I was eating a hamburger earlier, and while crushing the meat fibers with my powerful muscle driven molars, I wondered what the animal’s life was like. Did anyone ever pet the poor beast? Did anyone scratch behind it’s fly attracting ears? Did it have a name? Was it ever loved? I gnawed another bite of animal flesh and a little roasted blood drizzled down my chin…mmm…yummy fluids. A man wearing a funeral-black suit sat in the booth with me on the opposite side – facing me. He said, “Hello, it’s nice to meet you, I’m Fernando Giovanni McDonnell; half Italian, half Scottish owner of McDonnell Meat Corporation. I saw you enjoying the delicious succulence of our best hamburger – I’m a psychic by the way – I could tell by your expression exactly what you’re thinking.”

“It’s nice to meat you Fernando, I’m Bobby,” I said, choking down another sliver of fried bovine, “So you’re psychic huh? Please…do tell, what am I thinking?”

“You’re wondering about the animal flesh in your mouth. You’re wondering who the animal is,” he pulled a picture out of his inner suit pocket and slammed it down on the table, “Meet Samuel…the beast from which meat was shredded – from his bones – machine strewn, chopped, whipped, blended and digitally fabricated into the scrumptious patty you’re now masticating.”

I picked a hair from between my teeth – flicking it onto Fernando’s suit. He scowled slightly and began laughing, “Haha…I guess we didn’t rinse Samuel’s meat correctly, an occasional hair gets through.”

I replied, “If I do masticate, I do it at home…in private, with the curtains drawn and lights off. Back to the hair, that was no bovine hair. I know bovine hair when I see it. That…Fernando…was a human pubic hair. I know a pubic hair when I see one; nonetheless, please tell me Samuel’s story.”

We both looked at the picture of Samuel – I paid particular attention to the flower in his mouth and happy go lucky look in his eyes. Fernando said, “Masticating means to grind the meat into a swallowable pulp…aka chewing – back to Samuel – well, no one ever loved him. No one ever petted him. No one ever cared about him either. ”

“How freaking heartbreaking,” I said.

Fernando turned towards the kitchen door, yelling, “Anthony, get your ass over here.”

A young guy dressed in blood sodden butcher’s garb walked out with a meat cleaver in his hand. He said, “What? I’m real busy killing killing a baby calf for our veal burgers.”

“Anthony, meet Bobby, he’s eating Samuel.”

“It’s really nice to meet you Bobby,” said Anthony, “I’m the guy who killed Samuel and hacked his body up into it’s respective cuts.”

I took another bite of my hamburger…I mean Samuelburger and asked, “How did you kill him?”

Anthony wickedly smiled, “With a sledgehammer. He didn’t die the first time I hit him,” I took another bite of Samuel, chewing feverishly while Anthony continued, “The first time I hit him, I pulverized his eye socket and blood splattered all over my face…it got all up in my eyes. And dude, that shit burns. You ever got cattle blood in your eyes? Anyway, he groaned in hellish agony…I mean the thing was screaming in pain! He staggered a few steps and tried to run. I used to just cut their heads off on a band saw while standing there alive, but we have an old one and you can’t get blades for it anymore. So I took a machete and chopped one of his legs off. He fell down and went into convulsions. I hit him…must’ve been 30 more times. When I finally finished, his head was beaten flat into the pavement – blood everywhere, buzzards circling above – it was a stomach wrenching nightmare. One of the trainees puked when he saw it…spineless green pea. We actually had to use a forklift to peel his carcass off the hot blacktop – his blood was already starting to cook. We killed him around an hour ago, I’ve been grinding up his meat ever since. Overall, he had a miserable life all jacked up on steroids…and then was ruthlessly beaten to death – heartlessly and without remorse. Hell, I enjoyed killing the stupid thing.”

I took my last bite, and washed it down with a sip of sparkling iced tea, “Ah…that hit the spot. What part of Samuel’s carcass was used to make the hamburger patty I just ate?”

Rolling his eyes, Anthony scratched his chin with bloody fingernails while a sliver of raw flesh dangled from the hairs on the back of his hand, “I’m not really sure, I think it was the left shoulder.”

I looked at Fernando and said, “Samuel was delicious, one of the best burgers I’ve ever tasted; however, I will not pay for my meal, there was a pubic hair on my bun.”

“Hahaha…” Anthony said laughing, “I’m sorry, that’s one of my sister’s pubic hairs…Carnillia, get out here!”

A beautiful red haired woman walked out, giggling, “It’s my pubic hair, I put one on every man’s hamburger…hehe.”

I replied, “Well, in that case…I’ll let it slide. It was quite silky – do you use a conditioner?”

“Yes!” she said, “I use a homemade mixture of Vaseline and jasmine flowers…I hope you enjoyed it. We forgot to change the name on the menu to fur burger.”

I must admit, my visit to McDonnell’s Butcher & Burger Heaven was quite interesting, I may go back tomorrow.

Lab Grown Meat

Have you heard about lab grown meat? Scientists all over the world are working on this concept, and astronauts are being currently fed this petri dish delicacy. When I started writing this post, I was just going to write about lab grown meat, but got carried away and wrote a morbid story instead. I don’t know what happened. I was watching “Pulp Fiction” for the 727th time while writing – listening to Samuel L. Jackson talk about why he didn’t eat pork. Like Samuel (I named my character after the noted actor), I don’t eat pork either. I don’t eat pork, bacon, pork sausage or anything from a pig. Years ago, I met a group of cannibals who were actually part of a tribal musical group, They told me that pork meat tastes exactly like human meat, thus ruining my appetite for pork forever.

Lab grown meat is actually known as in vitro meat, isn’t that appetizing? It all started when cosmetic companies were looking to test their chemicals on flesh other than human. Then animal rights activists got all riled up and forced them to actually grow skin to test their chemicals. See the chart below (I downloaded this picture six months ago, but cannot find the site I got it from – I’ll happily give credit if I can find the original site, the author is apparently a guy named John Lawson):

lab grown meat

lab grown meat

Isn’t that strange? Did you know that the chemical laden skin moisturizing sunscreen you’re currently spackling on your body was tested on actual human flesh grown in a petri dish? It should give you comfort that a poor animal wasn’t used. For actual in vitro meat, check out the chart below:

in vitro meat

in vitro meat

Here are the steps: 1. Scaffold-based cultured meat production: 1. Myoblasts in petri dish; 2. Porous collagen microspheres; 3. Myoblasts form myotubes on collagen microspheres; 4. Bioreactor; 5. Microwave; 6. Hamburger.

Eventually, entire muscles will be grown in labs – like a sheep’s buttocks muscle in an incubator with clear plastic blood vessels hanging out of it – blood pumped into it by a Jarvik artificial heart. Sounds grotesque? Well, it couldn’t be more grisly than eating an animal who was beaten to death with a hammer. Now enjoy your steak and pass the ketchup.

*The laboratory hamburger picture and text below it is from Would You Like to Eat ‘Cultured’ Meat? (originally from the University of Maryland) – a fantastic article by Roland Piquepaille. Make sure you read it…it’s fascinating.