OCB Banquet

Well, today was the annual Orchestra - Colorguard - and Band Banquet. I must say that this wasn't the most fabulous party of all time.

The horror of it all begins earlier that day with my orchestra direction instructing us that the event was "dressy casual." Dressy casual, eh? I went to school believing that I had dressed "dressy casual." Apparently, I hadn't, so I had to drive home and put on a polo.

Upon arriving at school, I met a girl who exclaimed, "You're going in that!?!" Whoops, not so good. She explained that it was "semi-formal." There's a world of difference between "dressy casual" and "semi-formal"; to me, they mean "casual" but not crap and dress shirt and pants, respectively. So I escorted her to the band restroom (which despite being music students isn't as clean as normal restrooms) so that she could change into some sparkly pink dress while calling my dad to bring me my orchestra outfit seeing as I had no other "semi-formal" outfit. He wasn't too happy - looks like this banquet was going to cost three dollars in gas.

Having decked out in the proper attire, I made my grand entrance to the banquet. Sadly, there were no trumpeters from the band to announce my presence. Oh well. Following a wait in a fairly long line, I began to near the buffet. There seemed to be some kind of pasta, a couple rolls, a salad, and some semi-melted desserts. I began to worry, for I saw no evidence of meat.

Some lady piled some weird cheese pasta onto my dish. Suspicions confirmed: no meat. Ironically, a guy farther down the line was calling out, "Vegetarian here!" That's kind of pointless. Isn't the whole meal vegan?

I ate my meal, picking apart the vegan mess while complaining to any who cared to listen about the lack of meat. I paid eight United States greenbacks for this! Maybe if they spent less on the DJ and more on the food we could have some meat. I need my meat three times a day+, seven days a week, twelve months a year. And that's just the bare minimum or else m hands start shaking and my vision goes double. Then I saw some sort of wrinkly mass on my plate. Could it be? I speared it with my fork. It sure looked like chicken. I placed it in my mouth and immediately burst into tears. Meat! There was actually some sort of meat! Chicken ain't all that great, but it's better than nothing. After my little euphoria had subsided however, I continued to wander around and spread my sad tale of a meatless dinner.

Then it was the awards ceremony. Blah blah blah, some guy in front of us was quite the obnoxious. Kept screaming and hugging his buddies and conceitedly complimenting himself on how he made band fun, although to his credit he actually started more than one round of applauses. Simultaneously, there was some guy from percussion clapping rather loudly. It was like he was trying to make one hand go through the other or something. What was a percussionist doing here anyways? I remember quite clearly that this was an OCB Banquet; not OCBP.

On a final note, I must say that band enjoys overkilling their tradition. They have to pass down binders and unread books, give necklaces (who knows where it's been), and so on. On the other hand, orchestra sure enjoys making ties. We have co-presidents, co-seceretaries, co-treasurers, and co-historians. Heck, we even have co-teachers.

But above all, I've had a wonderful time with orchestra, band, and colorguard. Just try to get more meat in the banquet next time.

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Keep the Meat Coming

By now, you all should know I like food. More specifically, I like meat.

Today, I have another lunch episode to share with you. And it should be no surprise that it has something to do with meat.

For lunch, we went out to a Brazilian (maybe Portuguese, what's the difference?) steak house.

Now, the first thing you notice when you sit down at one of those churrascarias is that there is this interesting little object. Usually, one side of it is green and the other side red. This little thingamabob is key to your meal, and it is important that you flip it as little as possible. You'll see why in a moment.

These restaurants are part buffets. You can try their signature chicken Cordon Bleu, or any of the cultural Brazilian dishes such as Lingua, rabada, and other unpronounceable creations, but it's recommended you save your stomach space for as much meat as possible. Don't even think about putting any foliage on your plate. Be careful, though. There's no telling what's in half of the foods.

So what is a Brazilian steak house anyways? It's where all the best waiters are located, because these particular breed of food carriers are known as passadors; meat waiters in English. Can you believe it? Waiters entirely dedicated to bringing you meat! This is where the little red-green indicators come in. When the green side is up, they'll keep bringing you meat. They bring these huge sword things with pepper steak, garlic steak, chicken, and more skewered on it right to your table! When the red side is up, the meat flow is cut. The only reason why the red side is down is because you need some time to digest to make room for more meat.

But you can't have everything. The meat sometimes comes too slowly, leaving you to watch some Latin channel on their two flat screens or listen to some Brazilian chant/music set on repeat. The buffet food is probably not all that fresh, because who after all eats at the buffet when there's all this wonderful meat to be had.

The next time you spot one of these places, stop by. Just remember to clear your schedule for the next one hour or two. You'll want to get the most beef out of your buck.

Need a Moment?

Don't you ever get that craving for something sweet, salty, chewy, and brown?

I do quite often, and I fulfill the urge with Twix. But only if there isn't any beef jerky handy.

I'm always looking to eat meat, but there never seems to be enough of it lying around, or at least in the palatable form. Enter beef jerky, the best thing since the invention of meat itself.

What's not to like about beef jerky? It doesn't need refrigeration, it doesn't need cooking, and it doesn't even need to be uncanned. You can bring it anywhere for that quick burst of protein to keep you on you on your feet. You don't need one of those environmentally destructive plastic bags to like you need for trail mix. A little piece of paper to wrap around it is all you need. Plus, you'll have something to wipe your hands after you've eaten the jerky and licked your fingers.

You don't even need hands to eat jerky. Just pop a chunk in your mouth and start exercising your jaw muscles and do whatever needs doing. It may also help in rehabilitation of tobacco-chewers. Chewing beef jerky may produce salivation, which the patient may "spit" in the tobacco-chewing fashion. However, this is not recommended at is a waste of perfectly good beef jerky juice that should be savored instead.

Beef jerky also has its masculine appeals. Real men like meat. What's more manlier than taking a stick of jerky and ripping a chunk off like a barbarian. Arrghh.

Nutritionally, beef jerky has no fat. Yup, you heard me, no fat. Not that I would care, but it doesn't have fat because it is the nature of beef jerky to be mostly fat free.

Furthermore, beef jerky has non-gastronomic uses. If your shoes ever need a new sole, you can tack some jerky to the bottom of the shoe and it'll be find. Or a rather stringy piece, stick it to a large slab of jerky and call it a sandal. Beef jerky also makes a rather nice fly swatter, and to a lesser extent, an instrument of child arse-abuse*. If you happen upon a creature rather desperate for hominid flesh, beef jerky can usually prove to be a nice distraction.**

Need a moment? Chew it over with Jerky.

*Moufflets is not responsible for any action taken as a result of this post. Child abuse is frowned upon in most lax Western societies who pass "No Child Left Behind" acts and may be punishable by law.
**WARNING: This is not a proven survival technique. Moufflets is not responsible for any action taken as a result of this post. Also, do not attempt any heroic attempts to save the beef jerky that you used as a decoy, for that would negate its purpose, nor should you eat the jerky in the presence of a carnivore.

Moral Meat Eating

Why is it considered so bad to eat meat, health concerns aside?

Do people consider it cruel? Welcome to my world, a rather cruel one. That'll be a $50 entrance fee by the way. Animals die everyday because of the forests you clear to grow your soybeans. The plants make themselves food, the animals eat the food, and we eat the animals. We should consider ourselves lucky to be at the top of the food pyramid. I wouldn't want to be a cow in another world. My world is also a Darwinist one, among other things, and it's survival of the fittest, and as the fattest, I say we deserve to eat meat. In fact, it was eating meat that allowed us to first develop our abnormally large heads and meet that sometimes annoying speaker named Jiminy Cricket that says killing animals is bad.

Are you not being cruel to plants? Just because plants don't have that bundle of neurons that some of us know as a brain doesn't mean they're not sensitive to pain. When you continuously clip a plant, does it not grow in the other direction? Does its crunchy cry of death not make you think twice about eating it? The plants are still photosynthesizing when you mercilessly pull them by their roots out of the ground. Do weeds, as annoying as they are, not deserve to live among side your precious vegetables? This is a case of irrationality and human bias. Because plants are not warm and fuzzy and do not look cute, people do not have qualms about killing them.

So we have animal farms that take productivity a little too far. What about your plant farms? I'm sure plants don't like it when they're jammed together side by side in neat little rows and genetically modified and then sprayed with chemicals. Nor do they like roasting inside one of your greenhouses. When they're all nice and fattened, a big machine comes and violently rakes them out of the ground, after which they're sent to big factories where they're sliced and diced and made into chop suey.

If we didn't eat the animals, then they would multiply unchecked and upset the natural balance of things. Imagine all that bovine feces and flatulence we would have to face if cows were allowed to run rampant. Then they would eat all your plants and then where would you be? Resist the temptation ... resist it ... hah! Guess you're just going have to learn how to chug down some bloody protein.

So all you vegans out there: shut up about animal cruelty and go find some piece of green in the dirt to chew on. More meat for the rest of us.

Sinister Soybeans

I am fairly certain that soybeans are attempting world domination.
These hairy little legumes are as Wikipedia describes it, "small, inconspicuous, [and] self-fertile". I am pretty sure that there is some extra large Master Bean lying somewhere underneath Beijing, pale white and pulsating.

At first, the soybean was just a seemingly innocent and useless plant being utilized for fertilizer. Now these things are everywhere! They're trying to replace salt, milk, and turkey! And as if it's not bad enough, they're trying to replace the staple diet of meat!

After interrogation (not by torture of course, for that would be inlegume), a bean revealed to me that the plan was to replace every one of our food sources and then secrete some hormone that allows them to exert mind-control over us. Rumor has that the soybeans may have been genetically engineered by North Koreans* to become a sentient hive organism.

The soybean's also have a contingency plan. They display temporary "beneficial" effects, deluding health conscious people to increase their demands for more soy products. Rain forests have been cleared away to make room for soy farms, attributing to less rainfall in the region, where clean water is not always available. In fact, planting soy fields is worse than using the same land to graze cows.

According to Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

[Each] major Galatic civilization tends to pass through through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?

Humans, as a civilization, have surely gotten to the point of Sophistication. As a Sophisticated species, have developed techniques to synthesize flavorful foods. It would be unseemly for us to regress to the point of eating a compost-heap of soy "meat", which is bland, gray, textureless**, as well as detrimental. Soy contains phytoestrogens, which simulates the effects of the female signature hormones and phytates, which hampers the absorption of minerals. This could be a problem for boys, who if fed soy products at an early age may find themselves with small mammary glands and/or small penises.

Finally, processed foods are becoming notorious for causing cancer and other bad things, so why take the chance of eating mechanically-separated patties made from pesticide-sprayed soy grown on farms worked by cheap labor where quality-check is unheard of? So spare yourselves and eat the real thing. Eat meat!

*Unverified sources.
** Verified primary source: try it yourself. Nutritional information. Beneficial information disregarded.