Folks, I know you’re probably getting sick and tired of my recounting all the ways ol’ Nevah and I are getting ready for our move into a new home. My column publishing schedule is in limbo because of the impeding move.
So, in an effort to to make sure I don’t miss publishing a column because of any possible delay in getting the internet working in our new home, I’m stuck writing two columns before I move that you’ll read after I move. I’m actually writing this column on Sept. 30, exactly a week before our scheduled move.
With that explanation out of the way, let’s plunge forward.
***
All the hullabaloo about the nutritional and “climatalogical” benefits coming soon from manufactured “fake-meat” entering our diets makes me want to puke. In my mind, and to my tastebuds, there ain’t no way to replace real, natural, God-given, and farm & ranch-raised meat.
All the lab efforts to convert a putrid concoction of plant-based gunk and unpronouncable chemicals into something beneficial and tasty to the human palate are doomed to failure. In fact, most of the venture capitalists in the fake-meat industry are expensively finding out that people don’t want to buy or eat fake-meat. They are losing money hand over fist — a fact I applaud heartily. Keep it up.
So, to poetically express my disdain for manufactured fake-meat, I dusted off and reworked a poem I wrote long ago entitled “A Health Warning to Would-Be Vegetarians” and updated it to apply to “Fake-Meaters.” Here it is:
***
A Health Warning to “Fake-Meaters”
If you’ve considered, even fleeting,
Manufactured fake-meat for eating
And, plunking into your grocery store cart.
Let me give you advice
The results won’t be nice.
You’d be better off not to start.
But if you insist,
And follow through on this
Self-destructive course of action.
A warning — many things will change.
Your life will be rearranged.
By joining the fake-meat faction.
Your health will fail.
You’ll start looking pale
And your bowels will get mighty runny
Your judgement will bind
And, your hair you’ll find
Is brittle and looking real funny.
A spritely step you can’t make
’Cause your joints will all ache.
And you start to stoop at the shoulder.
Your spine will twist
You’ll be limp in the wrist
And you’ll look at least 20 years older.
You’ll slow down your pace
And get gaunt in the face
And your hide will just hang on your bones.
Your voice will get weak.
Your bladder will leak,
And your kidneys get loaded with stones.
Your brain cells will wither.
You’ll be all a’dither.
As nerve endings fail to connect
And you’ll shuffle around.
Alone in your town.
As all your friends start to defect.
Your blood pressure will soar.
Your ears will roar.
And your grip will lose all its might.
Your resistance to disease
Will put you in a squeeze
As your doctor bills go out of sight.
Your bones will crinkle.
Your skin will wrinkle.
And your sinuses fill up with snot.
For eating fake-meat
Instead of natural meat
Like you know in your heart that you ought!
***
Well, it’s time to plop a tasty-looking chunk of pork loin onto our outdoors grill to slow-cook for supper. In a few hours, fake-meat will be the farthest thing from my mind as those savory pork juices trickle across my tastebuds.
Hopefully, my next column you read will come out of my new office in our new home. Until then, here are a few words of wisdom to contemplate: “The older I get, the more I understand why roosters scream loudly for all the world to hear to start their day.”
Have a good ‘un.
