The Burger Debate

Two opposing theories:

Dave: "What, you're never gonna eat a hamburger again?" (Uttered whilst on line for a table at Corner Bistro last year.)

My high school friend Ramsey, who used to eat a hamburger every other day -- at least: "I don't eat burgers anymore because of mad cow. I know the chicken is the filthiest animal but you can get off with just a stomach ache. Mad cow might kill you decades later."

Today, I sat down in my living room with a hamburger -- leftover from dinner last night -- and the paper. Then, all of a sudden, the doubt: a miniature Dave, the voice of common sense on one shoulder, dressed in red with a trident and a tail, holding out a plate of steak tartare; on the other shoulder, Ramsey, dressed also in red, gripping his own trident, hooves in place of his sneakers, sucking on a chicken bone between his teeth.

To eat or not to eat? Did I eat the burger? Did I risk going insane in fifty years (from ground beef: that is if mad cow sets in before insanity gradually germinates from a fundamental chemical imbalance), no matter how slim the chance?

Until next time when the ending is revealed, I leave you with an ode to ground beef. After an invocation of the Muse, Cattleturd, the ode ends in a heroic couplet capturing the modern carnivore's dilemma:

O' Cattleturd! Give us wisdom in these
confusing times of buns, beef and cheese,
lettuce, tomatoes, and deadly bacteria;
When I was but ten years and three, to the cafeteria
We, schoolmates, ambled -- o'er our heads no cloud of insanity!
Ash-colored patties impotent to our equanimity -

Innocence and Freedom from meaty morsels of madness,
like Athena's shield, sheltering us to freely dream of
Katie, in Mrs. McDonald's homeroom class, with her eyes of amethyst.

The muddy depths of the Danube that is
my soul - cattle or foul - madness here sits.