Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Generation Bacon

About a midlife crisis ago, many of our parents gave their generation an identity through music and drug culture to separate themselves as youths (we especially know now because they won’t shut up about Woodstock).

This largely happened because, like any young generation, they thought the past one sucked. The problem with the misguided youths of today is that they have nowhere to go. We have the misfortune of following up a generation that introduced the world to the ganja, invented acid, created that damn rock and roll music and made sexually transmitted diseases relevant.

How are we supposed to follow that up? Food.

Back in the day, every parent worried about her little boy/girl going out and listening to that devil’s music and joining in student protests. In turn, these same parents worry about us being lazy and gaining 15 pounds.

How can out generation make its mark? By stuffing it in their faces by stuffing our faces.

Think about it. We’re at the point where social deviance from the previous generation can only be achieved by descending into absolute moral decay or physical decay. Fortunately, one of those choices involves ordering one of those new Domino’s bread bowls with the chocolate lava cake and playing violent video games for nine hours. Yeah, I thought you’d pick that one.

It’s simply easier to deep-fry a quadruple cheeseburger than to start a band and write a song that trashes the establishment. Our predecessors changed the world by standing strong and working for peace. We can change the world by sitting still and working through a large cheese pizza.

If you’ve ever wondered why your parents worry so much about your health, take a look at the staples of a typical college student’s diet: Mountain Dew, 99 cent double cheesy beef burritos and anything including bacon.

Sweet, sweet, bacon.

We love delicious, unhealthy food and the Internet. So it should come to no surprise that kids of our ilk have found a way to combine the two.

With websites like Thisiswhyyourefat.com leading the way, making atrociously unhealthy foods has become part – albeit a small part – of Internet lore. In short, food has gone viral. But in reality, it’s much more than that.

Bacon chocolate peanut butter cup, a third-pounder with cheese and bacon between two Krispy Kreme donuts, bacon pizza on a crust made of bacon weave (yes, bacon woven into a sheet) and bacon chocolate Oreo’s. Google the recipes.

The common denominator? Bacon.

Bacon, the once-friendly staple of an awesome breakfast has gone the way of illiterate cats, Heath Ledger’s Joker and Rick Astley as part of everyday culture through the Internet.

The effects of the bacon craze have now even infiltrated into the mainstream. On a summer episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, sidekick Andy Richter tried out the newly-marketed bacon-flavored vodka in front of a national TV audience. It apparently tasted awful, yet it was still awesome.

It’s really a tribute to bacon and its significance. Apple pie may be the stereotypical American food. But, when you think about it, there’s nothing more American than bacon. It’s hearty, heart-destroying and can be put in anything. Plus, you can hear and smell it being cooked from any room in the house, as if you’re saying, “That’s right, I’m bacon.”

“Bacon is our national meat,” wrote Sarah Hepola in her 2008 Salon magazine article, “Bacon Mania.” “The pig is not an elegant animal, but it is smart and resourceful and fated to wallow in mud. A scavenger. A real scrapper.”

This concept of idolizing bacon is not lost on college-aged students, who, largely, will utilize their young, bullet-proof metabolisms to eat everything that would make their parents’ arteries explode from both the fat and jealousy.

Only through bacon can any single food immediately become unhealthy like with bacon bits on salad. Where the true power of bacon lies, though, is in its ability to turn already unhealthy foods into complete abominations (like if you wrapped bacon around a drumstick and melted cheese on it).

Like the pot leaf was to the 60’s, the bacon strip is a symbol of independence for our generation. It is a decree that we will not submit ourselves to the will of the oppressors by doing what is delicious.

Be warned, the Powers That Be will attempt to tell you that deep-frying candy bars is “detrimental to your health.” And that is true. You really should limit these things to like, once. Ever.

There only had to be one Woodstock, one time smokin’ the dope, to push parents over the edge back in the day. Today, all it takes is blowing a 0.09 on the BMDC (blood Mountain Dew content) to make your parents think you’re heart’s going to stop beating (which it might do, that’s a lot of Dew).

The point is that this generation of college students has the easiest task of creating an identity for itself by flaunting bacon rather than weed. It’s cheaper, funnier and marijuana’s getting close to legalization anyway.

So take up your bacon-weave flag, deep-fry something that already exceeds your daily limit for calories. Go to the gym and eat a salad later. Make a delicious statement.

Nick O’Malley is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].

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    muad'dibSep 20, 2009 at 11:07 am

    Yeah, well the last generation’s way of changing the world turned out to be pointless hedonism as well.

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