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Friday, May 06, 2005
Branding, Tipping, Laughing
I checked the mail when I arrived home yesterday, and to my great surprise, I received a postcard from a childhood friend. I hadn't heard from Chuck since he quit high school to join the Marines nine years ago. Somehow he tracked me down, and he sent me this:
 On the back he wrote: Steve, I just bought a cattle ranch a few miles outside Tlaxcala! I'm gonna start a new gamblin man's sport, cow racing! Come on down for a steak and a race! The senoritas is reeeeal friendly round here, ya know what I mean? Ha ha! Hope to see you soon, Chuck 'The Tiller' Stakefalter Southern Mexico. Oh my. I'm afraid to go visit. I've heard about the crooked cops and banditos. I've heard about drinking the water and getting dysentery. Bloody mucus ridden diarrhea? No thank you. Tourists can go to resort cities, which is great, but this invitation is different. Do I really want to venture into the lonely dusty desert to some far flung cruddy ranch full of starving cattle and swarming flies? Maybe I was underestimating Chuck. He must be a hell of a successful cowhand to have mustered the capital to start a new sport. Still, I had trouble imagining cow racing. What could it be? Some ugly notions crossed my mind. I feel compelled to share them. What if this was a jockey sport like horse racing? Would Chuck pay some local village idiots in pajamas to follow the pooping cows with electric prods? Would these short hungry little natives stumble behind the moaning beasts, cursing, praying, and frying their few remaining brain cells under the punishing equatorial sun? I can imagine the desperate jockeys slipping and skidding on gleaming loafs of grassfed manure. Even the most dedicated gambler would not have the stomach for such a pathetic spectacle. Maybe a more sadistic sport was more Chuck's style. He was a marine once upon a time, after all. Maybe he was having slaughtering races for violent people. I've written about the slaughterhouse before. Some of these fuckers might just get a kick out of a relay race. The first "lap" would be spiking the skulls, the second would be hatcheting the heads right off, the third would be hanging the corpse, the fourth would be draining the blood, the fifth would be skinning the beef, and who knows what they could come up with for the rest. They could have teams with sponsors and logos and television rights and everything. It would be popular in third world countries and jail rec rooms. The A1 Sauce company would sponsor that in a heartbeat.  Click on the above photo to see a real slaughter. I decided to go with the safer, friendlier picture you see above for those of you that are A) unwilling to view the process that feeds you B) vegetarians or vegans C) weak. Go ahead, there's even a kid in the linked picture watching daddy eviscerate the animal, and she isn't flinching. What else could he mean by cow racing? If I was forced to come up with something, I'd put cows on rollerskates and push them down hills. I'd record the terrified "Mooooo!" sounds and make a Christmas music tape out of them. The dog and cat ones sell very well to old ladies who knit their own sweaters, so why not a tape of dying cattle singing "Deck The Halls?" Sick. Very very sick. I halted my train of thought. Bad momentum. Bad. I decided to write back to tell him to open a restaurant instead. Everyone loves a good juicy steak. 11:15 AM - Bottle Rocket Fire Alarm 
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