As I always say, my big fear is reincarnation, but lately I’m starting to hope I might come back in a few hundred millennia as an archaeologist in a whole new species. Imagine the wonder-working wisdom to be gained while deciphering cyber-hieroglyphics and realizing that a world tilting off its axis from too many humans needing too many resources actually chose to fuel its cars rather than feed its population (or even expand mass transit). Every day there’s another horror story about ethanol eating up all the grain crops while rice prices are shooting up. Tax cuts were even approved recently for the ethanol eco-disaster. Eat your heart out, Marie Antoinette. People today are too stupid to realize there will soon be no brioche no matter how far they drive.

And, while I have my Mormon underwear on, I also have to sermonize about the chubby kid I saw eating cheese fries with ketchup on the subway the other night. I watched him put garbage in his mouth for several stops and thought: If he had any idea how stupid that was, he would have ordered a cheeseburger instead — and schools would be teaching basic nutrition again. But then I remembered there is no profit in that — an educated consumer is the biggest offense to Big Food. Snapple is juice, no? And Twinkies are now being promoted as ideal eating in the car. . . .