Food for thought: There can be no more biting a remark than a world-class microphone gaff -- a sound bite, biting back -- made while on the road, enough to really burn your bacon.
The sizzling little remark was made by President Obama, with microphones around -- always content doing what they are supposed to do, to go scoop and soak up some sound.
It's just the sort of thing to make anyone's hair prematurely gray, just as presidential hairs all do after just a year or so in office. That's one heck of a pressure-cooker up top, where nothing is black-and-white, where any issue, to move that far up the chain, must be Gordian-knotted into tight, tangled, terrifically-compacted shades of gray. That far up -- or, that far out on a limb -- saving one's own bacon becomes increasingly problematic, given all the chefs in the kitchen.
It must be the kind of stuff where lesser mortals would start reaching for any number of bottles -- Grecian Formula least among them, some Old Grand Dad as a chaser.
Obama, you'll recall, was talking to Russian President Medvedev, said he would have more flexibility about missiles after his election, come November.
And, with that, some flea-bitten, sound-bitten memories started nibbling back in, from John McCain cackling about bombing Iran to the repeated tune of an old Beach Boys song, to the cringe-inducing "Yo, Blair," emitted from that classy, flight-suited, mission-accomplished, animatronic codpiece, Dubya -- on up to the sainted Ronald of Reagan, tripler of federal debts, letting supposedly dead mics know he'd outlawed Russia, the bombing begins in five minutes.
All explosive comments from microphone-aware types, already on their so-called best behavior, shooting off their loose-lipped mouths. Or, is it, in Obama's case, just one more conversational chess gambit, that very long, supposed chess game among all us checker-players still going on? If the game's still on -- yes, one sometimes needs the aid of time-lapse photography to detect a move -- are we still playing to win, or just playing to a draw, the pawns all exhausted?
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And, of bringing home bacon, it's surprising all the ways it can now be done, through the miracle of bacon flavoring: popcorn, mayonnaise, salt, even lip balm -- just name your poison, so to say, especially if your DNA runs to veins more like wispy cobwebs than fat straws built for thick shakes.
Naturally, bacon is the original meat candy, which is very unfortunate for all smitten, smoky-bacon-toothed, heart-weary individuals, given the standing marching orders of cardiologists to double-to-the-rear, and disappear -- to run away at high speed, in the opposite direction -- rather than encounter the stuff. Advice is to instead ignore and dismiss all the bacon-of-the-month clubs, and bacon-club sandwiches, out there, absolutely everywhere.
However, it is possible to amuse ourselves briefly with turkey bacon, if we are good for whole slabs and rashers of time, but, only in a last-ditch crisis, when the going gets really rough -- and we start curling up, the way strips of real bacon sometimes do, when you fry them...
Of course, it helps some people cope, to have non-edible, bacon-y geegaws and gimcracks around to make us laugh, and right into that tasty, teasing, tempting, siren-bacon's face.
Good thing that one teevee commercial is no longer airing -- the one with the dog smelling bacon, showing us the snout-cam's, dog's-eye-view, lay of the land. That one always triggered scent-reflex, made me want to join in with the dogs, right on the floor, rip open 243 packages, right then and there.
Bacon-flavored toothpicks, a bacon action-figure, even bacon wallets and bacon bandages can help savor -- sorry, hang on, that is to say -- save or carry a whole iffy sort of day, there being no Betty Ford clinic for Bacon Abuse, to this very day.
Bacon toothpaste and bacon frosting are also available -- are perhaps interchangeable products -- but require some imagination for the using, unlike bacon candy, including gummy bacon: here, no imagination is required at all in envisioning it most satisfactorily -- in fact, the only creativity needed here is simply in the size and design of the shrine. You could pull in bacon pilgrims across continents, you build a thing like that.
Lacking edibility, there is still some paltry nourishment to be had from an old, improvised design, scribbled onto warm-air hand dryers, now immortalized in many tee shirt designs: Press Button, Get Bacon. If only it were so, early sci-fi food-replicators, their settings stuck on making bacon.
And, after a lifetime of bringing home the bacon, there is the ultimate farewell accompaniment, come time to slide off the mortal heating coil over which is suspended our communal frying pan: a three-thousand dollar, bacon coffin -- complete with bacon-scented air freshener.
As someone has no doubt remarked by now, it would be a final irony, being buried in a replica of a thing that may have killed you.
Nice way to go.
Today's Specials:
Slipped lip: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17516108
Bacon foods: http://www.jdfoods.net/products/baconsalt.php
Bacon everything: http://www.mcphee.com/shop/categories/Bacon/?sort=featured&page=1
I smell bacon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CErapf79rqM
Press Button: http://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/2/9/7/4/2974f4f912835bdd/bacon.jpg
Bacon coffin: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/29/bacon-coffin-hoax-j-d-foods-seattle_n_1389067.html