LJ Idol Exhibit B: Week 0- Intro

For this vainglorious new season, I have the pleasure of introducing my good buddy ugawa, whom I roped into doing this crazy gig with me! My only goal for him is to outlast my LAST buddy I roped into this : ). Or to just beat my "score" my first season participating. That's week 5, you up to the challenge, ugawa? You better be!!

Where to start? I met ugawa several years ago in undergrad where I was approached by one of those annoying vegans, soliciting animal rights and passing out those PETA pamphlets in an attempt to scare people into turning vegan. Those things were horrid. They showed animals being abused in the farm industry and living in filthy, disgusting conditions. If any of you had any sort of vegan community at your college, you may have seen them. Most of the lesser hippies at my school, not really interested in interacting with the vegans just browsed them a bit, then went on their way. Myself, however, being the more argumentative type, began to interrogate this vegan who interrupted my day by showing me terrible pictures of animals being abused. I have a compassion for animals, and I absolutely HATE looking at animal abuse pictures, no matter what the purpose!

From the getgo, I realized that ugawa didn't exactly fit in with the normal vegan stereotypical image I came to associate. For one, he looked actually *normal*. He didn't have long hair, and just dressed like a college kid. No dreds, no stench of weed on him, no patchwork propaganda. Yes, yes, I realize not all vegans look like that, but if you went to a college heavily populated with vegans, you begin to notice that there is a particular "look" to a majority of them.

I immediately announced to him that he ruined my day by showing me disgusting pictures of animals being abused. I figured he must have been new to the whole vegan propaganda because he was slightly taken aback by the criticism and didn't quite know how to answer that other mumble something about being sorry, but it's important to understand how animals are treated in the farm industry. I told him that I didn't care to look at horrible pictures of something I already was well-versed on and told him that I was certain he was just doing this as a hobby while at this crazy hippie school.

Then his reply too me aback when he agreed with me. He told me that he had no particular affinity for animals or animal welfare and became vegan 8 months ago when he thought of doing it as a personal challenge. I didn't quite comprehend that one, but apparently one day he woke up, thought it would be cool to be vegan for no particular reason, and decided to see if he could last a year. I thought this kid was kind of weird at this point, so I told him "good luck with that", and went on my way.

I didn't seem him again until months later when I had to take a class with him. "Japanese Pop Culture". I was taking it as part of my East Asian Studies minor, and he ended up taking it as a GE. For the final group project, we were put in the same group, which I was kind of annoyed at. Our project was about Japanese Visual Kei bands. Some of you know what I'm talking about. I had known nothing about the topic, and someone else in the group was really into them and wanted to share their fandom with the class. They're these heavily glitzed up boy bands who sing hard rock, but look like... members of Kiss on crack, basically. I guess the closest analogy I can make to an American rock band is Twisted Sister.

( Some examples )

Since we were stuck together, ugawa and I had to get to know each other a little. I was surprised to find we had a number of things in common. We both liked anime, writing, and board gaming. He introduced me to this horrid game called "League of Legends" that he was getting into, and I guess you can say the rest is history.

We graduated and went on our way, but we still play League with each other on average about once a week or so. He's since taken up writing even further. He's completed/won NaNo for years now, even though I have yet to read his novel about League of Legends. He has several blogs, I'll pin his vegan one for him now (I'm sure he'll appreciate it since he can get 15 bucks for every article). http://www.theflamingvegan.com/bloggers/1472 He also likes doing charity work and the latest thing he seems to be into is running.

A few months after graduating, I get this text from him, announcing that he's still a vegan. I don't get it at first, then I realized that he's rubbing it in from when I first met him and told him I was certain he wouldn't keep it up after he was out of that hippie school. I told him to shove it and to get on League because I still required his assistance in moving up the League rankings which is... another story.