Recently Marti has introduced me to a new way of procrastinating: the McVideo game. This is a game where the player gets to learn how to succeed as a fast food restaurant. Players must raise cattle (preferably by clearcutting rainforests — it’s cheaper) add industrial waste, hormones and animal byproducts to fodder, buy off politicians and nutritionists, and market to kids and hippies. It’s actually very difficult to play — neither of us have made it much past about 12 years or so. We don’t compare to the 50 years of most fast food restaurants. This game, of course, is to illustrate how awful the industry is — mad cows must be shot, epidemics stopped, health inspectors paid off, etc. It should encourage me to stop eating red meat. It just makes me feel guilty, though, and not guilty enough to stop. After all, the 3rd world is far away now, and beef is goood.
I’ve decided that eating red meat is a lot like premarital sex. Those who abstain are smug; they are never going to get any awful, debilitating diseases as a result of their personal choices. But those who do eat meat give this response: “Mmmmmmmm!” Pretty much exactly the same for premarital sex.
I’ve been a vegetarian off and on throughout my life. I really, really want to be a vegetarian, but it’s hard to imagine the rest of my life with no turkey at Thanksgiving, no summer sausage, no medium rare rib-eye steak so tender it can be cut with a fork. It’s just not possible. I don’t eat a lot of meat, but when I do eat it…I like it to be worth the global warming.
The longest I was ever a vegetarian was my freshman and sophomore years at college. I became a vegetarian because I had anger management problems, and I honestly thought that changing my diet (no, I did not consult Tom Cruise) would help me to be a calmer person. It’s possible that it did, because it also made me very tired — one reason I’ve never been able to stick to a vegetarian diet. But I ate absolutely no meat for about 10 months. Part of this time I was in Iowa, land of pork and beef, and Iowans were traumatized by this anomaly. Honestly, people were really freaked out because I was a vegetarian (and I had a nose ring). I mean, in Seattle, I wouldn’t even have been worth noticing, not unless I had dyed my pubic hair purple, set it on fire and run through the city center. Even then I would have only gotten a blurb, probably in one of the independent papers. But we weren’t in Seattle anymore, Toto. Oh no. We were in Ames.
One good Iowan friend of mine, Seth, has never forgiven me for asking to go to a vegetarian restaurant on our first date. He was a typical Iowan — substantial, with rosy cheeks and a healthy glow, probably due to eating large amounts of meat and potatoes from a young age. He drove an old car (by old I mean vintage, antique, you know, old and expensive), kept Reeses Pieces in a bowl next to his computer in his dorm room, and forcibly reminded me of my father. I’m sure they are cut from the exact same mould. Nevertheless, I took him to this “new agey” coffee shop that featured eggplant in many of its dishes. I remember the look of horror as he stared at the menu and asked, “Isn’t there anything with, you know, meat in it?” He still reminds me of this experience from time to time, even though we are both married to other people and have only seen each other twice since 1995. It was a full meal without meat, of any kind. Not even baco-bits. He may never recover.
I, on the other hand, am a shameless hypocrite. I know that meat — particularly red meat — is bad. Poor ranching practices ruin rangeland here and elsewhere; methane-producing cows add to global warming; precious forests and rainforests are cut down so cows can graze, and valuable grains go to feed the cattle. E-coli, listeria, mad cow disease — all meat-related. All I can say to this however, is —
“Mmmmmmmmm.”
