gastropoda

I know I’ve said many times that my big fear is reincarnation, but I sometimes read a wingnut rant that makes me hope there is a hell. And the one the Murdoch Mouthpiece recently ran about food stamps should be a one-way ticket to Satan’s walk-in. This was by a noble character who walks the extra blocks to buy his cheaper groceries because he’s noble and all. Paywalled, of course, but it was a trashing of a mom he spotted buying a $41 ice cream cake at the pricier/closer place he just happened to be shopping in. “I quickly calculate that the woman’s cake was eight times more expensive than the kind I make at home to celebrate birthdays.” Uh. Huh. He condemned her without explaining how melty her investment would have been if she walked the long mile and a half back in his noble shoes. But his big point was that “food stamps” is a euphemism for fraud, that his fellow Americans who get subsistence benefits are just not noble enough, that if we just made them harder to get we’d wipe out the national debt. Because of course unfunded wars are free. His “common-sense” grandma obviously raised a fool. But what’s his editor’s excuse?

As the foodiest of campaigns slogs on, it was rather rich to see the wearer of magic underwear strutting into a firehouse with Rudy 9/11 bearing boxes of not-even-good pizza for a photo stunt. Given NY fireguys’ reputation as great cooks, wasn’t that the equivalent of carrying coals to Austin?

And the funniest photo stunt to backfire in donkey’s years turned out to be the one staged for the KKKraziest clown in the car. When a newspaper ran a story on the latest case of mad cow disease, the picture editor pulled a stock shot of her. In a beef slaughterhouse. And not in Switzerland.

As I said over to the Epi Log, this is shaping up as the foodiest campaign ever. The son of a Mormon man made a fool of himself by dissing bakery cookies, his wife had to face down a revolting birthday cake ordered by a classless fraud and all the KKKrazies lost their dung over the Big O having eaten dog as a child in Indonesia. Leave aside the embarrassment that his having done so proves he must not be a muslin (strays are not halal). What this really makes clear is that the cretins shrieking about an unvetted candidate had the straight dope all along. Next they’ll be screaming no one told them there are mega-calories in Big Macs.

If this country had had universal health care in the early 1900s, Mary Mallon would not have become one of the most famous cooks in history. Apparently we still haven’t learned the lesson. While the wingnuts kick up sand and the rest of the world marvels at the backwardness, the fact remains that without health care even the super-richest remain at risk of typhoid from the meatloaf. Sweet sauce or no sweet sauce.

As if the clown car’s race to the bottom could not get any more amusing, two of the losers are now campaigning on which of them is the more true-red aficionado of grits. So I guess I shouldn’t point out that grits are the new arugula, heritage and coarsely ground for a new generation. Or that they go really well with truffles. Or that of course the serial adulterer would be the one to express his devotion to the white stuff three ways.

As a way of protesting the wingnuts’ assault on the Girl Scouts, I bought my first Samoas ever in Washington, too, but not from those little lesbians I was promised, just from an older couple collecting dollars for them outside the Eastern Market. I wonder how Slut Brownies would sell.

For all the mockery of bacon worship, the trend does deserve credit for redeeming reputations of the porcine variety. When I Tweeted that my 83-year-old in-law equivalent had told me there must be a worse dis of Rush Limbaugh than pig, the responses came down solidly along the lines of “don’t defame the source of so much goodness.” And it’s true: You can’t get lard from a butt cyst.

I wish I could honestly wonder where the kkkrazies were when the Chimp and his Lump in the Bed opened the People’s House for the rare dinner. But I already know (any view is rather dark with head up rectum). Which makes it all the more pathetic that they attacked Mrs. O for serving a festive menu on a festive occasion. Anyone who believes governors on one big night should eat like everyday schoolkids needs his keyboard taken away.

And I can’t keep up with all the wingnuttiness these days, but I do find the growing push for drug testing of food stamp recipients rather bat-guano insane. Not only does it add to costs and bureaucracy (AKA Big Gubmint) and cause needless humiliation. But let’s say you catch one of the little users. You’ll save a couple of bucks a day in benefits. Then you throw her/him in jail and have to provide free meals for years.

Deluded me, I thought the movement in Utah to get some imbibers on the liquor control board made a ginload of sense. But apparently there’s backlash from contemporary Carry Nations (lost in my Twitter stream, or I’d link). Come on — of course you want someone who does what normal people do to have a vote. Otherwise you get teetotalers advising we all hold a grape between our knees at happy hour.

I wonder if Taco Bell hasn’t misunderestimated the stupidity of the patron (lower-case, BTW, is not the tequila in the contract rider). “Live mas” sounds like what hillbillies who are not being raised by their grandparents have.

And I guess there’s even going to be a war on Little Women. I always thought the Girl Scouts ranked right up there with apple pie as sacred American exceptionalism, but no more. Samoas, show us the birth certificate!

I’m also trying to tune out the Clown Car because I know it’s only going in reverse, but sometimes teh stupid just has to be noted. And this week that would be the photo of the wearer of the magic underpants (and of the ill-fitting, oddly weathered Everyman Brand jeans) making yet another peanut butter and honey sandwich for the benefit of the press corpse. I’m sorry. If a guy bottle-fed on liquefied gold ingots really prefers to eat like a kid, he doesn’t deserve a White House chef. As much as the KKKrazies deny evolution, palates should improve with exposure to serious food.

I have to admit it’s kinda hard to focus on food silliness when the bat guano insanity is out of control these days (is an institution best known for using little boys as birth control  really trying to take women back 50 years?) Thank allah, again, that Julia left such amazing letters proving the Republicans were just as whacked when she was struggling to create MTAOFC. Clearly, they’ve never recovered from cassoulet moving in on “real American” casserole.