By K. A. Laity
The internet has brought us many wonders: the Rick Roll, the Facebook quiz, the Twitter novel, the blogosphere, but on most days I am reminded of the real point of the internet, its highest good and special purpose: bacon celebration.
So vegans and PETA proponents, cover your eyes. This is a porcine odyssey.
The bacon mystique, while difficult to define, is nonetheless impossible to deny. Sure, you'll set off arguments whether you come down on the side of crispy or fatty, but the only sure route to being ostracized from all good people is to have no burning desire to consume lots and lots of bacon.
That's a given, though. What the vast resources of the internet have brought us—countless gigabytes of memory, a sophisticated network of machines, international cooperation at a nigh unthinkable level—more than anything else, is a place to worship the salty divinity that is bacon.
Case in point: The Bacon tiara. When DIY meets girly culture, magnificence is born. The directions may include dire warnings about "protective gear" and working in a "ventilated area" but how many bacon fans are really going to try to do this. They may admire the swank look, but let's face it -- true porcine enthusiasts are not really interested in wearing bacon. They just want to tell you about the tiara while eating more of the tasty treat.M
Thus it is that they love sites like John Scalzi's Canonical Bacon Page where the cute factor of LOLCats gets cut by the salty savour of our favourite meat. Scalzi was the first to popularize what has become known (at least on his site) as Scalzi's Law:
Any conversation on the internet will eventually include bacon in some way.
He started with a picture of bacon taped to his cat and realised he had hit a fundamental truth: Bacon added to anything lends excitement and drool. People send in links for clothes that look like bacon, a stunning range of bacon-based entrees and ways to make things that are not bacon flavoured taste like bacon. People can't get enough bacon, so they add bacon to anything that has the remotest chance of becoming unhealthy.
A scientific examination of the recipes at This is Why You're Fat would surely demonstrate that a clear majority of the dishes simply add bacon to already staggeringly unhealthy dishes, like the Sausage Fatty or the irresistible Bacon-Wrapped French Toast Sticks Stonehenge. Bacon is the pièce de résistance that resituates the merely excessive into the sublimely lethal.
And bacon's not just for the belly anymore: I recall visiting a city-wide art festival in Ghent where one of the star attractions -- despite the summer weather -- was a pair of what appeared to be marble pillars at the front of one stately building. The pillars, of course, were wrapped in bacon. Who knew the humble breakfast staple could look so regal in the right location.
But bacon will always be the gastronomical king for one ineffable quality: taste. We hunger for that salty taste and the rich savoury delight of the smoked pork. We will go to great lengths to obtain it, although admittedly we’d rather it were very easy.
For bacon-devourers the world over, I have two words: Squeez Bacon®.
From the land of Bergman and the best education system in the world comes bacon in a bottle. "Jätte mumsig" indeed ("very tasty") because it's got "American flavour"! Bad enough the entire United States seems to be defined by its girth across the world, but now we're equated precisely with the smoky, salty taste of bacon. Well, that's not so bad, is it?
Image via The Wonderful Pig of Knowledge