The Coming Corno-pocalypse

Cute Animal or Divine Temptation?

We are on the cusp of an environmental and agricultural disaster. And it is your fault, dear readers.

Yes, your fault. You and your damnable love for baby corn.

Yes, you read that right.

No, I’m not talking about the full-grown but severely stunted ears coming out of Colorado.  I’ve already warned you about that. I’m talking about healthy, tasty, crunchy baby corn. Infant corn. Prepubescent corn.

I long ago eschewed the delicacy when I perceived the looming extinction event. I had the foresight to see it coming and had time to slowly wean myself of the addiction. But voracious consumer of the stuff that I may have been, my abstaining from the tender vital wasn’t, and isn’t, enough.

That’s right. Corn is on the verge of extinction.

What did you expect? If we keep harvesting and eating corn in its infant, or, even worse, embryonic stage (I’m talking to you, vile popcorn lovers!), there will be no mature adult corn cobs to propagate the species. The folly of our management of this particular consumable is self-evident.

And yet society continues to clamor for more and more baby corn, as if utterly blind to the consequences.

It disgusts me, but my disgust does little to save this staple agricultural species.

Instead of my disgust, we need an advertising campaign, something to make the general public aware of just how close to corn genocide, or as I call it, cornocide, we are.

Though perhaps we shouldn’t include my disgust in that campaign. It’s pretty…heady…stuff.

You know, something like that anti-baby seal clubbing campaign a few years ago, with long lingering shots of soft-eyed baby seals, seemingly imploring us to reach into their Arctic habitat and personally intervene to save them.

Of course, baby seals aren’t the greatest example. The meat is so soft, so sweet on the tongue, falling right off the bone. If anything would make me give up my militant Veganism, it’s blackened baby seal encrusted with macadamia nuts.

Mmm, blackened baby seal encrusted with macadamia nuts.

Where was I? Oh, yes.

Maybe some ads with ears of corn listening for the sound of their salvation? I can see that working on television, but we’ll need a better angle for radio.

We could show the kernals of corn screaming as they pop in the popcorn maker. That’s pretty striking, right?

The point is, people, you need to stop eating baby corn. Wait until the damn ears have spawned at least a couple of litters before you chow down on them.

Otherwise, corn will go extinct, AND THEN WHAT WILL WE FEED OUR CORN-FED BEEF???

Oh yeah, and there will be no more baby corn. What’s the point of living if you can’t have baby corn?

Sweet, delicious, forbidden baby corn. Goes great with baby seal.

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And now, a word from our sponsor: me!

Click here to check out my forthcoming book, Marlowe and the Spacewoman, coming out January 9th, 2012 (Balloon Ascension Day)!

 

The Produce Is Bad

Note: For the visually impaired and the illiterate, I am experimenting with podcast technology. An audio version of this blog post can be found by clicking here:

If there is a positive response to the audio version of this blog, I may continue to offer entries in this format.

A new menace has come to my attention, something horrible and unimaginable. As unfathomably terrible as this news is, the American public has a right to know.

Most of the produce in our stores is counterfeit.

That’s right, counterfeit.

No, I’m not some nut job claiming the Noid or the Keebler Elves have secretly replaced our fresh produce with wax or plastic facsimiles. It’s much, much worse.

Idaho potatoes? I don’t think so.

Florida oranges? Uh uh.

California raisins? I heard it through the grapevine they aren’t Californian.

Doesn't look like they're in sunny California to me!

If they’re really from California, why the scarf, earmuffs, and gloves? Or all that snow, for that matter? Hmm???

This revelation casts the spate of foodborne illness reports in a whole new light, doesn’t it?

Who is behind this menace? What nefarious force is surreptitiously spoon-feeding us fraudulent fruits and veggies?

If you guessed China, you’re wrong. A fair guess, all things considered, but still not correct.

No, the source of this evil is a member of the Union. A state so desperate for export income, they’re willing to deceive the rest of the country.

I’m speaking, of course, of Colorado.

How, you ask? How could a state government stoop so low?

Politicians.

You see, under the guise of ‘immigration reform’ (fiendishly devious of them!), Colorado passed a law in 2006 (House Bill 1023) that allowed vegetables to establish residency, retroactively, in other states. Those shifty Coloradans grow their puny, inferior fruits and vegetables in an environment simply not conducive to healthy, vibrant crops, and then transport them through other states on the way to market.

Potatoes are driven in refrigerated trucks through Idaho, and are retroactively granted Idaho residency by Colorado, thus enabling Colorado farmers, and I use that term loosely, to stamp them Idaho Potatoes.

Oranges pass through Florida, and get the same fast-track citizenship treatment.

And the pistachios, the ones masquerading as California-grown, the shriveled, pebble-like nuts I shudder to call ‘gravel’, let alone ‘pistachios’ – they are shipped to California, housed in a warehouse for a single day, and then granted ‘California’ residency. By the state of Colorado.

Oh, and don’t let the massive PR campaign Colorado has unleashed since the passage of House Bill 1023 sway you. Sure, it’s a slick campaign with an appealing message, but it’s lies. All lies. Check out the most recent video put out by Colorado on YouTube if you want an example of the depths that state will sink to in order to beguile the rest of the country:

What can you do to protect yourself? Nothing. You’re screwed. It’s all perfectly legal. Colorado recruited elitist East Coast lawyers to find loopholes in the US Constitution that would allow them to write an air-tight state law.

Honestly, I have to tip my hat to the diabolical geniuses behind this, because it is brilliant.

Wait, wait, don’t abandon all hope just yet. There is one thing you can do to minimize your exposure to these substandard foodstuffs that are so deplorable, state and federal prison systems refuse to serve them.

Vigilance.

Is that ‘Idaho’ potato looking a bit shriveled? Crows feet around those dark, beady eyes? No, it hasn’t sat in the store too long. It’s from Colorado.

That ‘Florida’ orange looking a bit too non-Euclidean in its misshapen geometry? Colorado and its rocky soil and inhospitable climate strike again.

That ‘Georgia’ peach look and taste more like a gob of moldy mashed potatoes squirted into sheep’s intestines and then fashioned into the rough shape of a peach? OK, that has been on the shelf too long – it’s an ‘Idaho’ potato once the Sell By date has expired. Colorado’s law has a provision forcing retailers to re-package those abominations as peaches.

The only other thing I can recommend is that you flood the Colorado State Legislature and Governor’s office with phone calls, emails, letters, and tweets, demanding they repeal this Draconian export law and restore honesty and sanity to our food ecosystem.

In the meantime, I am reliably informed that canned peaches labeled “Canned in Mexico” are not from Colorado, and not expired potatoes. They’re from Arizona and, at the time of this writing, considered relatively safe. Though they might actually be nectarines.

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And now, a word from our sponsor: me!

Click here to check out my forthcoming book, Marlowe and the Spacewoman, coming out January 9th, 2012 (Balloon Ascension Day)!