Children: What Are They For; Or, Swift's Modest Proposal Reconsidered

Soylent Green: is it the future of human nutrition?

Isn't it already albeit in a slightly different and removed form?

Oh--ashes to ashes, to be sure.

But I'm thinking about overpopulation and looming concurrent famines.

In truth I wasn't thinking of the ashes to ashes stuff. But people in countries like the USA already indirectly consume other lives--through exploitation of resources, labor of the other, etc. Anyway, considered all the processed food out there. Of what is it really made? Considered the ubiquity of guar gum. I have my suspicions guar gum, but I keep them to myself.

Perhaps we need to evolve beyond the need to eat. In my salad days, I worked at a commune through which migrated all sorts. I was in charge of the kitchen--not an easy task. We had vegetarians, vegans, freshaireans, fruitarians, and one-rice-kernal-a-day people. It was difficult because each group considered the members of the other group at one remove from hell. As head of the kitchen, I was her supreme high dominatrix, the Devil or Satan's housecat, or the Whore of Babylon. I've had so many names, I sometimes forget who I am. At any rate, the freshaireans were the most interesting of the lot. They would sit around at dinner ostentatiously chewing air. I am quite sure they raided the larder at night, either that or we had very large mice.

Matter decomposes and reconstitutes in endless metabolic recycling, that's what I meant by ashes to ashes. There is no "pure" food in that sense, be it a carrot or a steak, everything was a million something elses before it became somebody's meal.

So, Lola, you're dissing The Master in another thread, and yet, your ideals on the matter (carrots, that is) are remarkably close to his (emphasis added):

"I believe in this - if you want to take reincarnation as a subject: let's say a child is conceived inside of a woman's belly, and was planted there by a man. Nine months before that seed is planted, there's nothing. Ten, twelve, thirteen months... two years before that seed is planted, maybe there's germination of that seed. That comes from food intake into the bloodstream. Food can be a side of beef or a carrot on a shelf. But that's what makes it happen.

In another lifetime - you're in a supermarket and there's a package of carrots right there... that possibly could be you. "That" kind of reincarnation.... And how did that carrot get there? It got there through the ground. It grew through the ground with the help of a piece of animal shit. It has to do with the creation and destruction of time. Which means it's immense. Five million years is nothing - it's a drop in a bucket. I don't think there's enough time for reincarnation. It would take thousands or millions of years and light miles for any real reincarnation.

I think one can be conscious of different vibrations in the universe, and these can be picked up. But reincarnation from the twelfth to the twentieth century - I say it's impossible."

-Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone interview, 1978

What's up with that?

I'm... Dylan?

Or, I COULD be--given enough time.

It's amazing the kind of stuff you have at your fingertips, btw.

Rack of Toddler (with or without mint jelly)?

I need some fresh air.

i adore children, but I can never eat a whole one, I find.

good god--start with a new born

are these red herrings? or you saying somethings rotten in Denmark?

Spare the frying pan, undercook the child.

Stephen King says that he has the heart of a small child. He claims it's in a jar on his desk.

A colleague of mine kept her own aborted fetus on her desk. That's number six on my list of Ten Questions I Most Regret Asking.

Pickled Preemie.

#17

Annnnnnd, THAT attack of giggles just sealed my next reincarnation contract on : Beetle, dung.

18 please don't mention what items 1-5 are...

Breaking a Long Silence on Population Control

(I got to it following a delicious headline in French, "Pour sauver la planète, mieux vaudrait que les Américains cessent de se reproduire."--To save the planet, it would be better if Americans stopped reproducing.)

Anyway, YEAH! More polar bears, fewer humans! Get those condoms out and about!