Human beings have managed to turn a lot of unbelievably great things into bullshit garbage. Where can I start? The planet. I can start with the planet, and I could end with the planet, if I really wanted to. Litter. Pollution. We put a hole in the ozone layer. Namechecking the hole in the ozone layer making me look like Al Gore? How about this one: We just filled an entire gulf with oil! We knock each other's buildings down. We war. We steal, we cheat, we revel in the misery of ourselves and others, in real life and on television. Human beings have managed to turn themselves into bullshit garbage, which generations of all kinds of oppression and other nasty things have proven time and time again and will continue to prove. But the usually warranted and satisfyingly cold rub of cynicism isn't necessary here. We've made our bad mark on the history of the universe, sure, but I argue that our positive contributions far outweigh our bullshit garbage. There are the obviously good things: Art, music, yaddayadda. Even the worst people in the history of people have found joy in those things. But I argue that the one thing human beings are remarkably good at doing, the thing that justifies their very existence in the history of the goddamn universe among all of the evil they have introduced, is this: Pleasure. Breathing is kind of ordinary? Enter smoking. We take things that are absolutely essential to our survival and squeeze every last drop of pleasure that we can out of them. And that means food. (It also means fucking, but that essay would find itself in a different book.) Somebody figured out that undercooking cow's meat is delicious. Is it practical? No, but it's delectable. Somebody figured out that the forcibly fattened goose liver is delicious. Not pratical: Delectable. At one point in history, somebody had to think, "Say, what if I just let this milk go bad?" At another point, "Well, every other part of the pig is delicious... What about this one?" And another one, "These mushrooms taste awful and they grow in cow shit but maybe if I eat them they will provide me with the meaning of life." Maybe that's an essay for a different book as well but hopefully you catch my drift. What does it mean to cook food well? It means to take something that is a chore to every other species and make it something that ours look forward to. Something that people get fat over! Maybe that means that McDonald's cooks food well. Maybe that means Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is fantastic. It's easy to get panties in twists over processing and conservatives but the only reason those things exist is because we as a people are so obsessed with food that we are not content to eat the generic gruel from The Matrix. And rightfully so. Food is the best!