11-16-08

Day 828 of 365 Again.

So Stephanie is a big fan of reality TV shows. When I don’t have anything better to do, I watch them with her. Today she was watching "The Amazing Race." This brought to mind something that I had noticed years ago when watching Survivor.

Here’s the scenario. The Amazing Race is run by several teams of two. Each team is different: "Best Friends," "Mother and Son," "Newlyweds," "Divorced Couple" "Newly Dating." Whatever.

On tonight’s episode, the teams were given a choice, do a series of meaningless but ultimately tricky and cumbersome tasks or take a shortcut and do the "mystery task."

Most of the teams went for the standard task. But two teams, "Brother and Sister" and "Newly Dating" decided to go with the shortcut (again, not knowing what it was) they hop in cabs and wisk off to the secret location.On the way, girlfriend from the newly dating couple says she really doesn’t want to do it, because they don’t know what it is, but boyfriend assures her that it’s worth it to get ahead in the race.

They arrive at the mystery location several miles away from the main race. The task was simple. They had to eat a bowl of stew made from sheep rump, apparently a local gourmet meal. Brother and Sister hop right to it. Girlfriend hops right to it. Boyfriend sits there and stares.

You see, he’s a vegetarian. He hasn’t had meat in 15 years. After wasting a long time (like 30 min) staring at it (they didn’t know what kind of meat it was), he finally takes a couple bits, and bitches and moans because he can’t bring himself to even swallow it much less stomach any he does get down. He tries for another 30 min. maybe, as brother and sister are nearing the completion of the meal. Girlfriend is half done, but trying to be supportive of boyfriend.Finally after nearly an hour he gives up, congratulates brother and sister and he and girlfriend hop back in the cab to go all the way back to the original location (which all the other couples have since moved on from) and does the race the long way. They of course got to the finish line last and were eliminated.

I have a lot of vegetarian friends. It’s not my thing really, I began life as an inarticulate mass of lifeless protoplasm and personally clawed my way up to the top of the food chain and I intend to stay there. But that said, if you’re into the whole herbivore thing, more power to you.

That said, if any of you ever become my partner in a gameshow and have the simple task of eating some meat and you don’t and you end up costing me one million dollars, I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL FUCK YOU THE FUCK UP! YOU WON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT EATING MEAT ANYMORE BECAUSE YOU WON’T HAVE ANY TEETH! YOU’LL BE LUCKY IF YOU CAN GENERATE ENOUGH SUCTION TO PULL YOUR CREAMED BROCCOLI UP THROUGH THE STRAW THEY’RE GOING TO BE FEEDING YOU THROUGH. I WILL RIP OFF YOUR SKULL AND PISS IN YOUR DEAD EYE SOCKETS!

There, I feel better now.

Seriously, one million dollars! To eat some meat. I don’t care about your ethics. I don’t care if it’s sheep, fish, beef, a bug, a worm, monkey brains or human flesh. I don’t care about your dietary concerns. Yeah, you haven’t had meat in 15 years, your stomach might have some issues with digestion. You know what? For a million dollars you better suck it the fuck up!

As an aside, along the main course, one of the challenges involved finding a specific lunch stand and ordering and drinking a glass of milk from them.

For those who don’t know, I am allergic to milk. Not lactose intolerant, mind you, I am actually allergic, sort of like a bunch of kids are these days with peanuts. If I were to drink a full glass of milk, I’d probably get deathly ill. But if there’s a million dollars on the line, I want every one to know that you wouldn’t even have to ask me twice. I’d shotgun it like a freshman at a frat party.

Ok, I’m done now.

Thank you.

365 days