gastropoda

Speaking of flacks, I kept hearing that stupid country song, “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille,” while scanning the e-release on how the snootiest of British food purveyors is finally opening an outlet in the United Colonies. Somehow mustard priced like caviar sounds like “with four hungry babies and the crops in the field.” Already I’ve found Zabar’s has replaced the wondrous fresh lasagne sheets from Italy with clunky, gummy stuff made closer to home, apparently for price reasons. Even for those of us fortunate to love subways more than gas fumes, this is now officially a populace under de facto rationing. And a $24 jar of jam sounds as reasonable as a $175 burger.

I can’t be the only one who suspected the Chimp sent the lump in his bed out to distract the press on Cinco de Mayo simply because he was busy meeting with Jose Cuervo. But my cynicism was validated by the Vino Fossella affair: Where did that hypocritical fool start drinking on DUI Day? At the executive drunk tank. Obama is going to have a heckuva job restoring honor and integrity to the Animal House.

Now that the NYTimes expose on spokesPinocchios has made it sickeningly clear why we’re staying in Iraq — to launder money for GoFuckYourself’s contractor cronies — beef is looking even scarier than ever. The WSJ, whose new owner should be covering up the E. coli, actually ran this headline: Meat Inspectors Can’t Keep Up, Official Says. As the story elaborated, the USDA is “so understaffed that some inspectors are assigned to as many as 24 plants.” And worse. Meanwhile, we have billions and billions to squander far from the land of cheap food. Don’t get me started on the whimpering for the poor children separated from their moms in a wacko religious cult in the Chimp’s wacko state while not a word is heard about the offspring of illegal immigrants rounded up in raids on slaughterhouses and packing plants. When the roll is finally called wherever it’s called, America is going to have some serious ’splaining to do about 99-cent burgers in a drive-through world. But to paraphrase the Language-Mangler in Chief, who cares about hell? We’ll all be dead.

Sad that the home of the brave is too chickenshit to consider impeachment, let alone war crimes trials. Not while “Top Trash” is on, at any rate. At least I can take consolation in knowing the Chimp would walk away unscathed no matter what. Given his affinity for junk like hot dogs and O’Doul’s, he has the perfect defense for approving torture: The Twinkies made him do it.

About the only law that still seems to be in effect in America is the one of unintended consequences. Consider the case of the “homeland security” money showered on Long Island. One of my better sources says it has paid for big new boats and crews to patrol the Sound, and of course Osama and his dialysis machine are not exactly swimming ashore out there, so big new boats and crews have nothing better to do than harass fishermen. Who have their own insecurity with lobster stocks never having recovered from the mysterious die-off a few summers back. Apparently tickets are being handed out for oystering minutes past the 4 o’clock cutoff on a catch that used to be allowed from dawn to dusk. Forget the terrorists. The petty bureaucrats have won.

New revelations oozing out about the Chimp’s illegal wiretapping would be more sickening if not for the entertaining aside on what the Skankier of the Twins was up to right before 9/11: having the Secret Service organize a bar-hopping trip to Mexico after she was caught bingeing illegally here in the homeland. Apparently that wall should have gone up much sooner, and not to keep immigrants out but those genes in, away from the good mescal. Start with one body in an intersection and before you know it 4,000-plus are piled up far, far from the WTC. “Salud” in Simian is a very scary word.

I was happy to hear the almighty-god-given right to freedom has now been officially validated on the Upper West Side. A friend who lives in the Beresford spent the better part of a day in lockdown because a certain Chimp was due there for lunch, the $1.4 million shakedown stop on his Irrelevance Tour. Good thing he got all that training flying into Baghdad unannounced and under cover of darkness. He evaded those of us who pay his salary who would have been happy to greet him with flowers — spelling out WPE, with a hot dog from the corner cart as exclamation point.

And speaking of a guy who could have cleaned up selling filthy water to the troops rather than trying to forestall socialized banking in America, anyone else notice that his PaidPal bears a rather striking resemblance to the Human Scratch N Match? Is there some factory somewhere that punches out these “girls”? Just imagine if Ham Awry had thought to record a little lame-ass music before taking her gig. No one would be buying her for a mere 50 cents today.

The only thing more appalling than seeing the war president prance around as if he had finally found his organ grinder was hearing what he ate for lunch afterward. Hot dogs. On White House china. Worse, the war president wannabe agreed to have whatever the First Child was having. He is McLame.

Off and on over the last horrific seven years I have been trying to come up with a spoof on How to Cook a Shrub. Now the exemplary Tom Engelhardt has done something far more impressive with his commander-in-chef recipes. Nothing says disaster accomplished like an edible flower garnish.

The McDonald’s translation of feng shui must be “piss into wind.” A franchiser whose mainstay is beef right now is going to need a lot more than Asian touches to keep bad luck at bay. You’ve got the USDA insisting it will not ban downers that might carry mad cow, new cases being diagnosed across the northern border and spinmeisters pinning the problem on the Humane Society, not on a national epidemic of greed. And all this is happening as more news oozes out about where the recalled beef might still be lurking. Anyone who has eaten Progresso Italian wedding soup lately, or those truly scary Hot Pockets, might want to go into denial very soon. Considering that South Korea (and Japan) have long banned American beef, a headline in the WSJ said it all: “Rice and U.S. Beef Lobbyist Offer Reassurance in Seoul.” I don’t know about the professional prevaricator, but I can already hear Kindaliesalot’s defense down the line: “No one could have anticipated. . . .” At least until Jan. 20, 2009, it will always be 8/6 in America.

Anyone still baffled by how we wound up with that buffoon jackassing  across Africa has only to consider the coverage of the largest meat recall in American history. The message most clearly disseminated to a “Top Chef”-stupefied audience is that it’s all about animal abuse, that the bleeding hearts won. The reality that waterboarding was needed to force seriously sick cattle onto their feet to pass “inspection” is consistently glossed over, especially with the reassuring line in every story that “no illnesses have been reported” by consumers. As if mad cow disease sets in as fast as the salmonella squitters. But rest easy: Most of the beef has already been eaten. I have to laugh every time I hear a story on the Olympics boasting that we’re going to keep our prize athletes healthy — we’re going to ship American food to China. Yeah, right. I don’t know about the USDA, but the FDA’s budget for a full year is less than we squander in Iraq in one  week. Good thing we got the government off the industry’s back. . . .

My friend the aristocrat who has traded homelands after 20-some years says she feels “like I left a banana republic for a Feydeau play.” Even the cheese eaters, though, would never be so silly as to think food stamps should be left out of a “stimulus package” for an economy devastated by greed. After all, what is the one thing you can do with government coupons? Spend them. At the very least our own surrender monkeys could have added wine stamps for the middle class.

Of all the uncountable reasons to hope the tiara-whipped one is sent home from Florida with his shriveled balls sucked back into their cavity, one of the biggest is his insistence that he made New York livable. 9/11 did change everything, but no thanks to that tight end of the alimentary canal. My latest evidence came at the Sido on Amsterdam when I ran in for an O’Reilly sandwich on a time-crunched afternoon. The couple ahead of me had just presented a credit card for $13.96 worth of food when the counterman said it was cash only, and they panicked over where to find an ATM. He kept insisting, “Eat first, pay after,” until they agreed to sit down and enjoy their lunch. My first job out of restaurant school was just across the street in 1984, when it was so scary you took your vagina if not your life in your hands walking in at 6:30 in the morning, and whatever produced this sea change was not a petty tyrant. During the blackout I realized it was more likely to be a populace that understands anything that does not involve bodies hurtling out of windows and air not fit to breathe is really no biggie. The city got kinder and gentler almost in spite of its mayor, even before he balked at leaving. And I’m so glad to be living here rather than back in the relatively small town where I waitressed in college — 36 years later I still cannot believe a regular customer came in one morning, ordered steak and eggs, told me he was short of cash and would pay me the next day and then was never seen again. I can only hope he wound up marrying his cousin.

Wanna know why the Chimp will still be eating his toddler fare at a fancy table for the whole next year? The gutless wonders in Congress are busy aping Marie Antoinette instead of confronting the I word. Nancy Pelosi’s only accomplishment so far is getting the House cafeteria to upgrade the food, even as she sends the clear message that we peons should eat farm-subsidized Twinkies. It’s bad enough our employees have better health care. Now they get the green eggs while we get the salmonella.