as a vegetarian horsemouth is a bit of a junk food vegetarian (when he was a vegan he was a junk food vegan, when he was a meat-eater...). horsemouth is not a big foodie - he just eats to prevent death. when asked why he went vegetarian he usually replies 'peer group pressure' (which is pretty much the truth).
he's been reading j.m. coetzee's the lives of animals - this is less about animal rights than about reason - reason is the thing humans possess and animals don't (or possess less of it), it becomes the way we alibi our exploitation of them (they lack reason, they are just machines, we can do to them what we like) - kafka's report to an academy may derive from kohler's investigation of reason in apes (the mentality of apes) which could also be viewed as a training of them in problem solving, a training in a narrow instrumental reason, a remaking of them in the image of the scientific method.
interestingly there is a discussion of swift's intelligent horses (the houyhnhnms) - here because they are more rational than humanity they are in fact almost gods. this taps into the notion that horses are more noble than mankind (as adorno reports).
horsemouth reports that he feels no closer to animals because of his diet - indeed he may be further away.
this is stuff horsemouth hasn't thought about in a long time - being vegetarian has become so easy it has become invisible.
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