Tuesday, June 26, 2012

The Degenerate "Art" of Eating Anywhere: A Lesson from Dr. Seuss



Big Footprint hiker tracks.

As someone who has been known to make strange and heartfelt public proclamations upon meetings with discarded fried chicken bones, or to pronounce epithets about one’s former wayfarers  - who must befit a Bosch painting - when meeting with greasy and forlorn McDonald’s bags, it is refreshing to hear someone else say: “Eat inside at a table. As I do.”  This, having been proclaimed by the American author Fran Lebowitz, when discussing the topic of "American bad manners," which included the American tendency to eat anywhere and everywhere. (http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2012/06/20/post-2/)

The habit of eating anywhere and everywhere without the proper furniture, walls, or stylish and reusable eating utensils, is a major source of contamination, corpulence, and barbarism in our lovely environment. It is unfortunate that it not shocking to see big gulp containers, tin cans, and food wrappers piled high in nature preserves. One must ask oneself why these people of the heavy footprints even bother to walk through nature if they cannot get through it without quaffing or chomping down on some very unnatural drink and foodstuffs. 


Trail trash.

It would not be too outrageous to imagine that if the average American was to somehow become deserted in a desert, he would be found to be begging for a can of Mountain Dew instead of agua. Unless, perhaps, this water came in a plastic bottle with a brand name label certifying its xenobiotic and fluoride content. 

Servings from the sidewalk.

Scores of people go to bed hungry in America, yet it is probably one of the few countries in which someone could go out for a walk and harvest a seven course meal from litter on the street. 


Litter Americana.

A beacon of Styrofoam in the wilderness.

We are all branches on the the bread-bag of life.

By its very concept of eating to fulfill the fickle desires of "hunger" outside of etiquette or civility and urbanity of customs, degenerate eating, then, because it is based on the placation of these vacillating feelings and emotions, naturally includes the preference for foods that flaunt those same conventions of restraint and are valued mainly for qualities that appeal to a person's sensory perceptions, like taste and appearance, or the "feel good" qualities. The production of foods based on these inordinate desires is, of course, killing us, torturing animals, and polluting our environment. 


The longevity of sips from plastic. I & M Canal, Winter.

Food, as it is used in advertising (selling vice), or as served in restaurants, which present eating as a highly individualistic and often obsequious servility-reliant recreational activity, falls easily, as everything does, into indulging our unwieldy passions. Food eaten anywhere, that is, the habit of making it so that food fits into any desired circumstance imaginable, gives a sensuality to food and eating that, arguably, should not be entertained, and is not very pretty when it is. Quoth notorious food sensualist Paula Deen, on bacon, which she refers to as an aphrodisiac: "Y'all Getting Horned Up Yet?"

A young girl enjoys her bacon.

 Not only is this deleterious face-stuffing -- and often mouth-missing -- taught to us from a young age by the bad example of our fake foods purchasing, and Chicken McNugget passing, parents, but it is also taught by children’s books. One fine example of the degenerate "art" of eating anywhere is taught by the good Doctor Seuss.

The book Green Eggs and Ham is catchy propaganda for teaching children to eat anywhere, like in a boat with a goat, or in the rain and on a train, or in a tree.  You see, Sam-I-Am, carries out fake foods harassment on another furry dress wearing dude in an attempt to get him to eat green eggs and ham in a variety of locations until he gives in and is converted to the nomadic noshing on gross green foodstuffs here and there. In the end, after the green eggs and ham hating dude ends up eating the once forbidden foodstuffs, he exclaims: “Say! I will eat them ANYWHERE!” 

Yes, he will now eat the junk anywhere. And this indeed does spell the end, for humanity, or furry dress wearing creatures that are teaching young human creatures that it is indeed great to eat highly portable and unnaturally coloured dead animals with a goat... in a boat.


Furry dress wearing dude becomes a Degenerate Eater

Those who trash their bodies with trashy food seem to show a similar lack of concern about trashing their environment. Civility demands sitting down at a table and chewing your food properly – not tottering around in flip flops with it, shoving it into your face, and then throwing the wasteful hand-shielding wrappers, along with what you no longer feel like eating, on the ground so that the next person needs to wrestle it away from his opportunistic terrier. 


The McModern equivalent of Green Eggs, with a side of curb.

Such things as eating and comportment, reveal one’s virtue and culture. When a man walks around grazing like a cow, onlookers may naturally perceive him to be an uncultured and uncivilized "cow," whom cannot even discipline himself enough to properly prepare to dine on, and truly enjoy, real food, which is not handed through an automobile's bird crap stained window twenty-four hours a day (And this is not even mentioning the social repercussions of requiring minimum wage workers to become nocturnal so that you can eat a Big Mac at 3 A.M.). 

Eating like a degenerate can be deadly.

This perception of the "grazing as he feels like it" person -- or someone who eats for entertainment to fulfill every possible whim or fancy of hunger throughout the day and night– will naturally evolve into a snobbish hypothesis that this everlasting eater is uncontrolled and full of other more serious vices. But this is in fact the most probable outcome of any indulgence of the ever debasing and monstrously insatiable passions of the flesh. If one cannot discipline himself in the small things, naturally, stronger temptations will not be easily withstood. And such practices in degenerate eating easily can carry one into becoming culpable of Gluttony, one of the Seven Deadly Sins: eating “on the run” can precipitate choking to death. One could also argue that such uncouth behavior may offend one’s angel guardian so much so that he will turn a blind eye to one's ugly windpipe-obstructing plight as well. 

Those die well who at the time of death are already dead to the world, that is, detached from those goods from which death will forcibly separate us.

Cows are beautiful creatures as what they are, outdoor grass grazing ungulates, (and not fast food), but man is not a cow, and when he acts like one, it is not beautiful. So, at the very least, avoid the temptations of Sam-I-Am and stay inside and chew your crud, thanks.

  © 2012 GAK


Some happy cows:







The danger to animals that nomadic noshing poses, (i.e., the ubiquitous cups and cans stuck on animals' heads, and straws in noses):








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