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Yossarian News Press release, Feb 29, 2008 - It was a matter of time before someone found the right combination. It was Almont Utterban and his mixed team of scientists at Tyson Foods International that got there first - the creation of a boneless, skinless living chicken, appropriately called in the food industry a chicken-slug. "Actually, it does have a skin of sorts, but it's practically indistinquisable from the meat itself," admitted Utterban in a press conference, "but it definitely is boneless where it counts."

The animal, a product of several years of recombinant DNA work and now a registered patent of Tyson Foods International, actually does have a thin-walled skull and a rudimentary cartiledge-like appendage protecting its lungs and other vital organs. These are considered ancillary in the food processing industry because with one well-placed cut, the head, digestive and other support systems can be removed from the saleable portion of the "bird."

And bird it is not. Without feathers or bones, it is capable of only the most simple muscular movement. "If it doesn't walk like a chicken, and doesn't look like a chicken, then it isn't a chicken," stated Gill Murmount of the (Processed Edible Chicken Kitchens) East Coast Chicken Processors Guild denounced. "This is not going to affect the chicken processing industry in the least," he continued, "because the FDA is not going to approve of an animal that has less than 92% of the original DNA, and label it a 'chicken'."

But Tyson executives have high hopes. They have conducted many public taste test trials using the new chicken slug and regular animals and say that they have found very little ability for the public to discern the difference. In fact, according to their published statistics, many people preferred the chicken slug to regular chicken meat indicating that it had more flavor. This creates the only problem in the taste tests for Tysons, who admit that the industry giants, such as McDonalds and other fast-food industries, aren't much interested in the actual taste, but in the consistancy of that taste, no matter how bland. "It seems that a few of our birds are gourmet," kidded Utterban.

But there's a bigger problem. The current cost of production and preparation of the chicken-slug is still over 15 times that of current farm-bred chickens. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is that the animal is sterile. It has to be created in existing fertile chicken eggs and is still a very laboratory-intensive process. "The animal lacks both reproductive and egg-making organs." smiled Utterban, "The industry will find ways of making production automated, I'm sure. And be sure that McDonaldÕs is watching what we're doing with keen interest. If we get the animal's growth and development price metrics down to comparable units, it will reduce production and processing time and cost by 1/5th the current cost. Plus, as they grow, they sort of look like chicken McNuggets already."

I wonder if they're designed in the 5 different shapes of the chicken mcnuggets. And i've heard that the industry is working on a separate egg-producing animal that looks a lot more like a termite queen than a chicken. See? Screwing around with DNA benefits everyone!

Unless acted upon by a net external force, a body at dinner, will tend to remain at dinner and a body, fasting, will tend to remain fasting.
- Isaac Newton's first law of dieting

I'm on a diet. I have been a bad boy and greedy with Helen's artful cooking. She makes a sauce that if poured over gravel i would bust my teeth to eat. But even before tasting her ambrosia, in my bachelor years, i wasn't exactly mindful of what i ate. You see up until that point i really didn't like food - and saw eating as a distraction from whatever i was doing at the time, usually computing or photographing. Eating was an interruption. And so my eating habits were of convenience - read: fast food - and a lot of it so i wouldn't have to interrupt whatever i'd be doing in the next few hours. I was thin.

I also fasted. Fasting is easy for me, partly because of my antipathy for food, partly because i saw it as part of spiritual cleansing. But as i grew older, fasting stopped being a monthly event and eventually narrowed to once a year for about a week. The thing is after the 3rd day of a fast, i tend to forget about food, and the very watered-down fruit juices filled my belly without interrupting my industry.

But this is the first time i've ever looked at my growing real-estate of a belly and thought: do i have genitals? Of course i do, but my little paunch had turned into a sprawling billboard advertising my gluttony. Hmmph. I should've been warned by having to buy all new belts after moving in with Helen, but even that didn't do it. My epiphany came when i found a pile of dress-pants at Sams Club with a built-in hidden elastic strip that expanded (for when i eat, right?) and thought "What an amazing invention!" Whoah there, Vlad the Inhaler! Next i'll find myself dressing like Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. Not just poor taste, but golf shirts and patterned shorts... I was getting fat. What a short, ugly word that. After discovering it for myself, on myself, i felt fat - and that's even worse.

I had never dieted before and only had narrowed my eyes at Helen when she suggested portion control. Self control isn't my strongest behavior. At work they began a health initiative at work of Lighten Up 4 Life i decided to try it despite my personal distaste 4 using numbers 2 replace words (I really h8 it). At first, educating myself in the values of calories and carbs gave me something to focus on and it was fun, but after a while that wore thin and i wasn't getting thin. But wait, i'm good at fasting, so i'll do that. While that isn't healthy for the long run, at least i would continue losing weight. But Helen isn't fasting and still making culinary art. So what to do?

The weird thing is my mind works best with simple, if strange concepts. If i continue to fast, but allow myself a small meal once in a while, that is attainable. And so that's how i look at it now. Fasting punctuated by portions of food. It's like eating desert only. I get to have the power over my eating by not doing it, but rewarding myself with lunch and dinner. And an occasional yoghurt late at night if i've been good.

So i guess i'm rewarding myself for not eating, by, um, eating. But that's what works for me and i've shed about 20 lbs in the process and will continue on this path probably until it becomes it's own habit. My future reward will allow me to watch myself peeing in the toilet. Not exactly a highlight, but some kind of twisted sense of being healthy.