For this week’s editor’s note I, Recess’s human hot takes torch, am going to lay down a series of truths. If you don’t agree with me when it comes to these four points, you’re an enemy of freedom and I will call the police on you and your loved ones.
1. Pandas are not worth rescuing.
I love animals, particularly when David Attenborough is describing them to me. I mourn every day for the loss of biodiversity that we have inflicted upon our global ecosystem. I mourn harder than you, no doubt about it. River dolphins, mountain gorillas and amur leopards? All very endangered. All worth saving. So why is the face of the wildlife conservation movement the panda?
Pandas are not only not endangered, they’re useless. They subsist on bamboo, a food that does not give them enough energy to continue eating more bamboo. It’s not that they can’t eat other things, they just really like bamboo. Look this up! I would never lie to you. Pandas are an evolutionary mistake and if they go extinct it’s their own fault. Don’t @ me.
2. “Cheesecake” is a horrendous misnomer
When it comes to names that don’t describe the thing they’re supposed to describe, “cheesecake” is right up there with “funny bone” and “The Patriot Act.” The Google dictionary defines cake as “an item of soft, sweet food made from a mixture of flour, shortening, eggs, sugar and other ingredients, baked and often decorated.” Most cakes are composed of one or a series of spongy layers with frosting in between. Cheesecake does not have flour or shortening, and it has a crust. Stop embarrassing yourselves and call “cheesecake” what it is. It’s cheesepie.
3. Meat adds nothing to most food dishes.
Meat is eaten by people who do not know how to add appropriate spices to their culinary ventures. It’s an easy temptation: a stripped animal carcass must be salted and given other spices or it will spoil. Because it brings out the flavors of other food by sheer proximity, meat is often added to dishes not as a feature, but as a crutch. (When’s the last time you tasted the meat in a lasagna?) Instead of genociding a bunch of animals, meat eaters, head on over to Harry Teets and ask someone to point you in the direction of the spice aisle. They got some good stuff. My condescension does not at all come from a place of insecurity.
4. Christopher Columbus was a murderous lunatic and it’s weird we ever celebrated him.
I was born on Oct. 12. I used to think Columbus Day was fun. He sailed the ocean blue! But growing up is learning and learning is falling. The rhyme should really go like this: In 1492, Columbus kidnapped natives from the newly-christened Hispañola, sold them as slaves, robbed them of precious metals and even had a woman’s tongue cut out because she said mean stuff about him and his friends. Christopher Columbus is playing checkers with Richard Nixon, Law School ‘37, in hell.
Enjoy this week’s Recess.
Kirby Wilson is a Trinity senior and Local Arts editor.
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