My Foot My Foot My Only Foot

I am grumpy to the point of almost being upset today. I've got a fairly good grasp on my audience so I won't command you to cease sympathy immediately as it'll be hard without you having started, there is no logical reason to my mood. I could blame it on Monday, but, as I don't have a proper job and I am not even doing my fake job today it seems a little unfair.

Even giving the kitchen floor a ferocious mopping hasn't helped to lift my Eeyore cloud. In fact, being in the kitchen caused me to have a turbulent inner rage at the jar of Basil I bought on Saturday (I bought it because I smashed the old one - so that might have been the residual rage that caused the kick off of my torrent of inner monologue abuse).

The Basil has a notice on the side that says "Suitable For Vegetarians" and before I could stop myself my head (and my mouth, but no one was home to hear it so it doesn't count) had screamed:

"OF COURSE IT FUCKING IS, IT'S FUCKING BASIL"

Short of it being manufactured in a "Pig and Basil" factory or having been made by people who are exceptionally carefree about whether or not the odd shrew got pummelled into the Basil shredder, I just can't see how Basil could not be vegetarian. It's a plant.

Even if it didn't have that "Suitable for Vegetarians" label on it, how much meat could there reasonably be in that jar? Enough to seriously upset a vegetarian? Enough that, without the label, the fear of a hidden trotter falling on their soup would stop them buying it? Unless the worry is that they're actually buying little meat flakes that have been painstakingly covered in Basil to hide the deception. Of course this is ridiculous and would mean that the MeatBasil manufacturers would be:

a) Operating a huge loss
b) Mental

I can't see the point of this stupid freaking label. If you're that paranoid about meat getting into your herbs, then grow your own. I don't like to eat fecal matter as a general rule but I'm quite happy to buy things that don't have a "There's No Poo In This" label. I'm conspiracy free enough to reasonably assume that things which aren't meant to have poo in them, ie  things that aren't toilets, nappies and the fingernails of small boys, will not have poo in them and are good for my consumption.

How can you like animals that much that it could put you off Basil unless you are expressly told that no animals were upset by the caging of the basil? Are vegetarians seriously that nice? Because I'm not. What if we discovered that there was a species of Panda that could only eat Basil? Sounds like something Pandas would be dumb enough to do. If we carry on eating Basil all the Pandas are going to strike on Wednesday and China will have to sanction them heavily and there'll be a little Panda civil war... will that make my little Basil label defunct? Pfft. Fucking vegetarians. Maybe if you had a little protein in your system you'd be cheerful enough to stop weeping over the plight of Pandas and realise that:

a) Burgers are great
b) Quorn is a waste of time
c) BASIL DOESN'T NEED A LABEL TO PERSUADE YOU IT IS SUITABLE FOR EATS. IT'S FUCKING BASIL.

Obviously I am being wilfully and horrifically insensitive to the leaf munchers. See my use of leaf munchers there. If you've made your choice to live off plants then who am I to judge. Some of my best friends are idiots  vegetarians- for an interesting story on them read this little piece from the archive: http://lauralexx.blogspot.com/2010/08/oblogatory.html

I simply let this rant run on and on to prove how grumpy I am and to encourage as many of you as possible to leave me the fuck alone and stop putting ridiculous labels on my Basil.