Pre-Ramble: Yell the word “bacon” in a crowded room, and conversation will hush — half of the people will turn with a look of recogition that says, “you are one of us” – the other half will look askance as though you’ve just committed some foul breech of personal etiquette. I will venture to say that beyond a mere culinary preference, an affinity for bacon represents a lifestyle choice.

So, as a closet bacon aficionado for the last 25 years (at least that’s all I’ll admit to in this forum), I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that bacon has become an uber-trendy darling, not only to the foodie crowd, but among a variety of other fraternities as well. Not even the very popular olives and cupcakes have busted through the boundaries of the ordinary foodstuff to become the versatility player and cross-over talent that bacon has. 

Author Joanna Pruess says it best in her homage, “Seduced by Bacon,”

Although 71 percent of bacon is still eaten for breakfast and brunch, it has recently stepped into the limelight as a culinary superstar. Led by a charge from creative cooks and chefs … this once humble staple [is now featured] in dishes that are served at all hours of the day and evening and at some of the finest restaurants. Ounce for ounce, slice per slice, no other quintessential ingredient has the seductive powers of bacon. 

Here, here!!! No truer words were ever spoken. This “seductive superstar” comes in a wide variety of flavors conjured up in smokehouses all across the country. There’s Applewood Smoked, Cinnamon Cured, Peppercorn, Cob Smoked, Hickory Smoked, Maple Cured, Garlic Clove, Hickory Juniper and even Jalapeno Smoked bacon. Consult the Grateful Palate’s Field Guide to Bacon for an exhaustive list of bacon options.

Polarizing pork:  And, it’s not just fabulous by itself, bacon in combination with other foods is downright tasty as well. Beyond its workhorse roles in the BLT or as a companion to eggs, bacon has become the favorite foil to all sorts of unusual food fare. Last year’s Minnesota State Fair featured a new controversial food-on-a-stick — Famous Dave’s Pig Lickers … dark chocolate-covered crispy bacon pieces sprinkled with sea salt (because bacon isn’t salty enough). Some hailed its praises, others spit it out.

It’s everywhere.  Moving comfortably among both food and non-food venues, bacon can be found in the most unlikely places. Alongside the Oxford Classic Edition of The Major Works of Sir Francis Bacon on Amazon, for example, are twenty-five other “bacon” related products including bacon dip, bacon popcorn, bacon chocolate bars, bacon flavored jelly beans (in a bacon shaped collectible tin), a bacon wallet, bacon action figures, bacon bandages (I have a pack of these – positively grizzly), and the seriously misguided bacon air freshener (who wants a car that smells like you’ve just driven through a grease fire?)  Between you and me, the biggest down-side of these applied bacon products is the decidedly unphotogenic properties of meat.

The Take-Away:  Let’s face it — like name dropping the Octomom or Susan Boyle, writing a blog about bacon is a cheap stunt. It is so easy to piggy-back on the near-sacred reputation of this delectably salty, crispy/chewy delight. I fess up to the fact that pandering to the weakness of the hog wild set is a shameless act. Bacon makes desperate people do desperate things. My bad. (See there — I hate it when people say, “My bad,” but I just said it … clearly a desperate bacon-induced lapse.)

Post Note: One of the best presents I’ve ever received was a subscription to the Bacon-of-the-Month-Club. Every month, a knock would come on the door, and there would be my UPS man, smiling that knowing smile as he forked over the special chill-pack box. Bacon in the mail = heaven on earth.

Pre-Ramble: As U.S. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner walks a tight-rope over the global economic crisis, critics on the other side of the aisle rush (unfortunate pun) to judgment on his plan and challenge his credentials. Despite repeated attempts to build confidence, manage expectations and signal much needed regulatory reform in his Plan for Bad Bank Assets (opinion piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, p. A15), Geithner still faces a swarm of criticism from the antagonistic crowd over at Fox News. 

Commentators Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and go-from-the-gut-doughboy, Glenn Beck are still dancing around on the us-vs.-them warpath,  justifying their sorry, partisan pot-shots as vital “checks and balances” on an administration that is solidly weighted to the left and attempting to operate above the fray.

Sure, the value of discussion and opposition is still an important part of the democratic process, but at this particular point in time, the last thing the President and his advisors, (or any of us who want to see meaningful progress) need is a pack of self-serving detractors with stop-watches heckling from the cheap seats.

I guess they don’t understand that it’s going to take longer than 57 days to turn this around and that the part where “we as a nation must work together“ means them too. 

The Take-Away:  Under these critical and complex circumstances, it is going to take more than fifteen seconds, a paper clip and some chewing gum to address the ticking national and international challenges that we face. In the words of civil rights activist, Eldridge Cleaver, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

Pre-Ramble: Yesterday’s news included a report indicating that the number of billionaires in the world had dropped by 30 percent in the past year. Apparently, of the 1,125 billionaires on the 2008 list, just 752 remain.

You know it’s bad when you’ve been booted off the billionaires’ list. (I’m sure I can imagine that.) Well so, how do they tell you exactly? It’s not like they can just announce it over the PA during homeroom. Is there some kind of siren that goes off? Is it like the Oscar nominations where they call you at the crack of dawn? Or, are you left to read about it in the paper like every other schmuck with dwindling assets? And actually, how do you even know that you’re officially on the celebrated list in the first place?  Is somebody in charge of monitoring everyone’s bank account and pocket change?

Forbes Magazine, it seems, is the keeper of the lists. In fact, they have a whole list of lists. I’m not sure how they track and verify their data, but in addition to the list of The World’s Billionaires, they have lists of The World’s Millionaires, The Richest Americans, and separate lists of the richest people from Australia, New Zealand, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philipines and Singapore. Forbes also releases lists in other exceptional categories like best companies, restaurants, schools, zip codes, sports teams, and even charities.

So, back to the plight of the fallen billionaires — you’ll be relieved to know that our own Bill Gates has been restored to the top spot on the list with a reported $40 billion, and even though he lost a spectacular $25 billion in the last 12 months, savvy investor and Obama BFF, Warren Buffett weighs in at No. 2 with $38 billion. 

It’s really tough for me to get my head around numbers this big, and if you stop to consider the kind of bank we’re talking about in the ga-jillion dollar stimulus package… well, that almost becomes illusory.

To put it into some kind of perspective, internet sources describe one billion dollars as ”someone giving you $1,000 every day for 2,738 years.”  That’s a lot of years, and where do I sign up?  Other sources try to express it in terms of piles of money, or number of football fields stacked on top of each other. Still others use more unconventional means like comparing the combined weight of a billion credit cards with the equivalent weight of 1,562 hippopotamuses (hippopotami?). Frankly, the weight of a hippo is just as obscure as the concept of 787 billion of something.

The Take-Away: When in doubt, I always default to the Twinkie. This iconic, cream-filled snack-cake is a universal equalizer — everyone has a rough idea of the size and value of the golden, spongy delight … and, whether you would actually eat one or not, they are the stuff of dependability and fun.

Bearing in mind that there is no tax on Twinkies in Minnesota, the price of a single Twinkie (not a two-pack) is 69 cents. Thus, in today’s marketplace, one billion dollars will buy  1,438,848,921 Twinkies. Slicing the analogy another way, one billion Twinkies laid end to end measures 4,250,000,000 inches, which will stretch around the circumference of the Earth (equatorial distance) approximately 2.7 times.

Pre-Ramble: As the squabbling over at the significantly diminished and rudderless GOP continues, party leaders are left holding a flaming bag of do-do in the wake of conservative talk show host, Rush Limbaugh’s latest proclamation made in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference where he stated that he wants “Barack Obama to fail.”

I wonder if Rush has stopped talking long enough to consider the fall-out of a Barack Obama failure?  The way I see it, if he fails, we fail. Big time.

The Take-Away: It’s pretty clear that, at this point, the Republican Party has no leadership, no message, and no hope. The last thing they need is some self-serving blowhard spewing outrageous, inflammatory nonsense.

Post Note: Al Franken may not be the right about a lot of things, but he may have been right about one thing.

Pre-Ramble: When we last visited the situation, we were on a cupcake break following a rousting round of musical chairs (see post from 1/6/09). And so, the Great Race to the U.S. Congressional Seat after-party continues as both candidates and their attorneys threaten to hold their breath until the other side relents.

Coleman continues to press for a grudge-match of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and was last seen constructing a blanket fort under the plaintiff’s desk at the recount trial. It is reported that Franken’s team is amassing juice boxes in preparation for a series of sleepovers on Capitol Hill.  

The Take-Away: Party on! Clearly, the kids are getting tired, but nobody is willing to walk away from this thing yet.

Post-Note: I found a couple absentee ballots under the nerf ball and Twizzlers in my party bag – what should I do with them?

Pre-Ramble: I’ve decided to start an occasional feature on my site called, “In their Own Words,” where I share some truism or particularly incredible turn of phrase.  Here is a notable observation by a guy named Chris Anderson on his website, The Long Tail, regarding emerging social networking forums:

… [while] Twitter and other microblogging [mechanisms can make] lifecasting and other status updating easier, for most people it still feels like another obligation, taking time to do well and causing guilt when neglected.

I could not agree more, but before I go into that, I need to mention here that I casually clicked the “about” button on Chris’ site to get a little background on who he is, what he does, etc.

Ok – Duh. Chris Anderson is the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. Wired Magazine! As in, the keys to the kingdom for tech-trend-savvy folks (or wannabes). Chris Anderson is the wizard of all things tech. To cite something that he has to say about the dynamics of social networking as meaningful, is like saying a ripped guy named Laird can surf. Cut to me showing up at Teahupo’o Reef in floaties and a nose plug. 

To his point: And, Chris is so right about the double bind of social networking. While it is amazing and empowering to be able to share random thoughts, photos and even video with potentially millions of people, attending to what is essentially a constant chorus of calls to come out and play can be a serious time-buster. Do I actually need to know that you just moved your dark load from the washer to the dryer? That you have a front-loader? That it was set on “fluff”? That a brown sock went missing?

Or worse – I’ve been “tagged,” obligating me to list the top 25 things that I would want to have with me on a desert island. Except, I can’t just rattle off any old response; the self-imposed standards of my inner perfectionist dictate that this list has to be not only carefully considered, it has to be witty, hip, entertaining and express my true inner self. Shit. That kind of deliberation can take the better part of an afternoon – if I’m lucky. So,… either I indulge the well-meaning friend who sent it… or, I blow it off and risk alienating my friend and coming across as a royal-stick-in-the-mud-buzz-kill in front of the whole Internet.

The Take-Away: Learning how to manage time and maximize effort in this new online world will take some doing. As with reality shows, shoe shopping, cocktails, and now Facebooking, Twittering and the like, we’ll need to master some degree of moderation. And, we’ll just have to face facts - when it comes time to head out to the desert island, some of us will be prepared, and some won’t.

Pre-Ramble: Minnesota Musical Chairs is a game played by a group of people (usually children or senators) often in an informal setting, like Congress. The game starts with two candidates and one U.S. Senate seat. Local election officials recount ballots and attorneys for each player issue statements to the press while the candidates circle the contested seat.  When election officials stop counting, the players scramble for the nearest bank of microphones. The first one to declare himself the winner is free to assume that he will be seated as the junior senator from Minnesota, while the one left out begins legal proceedings. Everyone gets cupcakes while a special three-judge panel examines “inconsistencies” and “irregularities” and then the game begins again.

Minnesota Musical Chairs goes on until one candidate can no longer afford the gigantic legal bills, both candidates are declared complete idiots by their constituents, or mom steps in and sends everybody home.

Note: A similar game is played in Illinois called Monkey-in-the-Middle. Also played out in the media, it involves a corrupt, foul-mouthed Governor, a bunch of riled-up senators, and a blind-sided former Illinois Attorney General. 

The Take-Away: Party on!