Fast Food Nation
Last night I was reading the afterword of Eric Schlosser’s excellent Fast Food Nation, in which he addresses the meaning of Mad Cow disease, and what it says about the beef and agribusiness conglmerates, and their incestuous and customer-unfriendly relationship with the USDA. One thing he said caught my eye, though, and sent my thoughts in quite a different direction.
He said that, so far, about 100 people have died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (the human analog to Mad Cow) in this country, and that — although each of these deaths was tragic and unnecessary — they should be taken in perspective: that many people die every day in auto accidents on America’s roads.
Those words stuck with me as I was shooting down the highway this morning, on my way to the daily grid. There were cars all around me, all going 65 miles per hour, all of them one-ton battering rams that could, under the right circumstances, tear my modest vehicle to shreds. The contrast between my present — a fairly peaceful commute in pre-rush hour traffic — and my possible future — a painful and slow death wrapped in a burning heap of twisted metal — was shocking, and a little unsettling. I’m not old enough yet to think about my mortality on a regular basis, but it does rear its ugly head every so often, just to let me know it’s there, and getting closer every day.
If I were to subscribe to the Many Worlds theory, where every possible action you take is carried out in another, alternate universe that springs up just for that purpose, then I’ve already died a million million times, in various interesting, amusing, or tragic ways. I think that, from now on, every night, before I go to bed, I’ll light a candle for all my dead selves, and wish them well in whatever alternate heavens or hells they might find themselves.
No Comments Yet