemplation that is provoked, the confidence or anxiety that surfaces, the self-knowledge that results, or the understanding that might be gained, above all we hope that asking these questions inspires optimism, since no matter who or what we really are, we share the ability to travel together the unpredictable journey of the imagination, which leads us through the wonderful game of life.”

This sounds like it’s right up my alley!

There are 125 pages of this book, each with four questions. I think it will be an interesting exercise to take one page each week and answer the questions as thoroughly and honestly as I am able. In addition, I invite you to answer the questions along with me, whether it be in the comments section, your own personal blog, or just within your own thoughts.

Perhaps in doing so, we will get to know each other better, but even more importantly, get to know ourselves better.

This week’s questions:

If you were to be granted one wish, what would it be?

I know it sounds incredibly selfish, but the first thing that popped into my head was that I would absolutely and without a moment’s hesitation wish for unlimited wishes. And since the question didn’t have any caveats of things you weren’t allowed to wish for, then I suppose it’s a valid wish to make in this instance. I just feel that it makes much more sense to have unlimited wishes than to just have one.

If you could spend one whole night alone with anyone in the world who is currently alive, who would you select?

Again, the answer for this one came really quickly to me. I think I would choose Ellen DeGeneres. I am quite confident that she would keep me rolling on the floor with laughter the entire time. And I bet she would make me feel really comfortable and treat me like an equal as opposed to a fan. On top of that, I think she is very intelligent and passionate about life, and I would hope that some of that passion would rub off on me. Plus, I know she loves to dance, and we would spend hours dancing until we were sweaty disgusting messes.

If you could spend one whole night along with anyone in history, who would you choose?

The Disney nerd in me would probably pick Walt Disney, although I imagine I would be so in awe of being in his presence that I would sit there staring the entire time with absolutely nothing to say. But, were I able to actual muster up some sort of conversation, I would love to pick his brain about the creation of the Disney Theme Parks. I love to read about the genesis of his parks and pour over pictures of the construction and early years of them. It would be such a treat to hear about it from someone who was so inspiring that even to this day his legacy continues to inspire millions to dream.

If you could physically transport yourself to any place in the world at this moment, where would you go?

Again, the Disney nerd in me is popping out and is tempting me to say something like Disney World or Disneyland, but since I’m able to visit those places pretty frequently as is, I’m going to try to come up with someplace else. This is actually a really tough question because there are so many places I really want to visit that it’s virtually impossible for me to pick just one. So, maybe it’s a cop out, but I’m going to pick my hometown back in Iowa. It’s a place that I know I should visit way more often than I actually do, and I think that if I were able to physically transport myself there in a moment, then I would visit my family much more often. I love them to death and it breaks my heart that I don’t see them much even though I put up a front that it doesn’t.

There are my answers for this week’s questions. What are yours?

That’s right, it’s vacation time!

Tonight, I’m headed back down to Orlando to spend a nice (albeit far too brief) weekend at Walt Disney World.

This time, Kevin is coming with me as well as Lauren and Karen. We’re calling it our Gay-cation. And by we, I mean I’m calling it that and hope they finally give in and call it that too.

We’re all taking cameras with us and I think we’ll have three camcorders amongst the group, so I’m hoping we get a lot of great pictures and videos of the trip. I even went out and bought one of those adorable little Flip Cams for the trip even though I already own a camcorder and my digital camera also shoots video. I have no sense of responsibility when it comes to shopping and gadgets.

And of course, Bossy Bear is coming along and will probably end up in more pictures than the rest of us. But it’s his first trip to Disney, so of course that’s bound to happen.

I think I’ll get to spend some time with Michael while I’m there also, which will be fun. And since he gets motion sickness and doesn’t go on a lot of the rides, I’ve informed him it is his job to hold all of our crap while we have fun on rides. That’s what he gets for being a scardey-cat.

I’m sure Miss Jackson will be angry that I’m leaving again, but since she adores her cat sitter and he loves spending time with her, I feel comfortable that she won’t be too pissed off with me. Here’s hoping anyway. I’d hate to come home and find she’s peed all over my bed like she used to do whenever she was mad at me. Yeah, those were fun times.

I’ll see y’all next week! Don’t have too much fun while I’m gone!

I got a Flip Cam in preparation for this upcoming vacation and took it to work today.

During some down time, Lauren, Karen and I whipped it out and decided to give it a little test drive.

Yeah, these are the kinds of things we do on the job…