If your mom ever made an excellent treasure hunt for you and your greedy, unappreciative siblings, you remember how tingly your toes and fingers got when you finally reached the treasure chest full of whoknowswhat. Now you can have that transcendent shivery feeling and a box of crafty vegan surprise in the mail, and you don't have to share them...or fish clues out of the toilet.

It's All in the Bag is providing that service. Buy a bag of vegan, handmade crafts for $15 (small), $25 (medium), or $35 (large holiday bag, now sold out) from their website and receive a mixed bag of vegan sample stuff donated by crafters on Etsy. All profits from the bags go to Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary out in Deer Trail, Colorado. (Oh, check out their site! It is so pretty and soft and delicate and just like being in the womb!) So what's not to like?

We blogged it a few weeks ago, but this is worth another mention. If you are anywhere near New York City, and you care at all about animal issues, you are a fool and a loser if you don't visit Banksy's "Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill" at 89 7th Avenue between West 4th and Bleeker Street.

The shop touches on humans' exploitation of animals for food, chemical and behavioral testing, fur, and entertainment. I've never been a big fan of Banksy's drawing/stencil work, but this show is just great, conceptually technologically, and aesthetically. It's subversive and clever, sure, but also quite touching and unnerving.

It's great how it's just a store-front. I suspect most visitors stumbled upon the place, rather than seeking it out. Even if you don't think you like or understand fine art, you'll be OK here. It's just a mock store, with animatronics, just like at Disneyland.

The show closes on October 31st, Halloween. The price and the hours are friendly--free admission, open 10am-midnight. Go!

(There's lots more there than what's in the video.)

Guerrilla artist Banksy has opened his first official exhibition in New York yesterday. "Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill" is at 89 7th Avenue between West 4th and Bleeker Street. The fake pet shop he's created aims to question "our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming."

The BBC has more photos and full info and video is available from Wooster Collective. Finally, an art exhibit that I care enough to go see. Take that Damien Hirst, you sick bastard.

I'll post a full report after I pay a visit to the exhibit, which runs until October 31st and is open daily from 10am until midnight.

Looking for something to fill the void that's in your life? Find that perfect little black dress, comfy vegan shoe, elusive vintage veggie cookbook, and more while doing good at today's Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary benefit tag sale!

If you didn't get a chance to stop by Williamsburg at the Aurora Lampworks Showroom yesterday at North 11th Street between Bedford and Driggs, the benefit continues on today from Noon to 4pm. And even if you did stop by yesterday, make sure to stop by again today as there are many more new items and yesterday's leftovers are now priced to sell!

Here's a flickr photostream of some of the many awesome items available for sale (as of yesterday) such as: $5 activist and just plain fashionable t-shirts and tanks, jewelry, cute jackets, vintage and refurbished lamps and metal accessories, posters and artwork, Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, and more!

All proceeds benefit the wonderful critters at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary! Even if you can't make it, you can still make an online donation and sponsor an animal at their website.

Too much news piling up, so I'm just gonna spew it atcha:

• Jessica Simpson is "deeply hurt," "disgusted," and "upset" that Pamela Anderson called her "bitch" and "whore" for wearing that "Real Girls Eat Meat" T-shirt. Thankfully, Pam ain't apologizing (though she does claim she was only "kidding" ... we can let a little damage control pass, and still be proud of her, right?).
• A giraffe at a circus in Amsterdam led a jailbreak, helping 15 camels, 2 zebras, and some llamas and pot-bellied pigs escape. (They were later recaptured.) Anyone have links to pictures or video of this?
• The New Scientist tells us that "Rhesus macaques have been shown to possess yet another numerical talent once thought unique to humans – they can simultaneously count audible beeps and dots on a computer screen." Good to know, but can we stop experimenting on them, please?
• Ryan from VegBlog points us to a list of "The 20 Healthiest Foods for Under $1" and notes "17 of the top 20 (and 9 of the top 10) are vegan. Show this to the next dummy that says, 'Being vegan is too expensive.'"
• The Food Fight! Grocery blog continues to be your go-to source for headlines such as "Dog Meat Off the Menu for Olympics"", "Woman Shoots Herself While Trying to Kill Mice"", "Woman's fingertip bitten off at meat market". Go read. And buy some unhealthy vegan food that costs over $1 while you're at it.
• Lewis Cicero of Fairfield, Connecticut faced either execution or declawing after scratching some of his human neighbors in 2006. His guardian Ruth demanded a trial on criminal charges. The case was just dismissed, as Lewis has kept out of trouble under house arrest.
• The Discerning Brute checks in with some stylish non-silk ties, non-leather martial arts gloves, non-wool post-consumer recycled suits, and more.
• Boing Boing Gadgets points us to this fake Louis Vuitton Piglet Dog purse by artist Meryl Smith (see picture). I don't know where she falls on animal issues, but a lot of her work is animal-related, and her sad greyhound piece The Last Race is pretty affecting.

For two weeks in May, Brooklyn artist Jillian May set up an unmanned kiosk teeming with vegan cupcakes and cookies and a sign prompting passersby to take a treat and leave a quarter in the jar to pay for it. The stand was an art project on honesty and culture called Conzept Kiosk and it soon developed quite a following from many Prospect Heights locals.

The cupcakes were a steal, considering vegan cupcakes usually go for a whopping $2.50, but that didn't stop people from purloining the pastries or the jar full of change. New York mag's Daily Intel reports that folks walked away with, broke, and melted her change jar. Brooklyn Paper reports that there were also folks who turned down the treats altogether. May surmises such people are "suspicious of generosity in an urban culture."

Some things that raise interesting questions have been collecting in my browser tabs bar. I thought I'd share them with you.

• There's a thorough post over at U.S. Food Policy about the scope of meat in rising food costs. It takes into account the rising cost of animal feed (and competition from the biofuels industry) and also the dramatic increases in meat consumption, especially in developing nations.
• A turtle named Myrtle, who was well known in the backyards of her block in Williamsburg was painted pink, presumably by some construction workers. It became quite a local "human interest" story. It seems like Myrtle will be OK, which is great, but I'm sure that most of those sympathizing with her story would have no moral qualms eating turtle soup.
• I've been noticing a similar disconnect in regards to Eight Belles, the racehorse who was driven to her death last week at the Kentucky Derby. The mainstream seems sort of upset about the abuse and effective murder of Eight Belles, but not really enough to realize that horse racing can be just as evil as their favorite bugaboo, dog fighting.
• And finally, Paola Antonelli, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art has "killed" a piece by artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr called Victimless Leather. The tiny jacket-shaped object/creature was made of mouse stem cells and was kept alive via a nutrient tube. It (I actually feel OK using an inanimate pronoun here) grew faster than expected and clogged its own life-support system. Says Antonelli:

  [It] started growing, growing, growing until it became too big. And [the artists] were back in Australia, so I had to make the decision to kill it. And you know what? I felt I could not make that decision. I've always been pro-choice and all of a sudden I'm here not sleeping at night about killing a coat...That thing was never alive before it was grown.

  I wonder how Antonelli thinks other "things" become alive?

You may be familiar with Boston-based Bexx as the creator of the awesome online restaurant guide, VeganBoston, but did you know she also makes books?

In addition to an assortment of adorable journals, sketchbooks, and albums, Bexx has created two outstanding miniature books, How I Get My Protein and How I Get My Calcium. Each illustrated, handsewn book contains a short list of vegan nutrient sources, the amount of nutrient per serving, and percentage of daily value. Also included is information on how much protein or calcium the average person needs each day and a list of resources on vegan nutrition. Bexx recommends: "The next time someone asks you 'How do you get your protein?', suppress the urge to strangle them by handing them this cute little book!"

Books By Bexx are sold on Etsy, Little Paper Planes, and Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe. Books by Bexx is also a member of Vegan Etsy, an etsy team made up of vegans that maintain completely vegan shops.

Through the magic of Myspace, I sent Bexx a few questions about her bookmaking business. She was kind enough to respond.

Two stories have been jumping very aggressively from the internet into my face lately and aroused and aggravated my skepticism. First, that an artist is starving dog; and second, that PETA is offering $1 million for in vitro meat.

Costa Rican artist Guillermo "Habacuc" Vargas may or may not have starved a dog to death as a piece of art (alongside "175 pieces of crack cocaine alight in a massive incense burner") in August 2007 at the Códice Gallery in Managua, Nicaragua, and he may or may not be doing it again at the the Bienal de Artes Visuales de Honduras 2008. Real information is spotty, and this one article from the Guardian (which mostly implies that it was just a stunt and no one was starved to death) seems to be the only actual reportage about any of it.

Habacuc's primary goal is getting a lot of attention, and that's certainly working. As of this writing, 2,206,525 people have signed an online petition demanding Habacuc be banned from the Bienal (an additional 666,241 people have signed the embarrassingly slapdash English version.) And it took some serious Googling skillz to find out anything about the Bienal that wasn't about Habacuc. I'd argue that the public's outrage is the main component of the piece. It's up to you if you want to help him or not. Personally, I'm mostly upset at the ratio of outrage to investigation on the part of the pro-animal community. Do we want to be taken seriously or be a bunch of raving ignorant people?

PETA seems to agree with me, and quite rightly points out that "if we can muster up this degree of outrage about one incident of animal suffering, why are we any less horrified by the billions upon billions of similar or worse cases of abuse that we can personally help to prevent?" Good question. But perhaps they're also jealous of all the attention Habacuc is getting. PETA's latest ploy is their offer of a $1 million prize to the "first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012." Like many vegans, I have conflicted feelings about in vitro meat (and about PETA, for that matter), but mostly I see this as a pure publicity stunt. 2012 is really soon for something like this. And $1 million isn't all that much money for something like this. I don't think PETA's actually going to inspire anyone to develop better "fake" meat faster, and I think they know that. But the promise of $1 million is a quick way to get a lot of press attention and discussion.

• Friday on Oprah: Taking a cue from HSUS, Lisa Ling uses a hidden camera to investigate the cruelty of puppy mills. (When did Ling become the reporter of all things freegan and animal-related?)
• The San Francisco Art Institute has taken down an exhibit that featured videos of six animals being bludgeoned to death. Unfortunately, it did so before the public forum was held because of death threats to its staffers. Go hypocrisy!
• The Canadian seal hunt began earlier this week.
• The Rotterdam Zoo is making all of its animals go veg, for health reasons. Even the carnivores...?
• Meanwhile, in Germany, apparently ”zoo” is synonymous with “factory farm.”
• In another giant step for I don’t know what, scientists are hoping to train fish to “catch” themselves. Because why do the harvesting, too, when you can confine your actions to killing and consuming? (At least then maybe there'd be no call for shows like this.)
• And because I can’t handle any more depressing stuff today: Enter your film, poem, needlepoint, etc., in NAVS’ 19th Annual Art for Animals Classic. If your piece wins, it will grace National Anti-Vivisection Society materials (plus you’ll get some cash). Click here for the PDF entry form and rules, or call 800-888-NAVS (6287). The deadline is May 2.