Life: Time to dumb it down

I never had much use for science when I was in school. At the time I thought it was because I was too dumb. Now I know better.

Science is stupid. And worse, it’s making our lives more stupid every day. Why? Because they do stupid studies that come up with stupid conclusions. And a lot of people stupidly believe them because they’re living with the stupid impression that science is all about being smart.

And that’s really stupid.

Take, for instance, a group of scientists in the U.K., “leading experts on food safety,” who decided to find out how clean and sanitary is the average backyard grill in the Land of Brits. They released their findings over there on Friday, just in time for the start of the Memorial Day holiday weekend over here. The headline on the story posted on one U.S. news website, theweek.com, sums it up pretty well.

“Happy Memorial Day: Your BBQ grill may have more germs than a toilet seat.”

I knew there was more than one reason to wage war on that country.

Allow me introduce the Three Bringers of Your Apocalypse: From left, Sam Onella, E. Coli and Les Teria.

Seems the average home BBQ grilling surface is a magnet for harmful bacteria like salmonella, e-coli and listeria. Because most of our backyard grills aren’t kept clean enough to … well, to eat off of.

Interesting. Now, wait just a minute. Before you, me, and every barbecuing person in this country runs out into the streets and falls on our long-handled meat forks, let’s recall one little-bitty, silly thing that seems to be missing in this whole conversation here.

I see cavemen. I see cavemen cooking meat. I see dirt. Whoa now – I DON’T see any Handi-Wipes! How the hell did we ever freakin’ evolve!?!

Fire.

Fire is enlightening. Fire is even somewhat pretty. But fire also is hot. Fire burns things. Like houses, paper, trees. Why, fire’s even been known to burn people’s beating hearts … with a hunka-hunka burning love. Oh, and also quite a few hamburgs and hot dogs too.

Grill, meet fire. Fire, meet grill. Bacteria? Meet your destruction.

But before it ever puts a sear on a steak, I’ll bet it burns up every single bad ol’ bacteria that might be hanging on to that grilling surface as it burns and brings up the temperature to the necessary sizzling point – hot enough to grill those hunksa-hunksa barbecue food items.

But what if they don’t all die? The bacteria, I mean. What if a few get through and into your disgestive innards?

I’ve already thought of that, got it figured out. And I’m not even one of those smart scientists. Remember, I flunked science.

A bottle a day keeps the bacteria away.

Beer – cold, sparkling, refreshing … and alcoholically antiseptic.

Holiday food for thought

It is Saturday, May 26, 2012. The first official day of the three-day Memorial Day holiday weekend.

That means a lot of things to a lot of people in America. First and foremost, but sadly too often overlooked, is this is a time for us to stop whatever silly or self-indulgent thing we may be doing now and remember how it is that we’re even able to do it. We owe it all to so many Americans who came before us, who fought and died to keep this nation’s beliefs and ideals safe from enemies who, had they won, would have crushed them. No matter how much we’ve screwed up this country lately, it was our freedoms that got us into this mess, and we’ll use the same ones to get us out of it as well. No one should forget that for one moment this weekend. Or on any weekend, or day, or minute, for that matter.

But you can’t overlook the fact this weekend means a few other things as well. Maybe not quite so reverent, but certainly not irrelevant.

It’s the unofficial first weekend of summer, the first opportunity to take our summer clothes out of our closets, hold them up to us, look in the mirror and put them right back where we found them. Looks and the physics of fitting do not deceive – no point in even trying it on. Maybe next Memorial Day.

It’s the first time for many of us to hit the road … to travel and join friends and family to enjoy the long holiday together. This is soon followed by another first, at weekend’s near-end, when many of the same people are snagged in their first highway radar trap of 2012. This, as they just attained Mach 1 speed to race – these sunburned, overindulged, slightly hungover bats-out-of-hell – to get away from those same friends and family. Never met those people before in my entire life, or the two previous ones either.

But for most us, at home or away, Memorial Day weekend is the first chance we have to venture out into our backyards, pull the proverbial manstove out from under its winter wraps, shove out the mouse nests, knock down the spider webs, and scrap off the remnants of last year’s Labor Day holiday weekend.

FIRE IN THE HOLE!

And with patriotic and enormous pride, we load up our grills with propane or charcoal briquettes, strike a match and in one flip of the wrist, in one single macro-mini-micro-nano-second of an instantaneously combustible moment … we singe off most of our facial and frontal body hair, in one flew swoosh.

But undaunted, and though soon to be under a doctor’s care, we forge ahead, we endeavor to persevere … and we proceed to blow our already semi-bulging waistlines all to bloody, char-broiled hell.

Hey gang, gather ’round! It’s that time again and we’re ready – let’s have ourselves a cookout! Let the dietetic debauchery begin!

There will be flipping and sipping and munching and crunching, forking and knifing and sizzling and wizzling (I know, I know. It just sounded better). Slurping and slathering, belching and burping, chewing and spewing, moaning and groaning, brapping and barfing.

God Bless America.