Eat Bugs

For the longest time (a week, by my calendar), a war of words has raged on a message board nobody gives a fick aboot. Many lives have been lost. Vegetarians have condemned meat eaters for their abject diets; the meat eaters, in turn, have slept, showered, and shaved.

Enough, I say!

To satisfy my magnanimous nature, I say Let us all agree to disagree. (Or Let us hold a lottery where members of both factions are brutally executed. I'm not adverse to that idea, either.) One point though, I believe, can unite us. There are people starving elsewhere in the world (if The Grapes of Wrath is any indication, mainly in Oklahoma), yet this would not be the case if insect consumption were more widespread.

I know what you're thinking: How will I ever get those bread and potato chip crumbs dislodged from between the letters on my keyboard. I can't ven typ the lttr 이...

Sorry, that's what I was thinking. I tend to project. What I wanted to say was: Bugs are gross!

That they are. That they are. But, they're also chock full of protein, or so I hear. And there's no shortage of the critters. Check your pubic hair if you don't believe me. AND I'm pretty sure no one cares if they die or not. Look, I think cows and pigs are cute. I've seen Babe and that movie with the adorable cow (you know the one I'm talking about). I own Chicken Run on DVD. And even though they can't do algorithms nor write a potboiler novel, I regard dogs and cats as my friends, even though quite a few of them have stiffed me on the pot I've spotted them and would probably drive away without me during a gangland shoot-out. But that doesn't exempt the fact that they also taste like how an orgasm feels, and that their searing flesh makes my mouth water like a virgin's supple neck to Dracula. Still, for the time being I'll pretend to concede that animal eating is worng (he he) and that we as a society should seek a compromise, namely bugs.

I'm not talking about butterflies, because most vegetarians would likely oppose the idea (though they'd make a great salad, I'm positive); but even the most ardent herbivore, I'll wager, would have no qualms against capturing a mosquito and systematically pulling its wings and legs off like Oh Daesu in Oldboy or The White Angel in The Marathon Man pulling teeth. Mosquitoes, after all, are the Nazis of the insect world. And both logic and instinct dictate we kill them. So why not sate our palates in the process?

We stand on the precipice of universal progress, brothers and sissies. For the sake of our planet, let us do away with convention and feast upon our mutual enemies, the insect kingdom. For I long for the day when praying mantis is a main course at TGI Friday's, and sauteed cockroach an appetizer.

Like Dr. Martin Luther King, I too have a dream, and it is that no belly will go unfed due to our petty prejudices of what constitutes "food". In the bible it says that Jesus took five loaves of bread and two fish and fed the multitudes. Sounds incredible? Unbelievable? Substitute that bread and those fish with grasshoppers and caterpillars, and what you have, friends and nihilists, is reality.

Perhaps you think I'm joking. Let me assure you, I am

(batshit insane)

completely genuine.

Remember, back in the day they scoffed at Galileo Galilei's ideas, too. That's probably because he had a silly name -- would you believe the earth revolves around the sun were the idea posited to you by Dick Butkus? -- but history proved him right. I'm warning you, don't make the same mistake now that the Catholic Church made then; heed the wisdom of a man gifted with talent and insight. I'm a champion-level Pac-Man player, and therefore have authority in matters concerning the human race.

Do the right thing. Eat Bugs.

(For your Pulitzer consideration.)