A "Sno Ball's" Chance in Hell...
I think this whole 'War on Terror' thing is a big misunderstanding. We all know our president is so fiscally right wing that he doesn't even believe in syntax. His malapropisms and non sequiturs could support an entire publishing genre. Hell, they do support an entire publishing genre.
Rather than terror I think he has declared war on terroir, as in Cusine du Terroir, that school of French cooking which pays special attention to local ingredients and the quality of the earth in which they were cultivated. This would seem to explain why 'French fries' were renamed 'freedom fries' in the run up to the Iraq war, which the president never fails to remind us, is 'the central front in the War on Terroir.'
Though this country has more arable land than any other and is an agricultural superpower, our cusine decidedly eschews the organic and wholesome. Our official national phallic phood is the hotdog, which despite its indeterminable chemical composition, does not stop Americans from consuming 837 million packages a year. Other quintessentially American food-like substances just off the top of the head: TV dinners, Spam, and Mountain Dew.
Our obession with industrially processed consumables meets with our barely repressed Puritanical sexuality in the entire line of Hostess products. Bearing names like 'Ho-Hos,' 'Ding-dongs' and 'Twinkies,' these little atomic confections also bear the mark of our sublimated sex drives. My orientation was a done deal at the age of five when I ate a pair of hot pink Hostess Sno Balls. They were pink! topped with coconut! and called Sno Balls for Chrissakes! I never had a chance.
The president's meticulously cultivated unpretentiousness, which plays so well in the Red States, explains perfectly his hostility to certain French culinary movements. While the French put a premium on authentic, natural ingredients, Republicans are trying to end the FDA's practice of labeling food. No, really. The best defense in the War on Terroir is a good offense. We fight arugula abroad, so we don't have to eat it at home.
I guess this is all on my mind because I have been asked to pick out the turkey for this year's Thanksgiving, with a mandate to buy a free-range, grass-fed bird only. I have no problem slaughtering and eating animals, but at the very least the animal should have a comfortable life, living as close to a nature as possible. This contrasted with production-line turkeys which suffer the indignity of never seeing daylight, are pumped so full of hormones they're rendered immobile, sitting in their own feces, merely living to eat--and eat feed made from their dead turkey-relatives. Happy Thanksgiving!
Rather than terror I think he has declared war on terroir, as in Cusine du Terroir, that school of French cooking which pays special attention to local ingredients and the quality of the earth in which they were cultivated. This would seem to explain why 'French fries' were renamed 'freedom fries' in the run up to the Iraq war, which the president never fails to remind us, is 'the central front in the War on Terroir.'
Though this country has more arable land than any other and is an agricultural superpower, our cusine decidedly eschews the organic and wholesome. Our official national phallic phood is the hotdog, which despite its indeterminable chemical composition, does not stop Americans from consuming 837 million packages a year. Other quintessentially American food-like substances just off the top of the head: TV dinners, Spam, and Mountain Dew.
Our obession with industrially processed consumables meets with our barely repressed Puritanical sexuality in the entire line of Hostess products. Bearing names like 'Ho-Hos,' 'Ding-dongs' and 'Twinkies,' these little atomic confections also bear the mark of our sublimated sex drives. My orientation was a done deal at the age of five when I ate a pair of hot pink Hostess Sno Balls. They were pink! topped with coconut! and called Sno Balls for Chrissakes! I never had a chance.
The president's meticulously cultivated unpretentiousness, which plays so well in the Red States, explains perfectly his hostility to certain French culinary movements. While the French put a premium on authentic, natural ingredients, Republicans are trying to end the FDA's practice of labeling food. No, really. The best defense in the War on Terroir is a good offense. We fight arugula abroad, so we don't have to eat it at home.
I guess this is all on my mind because I have been asked to pick out the turkey for this year's Thanksgiving, with a mandate to buy a free-range, grass-fed bird only. I have no problem slaughtering and eating animals, but at the very least the animal should have a comfortable life, living as close to a nature as possible. This contrasted with production-line turkeys which suffer the indignity of never seeing daylight, are pumped so full of hormones they're rendered immobile, sitting in their own feces, merely living to eat--and eat feed made from their dead turkey-relatives. Happy Thanksgiving!
* * *
I happened across a protest while downtown today. The speakers' emotions got the better of them and it seemed less a protest against Prop 2, than a protest against correct grammar. There was one good speech though--by an octogenarian Episcopal pastor who was active in the Freedom Rides of the 1950s. He was a small, trembling man, but a pillar of real 'moral values.' He closed by saying
I had a stroke last year that disabled my entire
left side. But my leftist politics and religion are still intact!
posted by Grant @ 1:25 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home