Past Opinion Articles

Article for the week of 3/26/05

Xphile’s Tapes: Secrets Revealed II
By Grey Xphile

Okay, so the last time I tried this it didn’t work so well. My bad.
Well not entirely my bad, there was that idiotic presidential aide who managed to outwit me, it was his fault too!
However this is not the place for mewling apologies and claims of ignorance, this is the place of second chances!
This time I have stumbled across one who was willing to tell us what we’re really eating in our burger joints!
<Tape Begins>
Grey Xphile: Right, talk!
Burger Lackey: Do you have my money?
GX: I gave that to you already.
BL: Oh yeah. Can I have more?
GX: Do you remember our deal?
BL: Two jumbo meals with desserts for $8:95 with coupon?
GX: You’re not flipping burgers right at this point.
BL: Oh yeah, the other deal. You wanted to know what was in the food. Is this going to be on Sixty Minutes?
GX: Maybe. If the corporate drones realise what a gem I have produced. If the watchdogs of our oppressors slip up just once. If those who control the information decide to allow one scrap of truth slip through their greasy mitts -!
BL: Okay, okay, I don’t need the life story. Do you have my money?
GX: You’ve got it already! Who hires someone with a memory like this?
BL: Dude, I work at a burger joint.
GX: Sorry, my fault there. Anyway, what is in the burgers?
BL: Meat.
GX: Meat? Like what? Dog meat? Rat meat, cat meat? Or do you mean pet food meat.
BL: Cow, chicken, horse. You know, the usual stuff.
GX: So the big secret, the one you’ve told me is shared by all burger manufacturers is that there is meat in the burgers. What the hell am I paying you for? This isn’t a conspiracy!
BL: Dude, the meat is in the buns.
GX: The buns? Not the patties?
BL: No. The meat is in the buns, the salad, the sauce, everything except the patties.
GX: Even the tomatoes and lettuce? That doesn’t seem possible.
BL: It’s kind of like what they do with pickles, only with less yellow.
GX: Less yellow? Amazing. Then what are the patties made out of?
BL: Vegetable matter. Ground up cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, that sort of thing.
GX: So the big secret of burgers is that everything except the meat patty, which is made of vegetables, is made of odd ends of meat.
BL: That’s about it. Except it’s not odd ends, its all Grad A stuff, even the cow.
GX: So when they advertise that their burgers are made of the best meat it isn’t exactly a lie.
BL: It’s the truth. Just that no one recognises it easily.
GX: What about the fries?
BL: You didn’t pay me enough to go into that.
<Tape Ends>
So there you have it, I’d play the rest of the tape but it pretty much degenerates into name-calling. Just know that I won.
However now you are armed with the knowledge that our beef burgers, while usually containing beef, are not arranged, as we were lead to believe!
What we should actually do about it I don’t know. If anything knowing that there are high quality meats and vegetables in some foodstuffs actually reassures me.
Huh, I don’t seem to be doing to well at this today.