On the other hand, there must be limits. You can’t tolerate intolerance, or make room for religious systems that are nothing but thinly veiled systems of control and oppression. There’s a clear line between “religion” and “cult”. And by many accounts, Mars Hill is crossing it.

To be frank, Mars Hill is on my shitlist anyhow. Its pastor, Mark Driscoll, is an intolerant homophobe who thinks masturbating makes you gay. Even worse? He had the temerity to take shots at Avatar. This man is EEEEEVIL, I tell you.

But that’s nothing compared to the stories of control and submission rounded up by Kiley, some of which would make the Scientology high command blush. When one young man quit the church over a dispute around a building safety issue, one of the pastors called his girlfriend’s father to warn the man what a dangerous individual his prospective son-in-law was. Others tell similar stories of hounding. On those occasions when Mars Hill couldn’t get its way, it brought out the favorite weapon of all cults: shunning.

None of this should come as any surprise. Mars Hill places undue stress on authority and submission to the church (another black mark, for those of you keeping score with the Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Frame). Pastor Driscoll has made it clear in his sermons that submission is critical to the Mars Hill Way, and that if you’re asking questions, you’re practically having sex with Satan:

Some adults are just always questioning… these are people with critical spirits. These are people that if you answer their question, they’ve got 25 more questions, and they’ll have questions forever. And it’s not that they have questions, it’s that they’re sinning through questioning. The heart is not good.

I don’t have many litmus tests for faiths, but one of my strongest is that one’s faith should be open to inquisition, examination, and even dissension. One woman’s heresy is another woman’s doctrine. Any church whose leader would use the phrase “sinning through questioning” without a drop of irony isn’t worth the $31 million in cash and assets it’s sitting on.

Small wonder that so many people these days are finding Jesus outside of church, huh?

Tuesday was Donut Day at the homeschooling center that my kids attend four days out of the week. The center is part of the Bellevue School District, but operates on a different model that requires at least one parent to be present at all times. Meaning, I had to spend a day surrounded by these sugar bombs. As I looked at the glistening field of cholesterol spread out on the large circular table, I thought to myself, Thank the Goddess that no one else here is vegan.

Yes, friends, you can make a vegan donut. And they’re damn tasty. A company in Seattle called Mighty-O Donuts makes some nice dosh off of the enterprise. What’s good for Mighty-O’s bottom line, however, is bad for my waistline. I have no self-control when exposed to sugar. Had those been boxes of vegan donuts occupying the room, I’d have scarfed down near a dozen, and spent the remainder of the day curled up Golem-like in the corner with the last Chocolate Raspberry cradled in my hands, stroking its cratered contour while hissing “My precccccioussssss…”

I know this defies stereotype. I’m supposed to be strutting around all self-righteous in my dietary choices, lecturing people on how the chicken they’re enjoying was raised in a 5-by-5-inch cage and tortured with sewing needles by sadistic farmers every evening at seven, after which the poor little things are strapped to chairs and their lids propped open a la Clockwork Orange as they’re forced to test-screen the latest Adam Sandler film. It’s that kind of (largely fictional) zealotry that led Anthony Bourdain to christen us the “Hezbollah-like splinter faction” of vegetarianism.

But, truly, I’m glad on a certain level that everyone around me eats meat and dairy. Because if they didn’t, I would gobble up any random morsel that had the misfortune to cross my path. While my decision to be vegan is primarily motivated by concern for animal welfare and the environment, health is also a factor. I feel a thousand times better whenever I eat a plant-based, whole foods diet with little added sugar. It’s easier to stick to this lifestyle when you know that three quarters of the food that floats past your grasp every day is strictly off limits.

So live it up, omnivores. Truly. You’re doing me a favor. And I’m not judging you. Well, maybe a little. But never out loud. Except perhaps during the twice-monthly meeting of the Liberal Vegan Ecological Homosexual Agenda Conspiracy Committee.

Goddammit. I’ve already said too much. Jay out.

Psssst…wanna know more about the health benefits of a plant-based diet, despite my best efforts to convince you to continue eating Bessie and Babe? Check out the documentary Forks Over Knives, which is currently available via Netflix.

Mona stormed out through the entry gate of her apartment building and took in several gulps of cold, crisp air. She had to huddle her sleeveless arms around herself for warmth; she hugged herself so hard that she dug her nails into her flesh. She didn’t care. It was worth not being in that damn building for two minutes.

I could run, she thought. Run far away, before I do something I’ll regret. Except I left my purse and cell phone upstairs. And my shoes. And it’s my apartment.

A blast of frozen air tore through her skin. The stars above leered down upon her, as if they could see through her clothes. A few more minutes here, Mona knew, and they’d have to amputate her feet. Reluctantly, she plodded back inside and upstairs seven flights, taking each step with the measured precision of the condemned. I’m calm, I’m calm. I’m a fucking fairy in the woods I’m so calm.

The apartment was as she’d left it. The couch tipped over. Chips scattered on the floor and mashed into the carpet, arranged in accidental geometry around a large wine stain that Mona could swear had swelled in her absence. And at the far end, near the window, sat her five friends, huddled around two card tables.

She sat down. To her left, Fran ignored her, opting to study her own hands instead, while Andy and Toshiro were grimacing so intently at one another she didn’t think they even noticed her. To her right, Meela looked at her with begging eyes. Pansy, Mona thought, only distantly concerned with where her world-famous empathy had gone. And Greg – Greg who brought her flowers, who begged her every other Tuesday to bear his children – Greg fixed her with a look that blended “slept with my best friend” and “murdered my puppy” into a grimace of absolute malice.

“That was the longest smoke break since the discovery of tobacco,” Greg said.

“Oh, fuck you,” Mona spat.

“Can you two shut it?” Toshiro said, not removing his death-stare from Andy. Both maintained a death grip on a plastic figurine. “We’re waiting on you guys here.”

Greg threw the dice at Mona.

“Roll,” he said.

On the first toss, Mona flung both icosahedra so hard that they flew off the table. Meela wept silently. Fran gathered up the dice and placed them in Mona’s hand. On Mona’s second roll, they came up a perfect 40.

The table sat in shocked silence. The only sound was the wind swelling and shaking the window, demanding  entry.

Meela was the first to crack. “No no no no nooooo. Oh GOD!” she screamed, and tore into the kitchen, where she attempted to open an artery with a butter knife.

Fran wheeled on Andy. “You’re fucking him?” she said.

“I give him what he needs!” Toshiro hissed. One of the card tables spilled over, taking game pieces and half the board with it, as Fran tackled Andy to the floor.

While this was happening, Mona removed the ring on her left hand. She stood up and loomed over Greg. Everything was illuminated. Her soon-to-be-ex-fiancee sat fixed in his seat amid the chaos, wringing his hands.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, over and over. He looked like he could cry, but his eyes were empty. The tears of the guilty, Mona’s mother used to call them.

“Not good enough,” she said. Mona unfastened and opened the window. “I need you to be sorrier.”

Two hours later, the apartment was swarming with police. Everyone had been taken away by one means or another, except Mona, who sat on her couch cradling her bandaged right hand in her left. A detective rummaged through the mess on the floor and picked up the top of a box in his gloved hand.

“Must have been a hell of a game,” he said.

“What?” Mona said.

He handed it to her. “Hell of a game, yeah?”

The game box cover depicted a young woman in Goth Lolita garb sitting on a throne woven out of bramble. The spear she held in her left hand dribbled blood onto the throne room floor. Scrawled above this in sharp pink lettering: Malevolence.

Mona handed it back. Her face was an unsolved jigsaw. “You know…I don’t remember. I don’t think we ever got around to playing it.”

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Bewildered Bug challenged me with “Malevolence” and I challenged femmefauxpas with “No doubt about it: this was worse than the last time I’d drowned”.

I was shocked last week when I dug into a dish at Seattle’s Plum Bistro and my first thought was, “Mmmm…steak.” The dish was Double-Dipped Seitan. For the uninitiated, seitan is vital wheat gluten. I swear that’s not as disgusting as it sounds; it’s actually tastier and heartier than tofu, when done right. And Plum Bistro does it right, cooking the “steak” to perfection until it has a crisp, golden exterior. No, it didn’t taste like dead cow – but the texture and experience were equivalent, at least. And it did taste damn good, which I’m convinced has as much to do with Plum’s decision not to saddle this dish with the “steak” label as with the culinary talents of Chef Makini Howell.

I had the pleasure of meeting an online friend for the first time at Plum. It turned out that we had intersecting food peculiarities: she’s gluten-free, and I’m vegan. In Seattle, that’s a sweet overlap. Most of our hippier-than-thou eateries, such as Chaco Canyon Cafe and the amazing Flying Apron Bakery, cater to both sets of dietary refugees. The only down side of the get-together? I didn’t take any pictures of the meal, out of fear that the person I’d just met would think I was a total, irredeemable dork. Given the lighting, I imagine my iPhone wouldn’t have captured anything more tantalizing than a dark blob shrouded in pixels anyhow. So I stole the photo for this post from The Stranger. (Thanks, guys. Don’t sue me. Love ya!)

If you live in Seattle, or visit our fair city, you should give Plum a go, even if you’re a committed lifelong eater of things with faces. Be warned that it’s “affordable upscale”: main courses start at around $13, but top out at around $19. Great for a date or a night out with friends, but not a place you’d visit three nights a week. For cheap vegan sandwich fare, visit Plum’s sister store, Hillside Quickie, in the University District.

My opinion of New Year’s Resolutions is on par with Douglas Adams’ stance on deadlines. It’s not that I think I’m perfect. It’s that I hate setting myself up for failure.

Look. We’re all flawed, imperfect individuals. Some of us more than others, granted. Over time, we improve. This is often not through a groundswell of intentional effort, but because Life is like an older brother who shoves you into the deep end of the pool and cackles maniacally while you flail. You swim, or you drown. You fall, and your only choices are to lie flat on your face or push yourself up. That’s how we grow. The hard way. Trial and error.

That’s why I didn’t make any resolutions for the New Year. But then I realized I needed a topic for a blog post, so here we are. Rather than write anything heartfelt and make a commitment that might require, you know, work, I’ve set a low bar for myself. Below are five resolutions that I’m damn sure I can keep for the duration of 2012.

1. Stop referring to America as “The Leader of the Free World”. Gods, I hate that expression. I hate it even more when I find myself using it. DAMN YOU, CULTURAL CONDITIONING! Yes, we Americans live in a relatively free country. Mind you, between NDAA, SOPA, and the violent repression of peaceful protest, we’re losing ground rapidly. But freedom runs rampant in the world. The Americas are pretty free. Europe is almost completely free. (I’m looking at YOU, Turkey!) Africa, the Middle East, Asia…well, let’s just say there are positive trends. It’s ludicrous to christen ourselves the free world’s leaders based largely upon our capacity to blow lesser nations to Kingdom Come.

2. Stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

3. Read more graphic novels. Because we all should, dammit. Sequential art (that’s the word we comics fans use for “comics” when we’re striving to sound like educated consumers of The New Yorker instead of dorkbags) is its own art form, a playful dance between words and pictures. Books by comics impresarios such as Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics) and Will Eisner (Comics and Sequential Art) make clear just how much is involved in the visual construction of a story, and how hard it is to do it well.

While my tastes generally fall inside the genre “Kick-Ass Superwomen with Potty Mouths”, I’m trying to expand my reading this year to include more intimate and personal titles. Currently I’m reading Stitches, David Small’s true tale of growing up with parents who couldn’t be bothered to tell their son that he had cancer.

4. Stop making resolutions. No, really. This is it. The Final Five, as it were. After this, I’m breaking the resolutions habit until January 1st, 2013, at which time I can re-resolve while technically having abstained for 2012. I love loopholes.

5. Be a Thoroughly Terrible Buddhist. 2011 was both my best year as a practitioner of Buddhism as well as my worst. I meditated more, and more consistently, than I ever have in my life. I was also angry, I lashed out, I stopped practicing at critical (and eventually disastrous) times, and I spent too much time blaming others for problems of my own invention.

All in all, an excellent year.

I’ll admit, I was originally drawn to Buddhism by the fantasy of becoming a perfectly enlightened human being. But being human isn’t about being perfect. It’s about facing your imperfection. It’s looking dead straight into your soul’s headlights and remaining still, when every cellular organism wiggling through your body is screaming at you to jump away. Thanks to Buddhism, I’m slightly less thoroughly terrible at that. With any luck, by the end of 2012, I’ll be slightly less thoroughly terrible than I am now.

I fell down a lot in 2011. But I got back up. Fall. Stand. Rinse. Repeat.

Happy New Year.

Once upon a lease, my family found itself in the financial grinder. An unexpected increase in child support for my first daughter became retroactive, leaving us for an ironic nine months with our sole source of income reduced by one-fourth. I sat down at the end of October and calculated the impact on our expenses. Conclusion: We wouldn’t be able to make our rent come December. We needed either to hold up a bank, or move – immediately.

The move was, of course, a shoestring affair. Even though my mother- and brother-in-law were moving in with us to pool resources, we were beggars, not choosers. But there were certain absolutes. We needed five bedrooms and two bathrooms. We had an upper-limit in terms of rent. Above all, we needed a good landlord – one who wouldn’t blanch (as many did) at inviting four adults, three kids, and a teenager to squat on their property, and who would be good, if not saintly, with repairs.

And so we met Patric – our doomed, drug-dealing landlord.

We thought we had struck renters’ gold. He was an amiable guy a few years my junior, with well-kept curly black hair and a smile that said, “Dude, everything’s negotiable.” The house he owned, at first blush, didn’t seem workable. For one thing, there was an open staircase leading up to the second floor – an obvious hazard to the little ones. Patric immediately promised to build a railing – and build one he did, immediately after we inked the lease. After that, he did what we thought all good landlords should do: he faded into the background, cashing our monthly checks and stepping out of the shadows only when summoned.

We had our suspicions about why Patric was so laid-back. One day I asked Kim, “Don’t you think Patric’s a bit of a…well…”

“Stoner?” she replied.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, totally.”

Naw, I thought, probably not. That’s just a silly stereotype. In the 1920’s, marijuana made you a homicidal maniac; now, it made you an apathetic loser. The stereotype didn’t fit Patric, anyway – he was always active, always tackling the next project. He was just…at ease. Consistently.

The bamboo was harder to justify. Spring came, and the short stalks outside of our kitchen window sprang up over 15 feet tall; by June, they were growing through our deck and splitting the planks. Why anyone would have planted that noxious, barbarian weed there except to camouflage an illegal cash crop was beyond us.

We had no way of knowing who planted it, though. Patric? The former tenants? Or had it always been there? Our neighbors were quick to blame any oddities on the former tenants. We were quarantined from our neighbors’ house to the east by a thicket of blackberry brambles – which our neighbor later told us he planted to separate his kids from the loud partying and lawn filth of the pre-Patric household. Other neighbors confirmed that our abode was a dump before Patric took it over. To them, he was the local Solomon, raising an eyesore and building a palace – and boosting their own property values in the process.

Former tenants, bad. Patric, good. A comforting deduction for all concerned.

Not that it was anything more than a curiosity to us. Growing your own stash is no crime against humanity. The “war on drugs”, to us, was more than a colossal waste of money – it was a harvester of tragedy which, like Prohibition before it, turned a normal human activity into a bloody criminal enterprise. My only concern was leftovers: if someone had planted marijuana on the grounds at some point, who’s to say a plant or two wouldn’t survive a mild Seattle winter? All we needed was a police officer to wander onto our property with some concocted probable cause and spy a pot leaf amidst the bamboo forest; we’d find ourselves swarmed by federales and CPS agents before you could say “reality TV”. It’d make for a great episode of Cops – so long as it happened to some sorry motherfucker in a wife-beater, and not me.

After ransacking the bamboo for signs of stray cannabis stalks, we stopped speculating about what was properly our landlord’s own private business. Until the roof started leaking. Right above our bedroom closet. I had lived in several houses over the years, and had seen some strange malfunctions, but never had I known a roof to spring a leak over somebody’s wardrobe. Patric, as usual, was promptly on the scene. He spent a dog’s age on what Kim and I both thought should have a simple repair; we considered shacking up in a hotel until he could assure us that the roof wouldn’t cave in and kill us in our slumber.

The patch job failed. The roof started leaking again.

And Patric disappeared.

Kim left him a message about the roof. When he didn’t return her call after a week, we knew something foul had occurred. June’s rent check went unredeemed for the month; our sense of dread grew. We withheld July’s check until Patric poked his head out of the rabbit hole – or someone showed up with a damn fine excuse on his behalf.

Someone showed up – but he was just as perplexed as we were. I was on my way home from a business trip when Kim called. Sitting in St. Paul-Minneapolis International, preparing for my flight sipping a “Minneapolis Martini” – which, judging by taste, was four parts vodka and two drops food coloring – I lifted my brain out of its pickling solution when I heard my wife say, “Our landlord is here.”

A sense of relief filled me. We’d prepared for the worst; maybe, I thought, this would turn out shiny-happy. “Patric’s there?”

“Well…no,” she said. “Unless the part of Patric is now being played by a middle-aged Asian man.”

His name was Mark, and he introduced himself to Kim as the owner of our house. This was, to say the least, a mild shock. To be fair, Patric had indicated that he was “finalizing” the purchase of the property. But he framed this as a mere formality. In truth, Patric was in the early stages of a lease/purchase; Mark showed up because his rent check – Patric’s check, our rent minus a modest $50 that Patric tacked on to defray repair costs – never arrived. For seven months, Mark had had no idea that Patric was subletting to our teeming brood. I can only imagine what went through his head when he found us camped out in his house like we had a lease or something.

The upside was that I spent zero time on the ride home thinking about what would happen if the engines failed and my plane went down in the Montana foothills – I was too worried about whether we’d have anywhere to live when I landed. Fortunately, Mark would prove an even more casual landlord than Patric. Within a week, we had a new lease (and this time, we demanded our landlord show us the deed before we signed).

But Patric remained off the radar until mid-July, when June’s rent check finally cleared our account. Kim went on-line and examined the bank’s digital image of the check.

It was Patric’s name. It was not Patric’s handwriting.

Kim called the police in the town where Patric lived to file a missing persons report. Obviously someone had done him wrong and robbed him blind in the process. The detective at the other end of the line let her go on for five minutes before he stated flatly, “I don’t need to file a missing persons report, ma’am.”

“Well, yes, you do,” she insisted. “Didn’t you catch any of that?”

“I don’t need to file a missing persons report, because Patric is dead.”

We knew this in our hearts. Hearing the words, however, was a hammer-blow. We had waited five weeks for the thud of that other shoe, and when we finally heard it, it made us metaphysically nauseous.

The detective wouldn’t answer Kim’s questions about our landlord’s fate. “I just can’t believe it,” she told him, shaking her head. “He was such a nice guy.”

“Yes,” the detective said in his best more-than-meets-the-eye tone. “Patric was a very nice guy.”

When he interrogated Kim about how well we knew him, and whether we knew where to find his woman, our thirst for answers went into overdrive. We fired up a Web browser window to see what we could piece together online. Compared to the cop, the Internet was a loose-lipped stool pigeon; within three minutes, we knew everything we needed to know – and all the anomalies of our house suddenly made sense.

When he wasn’t training to be a landlord, Patric ran a trucking company with his brother. Puget Sound Energy tipped off the authorities that the business’ electrical consumption had suddenly tripled. When the police arrived, they found three semi trailers filled with cannabis plants. (The power was for the heat lamps.) Authorities made no immediate arrests, but told the brothers not to wander too far.

A week later, an Oregon police offer pulled over a motorcyclist on Interstate-5 for driving in excess of 90 mph. As the officer approached, the cyclist drew a pistol. Before the officer could react, Patric was on the ground – knocked off his chopper by the bullet he put in his temple.

We called our bank, which discovered that the rent check was cashed by Patric’s father – doing his best in grief, it would seem, to settle his son’s affairs. I’d love to say that we did the human thing – that we tracked down Patric Sr., commiserated with him, found out who his son really was. The very thought of doing this, at the time, made me want to assume the fetal position. A part of me wanted to cling to the scant memories it possessed of Patric, to keep its conceptions and conclusions unsullied. I was full on reality, and couldn’t stomach another bite.

Mystery solved, there was nothing for us to do except keep the grounds. Our new landlord sent his contractor out to re-patch the roof over the closet, where Patric & Co. had cut two square ventilation holes so that the scent of cannabis didn’t overpower the house. To this day, though, I haven’t managed to take a shovel and a set of clippers to the bamboo (though I may soon, as it’s begun to make threatening gestures toward the children).

The only thing worse than being the target of tragedy, is watching helplessly as Fate conducts a drive-by shooting. A gentle, hard-working, attentive, selfless young man died, haunted by the specter of a stiff federal sentence for a victimless crime. It’s one thing to read about such tales in a paper or on a web site – where they are, though real, tinged with the abstract. When they invade your life like this, they leave a mark that never rubs off.

Some would argue that Patric’s life was in his own hands, and that his death was his own decision. Considering that federal sentencing guidelines could have put him in jail for most of his natural life, this logic is at best myopic. Today, a man named Ron Ridenour awaits federal sentencing in Montana on charges of marijuana trafficking; he faces five to 40 years behind bars. Ridenour lucked out and drew a lenient judge, critical of mandatory sentencing, who will likely give him the minimum. We’ll never know where on the roulette wheel Patric would have landed. Stacked up against the possibility of spending 40 years in prison, death dons an attraction it wouldn’t otherwise hold for a rational man.

There is no addendum to this tale. I have no idea what happened to Patric’s brother. Even the original articles in the local papers have evaporated from the Web’s archives, leaving just a handful of people who can recount the story of a nice guy who carried the label of “drug dealer” to his grave. Every once in a while, when the kids go to bed and the house goes silent, Kim and I will sit in the living room, rum and Cokes in hand, and remember the kind support we received when things got desperate. For us, no matter who claims this place as theirs, this will always be Patric’s house.

They keep calling. I’m at my wit’s end. It’s come to the point that the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention whenever the cell phone rings.

You see, I’m the target of harrassing calls. From…vampires.

How do I know they’re vampires? First, their calls always show up as “Caller ID Unavailable”. That’s a telltale sign: A vampire’s number is never reflected in the caller ID window. Second, I have no will to resist them. I know who’s calling, and I try not to answer, but the siren song of the cell phone bends my will. Third (and this is the creepiest part), they tell me what they are. Before I can say anything more than “hello”, they announce proudly that they’re affiliated with this cult called “The Blood Center”. Their allegiance to the Dark Lord couldn’t be clearer if they had business cards. Fourth, they demand my blood. We’re down to a four-day supply, sir, and we could sure use a fresh steaming pint from those plump veins of yours.

I try to maintain my cool, think up some good excuse. “I’m sorry, but you can’t have any of my blood. I’m…out.”

“You’re…out, sir?”

“Yep, fresh out. Gave my last three pints to some neighbors down the way who practice Santaria.”

“Sir, if you didn’t have any blood…you’d be dead.”

AND WOULDN’T THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY?!? I nearly scream – but common sense returns, and I preserve my composure. “Look, I’m very busy, can’t this wait until next month?”

“There are people who need your blood now, sir. Please, think about them. Think about the children.”

AAAAHH! Now they’re playing the child card, the foul bastards. What, are they going to come for the blood of my kids if I don’t let them tap into my veins? Is there no code of honor amongst these people??

“Well, sir? Can I schedule an appointment for you? We can do it downtown, or at your place of business.”

My mouth goes dry, hands go clammy. I picture a half-dozen black-jacketed punks giving me a quick “love bite” and then leaving me for dead in the middle of the lobby.

“I…ummm…I…No hablo Inglais!” And I hang up.

I’m safe…for now. But they’ll call back again, with their slick voices and veiled threats against the young. So here I sit, preparing my next line of defense – weaving garlic necklaces, fashioning wooden stakes out of the furniture, watching Season 2 of Buffy. Perhaps while I’m at it, I’ll order some holy water from the Vatican, and leave my cell phone to soak in it overnight. That should put an end to those vampire calls in a damn hurry.

(Note: All personal names and corporate identities have been changed – grudgingly – to protect the guilty.)

The offer they mailed us was damn near irresistible. A night in a hotel. By ourselves. Without the children. We hadn’t sipped from that Holy Grail of parenting in years. The cost? Just walk in to JetSetter Resorts, listen to a timeshare sales pitch, and prance out the door with coupon in hand.

Unfortunately, they never told us to expect the Spanish Inquisition.

We made the 30-minute drive one Saturday afternoon from our home in Bellevue, Washington down to Issaquah, a sprawling Seattle-area suburb with tentacles of office parks and strip malls dangling off the body of its historic downtown. Unlike most office park businesses, which prefer to remain cloaked in anonymity, JetSetter advertised its presence with a sporty banner tacked to the top of its one-story rental space. We had seen the company logo before on sponsorship banners for local arts and holiday festivals. It spoke of fun and adventure, but with a dollop of civic awareness. We felt like we were in responsible hands.

Mary Kate met us at the door. She had about 20 years on my 30, and a down-home demeanor that implied she had been knitting her grandson a sweater before we arrived. After coffeeing us up (a ritual demanded by Seattle social mores), she escorted us to a 30-seat presentation room, where five other couples sat waiting for the Big Show. Our fellow cheapskates seemed, like us, equal parts intrigued and tense, like they were mentally fumbling for the best way to say “no” to the nice lady who had served them bad coffee.

The room went dark. The portable TV unit at the front sprang to life. For the next 30 minutes we were regaled with a whirlwind tour of JetSetter’s worldwide properties. The company, we learned, operates a network of timeshares stretching from Oahu to Canberra. As JetSetter timeshare owners, we would accrue a certain number of vacation “credits” per year that we could use at any one of their luxurious properties. Unlike with traditional timeshares, we wouldn’t be locked in to a single location year after year. (”But daaaad, we always go to Honolulu! Can’t we at least fly this year, instead of smuggling ourselves over on the sugar cane boat?”) Great vacations, with great flexibility, at the right price – that was the JetSetter motto.

Apparently, each couple had their own minders. Before any of us had a chance to mingle or so much as share our names, Mary Kate swept us up and escorted us back to her office. Over the next 20 minutes we learned more about Mary Kate’s life than we ever wished to know – from her former job as an office assistant with a petulant boss, to a detailed enumeration of her kids and grandkids. I was surprised she didn’t yank down her pants and show us her “body art”. Instead, she wove bright tales into her dialogue about all the fascinating vacations she and her husband had taken with their JetSetter timeshare.

“So…are you interested?” she asked sweetly.

Kim and I looked at each other. We hadn’t come with the intention of parking major capital on a vacation subscription, but now we were both tempted. The way Mary Kate spun it, the annual cost of the timeshare would come out to less than the cost of a single vacation, even when you factored in air fare, meals and incidentals – and we could use the timeshare multiple times in a single year, depending on how many credits we purchased.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s talk about the cost breakdown.”

And that’s when Mary Kate turned on us, leading us into the lair of her “partner”, Damien. Damien’s gaze was still and soulless, his movements calibrated to inhuman precision. His hair contained enough product to despoil the Alaskan coast line for decades. His sole raison d’etre? To squeeze our bank account number out of our brains. We ogled him as he dispensed with formalities and whipped out a clean sheet of paper on which he calculated the “standard” fees for a JetSetter timeshare on the left-hand side.

“But that,” he said, “is not what I’m offering you right now.” And down the right-hand column, he jotted a lower set of numbers.

I studied both columns. Even the “discounted” price spelled a significant dent in our monthly budget. Kim and I pow-wowed for a few minutes. I turned back to Damien to tell him thanks, we’ll think about it, and I reached for the paper.

Damien slammed his hand down, keeping the figures close by his side. “Actually, this is a one-time only offer. You leave here, and I can’t guarantee these great prices if you come back.”

I looked at him in shock. “So, let me get this straight. You want me to make a commitment to shell out thousands of dollars a year based on a one-hour shakedown?”

“It’s a hell of an investment.”

“I’m sure, but I want some time to think it over, learn more about it.”

“I can tell you everything you need to know,” he scoffed.

I did my level best not to roll my eyes. “Again, I’m sure. But I’d like to do some…independent research. Look some things up online. I don’t make a double-digit purchase on the spot, let alone a four-figure purchase. It’s a principle.”

Damien had no compunction about letting his own eyes roll at that one and droned, “Well, if you have your principles…” He slurred “principles” the way other people might say “ax murderer” or “timeshare salesman”.

My fingers curled up. I was ready to find the nearest mackerel and slap this schmuck into next week. Suddenly, I found my throat stifling a laugh. I had never been ensnared in a Good Cop/Bad Cop routine before, but I had seen them enough times on Law & Order that I could spot one from several leagues off. These weren’t salespeople – they were reincarnated B-movie actors.

After a few more minutes of high-pressure haggling, we found ourselves back in Mary Kate’s lap. She hadn’t changed, but my perception of her had done a 180. I knew from the get-go that she had been sucking up to us the whole time. But at least it had seemed like honest sucking-up, and not part of a carefully scripted tango between the partners of the real estate firm Dewey, Cheatum & Howe. I had little sympathy when she tried to sweet-talk us about her “overenthusiastic” partner.

Overenthusiastic, I thought. What an interesting euphemism for “dickhead”.

Kim took over. My wife had once made her living through sales; she had clearly had her fill of Amateur Hour. “You’re telling me that if we walk out this door, we never get the same deal again? That’s a horrible way to establish a relationship with your customer.”

Mary Kaye smiled wanly. Her voice took on a conspiratorial tone. She was going to give us an even deeper discount and extend the offer until the end of the month, even though she knew that her “partner” might not approve. It was all I could do not to chortle. This woman wasn’t playing just the Good Cop – she was fashioning herself as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. We listened to the abridged version of her life story (peppered with hard sells) for another 15 minutes before she gave up and gave us our certificate for our hotel stay. We were free to leave.

Kim chuckled and shook her head all the way back to Bellevue. “Do you think they switch-hit? Like every other customer she gets to be the dominatrix and he gets to be the submissive?”

“Honey,” I replied, “that’s not really the image I want in my head.”

Later at home, I looked over the provisions and exceptions for our free offer: we had our choice of four JetSetter properties on four specific Saturdays prior to Veterans Day, after which the offer was null and void. A funny feeling told me that we’d spend half of our “vacation” strapped to chairs with toothpicks propping up our eyelids, watching resort videos until we ralphed.

We ripped up the voucher and instead invested several hundred dollars in camping gear. We broke it in with a three-day trip to Blaine, a sleepy northern Washington town near the ocean. On our way to a family amusement park a few miles from the shore, we took a long road around Birch Bay. Its shores were clogged with seaweed and rotting fish. Across the street from the bay’s main beachfront was a JetSetter “resort”: a ramshackle two-story motel that was one low-rent prostitute away from a police raid.

I reminded myself that this was northern Washington, not Oahu or Cabo San Luca. Still, I couldn’t resist a feeling of smug self-satisfaction for being such a principled son of a bitch.

In The Get Healthy, Go Vegan Cookbook, Dr. Neal Barnard and co-author Robyn Webb offer 125 recipes, many of which are dirt simple to prepare. Take, for example, Black Bean and Corn Salad with Lime, which is literally a stir-together-and-chow-down dish. Even Udon Noodle Salad (pictured here) takes minimal prep: boil the noodles, cut the veggies, toss together the sauce, and enjoy.

I haven’t tried every recipe in here, but I’ve tried enough to be impressed. Some of the recipes have a longer prep time, but many are fast and simple. All of the recipes rely exclusively on whole foods. And few of the recipes I’ve seen use exotic or hard-to-find ingredients. If you’re looking for a no-nonsense vegan cookbook, this is the object of your desire.

Note: I’ve heard that Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s new book, Appetite for Reduction, is also amazing. Most of the recipes in that book take 30 minutes or less to fix. Hopefully I can snag a copy soon, and give it a test drive.

Note 2: Dr. Barnard is the head of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a non-profit research group that advocates a plant-based diet. Go give ‘em cash.

My son received the Marvel Encyclopedia for Christmas. It’s awesome.

But the back cover…wow. The back cover includes this hilarious depiction of Thor attempting to bash his Brother Loki with Mjölnir, while Loki throws up his hands as if to shout, “No, brother! Not my face! Can’t you see that I’M TOO FABULOUS TO DIE?!?”

This bit of hilarity aside, you should get the Encyclopedia if you’re a comics fan. It’s a nice cheat sheet to the Marvel-verse, and the illustrations are beautiful. Plus? It’s only $23 on Amazon.