Problem with the Cheese

Originally published circa 2005 on the (long gone) IllitPress.com – a sort of Canadian version of MatchstickCats.com with more swaring and fewer cats..

I’m deeply concerned at the moment by the proliferation of television commercials advertising cheese that has no holes in it. This is not acceptable in this day and age. Are there no standards in the food industry any more? I mean, in my day, you used to be able to put your finger through any lump of cheese without using a kitchen implement of any kind. And I don’t mean because it was soft. There was simply a sufficient number of holes in the cheese to guarantee permeability at almost any point along it’s surface. But times have changed now. And apparently, the manufacturers think we should be eating smooth, flat slices of cheddar wrapped in plastic.

They don’t specifically say that we have to eat the plastic, but it’s pretty much implied, isn’t it? Presumably so that they can poison our brains and turn them to mush, so that we’ll watch even more of their advertisements and buy whatever they have lined up for us next. I confidently expect the launch, sometime in the next year or two, of flat pack carrots. And when that happens, mark my words, we’ll have been taken over completely, and it will be too late for all of us.

People sometimes say that I’m paranoid. Well, I’m certainly anoid. But I think what they mean is that I think everybody’s out to get me. Well, what I think or don’t think is irrelevant. Either they’re out to get me, or they’re not. And in the case of the dairy products industry, they are.

I don’t want to worry you, but today I bought a carton of milk and took it home, and I’m almost certain that as I opened it I could hear a faint “moo” coming from behind me. Admittedly I do have cows in my back garden. But I only keep them as pets so they don’t “moo”. They just sit there, staring at me and eating my grass and waiting for me to grow some more grass for them in the greenhouse. They have very exotic tastes in grass, my cows. They won’t eat any old carp. They expect me to import grass seed from a dealer in South America, but I think it’s worth it. The cows always look very, very happy while they’re eating the grass. In fact, I think they’re becoming addicted to it. Well at least it keeps them off the street.

I’m not like other cow keepers, who allow them to roam the streets of the city at all hours of the day and night. I stand up to my responsibilities. Streets are for cars, cats and people. Not cows. Cows need to be kept well away from the urban environment. The same is true of tortoises and reindeer. Stop me if I’m stating the obvious here. I don’t like to patronise my readers (“Patronise” meaning “talking down to”).

Anyway, the problem as I see it is that we are are far too accepting of the existence of cheese manufacturers. Surely cows are perfectly capable of making all the cheese that we need to keep the world running. We don’t need these factories pumping out tonne after tonne of artificial cheeses, made by hideous machines and stuffed with unnecessary additives and dye. So I say we leave it to the cows. After all, they’ve being pumping out cheese for thousands of centuries, without any need for interference from us humans. All we need to do is put a couple of buckets underneath them; one for the milk and one for the cheese, and let them do what comes natural.

Personally, I prefer jam to cheese. With jam, you never have to worry about whether or not there are going to be holes, or whether it’s going to be wrapped in individual slices with “extra mild, loved by kids” or some such carp, written all over it. The problem with jam, though, is it’s full of fruit and health crap like that. I don’t want health on my toast. If I wanted health I would have a salad or a banana. When I’m having toast I want to be left alone with proper unhealthy stuff that actually tastes of something.

I never understand why people who like fruit claim that it’s good for punctuation. They go on and on and on about tidying up their colons, and presumably as well commas, semi-colons and full stops, but fruit isn’t going to make you more literate. If anything, fish will. Fish is brain food. Even if you don’t eat the head. Because fishes are remarkably intelligent, if you choose to measure a creature’s intelligence by it’s ability to swim around in the ocean. Which I do. I think any animal that manages to find it’s way around in the dark depths of the sea, with all that sewage and bits of the titanic floating around and getting in the way, must be super intelligent.

So to recap, lets all eat plenty of fish and jam, but not so much cheese