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Eastern Europe evolved a cuisine predicated on the assumption that what was stolen for the cookpot today might have to last for an indeterminate length of time before luck struck again. The meals were heartily strewn with calories, nutrients, and various inert materials employed to chronically occupy starving bellies. Preserved meats discovered hidden in Carpathian caves and carbon-14 dated to the Bronze Age contain every bit of the scrumptious goodness and delicious flavor of their freshly prepared contemporary counterparts, which is to say, not much. Imagine my surprise as I perused the ecologically sound meat locker at my local supermarket and found instead of tough, fatty, rancid, delicious Polish kielbasa its kinder and gentler descendent - tough, fatty, rancid Señor Turkey Polish Kielbasa, New and Improved!
If it is new, how can it also be improved? Improved versus what?
Not only did Señor Turkey cost a mere fraction of the going rate for other preserved mystery meats, but a flashing dispensor was vomiting discount coupons that, given the store's Double Discount hype, would let me break even from the transaction. Free pork is the bar mitzvah'd Jewish male's dilemma! I bought.
(Jewish girls fantasize the bittersweet dream of being raped by a doctor.)
A field trip to the Señor Turkey processing plant out in San Berdoo reveals for all to see acres of turkey holding pens - round because turkeys are so stupid that they get lost in corners and die of fright. Visible air displacements roiled heavenward above them as turkey exhalations, manure stink, offal fermentation, and the San Berdoo southwest desert heat combined. They violated every EPA restriction regarding air quality, including some with biblical precedent. Señor Turkey quietly delivers generous financial support to both sides during local elections.
Thousands of turkeys each day are reduced to sludge piles of turkey byproduct (bones, beaks, feet, and feathers). You would suspect that even something as stupid as a turkey might ponder the substance within those sausage casings and make a break for it. Amidst illegal aliens plucking and stuffing as fast as their remaining little brown fingers could fly for $3.00/hour there roam the Señor Turkey psychologists bravely shouldering their $100K annual salaries, plus perquisites. When gobbling input hoisted upside down upon foot spikes preparatory to initial processing starts being reluctant, those psychologists really earn their keep.
"Hola Paco, pull a gobbler off the spike and throw it back into the holding pen."
Corporate culture is never violated. The command is always properly relayed through the foreman who conveniently speaks Spanish. Anyway, you can hardly expect to get a bilingual psychologist for $100K per annum, can you?
The released turkey hustles like its tail feathers were on fire (and given the sexual predilections of Señor Turkey supervisory personnel, the possibility is not all that remote), screaming to his confreres the horrors of what lies beyond the vertically sliding aluminum garage doors.
Turkeys are stupid, but not even a turkey would believe that ostensible, much less salable Polish kielbasa could be made from turkey meat, meat byproducts, ground feathers... The rumor spreads like wildfire. The sound of thousands of turkeys laughing is something to be heard! The wholesale slaughter then continues without relent.
As per instructions on the package, I placed the wrinkled crimson cylinder bearing an uncanny resemblance to an alien turd whipped up by Special Effects for an old Star Trek episode onto a plate and into my microwave, and plucked the magic twanger. It put forth a mighty effort. Just as the 40% by weight added saline began to steam out of the sausage, the magnetron gagged and the circuit breaker popped.
I sawed off a piece and took a bite.
Perhaps the day my turkey kielbasa came into being the hard-working Señor Turkey employees momentarily confused the meat and paunch manure bins. Perhaps "New and Improved" means that the health inspector was finally slipped enough cumshaw to look the other way when the stuff was shipped. Perhaps the brand name is as pertinent to package contents as to the buyer of same. Whatever the perambulations of the fundamental quantum structure of the cosmos, New and Improved! Señor Turkey Kielbasa is AWFUL.
I understand that as with breweries and the Gorman, CA linguine mines, the workers are allowed to consume as much of the product as they like while on the premises consonant with their retention of operational skills necessary to their jobs. No Señor Turkey employee has gone back for a second helping, ever, even though the rule against projectile vomiting while in the production area has never been punitively invoked.
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