Come to Holland, MI where you can downhill ski in our urban city!

I was called out on my consumption orientation yesterday.  I’ve eaten and enjoyed meat my whole life, but during dinner last night I wasn’t sure and my poker face was no help.  I’m not ready to subscribe to one camp or another.  Then “it” was said: “you are a vegetarian.”  But, I’m not ready.  I want to change my affiliation for each new food encounter but society frowns on those that are indecisive or misrepresent themselves.  Why would you try to be something that you’re not?

Why? Because it’s much more interesting for the rest of us. Conflict! Intrigue! Gossip fodder! Go ahead and surpass awkward and head straight to bold.  If Holland put out a magazine that featured a group of seniors sitting smiling on a sidewalk on its cover, it might be authentic, but I probably wouldn’t read it unless the pages accidentally opened because some sort of coffee spill made it cling to the napkin I was using to wipe up the mess.  The saturated area would swell and give the paper that damp bubble that pills like a sweater when wet but feels extra crunchy when dry.

If something contradicts itself an even number of times, is it true?

Holland took the opposite route. It put out a magazine cover that screams of an urban identity and downhill skiing.  Wow! Now this was a magazine I couldn’t pass up.  I even picked it up with bare hands from the free stack near the coffee shop bathroom and paged through, vigorously looking for the place where the secret urban mountain is located.

Would the urban mountain have good hot chocolate? Tattooed people? Democrats?  Would it be a haven for the apres-ski set? Are there other half-French words I could learn there? Are there sandwiches named after movie stars?

I’ll skip ahead.  We all know that Holland didn’t deliver on the urban mountain, but kudos for the generative cover. In this era of diminishing print media ID magazine has shut down but Holland magazine was packed with enough intrigue to get me to page through.

I wonder if the urban mountain has any vegetarians?