The Domesday Book, Chapter I

I have had this nagging idea for some time now and I just realized what it is. I have never been one of those nutty vegetarians (no pun in ten did), but for the past few years the meat in the stores hasn't looked quite right to me and I haven't been able to figure out why.

I used to go into the meat section and the steaks looked appetizing. I mean, really GOOD! Now they are all exactly the same color and it isn't the color beef used to be. Not only that but in the past you could find the same cuts of beef in various sizes. Now they are all almost exactly the same size. That isn't right. No one can EVER convince me it is. You used to be able to toss a thick steak on a barbecue with nothing more than salt and pepper and have a fine dining experience. These things are like tossing cardboard cut-outs on the grill.

Now then....I go over to the seafood section because I want a chunk of fresh Atlantic salmon for sashimi. The salmon is all raised in Canada and it is a sickly brown. And that is AFTER they have added color to it. I look around and notice that EVERYTHING THERE is farm raised. Hey, I want fish fresh out of the ocean, not something that has been raised in a grey-water recycling pond so they don't have to pay for fish food. And little signs are appearing on fish products behind the counter: "This product treated with carbon monoxide". Why would anyone need to treat food with carbon monoxide? You will have to look it up.

Chocolate bars are now colored wax. In particular, anything made in the USA or Japan. When I was a kid, chocolate melted in the sun. That Hershey bar you just paid $3 an ounce for won't even melt in a microwave oven. You could pave streets with them. If I want to eat wax, I'll buy a scented candle.

Chicken. Healthy, right? I reckon not. The chicken butchers sell the leftovers to the cattle ranchers for feed and the cattle butchers sell the leftovers to the chicken farmers for feed. Pig farmers throw fast-food slop to the pigs and the pig butchers sell the useless parts to the fish farmers or, as I said, the fish farmers grow their catfish in waste recycling tanks. If I throw chicken on the BBQ a nasty green flame comes off of it for a second or two. Hey, what burns with a green color?!?!? NOTHING IN A CHICKEN!

In the mean time the pigs shit E-coli all over spinach and everything else so your veggies are all contaminated.

But hold the phone. Is any of that illegal.....or even regulated? Not at all. Everyone is on the honor system.

Oh, wait! CHEESE! Do you people know how cheese is made? If I told you it might make you hurl, so I won't. You can look it up right after CO (Carbon Monoxide).

So I go to one of the local farmers and buy sweet corn but I won't take just anything fresh-picked. I shuck it on the spot and take only the ones with caterpillars in them. If a caterpillar is eating it and is still alive, it must not be poison.

I get the tomatoes and lettuce out of my backyard so they are organic. I let the bugs eat enough to keep them happy, but I chase off the slugs.

I am on a water catchment system. There is no county water out here and that's fine with me. We get a lot of rain and I developed a little water filtration/decontamination/sterilization system that I pump the water through before it gets to the real filters. It was pretty easy to make, too! I just scraped the radium off about a hundred old alarm clocks and put it in a filter. As long as it is glowing I know it's working. The only problem with the water is that this pink stuff is all over the inside of the shower and I can't kill it, even with Lysol and Clorox. But whatever it is, pink stuff can't be bad for you, right? Anyway, my catchment water is like a crystal clear mountain stream compared to most of them which have drowned rats and what-not floating in the tank.

OK, I'm kidding about the radium.