A banner headline (well, I suppose that’s a anachronism these days) on quite a few news websites today is that Starbucks puts bugs in their milkshakes. To be more accurate, Starbucks uses cochineal extract as a form of red dye in their strawberry drink mix, an ingredient made from ground bodies of beetle-like insects. A food and cosmetic additive that has been around for years, once an intrepid vegan barista discovered this ingredient, she passed it along through the pasty whole-grain subculture she frequents, and less than twelve hours later, it’s a top headline on CNN.

I’m assuming that there are people who are bothered by this. Like with the “pink slime” hamburger menace that’s sweeping supermarkets throughout the country, there is a sudden knee-jerk revulsion lately toward anything processed, as if processed foods have ever been produced through anything other than…well, a process. And science is a big part of that process. See, there isn’t some asshole neighbor lady growing strawberries out back behind your local Starbucks in her community garden, graciously donating them to her local coffee concern, where they can be muddled by hand and blended with farm-fresh milk to make your strawberry whatever. There are thousands of these fucking coffee places. Just fucking thousands. Scale dictates that science and industry have to create something a little more productive if there is a profit to be made, let alone feed America’s insatiable appetite for whatever weird fucking combination of ingredients has yet to be sung about by a cartoon or celebrity or small-titted magazine cover.

Here’s the thing: we’ve all, ALL OF US, eaten bug corpses thousands of times. THOUSANDS! Ever had anything red that came out of a box, bottle, or wrapper? Chances are you’ve crammed pounds of liquid beetle carcasses into your food-hole over the years. The question is: what is the problem exactly? Is it because they’re insects? Poor insects were bred and butchered just so some asshole fiddling with an iPhone can have a psychologically pleasing pink tint to his berry-like milk beverage? Or is it simply the idea that you are eating the ground remains of an insect? Does it even matter?

Rather than answer those questions, all I really want to point out is that there is a lot of shit happening in our world, just about every moment in fact. While it’s not possible to care about it all, or maybe even most of it, whatever portion of some you are able to achieve in your daily wanderings between eating, shitting, sleeping, and sex, maybe be a little more fucking selective in what you choose to dedicate precious oxygen. War. Healthcare. Christina Hendricks’ fantastic rack. There are three things of at least slightly more import than the fourth-quarter notion that scientists might have been tricking our brains and bodies with chemistry lo these many years.

Besides, you’d think the whole-grain crowd would just be happy that the stuff is a natural, organic ingredient. Fucking fickle nitwits.

Andy has returned from Haiti, more or less safe and sound, and will likely return to regularly scheduled programming just as soon as he gets caught up on American beer, assorted meats and cheeses, and sex with his girlfriend…all very necessary things, I might add. As for me, I never left the country, though I clearly live in a land of oddity. Midwestern ethos notwithstanding, ignorance isn’t the only repellent thing one can find in farm country. More pervasive, and perhaps more dangerous, is devoted commitment to ideas with no basis in fact or reason.

To put a finer point on what I mean, people want their fucking FEMA money, but great bearded Zeus help you if you even fart something that sounds vaguely like two consenting adults wanting to commit marriage upon each other AND have matching sexual organs. Not sure I’ll ever quite understand the resistance. But the good thing about life is that death comes for us all, and most of that petty ignorance tends to die off too, leaving us the next petty ignorance to climb into society’s brutal gaze.

A lot of odd turns brings you to a place of specific geography. And it isn’t always an easy thing to identify the reasons why. At times such as these, I find it helpful to remember how very shitty so many people have it in this world of ours. Honestly, when you really break it down, most of the planet lives in such pain, bankruptcy, weariness, and sheer terror that problems like “my Visa bill is too high” or “Sarah Palin is kind of a twat” don’t really rank up there too highly in the whole food-shelter-safety paradigm. I guess what I’m trying to say is: we all have problems. I thank sweet Allah that an oil leak in my Cutlass or heightened seasonal allergies are about the worst of mine at the moment. This really is a great fucking country.

So, more POW! BAM! SMOOSH! BIFF! to come friends. Same bat time, same bat channel.