Let's see now -- which template to use today in the ol' homestead and standby, the Mainstream Cafe?  Not good to use them without some creative rotation, you know -- best to keep mixing it up, so's it keeps the product looking fresh.  When it comes to food for thought, the main dish can't be splotchy and a sickly green -- it can't be sprouting multicolored, science-project fur, not and get sold to the public and swallowed whole, like everybody all up and down the food chain wants.

Of course, between you and me, the stuff is almost identical -- we might as well be pushing soy served up a zillion different ways:  pummeled, tenderized, injected with flavor and some color, then -- Bam! Texturized, too.  You'd never believe your taste buds or your eyes.  Same thing here, no difference at all.  Facts is facts, like the man says.

But, yeah, it's basically the same old slop, day in and day out, recycled from various points all along the production line, under the conveyor belt, wherever.  You don't want to know more than that, really -- trust me on that.  We used to have high standards, but it got too expensive and too dangerous using real, true, unadulterated, meaty facts -- so we were ordered to slide down to using fact-filler in the product.

We used to call it, Ink Slime, as I remember, when we were first forced to use it, in all the papers,  then it spread everywhere else.  We couldn't believe it, but orders is orders. Guess they were right -- using opinion churned up out of thin air, or squeezed like juice from some think-tank's talking points, works out just fine.  No customer complaints, not even one.

It's still hard to believe we lucked out like we did, when the courts backed our right to lie and peddle it like news.  Imagine that!  What suckers we'd been!  We'd been working our butts off for the customer, and they couldn't care less -- nobody could!  What a bunch of chumps we were -- we could of been getting gassed over at Leo's Bar all that time, after slidin' in some slop copy that was just a rehashed mish-mash from whatever we had lyin' around that day.

Hey, it's a little late to look like you mind.  This stuff has been goin' on since the beginning of time:  There's always some mug with a rock, some thug with a club, some psycho bigger and badder willing to go the distance,  thinks he's somehow entitled to your share, and thinks you should be entitled to doin' without.  Same since the sun came up on us apes, you know what I'm sayin'?

Tell you what, friend -- people keep doin' the same thing all the time, and keep hopin' for different results, some experts would say that's stuff for the bughouse, screamin' right out of your mind.

So, what'll it be today -- you want me to run the same, tired old choices one more time?

All right then, you got your basic human nature served up hot and steaming, all the usual ways. Strange, you know something?  I just thought of a label that impressed me as a kid -- said:  All the fine, fanciful, and foul foibles, fallibility, futility, frivolity, and fun jammed into our cans!

Those were the days -- you don't see ad copy like that anymore, nosirree.  Pretty much gone downhill ever since then, which is really sayin' a mouthful.  Plus, some of the chefs they let loose in the kitchen, cooking up their slop?  They're all mad as bats stuck up some belfry on fire, all raving lunatics, and worse -- but, all overnight millionaires!  I just don't get it.  But, hey -- welcome to the show, no one asks to get born, am I right?

So, anyway -- you got your Political Platter, your standard lies, filth, and really cold cuts.  A real hodge-podge of whatever they find on the cutting-room floor back at the carving-up lodge.

You got your Bottomless Gruel, all leftovers, grueling stuff you just had yesterday and the day and year before that, maybe with a new sour twist, or in a funny new shape.  Think haggis-on-a-stick-meets-barbecued-sweetbreads, and you're probably-already halfway there.

There's the Science Surprise -- you never know what they'll find out next will kill you, or what's been killing you all along, ain't it the truth?

The Corporate Carnivore is good, if you got yourself deep pockets, 'cause this is first class, cut right off the bone, all choice, specified, very select cuts.

Liar's Loaf, of course, is spin-the-wheel, take-your-chances, no telling what you'll get.  Could be from bidniz, or gummint,  from people famous for being famous, or just regular people chucked all of a sudden into the mixer.

House Organs?  That's mystery meat ground up a hundred whichaways, but all strictly bidniz,  a regular public-relations feast, if you can choke that stuff down.

If you just won the lottery, you head to Sky's the Limit, which will cost you, but it's the stuff no one else has ever touched before,  served up, prima donna style, on plates of real gold, with jewels stuck on the sides of all the goblets, and real silverware, right down to a souvenir -- a silver spoon personally fit to your very own, personal mouth.

You feel lucky, go for the Tongue-in-Cheek, odds and ends from the laughing-academy cooks back there, from the crazy-chef end of the line.

You got a sweet tooth?  Order the Fluff 'n' Froth -- meaningless sweet foam sprayed all around for the air-heads, I say -- although tens of millions of people swear by that no-calorie stuff.

So, what'll it be today?

Name your poison.