They said oatmeal.  Eat locally-sourced oatmeal to lengthen and enrich my life.  Then it was fish or blueberries, then that South American grain with the maggoty texture.  Let’s not forget dark chocolate and red wine, or that one green.  You know.  With ropy-stems?  You have to prepare it with a bomb tech’s level of focus just to make it edible.  Yes, that bland one.  I’m probably mixing things up.  I must be.  I can’t keep up.  With all of the new advisories and recommendations and studies that invalidate other studies coming out every day, no one can.  Eat acai berries for powers of levitation and telepathy, but pickled camel udders for testosterone.  And then: ethics.  Eating popcorn hurts dolphins.  The amount of grain it takes to feed a leprechaun one meal would last a Venus flytrap a year.  It all comes down to: do I eat this or forgo its lovely taste?  How does a peach feel when your teeth rip away its face?  I can’t say.  Neither does the produce guy at my grocery when I ask.  I’m actually no longer allowed there.

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Alexei Kalinchuk has been known to pet cats, sometimes cats, but never clowns. He’s published a crime novel (It’s Not My Cult!) and has been published in a handful of magazines, but he doesn’t know how big your hands are. He also practices Ukrainian massage.  Keep a toe in the family business.  You know, peer pressure.