Sunday, March 11, 2007

country goodness

Just got back from the grocery store. I try and comfort myself with the cow-milking, butter-churning alternative to shopping but I still hate it.

Whenever possible, I try and buy free-range products. Like eggs from cage-free chickens. Barbara worked on a chicken farm in her colorful youth and her descriptions of that abuse make the extra dollar I shell out well worth it. So I bring home my reduced-guilt eggs. They are each stamped with, what one assumes is the mark of free chickens everywhere, a little red symbol. It seems a bit fussy but maybe the department of poultry rights insists on the labels.

What I really don't understand are the little bits of hen crap left on the shells. If they go to the trouble to stamp each egg, (and presumably the ink won't stick to dirty eggs) they must have to clean them first. My theory is that they take the pristine eggs, stamp them and then have a poultry poop sprayer that imparts a so-fresh-from-the-farm-they-still-have-chicken-shit-on-them authenticity.

Shit sprayers. The best metaphor for the field of advertising/marketing. I should know, that's where I work. Bill Hicks, rest his ranting soul, would probably agree.

1 comment:

Barry Baxter said...

The extra dollar you shell out? Anyone else catch that?

Your shit sprayer concept reminds me...at the livestock show this year, next to a pen of what I'll call the teenager chickens, there was a large almost Rube Goldberg-esque illustration of how chickens are "processed." It was just a little to in-your-face for a carnivore like me who likes to obtain his meat in a pristine package.