Wednesday, February 06, 2008

oh yeah! time for a tirade and some poetry!

Hi folks, it's me... WBE (worst blogger ever).

I've been super busy with contracts lately and trying to shovel as much moolah into my RRSPs as I can so that I don't have to pay tons of tax this year.*

Anyway, I'm finally moved to post something after reading one of the most depressing articles ever about genetically-modified onions that won't make you cry. Worst line in the article: "we would like to see them become the household and industry norm within the next decade" (italics mine).

So who's up for an incoherent tirade and some poetry? YOU ARE? Great. I know that's what you come here for and I like to deliver. I've just the thing:

Onions make you cry! Get over it! Can't we let just a few things be uncomfortable? Does everything have to be so boringly easy and perfectly pleasant? We're already destroying the planet with our climate-controlled homes, drive-through bank machines and over-processed over-packaged nutritionally-void so-called food, do we now seriously have to fuck with the onion? How about putting some of that research time and energy into addressing any one of the more pressing concerns, like renewable non-polluting energy, working out some climate change solutions, eliminating human-made carcinogens from our air, water, soil and food chain. Or if you really are interested in genetics, how about getting involved in preserving the DNA of all those fruits and vegetables that are being whittled down to just a handful of varieties, or like, saving whales or something. JUST A THOUGHT, YOU ONION-FUCKING WEINER POOPIES.

I sort of imagine that a few tears and burning eyeballs are the price we pay for its deliciousness, for the depth of flavour it adds to so much of our food. I figure it's a fair price to pay just for the pleasure of smelling it frying in butter.

So as a bit of an antidote, I offer you "Ode to the Onion" by that poet, activist and womanizing genius, Pablo Neruda:

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.


Thank you for weighing in, Mr. Neruda. I almost feel better.


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*I'm all for the welfare state, don't get me wrong, but setting aside a bit for when I'm a crotchety paddling hiking skiing boozy geriatric is probably a good idea.

6 Comments:

At February 06, 2008 1:18 p.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

AND chopping normal natural onions doesn't even have to make you cry.

http://www.articleworld.org/index.php/How_to_slice_and_chop_onions_without_%E2%80%98crying%E2%80%99

or

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070619030050AAXtAFG&show=7

just for starters.

I bet that whatever they end up changing will also reduce not only the taste but the health benefits of onions.

 
At February 06, 2008 2:09 p.m., Blogger sgazzetti said...

It's been well documented that I love onions, and that I love crying, and now it's safe to say that I love Pablo Neruda. Oh, and you. Duh. Onion dork.

 
At February 07, 2008 7:49 p.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is one of my favorite poems of all time. Seems appropriate.

The onion loves the onion.
It hugs its many layers,
saying, O, O, O,
each vowel smaller
than the last.
Some say it has no heart.
It surrounds itself,
feels whole. Primordial.
First among vegetables.

If Eve had bitten it
instead of the apple,
how different
Paradise.
- Lorna Crozier, Onions

 
At February 08, 2008 4:17 p.m., Blogger The Dude said...

Nice to see you back WBE.

 
At February 09, 2008 5:08 a.m., Blogger Jonathan Beckett said...

While it's easy to hate GM food, most people forget that virtually everything we eat is modified - either at the genetic level, or farmed to change it's makeup over decades.

Cows and pigs are twice the size now that they were years ago. Chicken bred for food would die within months if they are not slaughtered (they have been bred into a dead end). It's a horrible world out there.

We buy most of our veg from a farm shop when we can - it's been fun teaching the kids about washing the mud off the carrots and potatoes, and looking for caterpillars in the cabbages.

 
At February 13, 2008 2:35 p.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here's my favourite poem, like, ever-

"O little bird,
So pointy pointy,
Anoint my head,
Anointy nointy."

I find wearing swim goggles to be an efficient safeguard against onion induced tearage, just ask my husband.

 

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