Coping Strategy: The Big Mozz

I know I am not a decent person because I eat meat. Imagine if you will, the life of a cow on an industrial cattle ranch. Cows as a species have been bred to the point of stupidity. Cattle ranchers have to reach into the mother's womb (the breeding sow), wrap a chain around the newborn's legs, then pull the little guy or gal out with some kind of tractor or a truck. Whatever they have on the farm. After that initial trauma, the calf is then shoved into a cage where it is subjected to hormone and steroid injections every single day for years. A man in a lab coat walks past each cage (there are hundreds), prodding the animal inside with a stick (with a little too much interest). When he finds a prime candidate, a voice that he no longer recognizes as his own  but his wife and children know all too well says, "It's time". The cow is pulled out of the cage and led to a group of other candidates, all huddled together, terrified but with no comprehension as to what terror actually is. Their collective filth, years in the making is hosed off with disinfectant. Single file, the cows march towards a death chute. One after the other, they fall in and down a chute face-first, and their necks crack on the hard ground. SPLAT. The ones who survive are beaten to death by hammers wielded by lunatic men.

I suspect this is what happens because it is actually considered terrorism to enter one of these facilities and film or photograph the meat-making process. That last bit isn't a joke.

So today, I thought about all of this and felt sad. So I bought and ate a burger.

Whatever the process turns cow into food, people on the internet and in life will happily remind you that cow-as-food is not ethical and propose alternatives that are. I've tried the ethical eating thing in probably the worst possible venue, in a college cafeteria. Regardless, when I ate salads, grains, quinoa and seitan for two or three days, I actually wanted something to die. That certainly wasn't healthy.

Frankly, I accepted that I am a horrible human being because my taste-buds require a tidal wave of death to be happy. That's fine. I take my moral jollies elsewhere. I think one animal life is worth one human life and I celebrate when the former trumps the latter and mourn the opposite. I remember a story in 2007 when an 11-year old boy in Alabama murdered a beautiful 1,051-lb wild boar. That wild boar lived a life where it managed to experience the full boarness allotted by nature. It roamed free. It probably banged a lot of hot female-boars, whatever you call them. Then it's life was cut short by a creature who's potential is this: on the penalty of death, it will work in a cubicle or on a farm doing work it hates until it is no longer fit to do so. The product of it's labor will be used by a member of its species higher in the social order to stabilize this order. Thereupon it is finally warehoused in a nursing facility and it's life is artificially suspended until it dies so another member of its species hiring on the pecking order can stabilize this order further. Somewhere in that time period, it will mate with another living under the same conditions and create other members of the species, tidying a gene pool of individuals perfectly fit to do work they hate. At least the cattle death chute is poetic. I doubt that little boy's feat of killing that beautiful animal even translated into so much as a handjob.

So the burger I bought is from Sheetz. For people who don't live in the Southeast, Sheetz is a gas station that pretends its also a restaurant. This burger is called The Big Mozz, because it has three fried mozzarella sticks and it's coated in marinara and melted provolone. It is listed under the Premium Burgerz section because it is an extreme burger. It's a burger that probably takes something away from you. This is fine because it's the cow having its revenge on man. No amount of therapy will ever get that part of your soul back. Fair trade, I think. Most importantly, the beef isn't that good. Its a dry patty that kind of has a chalky aftertaste. However, this is undoubtedly on purpose--good beef would detract from the fried cheese. I read a William Gibson book once and he went on about Japan or some other nerd shit. He wrote about this model-Gundam painter whose work had the "perfect flaw". Something that shows a chink in the armor, that shows that the art object has some kind of sensitivity or vulnerability that is so strong yet subtle that no level of aesthetic cannot overpower it. It's a flaw inherent in the nature of the medium itself. In a way, the shitty beef is the perfect flaw, because obviously...beef is death. Milk is life. Both these things come from a cow. Dichotomy! And the fried cheese is perfect, but the beef sucks. Life trumps death. It's a sandwich! Do I need to walk you through it again? Do I need to hold your hand?!

So I ate the thing in my car and washed it down with a cup of onion rings. It provided some level of comfort but I knew I would be paying for it later. I drove back to work and found out that the parking space I left now had a traffic cone in front of it for some reason, so I had to park in the overflow lot. I walked back to my cubicle and probably burned off an onion ring. Then, later in the day, I realized I left the key in my car and I was furious with myself. When I opened the door, it was like a crime scene inside. The oil in the onion ring cup filled my car with rancid. There were wrappers everywhere. Alt rock that was on the radio when I was in middle school was playing because the battery was running. The maintenance light was on (well, it's been on for half a month). There was dust everywhere. I have no idea where it came from. I was overwhelmed by the responsibility, so I drove home to my parents' and took a nap.