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Amazon Book Description

«She dreamed her father was the hero in a war between meat-lovers and vegans. He was the vegan
hero, of course. He was the one who figured out how to fight without hurting the enemy. The way it was done was so top secret he couldn’t tell it to his family. He had to conceal his identity. Some said it was magic. Some said he got the idea from aliens. He said he dreamed the whole solution up one night and remembered the details.»

Excerpts

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

Water retention, compulsive bathing, surliness, seasonal affect, treason, a tendency to apologize, overspend, hear voices, spread rumors, experience duplicity, rapid cycling, dry heaves, thirst, hoarding, fugue state, altruism, loneliness, beatitude, wrist cutting, sophistry, sudden weight gain, sudden weight loss.

On the other hand, if the chlorophyll tattoo worked you could sell your stove; you’d never have to cook. Factories could remake them into tanning booths. People might need to jumpstart their chlorophyll on cloudy days or if they traveled to a polar zone in winter.           

The Practice of Eating Pork

isn’t fading as fast as some people would like. They say the pigs bring it on themselves. They’re supposed to be intelligent but look at the way they live. They’re like crazy people. They roll around in filth and eat garbage. They never go to school. They don’t cover up when they sneeze and they smell. How can that be intelligent? And how can they be so disgusting and taste so good?

Well, the argument comes from the other direction that maybe pigs wouldn’t be so filthy if they ran around in the wild. And it’s true –wild hogs don’t roll around in feces all day. And maybe they don’t eat garbage. But they make us want to kill them even more: They sneak up on us in the woods. And it’s pretty sure they eat people once in a while.

So here we are, trying to be nice and make up for all the centuries of eating them and this is the thanks we get: They don’t like us. It’s like they want to start a war. It’s like Animal Farm, only they can’t talk yet. They don’t have an army either, they just run around in the woods individually or in small groups eating fruits and berries until they happen upon some poor slob hunting wild mushrooms and gore him with their tusks.

I’m beginning to think that pigs aren’t cut out for freedom. We ought to give them life sentences and keep them from reproducing. Think about it. We stopped eating them and everything. There’s no gratitude. No justice. It isn’t fair.

Mournful Tunes for Mournful Thoughts  

This is the mosquito net. Would you like to see the worker who made it? How about the manager? Come to the headache zone and see the cancer cells. Most of their causes are banned and out of stock, but there’s a gut-level way you can sit in the sun and absorb something similar. What do you say? The buds are big and red. Almost edible. We haven’t seen a dandelion yet. And if the trees die? The know-it-all trees? They don’t make decisions but they suck you in with post-mortems. They spray paint doves’ eggs. Their science knows no limits. Look, if the illness of the moment strikes you, let it come. Let it be known as immersion therapy. And if you still haven’t heard back from your doctor, wait. It’s not what we’re good at and we seldom give ourselves permission –or pay attention while someone else is doing it. We’d rather use our teeth. And a supplemental chainsaw. We might keep talking when we know enough to stop.
© Gerald Yelle

Praise for «Evolution for the Hell of It»

In Evolution for the Hell of It, Gerald Yelle builds a world just barely removed from our own, where factory-basement experiments, bake-sale biotech, and tattoo-based photosynthesis collide with late capitalism’s filthiest instincts. This is Yelle’s second book with Alien Buddha Press, following The Bored, released earlier in 2025, and it’s even sharper, darker, and more irreverent.

Yelle has worked in restaurants, factories, schools, and offices, and it shows. His stories are saturated with the grit, absurdity, and hard-won wit of lived experience. The volunteers in these stories take chlorophyll injections for twenty dollars they’ll never see. They barter sex and pain meds in the ruins of Menlo Park and Newark. And yet, through the madness and mishaps, something grows, an anarchic green tendril of resistance, possibility, and bleak laughter.

© Gerald Yelle

Enjoy an Interview HERE.

Paperback

Author Biography

Gerald Yelle earned a BA and MFA from the University of Massachusetts. He has worked in restaurants, factories, schools and offices. In addition to the books listed above, he has published widely in journals both online and in print. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.