Junk world

Has anyone read "Fast Food Nation"? You really should.

No. Really.

After absorbing what that book has to communicate, disturbing as it is, most of you will change your opinions about government regulation, excessive meat eating, fast food, agribusiness, genetically engineered crops, and even Disneyland.

Waitaminute.

Did Brent just include "Disneyland" in that last sentence?

Yes. He did.

I am not a vegetarian, just so you know. I dated one and have to say vegetarianism, although it is a lofty principle, does not the ethical person make. Treating others as you would yourself also plays a role.

Hear that, Alexandra?

I digress.

I'm just a guy who cannot ignore his own two eyes and ears and the stimuli that infiltrate his mind and affect his psyche via these entryways. Our world is based on stuff. This stuff is fake stuff. It is a junk world.

We now return to Disneyland.

Disneyland is a symptom of our addiction to fake stuff. An obsession for creative junk gives us Disneyland, high art that it is. Yes. I deliver that last modifying phrase sarcastically. Disneyland commercializes and disrespects the imagination, something that should be sacred, by imploring us all to imagine the same things.

"What does this have to do with fast food and all that other stuff you wrote, Brent?" the confused blogger inquires.

Fast food commercializes and disrespects something sacred: food. It teaches us not to care about what we eat.

Join me, now, as I apply this logic to explain the attitude human society takes in the way we treat people:

The beef industry -- yes, the beef industry -- routinely treats its workers on par with the way it treats its cattle: like ca-ca. I don't know about you, but methinks the offense of treating people like ca-ca ought to be investigated and punished.

Then there's agribusiness. The industry for genetically modified food presumes it can do better what Mother Nature has done for millennia. You see, junk world is, ironically, not only full of junk but also arrogant.

"What's so tough to understand about that?" Brent asks his fellow blogger.

You'd be surprised and insulted by the myriad excuses and explanations junk peddlers will conjure for this junk world.

I'm not buying their junk, though. Guess what? That pun was intended.

But, hey, this is just lowly little me talking, Mr. Cubicle-constrained Consumer. Who do I think I am, saying these things?

I'm naive, right? I don't own and run a multibillion-dollar, multinational conglomerate. What the hell do I know?

Nothing. Apparently, the only people with valid opinions in this world are those who inhabit the top rung of the "corporate adventuring troupe."

It's too bad this troupe's show really sucks.