Natural Dinner Selection

If you’re like most right-thinking Americans, you love to eat meat. Even vegetarians can’t deny the strong desire to sink their teeth in meaty goodness. Sure, they won’t admit it, but I see how they mold their tofu and other questionable meat substitutes into items like veggie-burgers or tofu sausage. It’s like the child that daydreams of being a knight and builds a sandcastle.

The problem with eating meat is that it can get pretty expensive. A good steak will cost more than $20 at most restaurants. And so we settle for that chicken sandwich or that big salad with the fried chicken strips laying on it. It’s tragic. What if I told you, you could have your meat whenever you wanted, and have it for free?

A man in England named Arthur Boyt has been eating free meat for thirty years. And if you have a shovel and a plastic bag, you could too!

You see our outside world is absolutely jam-packed with animals. They live in the sky, in trees, underground, …just about everywhere. And when the animal population gets too crowded they aren’t happy. So nature dictates that the numbers should be thinned, and some animals are chosen to go out onto the road where they meet a quick end. Biology books refer to this process as natural selection.

Arthur Boyt refers to it as Dinner Selection. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4660060.stm

“It's good meat for free and I know nobody has been messing with it and feeding it with hormones and growth accelerants and so on. It's just natural, fully organic meat,” Boyt says. “I've lived off roadkill for the last 30 years or so. It adds to the pleasure of a meal to know I haven't paid for it”.

Amen Arthur. Amen. And good luck finding raccoon, otter, or badger at your local Safeway or Kroger Supermarket. These animals aren’t commercially sold, and some in fact are on the endangered species list. But maybe nature has pre-selected them for you. Next time you’re driving home, keep an eye out, and leave some room in the trunk.

And don’t worry about how to prepare them. Boyt is publishing a cookbook full of his greatest recipes. They’re all there: Smear of Dear, Rack of Raccoon, Chunk of Skunk, and the delectable Oodles of Poodles. Bon Appetit.

Oops. Did I do that?

Living near Washington, DC, I’m surrounded by museums and art galleries containing some of the most priceless relics and masterpieces to grace our good earth. I find I really don’t think about these wonders that much until I find myself standing right in front of one, and then, I’m like, “Whoa, I would like to scribble a fart joke on there.”

I remember when my father took me to the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore many years ago. Van Gogh’s Starry Night was on display at the time. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. And it was so close. I mean, I appreciate art and would never want to deface such a masterpiece. But just having that opportunity can be a bit of a temptation.

A visitor to a British museum recently found a way to enjoy the best of both worlds. He was at the top of a stairwell when he stumbled on his shoe lace. The next thing you know, he’s tumbling down the stairs and picking up speed. As he rolls off the last step, a whirling blur of arms and legs, he crashes into three Qing dynasty vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, shattering them into very small pieces.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2006-01-30-museum-mishap_x.htm

I’m sure he felt terrible…mostly. But that small part that dwells inside all of us, that inner drive that yearns to break stuff must have been immensely satisfied. I mean it doesn’t get any better than that. We’re talking Qing vases here. Qing!! That’s like 20 Mings or 50 Yuans!

The last time I broke something nice was when I was in high school. We had to give speeches about how to do something. I gave a speech about how to make a grilled cheese sandwich using a “Grilled Cheese Sandwich Maker”. Now this is before the Foreman grill was popular. This sandwich maker was sweet. If you had one of these babies it was like living on the Jetsons. You just put the uncooked sandwich in this device and it would close around it and cook it to hot, gooey, perfection….mmm….

Well I gave my speech, and needless to say my classmates were in jaw-dropped awe. After many autographs and high fives the class ended and it was time to go home. Being a teen, I had no concept of real responsibility and just shoved the sandwich maker into my backpack. Before I got home that backpack jostled quite a bit, and when I opened it to make a luscious grilled cheese, I discovered that my wondrous machine had broken into several parts. I, like the sandwich maker, was crushed. The pain from that event matured me like nothing else could. I was finally a man.

Wait a second…this is nothing like breaking vases at all. It’s probably better to break something that isn’t yours. Another important factor is not going to jail. I saw Shawshank Redemption, and I’ll tell you what, I AM NOT EVER GOING TO JAIL.

Johnny Vase-Breaker gets away with it because it’s an accident. The museum’s official statement was “It was a most unfortunate and regrettable accident, but we are glad that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed.”
They probably wanted to say, “You gotta be kiddin’ me! Oh man! There’s like only 25 of those in the world. Why couldn’t he have fallen down the steps in the modern art exhibit? I mean that stuff was made last night by third-graders. Wah!!!”

You know who’s really going to be in trouble? The guy who thought it was a good idea to put ancient super-expensive vases at the bottom of a stairwell. Why not just put a slip-n-slide down those stairs? You’re asking for it.

Anyway, none of this would have happened if Americans wised up and purchased Velcro shoes. But no, we’re too cool for Velcro shoes. Well, pardon me, but the last time I checked, art* was cool too.

*but not modern art