some scrambled words and haiku
No egg puns. I promise. This (latest) avian influenza is serious. We're teetering on the brink of a major food crisis with massive health and economic consequences that—wait, what? Every major news outlet is cracking egg jokes?
This is what happens when millennials who trolled Something Awful and Rotten.com as teens become media gatekeepers and Trader Joe's managers. Hey, are those sites still up? … DING! Sort of. Thankfully, I only hucked twenty-five minutes down that rabbit hole goatse thanks to my egg timer!
“The Incredible, Edible Egg.” Them's good eatin'. But only a couple. And not every day. Maybe just the whites. I think. As I slowly jog through my 40s, I find myself mindlessly parroting ancient slogans: “Beef: It's What's for Dinner,” “Milk. It Does a Body Good,” “Pork. The Other White Meat.” Also, “Betcha Can't Eat Just One” and “Once You Pop, You Can't Stop.” Food jingles are the OG affordable healthcare.
What's the current food science on eggs? … DING! It's a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Allow me to copypasta the great philosopher Lenny: “While it has been established that eggs contain cholesterol, it has not yet been proven conclusively that they actually raise the level of serum cholesterol in the human bloodstream.” Surely there's no way a character from “The Simpsons” was accurate about present-day science three decades ago (thanks IMDb, which is also extant). Let's try the A.I. feature on Brave. … Hey, Lenny was right! And it cited both the National Library of Medicine and the Dead Homer Society, so you know it's legit.
I'm going to go out on a kendo stick and say sombunall Japanese people are down with eggs. When I lived in Kyoto, I ordered a lot of oyakodon (親子丼). It's chicken and eggs served over rice. The first two characters in the word are “parent” and “child.” Cute, right? Sometimes the eggs were runny and, occasionally, raw. “But if the chickens are fed properly and well-cared for, that's not a huge concern,” said no red-blooded, statin-guzzling American ever.
Regardless, we all might benefit from treating animals better. That includes the ones we raise, eat, and eat from. If compassionate care requires prohibitively high production costs, that means we're doing production wrong. If we want different outcomes, we've got to try something else. How about burning everything down and starting over? (Note: I'm not advocating starting fires. Fire bad. Stay away from the light!)
On to dying! Excuse the typo: dyeing. PAAS® for edit. Cue that Patton Oswalt routine about the holiday egg decoration company of Easter past, present, and future. You can smell it right now, I bet, that vinegar water burning your nostrils. Feel the grit on the outside of the eggs as you rub the wax crayon across the shell, pushing just a little too hard. Satisfying. (ASMR YouTube channel or OnlyFans page pending. … DING! Already a thing. Both of 'em.)
I'm racking my brain for literary references to eggs — Mork from Ork's ship doesn't count — but all I've got is Humpty Dumpty and “Green Eggs and Ham.” Remember Sen. Ted Cruz unironically reading “Green Eggs and Ham” to filibuster healthcare? That series of juxtapositions works on at least four levels. (And if I manage to wrangle a MacArthur fellowship, I'll let you know when I uncover more.)
Eggs are inevitably about reproduction.
[Please use this space to take a break from my brain rot and have a serious conversation about gender, feminism, misogyny, sexism, healthcare access, reproductive rights, and human rights with someone you care about. And someone you don't. And someone named Mike. Everyone knows at least one Mike who needs that talk.]
I'm eyeing stray newsy notes about sick cats, a fox, a raccoon, and a human death, but I'll hold off on the doom and gloom until things get way better or way worse. Or until a talking head on legacy media references the World of Warcraft “Corrupted Blood Incident.”
Enough pontification. I was going to finish with a riff on — SPOILER ALERT for “The Hobbit” — that one riddle, but, instead, here's a series of haiku…
(breakfast) (or) (That Which Comes First)
they're chicken eggs, right?
sometimes quail and maybe duck
but why not pigeon?
they're chicken () right?
some() quail and ()() duck
() why not pigeon?
() chicken () ()
()() quail () ()() duck
() () () pigeon?
() ()() () ()
()() () () ()() ()
() () () ()()
() ()() ()Ƨ
()() () () ()() ()
() () () ()()
() ()Ƨ
()() () () ()() ()
() () () ()()
S() () () ()() ()
() () () ()()
S()() ()
() () () ()()
() () () ()Ƨ
() ()Ƨ
S() ()
S()()n will the serpent
hiss truths surpassing space-time:
THEY ALL TASTE THE SAME
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