VN AfterTaste

by David Raffin

Mitt Romney ate a puppy. Now they will all feel they have to do it. I hate politics.

Just a few years ago no one would ever think eating a puppy would gain votes. In fact, political advisors would have argued against it. Now it will become the norm. A year from now a candidate down in the polls will ask his advisor if he should eat a puppy. The advisor will say, “Just one?” Just one will be nothing. It will be seen as pandering and nothing more. I don’t even pretend to know what they will stoop to next year, let alone the year after.

By that time we will be talking of hunting zombies. And erecting zombie proof fencing. And how we, or rather the other side, have coddled zombies for too damn long. And how the other side is just a bunch of zombie enablers.

When zombies are the 99% they will eat the rich. This is the good thing about the zombie uprising, if you are of the correct political bent– and willing to look on the sunny side of life, vis-a-vi zombies.
You must admire zombies. They just keep plodding forward. They are goal oriented. They have but one thing on their minds.
They cooperate pretty well together, for being essentially selfish. But they have the same goals, a commonality, and I think we can all agree that is what works for them.
Zombies are green. They eat free range. However, they are not willing to pay extra for it.

Of course they will eat the rich. They just won’t eat them first. The rich are best served as a desert. They are for eating last.
First it’s the poor. The slow. Teenagers having sex, perhaps. The easy pickings. A nibble here and there. Appetizers is what they are. And the zombie legions grow.
Then the rich, like cake. What a zombie craves. People who can afford a gym membership and adequate healthcare. Lean and delicious.
They’ll try to buy their way out, the rich. That’s what they understand. That’s the way they think. But the zombies just want sustenance. Money is useless to a zombie. You can’t buy a rich man’s kidney, after all; you have to tear it from his flailing body, as he screams, “Don’t eat me! Don’t make me like one of you!” Because that is his greatest fear. That and higher taxes on the top 1%. Zombies and higher taxes on the wealthy. These are the things of fear.

And that’s clearly the way they want to go, the rich, torn apart and eaten by zombie hordes. Otherwise they would have done a little something to help stop the zombie plague at the beginning. But they didn’t. So, ultimately, they will be eaten.
They are fools, and I pity them.

I learned everything I know about pitying fools from Mr. T.
Because Mr. T is surrounded by fools and he pities them. As do I.
He says, “I am surrounded by fools!” and then he turns melancholic and says, with less bravado and a touch of, yes, pity, “And I pity them.”
The thing about Mr. T is that he is so filled with anger it only registers as love. That’s his magic.
Of course, I pity the fool who doesn’t eat Mr. T cereal. And since that hasn’t been manufactured in 20 years, that’s pretty much all of us.
Then again, I think that only applies to those of us who are fools. Or zombies, who don’t eat cereal. Fools. That diet cannot be healthy. And it has moral issues.

I am always a bit flummoxed about whether it’s “pity the fools” or “pity the fool.”
Just one particular fool causing all this strife for Mr. T. So I guess I’ve really learned nothing from Mr. T. And that is some Socratic wisdom. Which is something.

In the coming apocalypse, when the zombies arise, when civilization falls, when the power grid is decimated, It is the lack of clean clothes and the indignity of washing dishes by hand that I shall most regret.
Who am I kidding? I shall not wash dishes as I travel nomadically and I shall always wear new clothes pilfered from shopping centers. Though I will have to fight zombies while shopping, I mean stealing. I argue this is a crime of survival. I know there will be some survivors who demand that a capitalistic ethic must be adhered to even after the zombies rise. To them I say, “There is almost no difference between you and a zombie.”
Besides, I think those people will be trying to sell me something. There is nothing worse than a post-apocalyptic salesman. They’re worse than any zombie. The high pressure. The false appeal to desire. The zombies just want to kill you, and I find that refreshingly honest.
In the absence of Mr.T Cereal, you can still eat cereal shaped like cookies, donuts, and fruity pebbles. That’s cereal shaped like prehistoric colored rocks. But it tastes like sugar and artificial color. Green jellybeans actually taste green. That’s the wonder of food science.
Artificial flavorings taste like chemicals. There should be only one, and it should be called, simply, “artificial flavoring (nonspecific).”
I think processed foods are going to turn us into zombies.

You’re better off eating the rich. Think of it as a preemptive strike.