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Athens, Ohio, United States
"Art and love are the same thing. It's the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you."

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Synthetic Dog Steak..and Other Thoughts

I am borrowing the "Jumbled Thoughts" concept of my Groundhog's Day blog. I am doing this because well, I enjoyed it and after my Sabbath Day off (Tuesday is Alec Day), I am bursting with lots to say!

- I was thinking about lots of things the other night (always a dangerous thing when I'm involved) and for some reason I began to think about socially acceptable foods. I think it is because I have been obsessed with pork lately. If I wasn't a man, I would think I was having bizarre pregnancy cravings. Anyway, that got me thinking about pigs and how I love to tear into those poor little swine's flesh. People (albeit strange people) keep pigs as pets and here I am salivating over their cooked skin, muscle and fat. I then thought about how some folks in the far East dine on dog meat and horse meat, something that all Westerners find repugnant and reprehensible.

Most people would marvel at the hypocrisy of man kind and become a vegetarian. But I am not most people. Instead I began to wonder why no one has ever come up with synthetic dog meat. Think about it: no one wants to eat a dog; they're cute and fluffy and happy. But you can't tell me that you aren't curious as to what a dog, cat or horse tastes like. My best guess is that they all taste like chicken but how can I know for sure? Well, I damn well WANT to know for sure. I would drop down $10 bucks in a heartbeat for a big ol' slab of synthetic tofu dog steak. We could probably save dozens of dogs' lives in Indonesia and Mongolia as well! In a world where Jelly Bean flavors exist from apple to popcorn to sardine to vomit, why can't we have an edible object that tastes like dog/cat/horse meat? 

And you can even take it one step further. Have you ever wondered what a human tastes like? I know I have....I should probably stop writing about this now.

- I know I rambled on about 24 the other day but I feel the need to do so again. 8 episodes of 24 Season 7 have now aired and I feel like I can honestly say that they have been as good or better as any first 8 episodes of 24's history. Better than Season 1, about as good as Season 2, better than Season 3, on par with Season 4 (but those went downhill FAST), better than Season 5, and infinitely better than Season 6. What the hell is it that is making this ancient show so watchable 7 years in? To (kind of) borrow a phrase from our current President: "Change, bitches, change." 

When you view 24 through long lenses, you can see that it sort of breaks down into trilogies. Seasons 1-3 had similar characters, villains and recurring issues. And then Season 4 started things over....but it didn't work. The characters weren't as good, the villains weren't as good and the recurring issues sure weren't as good. Season 5 seems to be an outlier as it was one of 24's best seasons ever, but this can be attributed to Gregory Itzin's superior acting as a disgraced President and a fresh storyline dealing with White House corruption in a time when Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby seemed like old timey movie villains.

And now Season 7 has started things over once again. Only this time, the foundation for the future seems to be much stronger than that built in Season 4. These characters aren't only good, they make sense...something that 24 has had big problems with lately. If someone were watching 24 for the first time ever right now and didn't know its absurd past (6 Presidents in 10 years, about 50,000,000 Americans killed in 10 years and absolutely no civil unrest) they might think that 24 was a realistic, plausible show. The characters are actually upset when, you know, they are forced to threaten an infant in order to save the day or torture yet another person for information. New character's humanity and mundane insistence on "following protocol" only further drives home just how much of a monster Jack Bauer has become in the name of defending his country. And if 24 has had one unifying theme over its 7 years, it is its protagonists fall into sure damnation. Oh Lost has been blowing my mind too. I just don't feel the need to write about it because that type of brilliance is always expected from Lost.

- I think the "single woman with no job living off student loans supporting 14 children" story was way too easy for fiscal conservatives. I would have been interested to see how social conservatives would have reacted if she had gleefully aborted all 8 of those babies in one fell swoop.

- I don't know if you've noticed but Backdropmag.com is coming out in 8 days. In about 3 hours, I will be heading off to a meeting to figure out how to work the html nuts and bolts of it all. This thing is going to melt faces. Prepare yourselves over the next week.

That's how I feel today. I can only hope and pray that if your type in "Synthetic Dog Steak" into Google, my blog is the first site to come up.

That's my dream... make it happen, Internet.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Synthetic dog steak" is currently #2, but "synthetic tofu dog steak" checks in at numero uno!! job well done.

The A.G.B said...

Yes! My dream is complete! I could really retire from blogging now if I so chose.