to stand out, slightly, from the millions of other sads souls...

criticism sucks. even praise and glory can feel a bit false when it relates to something you've created. until the washington post gets back to me on an essay i submitted, this one will have to suffice in regard to mass exposure.

* * *
Cat Food---------------------------

.......
Personality goes a long way???
In the Bible and the Holy Qur-an, it is the Divine will of God that the pig should not be eaten and God has never changed this instruction, despite the white man’s setting up governmental bureaus to grade and approve the selling of pork.---
Remember when cow patties were something you ate.
Sheep balls.

......

This is the scene: The waiter is giving me a strange look. He stares down his thin nose with narrow, unsure eyes. The light of the restaurant plays off the smooth globe of his head, and I notice that the greased, thin line of his moustache quivers slightly from his twitching lip. It is quiet in here, as pleasant and peaceful as a church. And I wait patiently with the menu in my hands like a devoted worshipper.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he says, leaning to my shoulder where I can feel and smell his breath. For a moment, I think of the air in the subway during the summer, warm and palpable. I must remember to buy eggs on the way home.

The man is dressed all in black. His suit is neatly ironed and lint-free. It gives him a military look when he straightens. And when he speaks, I notice that his English is very good, but with a heavy, French accent that he probably exaggerates for his job. It creates a nice atmosphere. I almost think we’ve left the state.

“That is not on the menu,” he assures me.

“Funny,” I say to my friend across the table, smiling with a bit of feigned disappointment. “You’d think a nice place like this would serve cat.”

And it ends with my friend and I folding over our dinnerware in laughter the way they do in cheesy sitcoms from the 80s. Then, as if on a director’s cue, the maître d' will join us, and the chef and his aides, and the little old woman who sweeps the floor will all file out of the kitchen to gather around my table and share in this remarkable moment.

But the imaginary scene goes no further. The truth is I’m only thinking of French restaurants, and the comical implications of eating the neighborhood toms. In all honesty, my friend and I are standing on line at a Chipotle down the corner from the bus stop. There is a long wait, and because it is too noisy to talk—Muzak, the sound of sizzling chow—I have turned to reread the food options pasted across the wall.

This was when I noticed the sign on the counter. It’s a clever ad, one of Chipotle’s many, featuring their colossal burritos wrapped in foil. But this particular advertisement includes a passage in a small black font near the bottom, boasting the type of meat used in their signature tacos: Niman Ranch free-range pork.

This example of unfamiliar proper nouns and euphemistic monikers is what has drwan me to imagine the episode in the French restaurant. Although I’d like to think that I belong somewhere among the educated of our society, Niman Ranch is about as elusive to me as paedodontics or the nation’s insistent interest in Mars. This sort of wording is not what I would consider colloquial, much less appetizing.

Here’s the problem with food today. Nothing is as it is represented. Food chains and name brand groceries have sunk to the commercialization of their products. They’ve developed panels of experts and created departments for the sole purpose of marketing the items we have been buying and consuming for years. And what has resulted is a corporate language that is pompous and elusive.

Ask me and I’ll say that the single purpose of a label, of any kind, is simply and bluntly to inform the interested party about the item in question—assuming one cannot arrive at such a conclusion based on sight or smell.

Based on these labels we make our decision to eat, or not to eat. When confronted with the ambiguous fodder of commercialization we are left instead to ponder over such frivolousness as ‘Niman Ranch free-range pork,’ which, if anything, sounds like a child constructing her first sentence (one lacking a few articles and prepositions specifying Mr. Ranch’s obsession with clearing his land of swine).

I realize that some people might argue that such phrasing is there to banish the fears or the apprehensions we have about the foods we eat. The health conscious say that they have a right to know what they’re ingesting. And I agree. But what puzzles me is the need for food makers/providers to be superfluous in their descriptions. Or to use terms that result in losing my place on line so that I can rush home and Google what’s on the menu.

When I see this kind of jargon, it reminds me of being a child, when grownups spelled out the naughty words they used around the house to shelter my virginal ears. ‘Shit’ and ‘Fuck’ had not yet entered my vocabulary and were a harmless series of letters I would later piece together on my own. Wouldn’t ‘naturally raised pig’ suffice? Wouldn’t ‘shredded cow’ save us all some time? The simplest wording is best found on the canned food we feed to our pets. ‘Mechanically separated and processed chicken’ is perhaps as blunt and straightforward as can be. Who knew Fancy Feast was ahead of everyone else? One can only hope the others will soon gain their pace.

But even if the health concerned were persuaded (or at least ignored), such language would raise the brows of the sentimental. For a long time there has been a movement toward the separation between animal as friend, or fellow Earth dweller, and animal as food. Pig became pork; cow, beef; baby cow, veal; etc. Even the more peculiar, foreign fare was left untranslated to suppress the natural impulse to say, ‘I’m eating what?’ E.g. escargot, caviar, calamari, foie gras.

In the 1988 film Funny Farm, the main character, Andy Farmer, an aspiring novelist (played by the brilliant, yet egomaniacal Chevy Chase), moves to the sticks in hopes of writing his book. At one point, while dining with his wife in a local restaurant, Farmer is near breaking the record for consuming the greatest number of ‘lamb fries,’ small, round morsels that greatly resemble meatballs, but are in actuality sheep testicles.

“Yes, ma’m,” a resident confirms. “Sheep balls.”

This scene is comical and holds its merit within the context of the film’s characters, but more importantly it serves to emphasize an adage our food culture has been applying for years--‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

And it works. It works because it offers a mask and shields us from what we’d otherwise leave untouched on our plates. Were a hotdog stand to advertise sausages made of pulverized cow rectum, no one would buy them. If a restaurant offered pig shoulders as the house specialty, business would be slow. And while we’d prefer to imagine the platter of calamari as French fries and not the deep-fried squid tentacles, they actually are, there’s no way of denying the source. Words do not change the food.

This is why such meals as ankimo (a monkfish liver pâté) and tiet canh (congealed duck’s blood) will never have an explanation under them. They are there for those wishing to indulge their curiosity and romance with other languages and other customs. They are there for those who don’t care what they are going to eat. But, when in doubt, think sheep balls.

Strangely, it’s the foods that many dislike or refuse to admit enjoying that have not fallen victim to such chicanery. Pig’s feet continue to accommodate customers in many groceries, where those sad little tootsies swirl around in an oversized jar of watered down Hawaiian Punch. And cows’ tongue, although not as colorful, long-lasting or interactive, is readily available from many butchers. These items are the epitome of directness. We know exactly what we will be consuming when we see the label on the jar. If only everything were so simple. But gone are those days, the good old days, when choices were limited. Today’s generation is far too different. It is a generation of Teletubbies and counter lawsuits, where personal space, pocketbooks, and mine, mine, mine make me happy, and so they must make you happy. Gone are the days when children played outside, got a little rowdy and (god forbid!) dirty, and came in to the warm kitchen of home where Mom and Dad sat at either ends of the table. And the food on the plate was cooked, and it was obvious what it was, and the kids ate it because that’s what the parents put there, and the parents put it there because that was all there was. There were no options, disclaimers, labels. And nobody questioned this.

Which is the reason cat will not be on the menu any time soon. Americans have become too sensitive, too touchy. But I’m waiting for the day when your adorable feline does make its debut and enters the culinary mainstream, because I wonder what strange, new moniker it will be assigned. Will it receive a foreign Latinate name, or perhaps one completely obscure chosen by a supercomputer of the future randomly picking letters. As long as the word allows us to forget what we are consuming, it will have served its function. By today’s standards at least.

Now, as a rule, I don’t eat cat. And somehow by making this declaration I am placed within the spectrum of what is considered ‘normal’ Americana. That is, one of a majority of us, with the exception of the owners of those creepy little eateries neighboring veterinary offices, who prefer not to consciously consume the creatures we are fond of. We would prefer instead to keep our beloved Garfield and Odie off the dinner plate, if not away from the table altogether.

Which makes me wonder about our way of classifying pets, and how some animals make the cut while others hopelessly stand at the sidelines anticipating our affection—or even just a few extra years of their life.

This brings us to Jen. Jen was a woman I knew when I was a sophomore in high school. She was a senior and had even older contacts who had the ability to buy cigarettes and booze, so my friends and I often plowed in our cars to her house late weekend nights to woo her and maker her feel popular. It was on the first trip to her home that I met her pet pig, Bacon, a name I later learned was nearly universal among pig lovers.

Bacon resembled a massive slug more than a typical pig. She was only about one foot long and almost as wide. Her stunted legs made her hobble from the weight she carried and her hooves clicked across the linoleum floors as she ran. It was a sad sight, and one that could really fuck with your mind. Especially after a few beers, seeing Bacon race across the kitchen made me think I had somehow been transported to a house in Arkansas.[1]

For the most part everyone simply tried to avoid stepping on Bacon, who weaved between our legs and took a strange liking to anyone wearing Doc Martens (did he perhaps recognize someone from his past?). And each time we entered the living room, we were greeted by a strange smell. Not like the acrid tang of cat or dog piss, but something much more earthy, like compost or the stale odor of standing water. The floor was always discolored from spots and stains. Not once did Jen ever have it cleaned.

When somebody asked Jen about Bacon, and his ability to act or serve adequately as a pet, Jen glowed in the face and went on a long tirade about the misconceptions people have about pigs. How, although many perceive them as dirty and stupid, they’re actually smarter than dogs and just as affectionate. I was counting the discolorations on the rug when a girl came running into the room, screaming. Bacon was down the hall shitting on the carpet and smearing it across the floor.

Despite his faults, Jen was fond of her pig. Unlike many, she had the ability to overlook the presumptions others held toward swine and could love her strange pet for reasons that never became apparent to me in the short time that I knew her. Before long, I, as I imagine many that visited Jen eventually did, began to distance myself from Bacon and the sty he was making of Jen’s home.

Webster’s defines a pet as, “Any domesticated or tamed animal that is kept as a companion and cared for affectionately.” This seems fair, even if not absolutely clear. The cats and dogs we keep in our apartments are for the most part “domesticated” or “tamed” and we enjoy their company and affection. Sometimes even to an extreme limit. It’s no longer unusual to see the small head of a Chihuahua peeking from a woman’s handbag. Or to catch a glimpse of a neighbor in his pajamas scampering along the cold, 5a.m. sidewalks to dutifully and lawfully baggie his pet’s steaming turds. These animals are undoubtedly pets. We see them everyday in what is their environment as well as our own. In fact it would seem awkward to wake one day and find them no longer in our lives.

But there will always be the occasional individual with the eccentric taste, the person with a desire to live on the edge. For these people the oddball iguana or ferret is not compelling enough. Even Jen appears as a conventional pet owner in comparison. They prefer to make their pets more than a hobby or a companion, but rather a ticking bomb waiting to explode. The latest craze seems to be Tigers.

It’s certainly easy to see some of the merit in such a relationship. Tigers are beautiful animals. They are graceful, proud cats--although I’ve never found one so remarkable that its splendor usurps the obvious threat in its claws and teeth. Nonetheless, I think it is human nature to long for disproportionately sized images of the things we adore. This is why we would like for our children to never grow up, but to stay small, cute and containable. It’s the reason, why as children ourselves, we beg and beg our fathers to play toss-the-rings at the fair, over and over again so that we can upgrade our dinky little teddy bear for its unabridged, gargantuan sibling.

The vibrant purr and soft plush of a giant cat is tempting. Yet where this kind of relationship begins to disappoint is in what we fail to remind ourselves of; the term ‘wild’ has been assigned for a reason. And that, despite what we see in the circus ring, ‘tamed’ and ‘domesticated’ are simply words we loosely employ because we wish to ignore our fear that we might one day wind up like Roy Horn (of Siegfried and Roy).

Then there will always be those for whom none of Webster’s definitions can apply. Recall for example Antoine Yates, the 31-year-old man who kept both a tiger and a crocodile in his 5^th floor Harlem apartment. Yates, claiming to be in the process of building a “Garden of Eden,” was found in a hospital after the tiger turned on him, and attacked his leg. Everything about this case is remarkable. It is a story that seems taken from The Onion rather than the Daily News. But what is most striking is not the account’s ironic similarity to Roy Horn (Yates’s mauling came less than 48 hours after Roy’s own incident, hence the media was already in the throes of a wild animal confinement and domestication debate). Rather, it is the overlooked crocodile.

Surely the thought of keeping a tiger as a pet is a bit unconventional. But, honestly, who can resist those adorable black eyes, prickly whiskers and jaws capable of crushing through human bone? Or perhaps Yates was a great admirer of the spandexed duo. Maybe he aspired to one day launch his own Vegas stage show. Live from Harlem. With ghetto-flair. Who can blame him? Isn’t it what we all want?

Yet what I keep thinking about, what unsettles me most about this story, is the crocodile. This dumb, sad animal cooped in a Harlem apartment probably never saw the light of day. Nor is it likely that he had so much as a log to lie on or a one-month old Australian nipper to nip at.

Consider this, and then think of the emotional distress that animal must have gone through. After all, there is nothing pet-like about a crocodile. We’ve seen images of Siegfried and Roy and other odd celebrities cuddling up to the downy coat of a lion or tiger. But none--aside from Ritalin dependent Steve Irwin—are willing to saddle up next to 200 million years worth of carnivorous dominance. So, besides being deprived of a more natural habitat, the crocodile no doubt suffered from neglect and probably resorted to pouting in the bathtub while eyeing Yates and the tiger in the other room cuddling by the fire.

But even this is ridiculous. What is expected of an animal that you can not be affection with or consider a companion? Can Mr. Yates’s crocodile be considered a pet? Does an animal fit the definition if only one of Webster’s three prerequisites is met? It seems unlikely. Which is why the media treated Yates as the madman he most certainly is and not as the eccentric celebrity he probably would have preferred.

This is also why the crocodile was given far less attention by the media than the tiger. The tiger was seen through the same eyes that had witnessed, only hours before, the looping footage of Siegfried and Roy frolicking with their cats in their backyard. Had Yates’ “garden” been discovered hours after the Steve Irwin fiasco, the crocodile might have received a bit more of the limelight. Place a newborn child anywhere other than in a stroller and the country shits its pants (e.g. Michael Jackson’s infamous balcony spectacle).

In effect, a crocodile has little importance for Greater Americana, who would sooner have her twisted heart broken over a cute and cuddly cat than a hard and sharp toothed crocodile. This is why it seems okay when we see crocodile on the menus of many restaurants, yet still fail to understand people who take a fondness to the same animals we eat.

Something Webster fails to include in his definition is the notion that one will not ultimately eat their pet. This is the largest reason the housecat has not yet made the menu and therefore has not received an anticipated moniker. Jen’s love for an animal most Americans eat seemed strange to me only because when my friends and I looked at the pig we typically thought of bacon and sausage (among Deliverance quotes). It’s an odd thing in America when one man’s pet is another man’s dinner. Which is how it has been for years. Which is how most of us were raised. But is it right? I don’t know. For some reason no one bats a lash when a farmer uses a chicken from his backyard for soup. We all know that cows aren’t volunteering to be ground into hamburgers. Nor is it any different for cats, ferrets, parrots or the occasional iguana--the latter of which I can only envision braised whole with garlic and capers and served on a wide leaf of iceberg. And while most of us don’t like it, there are countries where dog is commonly served as a meal. I can not expect the world to turn from its love of ground chuck or rib-eye. KFC and Popeye’s will never file Chapter 11’s due to an increasing preference of celery over breast meat. And while salmonella and Mad Cow continue to make their train reservations for the city of DriveAmericansIntoUtterPanic, the lab-coated conductor always catches a whiff of their intentions and boots them off in that Indiana Jones “no ticket” kind of way.

Nor can it be anticipated that one day the vegetarians of the world will grow tired of corporate advertising and fast food culture, have their duo of dates wither and ascend simply to shell out the 99cents for a Big-Mac. I’m not expecting this to happen. I’m really not even thinking about it anymore. Instead, we are in another restaurant in my mind. I’m looking at the food on your plate, judging its contents and maybe even judging you. But mainly I’m wondering about your hamburger, and whether or not it was once a strong, proud cow in some picturesque, Wisconsin farm. A member of a much larger herd where she, at some brief or extended period in her life (it’s difficult to presume the social habits of cattle), may have confided in another her preference for a particular plot of land with exceptionally lush grass? Could this cow not have dreamed of different lands, a better life? Could it not have hoped for something other than what became of it? Isn’t this what we all imagine? Isn’t this what we all hope for? How, I wonder, should they be any different?

---

[1] My girlfriend is from Arkansas so I can say such things.