Alright already. I give. I cave. You got me. I really will, I swear it, only buy organic, local foods, positively, whenever possible. I haven't even gotten halfway through "Corn" and I'm already feeling anxious. In additional to all the other distracting and consuming concerns I've already amassed for myself ----what with my factitious fatal arrhythmia, my pheochromocytoma, my lipoma, the infertility that I just know is waiting around the corner (gathering speed) and my abdominal tumor(s)...really, how will I find the time?---I now have freak out about being made up undividedly of corn carbon and the catastrophic global doom I'm causing by my unrelenting love of grapes.
I hate it when books make me feel all trapped and powerless and skeptical. Particularly when they're good. Because then I'm driven by compulsion and insanity to read them. And then I sink into an existential mire of despondent tribulation and despair about the human condition, our sad, savage, surreptitious ways blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Because goddamnit, Chinese food is delicious and you know that s**t ain't organic, free range, or even sexually satisfied. You're counting yourself lucky if it's actually chicken.
So leave it to Michael Pollan--eloquent, rational, intelligent, funny, totally reasonable--to ruin Cottage Chicken and Scallion Pancakes forever not to mention making grocery shopping in Brooklyn even more friggen challenging (I mean, it just so rules out Fresh Direct from here on forward). I don't even want to talk about how I'm going to give up Indian take-out.
Oh my god, then there's my coffee. Truly, I can't even imagine. Flown in from far off locations here, product of exploited, third world workers there, this one picked by a deaf mute child with no arms, that one the end result of a bloody shoot out a plantation. Here I am, all worried about my organic milk, running halfway across my neighborhood to get organic cane (not corn) sugar, grass fed organic milk from free roaming, sun bleached cattle with social agendas and two hours later I'm pouring myself a nice hot cup of conflict coffee, teaming with the toils of Stegosaurus juice. Flown from Gautemala, roasted in Seattle, ground in Santa Cruz and brewed New York.
Fabulous.
And no, I don't want to talk about my engagement ring, thank you very much.
