Call me a snob, but there are certain things fellow diners do in a restaurant or even at a food stall that just make me want to cringe. Ordering meat cooked to anything more than Medium Rare, adding salt to just about anything, seeing Oysters cooked (that’s practically sacrilegious), adding lemonade to a perfectly good beer, ‘White Zinfandel’, or gripping their utensils as if they were garden too all get me to nearly (and I stress nearly here) loose my appetite. Why anyone would dine out in public with such horrific epicurean behavior completely dumbfounds me, but there is something that causes me to nearly commence the technicolor yawning right there on the spot… Ketchup.
The smug inhabitants of the useless bit of Canada between Montreal and British Columbia are the worst offenders here. Their ‘national dish’ is Kraft Dinner (instant ‘Mac & Cheese’ and something I also find utterly vile) topped with Ketchup. They then proceed to mix the two together, which creates a substance looking like the after effects of liposuction, and shovel this ‘stuff’ in their gaping (they’re Canadian after all) mouths. Take one to a steakhouse, and they’ll top a filet with the damn stuff. The American people must be thanking Benedict Arnold for being a turncoat at this point, and, clearly, Quebec and BC need to get the hell out of that freaky Dominion.
Honestly, who would eat this?
Right, so you’re now thinking, why don’t we just round up all of the Canadians from the flat bit in the middle, load them into busses, and send them through some sort of reeducation camps where their coastal brethren will teach them the beauty of shellfish, smoked meats, and gravy as a condiment? Well, that won’t work, since these people are clearly dumb enough to live in such a frozen wasteland, but there’s another problem. Ronald Reagan declared Ketchup to be an acceptable ‘vegetable’ in the lunch of America’s school children, so the practice of using this vile stuff has crept south. Ketchup, unlike KFC, isn’t just a crappy American export product anymore…
I was once dating a girl that had attended on of these state-funded schools and apparently had a mother who couldn’t bother putting a store-bought sandwich in a brown paper bag. She brought a bag of groceries in with her, where she then proceeded to unpack bottles of Ketchup, Ranch Dressing, Mayo, and a box of ‘Mac and Cheese.’ That relationship lasted about another two hours, and her purchases immediately found the bottom of the trash bin. However, this got me thinking… Was it really her fault that she found such disgusting ‘foods’ eatable? She, while intelligent enough, clearly lacked the mental faculties to see the Ketchup Lobby and Canada had pulled a fast one.
Let’s Ban This Stuff!
Rather than culling the Ketchup eaters for the betterment of mankind, which is apparently socially unacceptable to even propose to one’s elected representative, what the world needs is a Campaign to Ban Ketchup. So, let’s get the biggest Hollywood Celebrities, plus the casts of those reality shows some people seem to watch, to assert how gross Ketchup is. Sure there are a plethora of other disgusting condiments and eating habits out there, but my extensive (read nonexistent) research into the topic dictates that using Ketchup is the gateway to disgusting table manners. Therefore, Let’s Ban Ketchup and save civilization!
