Labels, I have started reading labels. I flipped over a package of hot dogs and read the following, “Ingredients: Beef, Pork and Mechanically Separated Chicken...” WTF! I’m not joking. Look at a bunch of cheap wieners the next time you are at the “Gas and Gulp.” I had a horrible vision of C3PO ripping a screaming hen apart as the bird’s little chicks watched. Droids are not very picky butchers either. When’s the last time you heard of a Kosher robot? Just imagine what part of the hen ends up in your food thanks to that damn Droid.
The other day my nightmare came back to me a dozen times worse. I read an article “What's for dinner? You don't want to know” by Karen Youso in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 21, 2010 (page 1E, variety). The FDA will have new labeling requirements beginning in January and we will finally get to know what is REALLY in our food. Eat donuts with sprinkles on top? Well, under the old regulations they simply had to list “color added” in the ingredients. That will change to “carmine,” come January. Carmine? Those are the dried and crushed bodies of the female cochineal insect. Yep. You are eating bugs. Lovely crush Mexican bugs. Crunch.
Never mind. You eat healthy. Raspberry yogurt? That may contain “Castoreum, a secretion from the anal glands of beavers, used mostly in perfumes and sometimes to enhance raspberry flavor in candies and fillings.” How very Canadian. Now I know why Celine Dion’s perfume smells like the asshole of a beaver. It is. The list of “I didn’t know that” -- followed by my frightened “ewww” was pretty long. You may wish to click on the link at the end of my article and read more. You may not. The only thing that seems fit to eat these days is Soylent Green.
I began to think. It has been a long time since the warning labels on music have been updated. All it really cautions against is foul language and -- really, that isn’t a warning. It is a selling point. I think songs should be labeled with as much care as our food. What goes in your head is at least as important as what goes in your stomach. More so, food is gone in a day. A Lady Gaga song can stay in your head for a lifetime.
Let’s take the most innocent song, “Sugar” as performed by the Archie's... not even a real group. But the pain underneath? That’s real. Very real. I have footnoted all the ingredients corresponding to the FDA’s upcoming guidelines.
Sugar
Sugar, ah honey honey [1]
You are my candy [2] girl [3]
And you've got me wanting you. [4]
Honey, ah sugar sugar
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you.
I just can't believe the loveliness of loving you [5]
(I just can't believe it's true) [6]
I just can't believe the one to love this feeling to.
(I just can't believe it's true)
Vincent Blackwood’s Product Warnings
1. Ingredients: Pollen regurgitated by angry, sexless insects, genetically predisposed to acid-reflux and crawling into your Pepsi can at picnics. Buzz... Ahhhhh! Surprise. And calling someone insect vomit is a red flag of poor judgment skills.
2. Referring to the other party as a possession, not as a fully cognizant person possessing free will and a need for a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship.
3. Warning: the songwriter is referring to a fully grown female as an infant. This is a sign of low self-esteem denoted by the belittling phrase -- and an obvious attempt to seize power in the relationship.
4. Another red flag: unable to accept responsibility for his own action.
5. More than bad poetry -- the whole song reads like a note from a stalker, the words cutout from a mildewed muscle man magazine.
6. Schizophrenic, unable to determine reality from fantasy. Staying in this relationship may require many years of intense Adlerian Therapy. Slip that mix tape under his door and run. Let it be some poor idiot on eHarmony that is dismembered and buried in his backyard... or worse yet, knocked up. You’re too smart for that... this time around.
The Original Star/Tribune Article:
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/96820404.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ
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