WebWurst Returns, In The Flesh

This being May Day - when all good pagans dance around the Freudian symbol of their choice - it's the perfect day to examine the state of the sausage...so to speak.

And like the sausage, the Internet is still the world's finest ground-up mix of oddments and cast-off information under one mouse. Case in point: prior to this morning, I had never known of the existence of:

The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, whose primary purpose is to promote the consumption of nitrate-laced, intestinal tissue-encased ground hogflesh (good heavens, I've been reading too much Lileks lately!). If you click on their Patriotic Food survey, you'll see the evidence behind their claim that the aforementioned seasoned hogflesh is the epitome of "American Patriotic Cuisine." Click a little deeper on the "A Project of the American Meat Institute" icon, and you'll "link" to www.meatami.com, which could be faux-French for "meat friend."

You'll find headline articles on how the cost of implementing the 1996 Pathogen Reduction/Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (PR/HACCP) has been "seven times higher than anticipated" - translated, meat-packing companies are crying "fowl" at having to shell out a measly 1 percent more cash to make sure we get reasonably E. coli and trichinosis-free meat on our tables.

(P.S.) I am not a vegetarian. Yet.

Or, Balloon fetishists - don't worry, all's left to the imagination here. A website full of photos like this one, the "60-inch Giant Head With Nose Shape Balloon," is perversely fascinating yet delightfully baffling - like a dirty joke you don't get, but everyone else is laughing at. I can only imagine what the Goodyear Blimp does for these folks.

Or strangest of all, that the 6 million or so punch card ballots (complete with hanging 'chads') from Florida's infamous 2000 Presidential election debacle are still in storage limbo awaiting their ultimate fate. Julian Pleasants, a University of Florida history professor, said destroying the ballots "would leave a hole in U.S. history". I'm sure the pun was intended.

From CNN: "I'm sure a lot of people would just like to forget about it," he said. "But this is the only presidential election decided by the Supreme Court. If you don't have a ballot, how do you understand the difference between a hanging chad and a three-corner chad, or between a pregnant chad and a dimpled chad?"

How, indeed. What sheltered existences we live until the Great Bratwurst of Life swats us greasily across the cheek.

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