By Ezekiel Buchheit
Arizona Daily Wildcat
October 30, 1997

Where's the Beef?

Arizona Daily Wildcat Ezekiel Buchheit

There are some new fads surfacing today. Well, maybe not so much new, but more recently commanding attention. And most of them I'm hip to. Most are very spiritually uplifting positive experiments in love and all that good stuff.

For example, the whole straight edge thing. This is great, making it popular to be anti-drug. This is a very positive step for mankind. Or the surge in primary or secondary virginity, allowing people to accept who they are and be comfortable waiting without the peer pressure. Heck, even the tolerance today that society expects us to have in dealing with alternative lifestyles. Even this has virtue to it.

But not all of these things are good. There is one movement that is very negative, that condones practices last seen in Sodom and Gomorra. Practices so sick and perverse that Bill Cosby was caught swearing to himself when informed about this development. As many of you have already figured out, here I am talking about Vegetarianism - an abomination before God and an insult to all the furry animals out there waiting to be eaten.

And it's not so much all vegetarianism, just male vegetarianism. At the risk of being labeled a sexist pig - heck, it don't matter, I can't get a date anyway - I can handle female vegetarianism. Because generally ("general" being the operative word here) women tend to be the softer, more caring of the genders and less likely to kill a cockroach, let alone slaughter some manatee to satisfy some primal instinct. No, it's the male vegetarianism that bothers me. I don't know about you, but I can't fully trust a male who doesn't get turned on when you throw a fat juicy steak down in front of him. It's just really creepy.

God created this world and all the things in it. And when he was done, God told Adam that man was to be the king over all the beasts. Then God gave Adam a chart showing him where the tenderloin was, the ribeye and all was good. God, and even more so, Adam, were pleased.

But nowadays men, because of the Bureau That Finds Out That All Things Can Kill You, fear meat, for some such lame reasons as health, religion or whatever other excuse they can come up with.

I'm going to come out and just say it. So if you are easily offended, and I've come to discover that most of us are, please stop reading now: Real men eat meat.

Now I can't call myself a real man. Why? Because I eat my steaks well done. A real man prefers it mooing, and would rather have to chase the bloody slab around the table with his knife. On top of that I usually get my steaks at a restaurant or a grocery store. I'm not a real man.

Allow me to tell you the story of a true Man of God.

The real man comes home after a long week of work to his wife and his 2.5 children. He's tired, but he notices that his family is hungry. Tapping back into instincts not quite lost from his ancestors, this man, the real man, walks into his bedroom, known to the family as Big Boom-Boom Room, and removes all the items of his suit one by one. Staring at his own form in the mirror, this man returning to his primal power, remembers his old war name: Doug. Doug then paints his face, harking back to his primitive tribesmen. Ancient masks: masks of power, and strength and other neat primal stuff. Donning only a loin cloth and spear, Doug then prepares to trek off into the wilderness, or any other nearby cattle ranch, to provide for his clan. Kissing his wife (Primal name: Martha), saying his good-byes to his 2.5 children, and shuddering at the thought of his half-child, Doug, along with his dog, his faithful partner in hunting, FooFoo, prepares for his long journey through mountains and across deserts led only by his instinct and the on-board computer in his luxury Marc De Ville Coup xvs25000 Cubed.

His wife, sensing that this maybe the last time that she will see her husband, begins to gather for her family, picking fruits and berries and Captain Crunch from the neighborhood Safeway.

Upon reaching his destination, Doug and FooFoo track their beast for days, calculating its motions, its relative ferocity and whatever other nonsense hunters do, and prepare to battle with the fierce beast "Bessie," who chews her cud in fierce defiance of mankind. Doug does not return to his home until he has tracked and killed this beast with his spear and his might, or if he can't seem to find one, until he has tracked and killed his dog, who he was never really fond of to begin with, and can bring his bounty home to his family, where his wife has dug a dip pit filled with sticks and logs along with a spit across the top.

Doug then takes his bounty over to their barbecue, asks, "What the hell am I supposed to do with this hole in our backyard, Martha?" and prepares the feast for his family.

This is a real man. While I realize that this option is a little outlandish for most of us, we can still do our best. Our hero in this situation is Dan Ackroyd's character in the old SNL skit "Mel's Char Palace."

As for me, I do my best to return to my primal past, relying only on instinct and strength. And let me tell you, those pigeons make for some darn fine eating.

Ezekiel Buchheit is a freshman majoring in English. He reminds everyone to remember that this is all in good fun.