In our last post, I was busy relating the Bohemian Radio Institute’s latest findings on pointless fascination with things that never happened when I encountered an example of what the poets and travelling salesmen call serendipity – which seems to be a form of coincidence in which something pointlessly trivial becomes trivial in a much more meaningful way. Or so my gut tells me.
Many of you dear readers happened to remark that, just as I was conveying the magnificence of the never-to-have-had-existed Bacon Toaster of Future 1975, something was happening in our contemporary, real future in a way that may or may not actually happen in our actual future lifetimes: A worldwide shortage of the most important ingredient of our imaginary toaster: Bacon!
Now, being somewhat a student of the science of circular logic and unfalsifiable propositions, I immediately became intensely suspicious and paranoid: Something was happening in the world that I, as an individual, couldn’t quite understand or control – elegant proof that someone or something ELSE was controlling things beyond my ability to understand or control things beyond my understanding or control, wouldn’t you say?
Resisting the temptation to immediately go off-grid, living out of dumpsters and public libraries while going under the nom de voyage Susan P. Bugblatt (long story), I instead settled down for some intense research on the subject of bacon. My first step was the laborious typing of the word “bacon” into the search line on Google. I was expecting to learn something, but … I wasn’t quite expecting this:
“How clever,” I thought. “Devilishly clever.” A certain fast food restaurant had just introduced the brilliant and tantalizing combination of fried heavenly goodness and a vanilla-esque soft-serve iced cream-like substance, calling it the Bacon Sundae. And just as a years-long drought threatens the supply of feedstock that may or may not result in a shortage and slight increase in the price of the most important ingredient. I was deep in the rabbit hole, with no electric carrot to light the way.
Before I go on, a little history may be in order. I know most people, like I do, think of bacon as a carefully cultivated result of the Apollo astronaut programs of the 1960s, along with Tang, Velcro and Richard Nixon. But did you know that it was actually discovered by our ancient human ancestors of thousands of hundreds of years ago – serendipitously – that the giant monster pigs they had been spearing for food actually tasted like delicious fried bacon? Or, at least, they would when they eventually discovered fire and pan-fry cooking.
Bacon was so useful and greasy that the Romans paid their soldiers with giant slabs of bacon called petaso, which they mixed in a bag with wine, spoiled figs, spices and feral cats before drinking. And the ancient French, when not making up words far too complicated for modern Americans to pronounce without local anesthesia, eventually domesticated some wild Germans accompanied by their porcine lords and masters, thus acquiring not only the Germanic bakkon, which means “delicious treat from filthy swine,” but also the magnificent animals they would ride gloriously into battle during the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.
During World War II, the U.S. government required all bacon aficionados to save their bacon grease and send it back to the Government Men to make into bombs. Just how many kitchen grease bombs were made is not recorded by the military – quite possibly because it was total bullshit – but my theory is that since Hitler was a vegetarian, he’d have been extra-offended by bacon-derived explosives. Who’s to say who hasn’t really bothered to look it up? Not me, my dear readers. Not me at all.
Even people named after the foodish substance were disproportionately influential on world history. Sir Francis Bacon not only invented the Declaration of Independence and Shakespeare, but his grandson Kevin Bacon is never more than six degrees of awesome away from anyone else on earth.
So, now that you know all these arcane, knowledge-like factlets, can you really believe that it is a coincidence that much of our most dearly delicious natural food resources – bacon, ham, pork chops, sausage, pizza, beef jerky – all come from the same amazing animal? It’s almost as if someone had planned the biggest mass dependency on a staple food item in the history of planned mass dependencies, only to then ruthlessly make it slightly less convenient to obtain.
There’s no telling how far this conspiracy of consumption goes. I’m not telling – mostly because I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be a lot more on the Internet about the Great Bacon Conspiracy other than what I have just posted right now. Or did I just Blow Your Mind?
Just a brief note here to thank everyone who stopped to read, like, comment or temporarily glance at my blog over the last two days; it’s a been an overwhelming privilege to be Freshly Pressed. I hope you enjoy what’s to come. Also, an especially grateful and loving thank you to my wonderful friend and benefactor Courtenay Bluebird of Bluebird Blvd., whose brilliant writings are always a pleasure and an inspiration.
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Oh, you make me chortle. My dear husband just told me this morning that the recent dust bowl that’s been propelled through time to create our current drought will drive the price of pork sky high. Bacon conspiracy indeed. You called it.
My dream is to start a web-wide Great Bacon Conpsiracy meme and wait to see how far it goes before I discover Jay-Z and Lady Gaga are behind it.
Hey, I’ve been wanting to ask you? How do you feel about your experience with being Freshly Pressed? Was ‘futurism’ the tag you wanted? Did it work for you? I am thrilled and honored to have been FPd, but being tagged “family” I think missed my targeted audience for the most part. If I was a reader, personally a post tagged “family” I probably would have skipped altogether. Let me know your thoughts.
Honestly, I’m still overwhelmed by the positive feedback I’ve received so far. I’m grateful that people seem to like something about the writing. In my experience, it hasn’t proven fruitful to worry too much about what labels of convenience might come up to describe what you do – ultimately, you can’t really control how how people perceive your writing. You can only hope to make a meaningful connection with the reader, targeted or not.
I appreciate your taking the time to answer me. I thought your post was absolutely wonderful I laughed through the entire thing. I found your post on bacon equally enjoyable. I merely asked because while I did get many more hits than usual and many new readers, I think that being tagged as “family” led people to click who don’t really get what I’m about. So not being tagged “humor” kept many of the folks that would have enjoyed my post away. I wouldn’t consider myself one who writes much about family. I just write about stuff that I think is odd or funny. Be it true or farce, family or not. That’s all. Thanks again for your reply. Keep doing exactly what you do. I love it and will continue to read.
Have no fear. As long as there are wild boars overpopulating south Texas, we will not run out of fabulous bacon. Just start practicing your rifle skills.
I have family members who will happliy go after them with spears, to tell the truth.
i rarely share this, but i’m only 1 degree from kevin bacon. that having been said, i can’t throw away bacon grease. i have jars and jars of the stuff in my refrigerator. you can add it to the pot where you’re boiling peas, beans, potatoes, to add flavor, or use it to fry other meats or greens. or, in the case of the boiling veggies, you can add butter. if and when i ever cook these dishes (less often than the rare instance of my cooking bacon), i choose butter. so that means when the baconacolypse comes, i’ll at least have plenty of the grease stocked up since i am forever saving and never using it. that having been said, i am now hiding my cache of bacon grease so as not to be overrun by all of you who foolishly wasted yours when bacon was plentiful. *sinister laugh*
oh, and did you know you can buy bacon maple flavoured lolipops?
Coming from the Valley, yeah, I knows about all the uses for bacon grease, and mom still has her grease can.
yeah. rgv tx and rural coastal plains nc are about 96% the same place.
ERMERGERD! Not only have you followed up your Olympic gold-standard story on bacon with even more Olympic gold standard bacon-flavored writing, you mentioned me in your final flourish at the end.
My eyes are welling up a little bit. It’s allergies, okay? These aren’t tears of joy or anything. Okay, maybe they are tears of joy.
You are my favorite writer, Phillip, and you always will be.
And you, dollin’, are the bestest at writing and niceness and sweetie sweetness.
*Laughing* Ah, you know me too well. Thank you, Phillip. So very, very much!
Fabulous! And now I have a craving for it… I blame you! Bacon… glorious bacon! MMMM!
Blame me if you must, just don’t call me late for breakfast.
Yet another laugh uncontrollably out loud post. Bravo. My smile of the day was brought
to the world by you.
Always glad to oblige; thanks for smiles in return.
Excellent post. I like bacon on pizza.
Bacon so gooooood on pizza … mmm.
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I already made bacon today because of the bacon toaster I imagined having in the future, and now bacon in a can is something I’m seriously thinking about stockpiling. Man I could go for a BLT right now. I will be curing my own pork belly in the coming weeks.
You had me with the toaster blog and now I’m stuck on bacon…too. Way to go.
Now that I’m number 77 of fellow bloggers following your entertaining postings, I find myself feeling a kinship. Perhaps one day a long long, long time ago we went to different high schools together? Just wondering…
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My favorite rendition of bacon comes from a skit on “That 70’s Show”. “Bacooon” LOL!!! I suppose pork belly stocks will rise from this sort of attention. And, I am curious about the, before mentioned, “Bacon Sunday”.
Whenever Boyfriend and I drive up to our favorite breakfast restaurant, I always remark, ‘what’s that sign posted in the window? something about…a bacon shortage?’ Gets him every time. He is as close to tears as I have ever seen him.