I put SuperVegan into Wordle and this is what came out.

• Rynn Berry, author of the Vegan Guide to New York City is answering questions for the New York Times about being vegan in New York City this week. (Ryyn is very important to SuperVegan. If it weren’t for his chronic failure to put his book online, we probably wouldn’t have bothered making this site.)

  Read the big readers’ discussion thread, and Rynn’s first set of answers. They’re still accepting questions through Friday morning. If anyone can get Rynn to mention SuperVegan in one of his answers, we’ll give you a prize.

• Mustafa Farouk, a scientist at New Zealand’s AgResearch (which seems to be some kind unholy alliance between the government and industrial agriculture) has invented “meat spaghetti.” Says AgResearch, “It tastes like meat and it can look like meat but we can actually change the composition of the product quite a lot so we can mask the meaty flavour.” According to the uncredited article on Television New Zealand’s site, “Kids love spaghetti but for many parents it’s hard to get them to eat meat – so the meaty, protein saturated, pasta version could be an innovative way of providing youngsters with vital nutrients and iron.” Journalism at its finest!
• If you’re one of those vegans who likes heavy metal music, the blog Possessed by Seitan is for you.
• Want a video tour and kitchen tips from famous vegan Moby? Epicurious has your hookup. His kitchen looks refreshingly lived-in and well-used. I bet you can make better pancakes than him. I wonder how much Moby likes heavy metal.

• On Sunday, June 29, at noon, cookbook author Hannah Kaminsky will be at the Herbivore store in the vegan mini mall in Portland. Buy a copy of My Sweet Vegan (I highly recommend it!), meet the fantastically talented sweets guru, have her autograph your tome, and enjoy some of her treats!
• I eat a lot of cashews, but if researchers in Japan have their way, there’ll be less in the supermarket for me and more on feedlots, since the nuts appear to cut greenhouse emissions made by cattle. Not to be outdone, New Zealand scientists are looking for a vaccine.
• ESPN finally gives props to veg*n athletes.
• Boston offenders can now get vegan meals in the clink.

The Dutch will do all sorts of things to sheep.

The New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies has released “Cruelty-Free Consumption in New Zealand: A National Report on the Perspectives and Experiences of Vegetarians & Other Ethical Consumers” (108 page PDF). It profiles 157 people (I know, but that’s probably a big percentage of the population down there) on how and why they live animal-friendly lives. Stuff has a report on the sex-related findings and the coinage of the word “vegansexual” for people who will only fuck other vegans.

Did you notice how I avoided making any sheep jokes in the New Zealand story? Here’s why: In more disturbing sex news, a man who raped a sheep in the Netherlands had his case thrown out of court, as the sheep was unable to testify that she “didn’t want to have sex and had suffered emotional stress.” Bestiality is only a crime there unless it can be proven that the animal didn’t want to have sex. It sounds like the Partij voor de Dieren has some work to do!

A cuddly mutant and his friend from Black Sheep.

Vegans longing for a taste of vengeance should look no further than to the upcoming New Zealand indie film Black Sheep to have their appetites whetted. The campy revenge of the herds movie tells the horrific tale of a flock of sheep who become bloodthirsty predators as the result of a botched attempt at genetic engineering. Judging from the trailer, this isn’t a total AR movie; there are awkward allusions to zoophilia (was Peter Singer a consultant for this film?) and lethal mint sauce is flung on the mutant sheep. Still, we can expect to see lots of stupid animal exploiters getting their asses kicked. Black Sheep hits NZ theaters on March 29, but Americans will have to wait until June 22nd to witness the “violence of the lambs.”

Another film worth flocking to is White Lies, Black Sheep, directed by the Brooklyn vegan filmmaker James Spooner. A coming of age story of sorts, the fictional film tells the story of a Black hipster’s (or “blipster’s”) struggle for identity within the white dominated East Village rock scene. This is a great follow up to Spooner’s first film, Afro-Punk, an award winning documentary exploring the Black experience within the punk movement. It’s not clear when White Lies, Black Sheep will be released, but you can watch the trailer and sign up for updates via the mailing list on the film’s MySpace page.

Ella Soryl, an eleven-year-old New Zealand vegan, recently challenged Professor Robert Pickard to a triatholon. Professor Pickard is general director of the British Nutrition Foundation and was sent on a speaking tour of New Zealand by the Council for Foods of Animal Origin. During his tour, Pickard has been making pompus claims that vegan, vegetarian, and even low-meat diets are “unnatural” and unhealthy.

Pickard did not accept the challenge. (It conflicted with his tour schedule.) However he did back track to say that he was not aiming his comments at individual diets but at the general public, who may not be educated well enough to eat a balanced vegetarian or vegan diet. So wait, is he calling us too stupid to responsibly not eat foods linked with cancer, diabetes, and heart-disease?