The Compulsive Eater’s Diary

              

               I am an addict.  A food addict.  My relationship with food is an obsessive compulsive one.  Salty snacks and sugary ice cream are placeless in my home.  They don’t belong.  If anywhere within my reach they are near gone.  My life is a constant struggle to satisfy a craving insatiable.  My addiction is a tiger.  If I were only so lucky to being addicted to heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, methamphetamine, oxycodone, alcohol, cough syrup or any other superfluous necessity.  Lucky fools addicted to such substance can simply lock their tiger in a cage.  My tiger constantly torments.  It has to be out of its age at least 2 or 3 times a day.

               My weaknesses? Where do I start?  The Christmas Season is a bittersweet one; the festivities and family gatherings are joyous but the cookies, candy canes, cranberry relish, pumpkin pie, turkey stuffing, eggnog and peanut brittle are inescapable entrapments.  One my wonder whether Christians in America celebrate their savior’s birth, or salute calorie gorging and hefty credit card spending near the end of every calendar year.

               Another vice is the homemade soft pretzel.  By following an online recipe made available by the ever brilliant Alton Brown, this food addict has managed to perfectly craft a comfort food that has been a favorite since his time in the crib.  The all day endeavor requires mixing the dough, letting is rise, shaping the glutinous balls in the familiar pretzel shape, dipping the tacky dough balls into a boiling hot water and baking soda filled cauldron, then laying the gummy pre-pretzel form on waxed parchment and wiping with egg before placing in a 450-degree oven.  And all this effort is for a prize that is short-lived.  The eight of so pretzels the recipe concocts are lucky to last eight hours before their gobbled down in an act of pure gluttony.

               The strangest thing is the total lack of moderation.  Moderation is a constant in other potential fault areas like social drinking, gambling, and household budgeting.  But when it comes to French fries, Key lime pie and ice cream, “moderation” is a foreign and unknown concept.  And therefore, the burnt orange and raven-striped appetite nervously snaps it tail while it paces back and forth within its cage.  Its single-minded, hungry green eyes belong to a wild animal that cannot forever be locked away. I must at least make a humorous attempt to suppress the beast’s destructive instincts.  Your correspondent realizes his appetite is a demonic animal must learn to trust.  That is the only way the tiger can step away from the cage and behave itself during mealtime.

Putting the Christ back in Christian

If someone is a leftwing liberal, then they are hated by rightwing Evangelical Christians.

Christ was a leftwing liberal.

Therefore, Christ is hated by rightwing Evangelical Christians?

               Okay, please do not get angry.  This statement may be valid in rudimentary argument form, but conclusions valid and logically derivable are not necessarily in accordance with fact.  But is this premise not compelling?  Is it just your correspondent’s misguided observation, or is a belligerent and excessively vocal segment of Evangelical Christians especially skeptical to new schools of thought and the progressive mindset?  These same Evangelicals tend to side with self-described political conservatives and, by definition, conservatives are ones who hold traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation.

               How can anyone so resistant to change honestly claim Christ as their savior?  Christ was nothing if not a Renaissance man or, dare say it, a liberal.  Rather than be tamed by the status quo, He engaged in verbal combat and said unto the influential Pharisees…”And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. “

               The same Pharisees, like today’s Republican National Committee, staunchly advocated capital punishment, and brought to Jesus a woman condemned to die.  They said to Him, “that she shall be stoned, and what sayest thou?  Christ responded, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” 

               Christ went further by challenging the moneychangers at Herod’s Temple.  In this shamelessly left-wing, liberal act He expels these precursors to today’s bankers and wealthiest one-percent from His house of prayer in an effort to save it from becoming a den of thieves.

               Is it not perplexing?  An exceptionally loud and militant Evangelical faction are so resistant to change that they put low taxes, the second amendment and disdain for Obama-care ahead of their so-called Christian beliefs, Country and even own sense of humanity.  And any new thought that attempts to meet at middle ground on hot-button conservative issues churns in them anger and backlash much like the one their Messiah met upon His final entry into Jerusalem.  Perhaps the Evangelical fellowship that dominates and sways today’s Grand Old Party should take a look at their Savior’s dynamic acts and radical thinking, and rather than worship with using hollow words,  display reverence through humble acknowledge of ideas different from your own.   In other words, your correspondent implores you to think about “Christ” every time you think “Christian.”

Laissez Faire-Weather Friends

               A common conservative cornerstone is the free market.   Rather than relying on state intervention, markets must be competitive and only be driven by self-regulating Invisible Hand.  Minimal mix-ins of government intervention, like contract law and property rights enforcement are necessary evils, but the overarching theme is that he who makes the better widget more efficiently succeeds against the less adept.

               Competition, or at least the opportunity to complete, is vital free market component.  That said; please consider for a moment how free market conservative heroes like Rush Limbaugh, Ayn Rand and their admirers would view government sole-sourcing and no-bid contracts.  Would they not consider this an utter abomination?

               It seems that such an act is not an abomination due to the American Conservative’s selectively short memory.  Officials from two quite contemporary right-leaning, quasi-conservative presidential cabinets that dubiously claim to be free-market advocates and frugal government proponents have on several occasions awarded no-bid contract contracts to the engineering/private military firm currently known as KBR, Inc.  True, it may be unnecessary to conduct formal bidding processes for such mundane activities like aluminum siding installation, or basic plumbing repairs, but these no-bid contracts approved by presidential cabinet officials (some of whom had coincidentally served on KBR and its parent company’s board of directors) are for ongoing projects like Restore Iraqi Oil and various military support services with program costs well into the billions.

               Countless other free market abuses exist.  For example, the George W. Bush’s Food and Drug Administrator (FDA) nominee, Dr. Lester Crawford plead guilty to lying about the stock ownership of companies that he was supposed to impartially monitor as Commissioner of the FDA. Kyle “Rusty” Foggo helped orchestrate bribes of over $2.3 million from major republican donor Brent Wilkes that lead to preferential allocation of Federal Defense Department contracts. And this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg; most of these facts and figures were accessed in seconds by entering “republican scandals” in a simple Google search.

               Please do not interpret this article of a sole Republican Party indictment.  Greed is in human nature and will forever transcend its way across party lines.  Capitalism is not perfect, and it is our best economic model, but in reality pure Capitalism is more fictitious than the Tooth-Fairy.  Your writer is simply irked by the Republic Party’s blatant hypocrisy.  The GOP has long proclaimed to be stalwarts of the free market economy.  High profile Republicans, like Mitt Romney describe the Chrysler and GM bailouts  as “not a success because the bailout program wasted a lot of money,” and quip further, stating it was the “wrong way to go” and encouraged the process of American ingenuity rather than government as a means to guide the economy. A neutral point of view would clearly see that infatuation with free market ideals is a marriage of convenience and not true love.  Rather than it being a right-wing cornerstone, the Republican Parts is “Capitalist when Convenient,” or in other words, Laissez Faire-Weather Friends.