I likes me some meat

I am prone to self-doubt. I mean, "I could be wrong" as the title, that's filed under "Clue, Some Kind Of." Sometimes I wonder if I've secretly turned all left wing, gone all prog, like a piece of meat goes bad in the supermarket if it sits there too long. Generally this is preceded by a putative conservative calling me some variation on faggot Godless commie.

Fortunately, the internet is full of places where I can easily check if I have succumbed to a, shall we say, more sinister political belief. (Umm, that's sinister as derived from the Latin term for left handed, playing on the popular understanding of the "left" and "right" wings.)

It doesn't take much roaming around for me to conclude that I fit in with "good movement leftists" about as well as I fit in with "good movement rightists," which is to say, not at all.

The left, we can posit, don't really dig on meat. This is not to slander the fine barbecue-loving Democrats that make up, one hopes, most of the Democratic Party, but speaks rather to the more rigorous adherents of the fringes. Vegetarians, vegans, Veejer (wait, that was Star Trek Something or Other), PETA advocates, or just folks who prefer to think that meat is generated, pre-shrink wrapped, in supermarkets around the world. I'm going out on a limb, here, and I don't have the statistics to back me up, but I'd venture that those folks are mostly left wing.

That's one of the ways I can tell I'm no commie pinko. Because just between you and me and the fence post, I likes me some meat. Hell, I loves me some meat.

I believe I am evolutionarily a carnivore, with the whole "eyes in front" thing going for me, with the whole "growed to rip flesh not chaw cud" teeth thing going for me. I believe I digest meat better than grains, and from time to time I see internet headlines about how our brains require amino acids found in meats to fully develop. Hey, all that could be nonsense.

What isn't nonsense is how much I likes me some meat.

I likes me some cow.

Like the commercial from a few years back said, "Beef, it's what's for dinner." For me, beef is the staple, it's the everyday thing. It's a floor wax, and a dessert topping! From the high-falutin' filet to the lunch bucket ground hamburger, it's the little black dress of the carnivore's feeding wardrobe. You can accessorize your beef just about any which way and it'll turn out satisfactory. We've cracked the code on beef, plus we're relying on cow farts to stave off the oncoming Ice Age. Fart, Bessie, fart!

I likes me some pig.

I pity observant Jews and Muslims because they have done themselves out of pork products through their piety. There are atheists out there who posit that every religion is a sham and a fraud, and while I don't buy into that (in my heart of hearts I do think I have a spiritual relationship with God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that I'm racking up karma points by attempting to walk with my Savior and that there is, in the end, a Plan however I am unable to fathom it, but I'm just saying) I think in such a case a good faith argument could be made that getting to eat pork is enough reason to do some schismatic heresy-shaking. Unlike beef, pork to me has a distinct, wonderful yummilicious distinctness. (Beef is pretty much "just meat.")

Bacon? Foshizzle my nizzle. Ham, either thick sliced steaks or honey glazed slices of just hocks tossed into the red beans and rice? Shut yo' mouth good. One time back in the day, one of my Daddy's clients sent him a peppered ham, had a good, thick, 1/4" rind of peppers on it. I remember the taste of that ham TO THIS DAY, I tell you. Ahem. To this day.

Now chicken and lamb, they have their place, as do all of God's other little critters. About venison, enough words simply cannot be said, so I shan't say a thing. And I've had some mighty fine elk and moose. Huh, that brings Palin to mind, who was, by causing mass anti-hunting spasms, probably the inspiration for this post. But other meats, they are of tertiary importance compared to beef and pork, and I want to get to sleep sometime tonight, and if I start going off on individual meats, I'll be here all night.

Loves me some meat. Yeah I do.

In my way, I'm a sensualist, a hedonist. Not a libertine, mind you (although I could be wrong) but a hedonist. I try to relish the sensations of the physical world, like the feel of grass between your toes, the pleasant itchy annoyance of a mosquito bite (somewhere in Clavell's Shogun someone says "life is pain") and oh my goodness gracious the taste of meat in your mouth. Maybe it's bad, maybe it's evil, maybe it's rotten, but you can't deny that meat tastes good in your mouth, even if it's "good like a fresh hit of crack" good. (Or wait, are kids these days just doing meth? Damn, it's hell to get old.)

I love ripping meat apart in my mouth. Bite down, there's that big explosion of flavor, sometimes a rush of juices, something primeval about it, something very rooted, something very grounded. Something very traditional. (We just do those traditions a lot more than people throughout history have been able to.) It's not a pellet, it's not something plasticized and hydrogenated for your protection, not something shot through with preservatives and processed into nothingness. (Even a hot dog, hey, lips and assholes, man, as they said in the East Texas poultry business, "parts is parts.") It's something real. It's something that was living, and not "living" like a plant turns towards the sun and produces phyloplankton, but living like it had a face and a heart.

And because I have a conscience, which means I'm a liberal . . . or maybe a conservative, I get confused, but anyway . . . the meat that tastes the best is meat I've made for myself. "Making meat" is another way of saying "getting your deer" and it sums it up in wonderful, beautiful, brutal simplicity. I won't lie, I'm no great hunter, I'm barely even a hunter, been hunting six or seven times and only bagged one deer and one pig. Both Bambi and Wilbur were thoroughly consumed, and with great relish, I will point out.

Aside from the health benefits of being leaner and free of hormones, antibiotics and other stuff of the nightmares of Upton Sinclair, meat you make for yourself is more moral. Rather than being industrially produced and processed, meat you kill for yourself has probably lived a more or less free existence, running around and rutting and fighting and mating and, you know, eating acorns. (Not, sadly, ACORNs.)

So yeah. I'm no commie pinko, because I likes me some meat.