December 2011
1 post
10 tags
Merry Xmas / Happy Holidays
What’s a Christmas Day like for a vegan? Well, I ended up opening my presents before going to bed on Christmas Eve. I was overjoyed at receiving lots of great vegan items… everything from a vegan slogan T-shirt to an animal rights cotton carrier, vegan chocolate bars, some Lush bodycare and an Animal Aid mug. I think I got the most vegan related items than I’ve ever had – which is great, as I...
Dec 26th
6 notes
October 2011
2 posts
5 tags
Red Kite
  Today I did a day of volunteering at Red Kite Health Foods in Bromsgrove. Since Lisa, owner of Red Kite, is a friend on Facebook I had the idea to email her recently to ask if I could go in and do some voluntary work. I wanted to gain a bit of experience working in a shop since I’ve never worked in one before. Lisa said yes so we arranged that I’d go in today. I got home a few hours ago after...
Oct 22nd
20 notes
10 tags
Forks Over Knives
Want cancer, diabetes, heart disease? Then eat meat and dairy! Forks Over Knives is a documentary now available to buy on DVD that shows how eating a plant based diet can cure diseases. It can reverse the effects that eating meat and dairy can cause, it can stop you having to take pills on a daily basis. Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn have both been inspired by the research...
Oct 7th
30 notes
September 2011
1 post
6 tags
Help: Revitalise My Skin
Works With Water is a UK company that have produced a range of food supplements containing ingredients that have been scientifically proven to improve the human body. The products all come under the ‘help:’ name with one of the newest being ‘help: revitalise my skin’, a gel supplement that contains CoEnzyme Q10 and Aloe Vera which aid skin regeneration. One box of...
Sep 30th
48 notes
August 2011
4 posts
4 tags
History Of Modern: Help Hillside! →
historyofmodern: Hillside Animal Sanctuary recently opened a Charity Shop in Sheringham, Norfolk to help raise funds to feed almost 2000 rescued animals in their care. On Saturday, when volunteer, Pippa, a 70 year old disabled pensioner was serving, heartless thieves robbed the shop. While one thief…
Aug 30th
6 notes
10 tags
Juicing, Rebooting & Raw Burgers
After my last blog entry last Monday when I’d been inspired from watching ‘Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead’ I decided to go on a sort of juice diet for 5 days. I say ‘sort of’ because I made a few compromises. Due to always having a lack of sleep from Sunday - Thursday (I usually get 3 hours max sleep on Sunday nights which then screws me up for the rest of the week) I...
Aug 25th
1 note
8 tags
Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead
Most of us, sadly, probably know someone who is fat, sick and/or nearly dead. Sometimes it’s ourselves. Other times it’s someone we love. Either way, it’s not good. However, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead is here like Clark Kent in his Superman outfit to save the day. Or a few days. Or years. This DVD/documentary is for anyone who needs to get a little healthier. Maybe someone who needs to lose a...
Aug 15th
36 notes
Bake The Difference
On July 30th I flew to Lisbon, Portugal for the first time. A couple of days later I visited an awesome vegan bakery in the city. Called Bake The Difference, the bakery only opened in May 2011. It deserves to be a big success as the food is great and the prices are good. My non-veggie friend from Germany came with me and we both opted for a toasted sandwich. I had a cheese, tomato & oregano...
Aug 2nd
July 2011
2 posts
9 tags
Barcelona Cat Bar
I’ve just got back from a quick trip to Barcelona. I went there for a concert, as you do. Of course I printed out a list of vegan/veggie places from Happycow before I went and also a map of the vicinity of our hotel with a bunch of them marked out. It turns out that there are quite a lot of vegetarian restaurants in Barcelona - and also a handful of vegan places. As my friend likes a drink...
Jul 28th
6 tags
Pizza Watch
I feel like I ought to do a dedicated pizza blog since I love pizza so much and it’s all I want to eat when I go out (given the option). I’ve just been away for a week and a half at a bunch of Bon Jovi shows. In Bristol I went to two different places that did pizza. First on the list was Pizza Express. Obviously I’d heard that Pizza Express does pizza that’s suitable for...
Jul 2nd
June 2011
1 post
7 tags
Pizza
Who could live off pizza? I could. I swear, best food ever. I just went to Germany at the weekend for a couple of concerts. Saturday was our day off. We had a few hours in Dresden before flying to Munich. I had originally wanted to visit a veggie restaurant in Dresden but my friend wanted a walk around the Alt Stadt so I said how about we start there and maybe then head to the veggie restaurant....
Jun 14th
4 notes
May 2011
2 posts
4 tags
SHAC Benefit Single
London based rock band Boy Of The Afterthought fronted by vegan Aaron John are releasing a benefit single called Satellites giving proceeds to SHAC. The single will be available on download from 23rd May via Amazon, Itunes, Play.com etc. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Satellites-Shac-Benefit-Single/dp/B004ZIXI1G/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1305219528&sr=8-6...
May 15th
1 tag
Home on the Range
Home on the Range Forthcoming CD to Benefit Farm Animal Sanctuaries Featuring Moby, Howard Jones, Nellie McKay, Matisyahu Currently in the works and due for a September release, Home on the Range (http://planetcdnyc.com/homeontherange.html) is a CD compilation presented by the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization Compassionate Farming Education Initiative (CFEI) (http://compassionatefarming.org) to...
May 12th
April 2011
1 post
3 tags
The Bland National
If nothing else, sometimes something good comes out of something bad. Saturday was the horrid Grand National - the yearly televised UK horse race which attracts lots of betting and horses dying. There are races leading up to this one, and one horse was killed before Saturday’s event even took place. Then on the day, two more horses died with the jockey of the winning horse later being...
Apr 11th
March 2011
3 posts
1 tag
The Patrick Miracle
Every evening, right about this time (or maybe a little earlier… damn, time flies too fast), over the last week or two I’ve caught up with updates from The Patrick Miracle. If you don’t know what The Patrick Miracle is - basically it’s a facebook page for a dog that was starved until he was virtually a bag of bones - and then dumped in a chute and thrown out in the trash. ...
Mar 28th
3 tags
Mar 24th
3 tags
Alicia Silverstone Book Tour/Signings
Alicia Silverstone is doing a mini tour for the paperback edition of her book, The Kind Diet. As well as being on The Doctors, on US TV, she will also be doing the following book signings in California: Tuesday, March 15 – 7:15 PM Barnes & Noble at The Grove 189 The Grove Drive Los Angeles, CA   Wednesday, March 16 – 6:45 PM Vroman’s Bookstore 695 East Colorado Blvd. Pasadena, CA   Tuesday,...
Mar 13th
February 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Your Food Diary
I’ve added a new page to SaveAScream.com entitled ‘Your Food Diary’. I’d like vegans to send me a weekend diary of the food they eat. Check http://www.saveascream.com/yourfooddiary.htm for my own example (if you want to include Friday too to make it a bit longer, feel free). I’d love as many people as possible to send in their food diary. If possible, lay it out like...
Feb 21st
1 note
Save A Scream Wristbands in the Paper!
My local Redditch newspaper, the Advertiser, gave my Save A Scream wristbands a little mention in this week’s newspaper. Thanks Redditch Advertiser!
Feb 11th
Customs Charges
Ahh, today I got my order from the Animal Rescue Site. Remember I recommended them on the Recommendation page the other week? The items I bought are great. The only bummer is that I ended up having to pay a £12.99 customs charge to get them! Gah. Apparently commercial items over £18 incure a VAT charge. The charge was £4.99 - with Royal Mail then bulking it up to £12.99 for their ‘handling...
Feb 11th
January 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Nocruelcosmetics.org
Did everyone sign www.nocruelcosmetics.org already? Nocruelcosmetics.org is a new website with a petition by the BUAV/ECEAE that was launched on January 19th, 2011. Although animal testing for cosmetics was banned in the EU in 2009, three types of animal tests carried out in non-EU countries for cosmetics sold in Europe was allowed until 2013. Now, some of the cosmetics industry want to delay this...
Jan 23rd
Happy New Year
I had a nice email today. Zoe wrote (amongst other things); ‘Thanks for creating such a cool website. I’ve been a vegetarian for some time, and am taking steps to become vegan. It’s so good to know there are so many people out there making a difference. Thanks again.’ Aw, thank YOU Zoe! It’s awesome to have a nice email like that. It reminded me to post on here and...
Jan 6th
December 2010
1 post
2 tags
Vegan Goodness from Goodness Direct
Go to Goodness Direct by clicking the below link and putting in the voucher code of 32233YTV and you can get £10 off when you spend £35 or more between now and February 2011. Goodness Direct is an online store that has a great vegan section, and sells vegan frozen food, chilled food, groceries, body care, household products and much more. Whether you want vegan sausages, burgers, bacon, cheese,...
Dec 10th
November 2010
4 posts
3 tags
Veg*n Artists Wanted For Compilation CD
Kneel of New York band The Dead Stars On Hollywood is producing a compilation CD to benefit Farmsanctuary.org of vegan/vegetarian bands/artists. It will include The Dead Stars On Hollywood, Moby and others. Kneel aims to include well known or on the verge bands. If you are a vegan/vegetarian artist or band and are interested in being a part of the CD, email us at editor@saveascream.com and...
Nov 15th
7 tags
Nottingham Alley Cafe Bar
I had some last minute inspiration for a gig yesterday. When I was in Madrid last weekend it meant that I missed Less Than Jake playing Birmingham. I LOVE Less Than Jake. Their shows are always super-fun and their music is great (on top of that, Zebrahead were supporting who are also a great band). So when a fellow photographer mentioned that she was going to photograph them again in Nottingham on...
Nov 14th
2 tags
Student Protests
I’m reading about the Student protests that took place in London yesterday regarding raising tuition fees. So I hear there was a bit of violence. This makes me think about the animal rights protests that I have been on. Granted, the size of those are a lot smaller, but I’ve never witnessed any violence in any of the protests I’ve been on. People have this perception that animal...
Nov 11th
9 tags
Madrid
It’s been a month since my last entry. Busy busy busy. I seem to be overloaded with work. Well, by work I mean zine work… not real work. I don’t class zine work as real work even though it’s what I put most of my time and effort into. This past weekend I went to Madrid though, and since while I was there I managed to go to a couple of veggie places, I thought I’d...
Nov 10th
October 2010
1 post
4 tags
Mayday Parade
I interviewed Derek Sanders of Mayday Parade on Thursday for Black Velvet. After the interview I was about to take a couple of pix of him and put my tape recorders away (yep, I still use tape recorders!) and he noticed my ‘vegan’ badge on my backpack. “Are you vegan?” he asked. Turns out Derek is vegetarian and his mother is vegan. His bandmate Alex Garcia is also veggie....
Oct 4th
September 2010
1 post
9 tags
Wristbands!
If you’re a frequent visitor to the site or are on our facebook/myspace/twitter friends list you’ll know that Save A Scream just got some Save A Scream wristbands. I love them. I think they are awesome. They are red and black and match the website! Hehe. They also say SAVE A SCREAM  AGAINST ALL ANIMAL CRUELTY in embossed white text around them. I have not taken mine off since I got...
Sep 3rd
August 2010
2 posts
Put to sleep
I think the government ought to put money into animal rescue homes like it does into job seeker’s allowance. I read today about a dog that needs a home and will be put to sleep in two days if they don’t find him a home. A friend suggested taking him to DogsTrust - but I was told DogsTrust have a waiting list of months for dogs in need of homes. :-( If people were put to sleep when...
Aug 18th
6 tags
Chicago Vegan Pizza
I was in Chicago last week for a bunch of gigs. Unfortunately I had so many gigs that I didn’t have too much time to visit veg*n eateries (good job I packed a ton of crisps in my suitcase). But I did make time for The Chicago Diner and Karyn’s On Green. Both were great in their own way. As I didn’t get to visit many diners, I can’t really write a big article yet on...
Aug 5th
July 2010
1 post
3 tags
Baby Bird
Anyone seen any baby birds or any other young animals in their gardens or just around, lately? There’s a baby bird in my back garden. I saw an empty half of a shell the other week, and over the last couple of weeks have seen a baby bird around. He’s growning up fast. On Friday he tried to fly up to the top of the fence to his mom but he couldn’t make it and hit the fence half...
Jul 10th
June 2010
3 posts
3 tags
Jun 30th
10 tags
Rock Memorabilia to help Animal Sanctuary
Rock musicians such as Steve Vai, Ozzy Osbourne, John 5, Paul Gilbert, Marky Ramone & Billy Sheehan have donated instruments, stage clothes and theatrical props to help Fur & Feather Animal Sanctuary. The sanctuary moves closer to breaking ground for the first fully solar and wind-powered, no-kill animal sanctuary. The sanctuary will also provide the community with a low-cost animal...
Jun 16th
3 tags
Dancing Dog
Am I the only one not enraptured about a dancing dog apparently getting to the final (at the time of writing) of Britain’s Got Talent. I’m sure the owner is awesome - I’ve read the dog has an organic raw food diet, and she was rescued from being put down… but shouldn’t Britain’s Got Talent be for humans? I mean, shall I get some spiders together and make them do...
Jun 4th
May 2010
1 post
6 tags
Legends
Bless the mighty Slash! He put a big smile on our faces last night when he twittered words of support for friend Brian May’s ‘Save me’ campaign. Brian May of Queen has started Save Me - see www.Save-Me.org.uk to show the government that the people of the UK do not want a repeal of the foxhunting ban. Slash twittered (this also is linked to his facebook page so appear there)...
May 14th
April 2010
2 posts
2 tags
Not So Fabulous This Week
So the general election is coming up. Who are you voting for? If today’s ‘Fabulous’ Magazine (the News Of The World’s magazine) is anything to go by, apparently you only have 3 choices - the Conservatives, Labour or Liberal Democrats. Hello? What happened to the Green party? We won’t mention the BNP. But what about the Independence party too? ‘Fabulous’...
Apr 25th
5 tags
Choo On This
What makes a designer innovative? Jimmy Choo are apparently one of the best known shoe brands in the world (although to be honest if I had to list brands of shoes I would never have thought of them). I noticed today that they have a new collection of trainers on sale – although upon reading what they’re made of I almost wanted to throw up. Top of the collection is apparently some purple sneakers...
Apr 21st
March 2010
4 posts
3 tags
A Little Compliment Goes A Long Way (In Fact, All...
Have you noticed that we spend a lot of time grumbling? Or maybe that’s just me! You know what I mean… we only ever contact customer services when we want to complain. Well, the other week when I got back from Hawaii I decided to email Continental Airlines to tell them how awesome the vegan ‘sandwich’ was. I say ‘sandwich’ as it was like a veggie burger - they...
Mar 17th
3 tags
I Saved A Live
Am I the only who gets stupidly happy when you know you’ve saved a fly’s life? Has anyone else saved a fly? I’ve done it a number of times. Once in a while one of those really tiny, mini flies ends up in my house. I don’t know how. They just appear. Maybe once a year or something. So today I just found 2010’s fly. I went into the kitchen for a drink and spotted what...
Mar 12th
10 tags
Protest With The Heroes
I’ve been to Santa Monica a couple of times. Only briefly while visiting LA. One place thankfully that I didn’t go to when I was there was The Hump Restaurant. Apparently they are now serving Whale meat. Gross. NY Times revealed a few days ago that the restaurant is serving this illegal meat to diners. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/us/09sushi.html So it’s nice to hear that...
Mar 11th
10 tags
Why have wings if you can’t fly?
One thing that bugged me when I stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Hawaii the other week (I stayed at the awesome Aqua Waikiki Wave hotel the first night – a cheaper but, in my opinion, way better hotel. The event I went over for was in the Hyatt Regency, though – so had to switch on the 10th), was the fact that there were parrots in cages dotted around the hotel. As soon as I saw them I felt sad. As...
Mar 2nd
January 2010
3 posts
8 tags
Bury Cadbury
I’m reading Richard Bacon’s column in The Sun at the moment. He has a small piece about how Kraft are buying Cadbury and how in his opinion American chocolate tastes bad. He seems terrified at the prospect of Cadbury being taken over. It’s almost as if he thinks Cadbury is the only UK chocolate in the whole of the country… and that if it changes in any way, omgzzz, how will...
Jan 22nd
4 tags
Are men the weaker sex?
There’s a new series of ‘Kill It, Cook It, Eat It’ on TV this week. I was actually flicking through the channels a couple of nights ago and noticed it but thought it was a repeat of the programme I’d watched last year, or the year before… so I didn’t stop to watch. Last night a (meat-eating) friend came on MSN and asked ‘Are you watching BBCthree?’ I...
Jan 7th
4 tags
A World Inside A World
Wasting time flicking through a free supermarket magazine. Almost every page either is trying to sell meat or has a recipe featuring meat. It’s like all they have to sell is meat. I started reading ‘Diet For A Dead Planet’ around Xmas. I only actually read one section as I had read a book the night before and had reviewed 4 other books for Black Velvet, so was all read-out, but...
Jan 6th
December 2009
1 post
1 tag
SocialVibe
I’ve just joined SocialVibe.com. Heard of the site ages ago but never actually got around to checking it out - until today when Goldfinger posted a link about it. I clicked their link and saw that Goldfinger were supporting Action For Animals. Of course I then had to do the same! So I finally signed up. If you’re on SocialVibe already, add http://www.socialvibe.com/blackvelvetmagazine...
Dec 9th
November 2009
3 posts
5 tags
Nov 26th
And My Name's Not Even Mary
I got a message this morning from a random male on a website. In amongst some other things he wrote ‘You scare the livin sh*t out of blokes with all that animal rights stuff.’ Although he meant it in a light-hearted way (he added at the bottom that he hoped his email made me smile), it got me thinking. Why does a female into animal rights scare a guy? And in reality, us people into animal rights...
Nov 25th
2 tags
Horny
What’s this about a rhino’s horn being worth thousands - thus rhinos are being killed in South Africa? That begs my usual question; why is it ok to do this to an animal and not a human? A kilo of rhino horn is now apparently worth £36,300. So they kill a rhino to get that. I’m sure there are lots of wealthy celebs worth a lot more than £36,300. No-one kills them, do they? If a...
Nov 21st
October 2009
3 posts
2 tags
I like free T-shirts
The awesome people at peta2 sent me a couple of free T-shirts the other day. I took a photo of me in one on Saturday. I actually like this pic. I usually take 100 photos and they all suck. Same happened this time as usual, but I liked this one. Pulin of peta2 is actually featured in the next issue of Black Velvet - issue 62 - out next week. I got him to answer the questions in the ‘Me...
Oct 20th