perfidy

My wife commonly associates bacteria and viruses on food with sickness. She gets all squirmy whenever I, in the course of preparing a meal, touch raw meat and then vegetables. Were she Jewish, I think that Mrs. Buckethead would be very comfortable indeed with Kosher food handling practices. Myself, I feel that heat kills anything that my stomach won't, and don't worry too much. Food researchers have recently come up with a couple innovations that will on the one hand make Mrs. Buckethead more comfortable, and on the other give her the heebidy-jeebidies.

The first innovation is a newly FDA-approved viral additive for hot dogs and sausages and cold cuts. The viruses, in solution, are sprayed on the meat of your choice, whereupon they hunt down and kill the bad bacteria that live on, and feed off of our beloved ground meat products. When injested, these are the bacteria that give us tummy aches, or even kill us. The first preparation of six viruses targets the bacteria that causes Listeria, an illness that sickens 2500 Americans a year, and kills 500. We may assume that further viral add-ons are in the works.

Our second innovation is a special concoction of bacteria which will be added to gum, toothpaste and mouthwash. It seems that Strepptococcus mutans, or S. Mutans is a cause of tooth decay. Our new ally is another bacterium, a new strain of lactobacillus called L. anti-caries, forces S. Mutans to clump together, preventing them from becoming attached to the tooth surface. Sweet, maybe now I won't have to floss. Researchers are also looking into enlisting other bacteria to fight body odor. Naturally, these critters will be be applied to the underarm by means of your deodorant stick.

The beautiful thing about these things is that we won't even notice they're there. Silent multitudes of our microscopic minions will do battle for our snausages, in our pits, and in the dark moist crevices of our mouths. A fifth column of single- and sub-cellular agents will infiltrate and sabotage the work of the evil bacteria, foiling their communist plots to make us sick, smelly, and gap-toothed. Sadly, the collateral damage of this effort will eliminate the population of Mississippi.

One can only hope that this effort will succeed, and expand. Imagine the possibilities! By inducing intramural conflict amongst the bacteria and viruses of the world, we will divert the attention of those malevolent viral and bacterial armies that make our lives, well, bad. Our newly healthy, odor free, and glisteningly white lives will of course come at the cost of uncounted trillions of deaths. But when has that stopped us before?