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 THE
ENLIGHTENED CRONE
Nitty gritty observations of life's
illusions & human folly
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Into the Rabbit Hole
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What is lettuce, Young Grasshopper?
Well, if you ask me, it's something that should probably be eaten BY
grasshoppers, rabbits and other marauding rodents & insects, because
to the human palate, lettuce is rather like congealed water rendered
into some manner of crunchy leaf through the mysteries of nature and
the marvels of modern horticultural techniques. Iceberg lettuce, we
call it. And it may be found in all manner of salads, heaped upon
sandwiches, and shredded liberally over an otherwise delightful
taco.
We consume it in mass quantities because we are told it is good for
us, yet upon doing an admittedly small amount of research, I
discover that lettuce has very little nutritional value for humans.
Guinea pigs seem to like it and can actually live on the stuff, but
how bright are guinea pigs when all is said and done? Glorified lab
rats, unfortunately, which is neither here nor there, but it does
cause one to take a more critical look at this being whose primary
diet is lettuce. Hmmmmmmmm.
It is said that the tao which can be spoken of is not the true tao.
Therefore, it could be speculated that lettuce which has any real
flavor is not really lettuce. Any flavor attributed to lettuce must
be examined for its true nature, and is usually found to be some
manner of "dressing." Funny word, that. Dressing. Like we must
dress up this peculiar weed in some attempt to make it more
acceptable to the eye, more palatable to the tongue - to disguise
the fact that we are eating what amounts to crunchy water with a bit
of chlorophyll thrown in just to keep it interesting.
In the course of dealing with this diagnosis of diabetes that has
been handed to me, I have been examining the benefits of a better
diet. This leads me to salads. I sat at a restaurant yesterday,
observing these painfully-thin women munching on a variety of
salads. Asian chicken salad. Cobb salad. Dinner salad. Casear
salad. They appeared on the surface to be content, yet one could
clearly see that keen look of hunger and animalistic resentment in
their gaze as they eyed the dessert menu, while verbally reciting
(unconvincingly) what a delightful salad they were having, and how
they would prepare yet another salad for dinner (though one did
admit that her husband would demand something of greater
'substance'.)
 Lettuce
is passively evil.
Leafus-Insidius
Note the evil green eye
at the center of the head
It has hijacked the minds of otherwise sane beings. It is the
foreign installation hiding in plain sight at the dinner table,
screaming, "Eat me! Eat me!" like some out of control carrot monster
in a sleazy juice bar in Santa Monica. It has convinced us it is
good for us, when it is really nothing more than the carrier
mechanism for the ranch dressing, the croutons, and bits of chicken
and cheese. I mean - really
- when you get down to it, does anybody really LIKE lettuce? ANY
kind of lettuce? Red leaf, curly. Romaine. Chinese. Endive.
Crisp-head. Summer-crisp. Loose-leaf. Iceberg. It may LOOK
different, but the taste is the same. Crunchy water, right?
C'mon, guys. 'Fess up. Tell the truth. 'Cuz otherwise, I have to
conclude that the joke is on us, and we have merely convinced
ourselves that we like this stuff that would make a better xmas
wreath than a "healthy" meal.
When I was a kid, I used to eat grass. Yeah, laugh it up. You did
it, too. We all had to eat a few bites of grass to see what all the
fuss was about with the cows. But when all was said and done, we
quit eating grass 'cuz it tasted like lettuce - actually, it had
MORE flavor than lettuce, and probably more nutritional value. But
it doesn't grow in cute little heads that can be cultivated
commercially, so grass makes a lousy salad unless you're a
grasshopper on a macrobiotic diet.
So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the funny thing
about lettuce is that we consume it as if it were going out of style
(no such luck), and in social settings, we pretend to enjoy it, when
the reality of it is that it's like the emperor's new clothes. The
emperor was nekkid as a jaybird, and lettuce is something a lot of
folks pretend to enjoy just because it is considered bad form to
badmouth the leafy green alien that has taken over control of our
common sense.
We eat lettuce because we see other humans eating lettuce. (Mother's
voice: "If everybody else jumped off a bridge, would you jump,
too?") We eat lettuce because the lettuce growers tell us it is good
for us. (TV Commercial: "Eat more lettuce because it's the only
goddamn thing we can grow here in El Centro and we need the money!")
We eat lettuce because we have accepted our programming. (Borg says,
"You cannot resist the water-leaf. You will be assimilated.")
Admit it.
Lettuce sucks.
The lettuce which does not suck is not really lettuce.
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