Memnoch

Linkie:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/mis...tml?mode=reply
Food Stories
By Warren Ellis

So I'm reading this argument against GM crops over here in Little Britain, and some granola-crunching hippie who probably lives on rectum-paralysing medication to stop them constantly fountaining a stream of seed-riddled diarrhoea makes what they think is a point. Now, this person's brain is clouded by malnutrition and leaf mould, so maybe I should cut them some slack. But, frankly, these branch-gnawing Archaic Revival fuckwits have a life expectancy of about forty-five, they don't have to live through the world they're trying to visit upon the rest of us, and they should be swatted like the mayflies in bicycle clips they are.

So this thing says, "Don't we want our food to have stories?"

First off, someone who examines their own turds for anything has no place talking to me about food. Let's make that clear. People who make things out of wicker and weave their own underwear out of dog fur dyed with cabbage juice do not have a vote here.

Secondly, broccoli should not arrive at my house with a tag on its stem telling me that the drunken farmer that raised it slaps his kids around and shits on his crops at midnight to make it grow big and strong. "Organically enriched" does not mean eating three curries and spraying them over your turnips.

In my youth, I knew a market gardener. Tom was an epic piss artist who could frequently be found unconscious on the soil, sweating beer into the marrows. Is that what you want to know when you're making salad? Tom had a thing about crows. He'd leave big saucers of whiskey out for them. They'd drink it and pass out. He'd put the unconscious crows in a big brown sack and disappear off for parts unknown. Are these the stories you want to accompany your dinner? Would this soothe you? The provider of your lettuce would drug the local wildlife and scuttle off into the woods under cover of darkness to use them as condoms in his continuing efforts to locate the mystery big cats that stalk the Essex countryside and fuck them to death. Split crows littering the country pathways, reeking of Watney's Pale Ale.

I don't want my food to have stories because I know where it comes from. I avoided the local pizza place for years because I knew the junkie cooks were pissing in the pizza mix. They'd be awake for three days on speed and E at some rave held in a ditch off the M25 orbital motorway, come into work and dispense their smoking flourescent urine into the mixing bowl knowing full well that within the week twelve people would be at the doctors complaining of the shakes and strangely depleted spinal fluid.

I have had sex on top of crop fields. Did you need to know that? No. "These potatoes were gently massaged by an 18-year-old girl's naked backside, and then kicked out of the soil by a 19-year-old boy's scrabbling feet when the farmer came for them with his bloody great shotgun." Let's see that on a retail information card in your local supermarket.

I've got a food with a story for you. Soylent fucking Green. It's got a story, a soundtrack and Charlton fucking Heston. Soylent Green is made out of people, and thank Christ for that because I bastard hate lentils. All the books say that people taste like pork.

Yeah, that's the story I want to hear. Organically-reared hippie, humanely slaughtered while making wicker basket. Presented to you freshly washed of all weak-minded bullshit intended to annoy the living fuck out of fragile writers first thing on a Thursday morning.

This has been a public service announcement on behalf of actual humans.



(C) Warren Ellis 2004




So there you have it. I find this article/editorial to be incredibly inspiring. I'm so sick of this kind of far-far-left environmental demagogue that insists that I eat hummus and pita bread and leave the poor defenseless animals alone. As Denis Leary once put it, "I represent Angry, Gun-Toting, Meat-Eating people." These people insist that eating meat is wrong, not to mention that it is "unhealthy." My response: if eating meat is wrong and it makes me unhealthy, then you won't have to worry about me being around very long to continue consumption, will you? I guess my "karma" will just come around and bite me in the ass in the end, won't it? That's fine with me. Random fact: I'm lactose intolerant. Doesn't stop me from drinking milk. Hurts like a bitch afterwards, but I don't care, because I love the taste and I think it's worth it. My question to these people is who the hell do you think you are to tell me what I may or may not eat, what I should or should not eat? I am a mentally capable man, am I not? Am I not able to gauge the pros and cons of each situation presented to me? What is with all these bullshit "We have to protect the general populace from itself" laws and guidelines? I know perfectly well what I'm doing to myself when I suck down a mouthful of alcohol, what I'm doing to myself when have a puff of tobacco. I'm not stupid. As long as what I'm doing isn't hurting you as a person, what beef (no pun intended) do you have with me? So you like animals, great, good for you. I do, too. I don't visit the zoo and look at Zebras and think to myself "Damn, that'd make a tasty meal!" Nor do I look at my beef and say "This meat was a living thing once. I should thank the Menstruating Pregnant Mother Earth Goddess of All That is Good and Feminine for allowing me to have one of her beautiful creatures!" Nor do I think "Thank you Jesus for blessing this animal, because we all know how much control you exercise over my digestive system on a daily basis!"

Anyway, enough rambling. I guess I post this because I just want to make sure I'm not the only sane, rational person here. Am I alone in being happy to just slap some A-1 sauce on my steak and leave it at that? What the hell is going on?!

__________________
Doing my best not to end up like Kathleen Chang.