I’m HUGE in Sweden

August 21st, 2007 by Scott

I got the following email a couple of days ago from a new fan, and I couldn’t help but share:

“Great site name, great writing and deliciously un-PC – keep it up! I’m sure I’ll be totally grossed out by your book, but I can’t help looking forward to it.

/Henrik (non-militant veggie)
Stockholm, Sweden.”

Naturally, I have much to say about this. First, a whopping huge bear hug and a twenty-one gun salute to the Internet. Call me naive, label me a “n00b” if you must, but to this day I simply can’t get over how cool it is to put up a few words and pictures on a computer and, as a result, get contacted by a friendly soul halfway across the world. It’s a truly splendid thing. Especially when the person getting in touch from so far away has some warm words. That’s just great.

Second, it’s especially wonderful that dear Henrik is a vegetarian, yet still appreciates the site. This warms the cockles of my heart; despite my passion for all things meaty and delicious, I have no beef with vegetarianism, so to speak. Veganism, maybe, and certainly a big problem with all that raw food and fruitarian nonsense, but not with your average ovo-lacto vegetarian diet. See here for my full thoughts on this, which I of course elaborate on considerably in the book. That said, I don’t think Henrik or anyone else will be grossed out by everything in the book. True, I eat lots of weird animals (llama, goat, guinea pig, snake, turtles…the list is extensive, to say the least), and animal parts (blood, brains, kidneys, glands, tripe, headcheese…again, a comprehensive list), but a lot of those things are not just un-scary, nearly all of them have a fascinating story or culinary tradition. Plus, there’s some extensive coverage about meat-eating as a human phenomenon, with angles ranging from dietary/nutrition to anthropological, social, historical, philosophical, medical and physiological. Even for a dyed-in-the-wool vegetable person, it should be an interesting read. If, as Henrik noted, “deliciously un-PC.”

So Henrik, when I’m next in Sweden (hopefully to promote the Swedish edition of the book), I’ll be happy to buy you a veggie burger. So long as you don’t mind me enjoying some of that fine reindeer you Scandinavians seem to relish, of course.

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