The Meal(worm)y Mouthed Monsters

Sylvia Shawcross

And so we have to go back to discussing insects I’m afraid. It is just the way it is going to have to be because there are far too many things we disagree on now—even more things than since we last realized that we all didn’t really want to eat insects. That fact being the only thing we could actually all agree on and which was happily uncensored.

Some didn’t agree with this probably because they have a vested interest in cricket/maggot manufacturing or think somehow that the mass slaughter of insects will somehow make up for the mass slaughter of cows and chickens now occurring for the sake of the planet and/or humankind or both. Or neither.

I don’t quite get the reasoning behind killing off animals to save animals because it is kinda like waging war to prevent war and we know how that has always worked out.

In any event, consider the mealworms of the world. Just last month the EU approved the production of Alphitobius diaperinus, a species of beetle commonly known as the lesser mealworm for human food. I suspect they knew all along even way back when they named the things “mealworms” that they were going to make meals out of them but perhaps it is all just coincidence. (And before anyone goes on a long descriptive correction on the term “meal”, I’m well aware of meal as a ground substance but am now desperate for anything remotely humorous in this ghastly world and to hell with anyone who wants to ruin my feeble efforts today.)

Now where was I?

Oh yes. As edible larvae A. Diaperinus are just squirmy whitish things with a nervous system and three sets of legs. Actually I don’t know if they have a nervous system or a brain really or even if they’re squirmy. I should look that up but I don’t want to. What the hell do I want to know really about bloody insects beyond the fact that I don’t want to eat them. Anyway, they are small. And they “are” whitish. This much I know.

A. DIaperinus has been observed inhabiting the scrotum of a rat. (The things you learn from Wikipedia. I mean, they also have other habitats but that kind of stood out to me.) They’re considered pests around the world. So what better way to make everybody happy and solve world hunger while also including the eradication of pesky little bugs than to eat the things.

Yes. It is all so simple isn’t it?!?!

I realize this may be a letdown for the rats who may have actually gotten quite used to squirmy scrotums but really… if it is to save the planet they’ll simply have to sacrifice like the rest of us… well except for the elite. They don’t have the word “sacrifice” in their lexicon I don’t think. They just think we’re all being dreadfully ungrateful for their Herculean efforts to build their idea of Utopia I’m sure.

And speaking of words, I just want to know what the word diaper is doing in Alphitobius diaperinus’s second name? Maybe they got that wrong. Certainly there was a diaper shortage in the UK I know in 2022 but surely they wouldn’t have misinterpreted that and instead of making more diapers they started breeding A. diaperinus?

Oh Lawd, I wouldn’t put it past them these days. The things that are done these days through computer glitches and algorithms and misinterpretations and miscommunications… like world wars e.g. It’s very hard to trust “them” now.

Yes, “they”, whoever “they” are, are a little insane and quite out of touch with reality. And you’re not really allowed to broach that observation with them. We could ask them if they accidentally started making mealworms instead of diapers but that wouldn’t work, as usual. It makes them prickle and sputter and get all emotionally overwrought and purple in the face and rush away in a mad nervous dash. We know this now. So we don’t say anything anymore. It’s just easier isn’t it?!? Of course it is.

And speaking of insane, as I write this the US has shot down four “unidentified flying objects” in US and Canadian airspace. By the time this is published in a few more days heaven only knows what other high entertainment we’re going to be subjected to. I don’t know about anybody else but when I woke up to the news of the first one I just laughed and laughed and laughed. And then I laughed.

Spy balloon? Really? How profoundly interesting given that satellites up there can zoom in on and know if Great Aunt Tilly has clipped her toenails this week. For heavens sakes! Of course maybe these balloons can spy in some new novel way. Who knows. There’s nothing like old technology resurrected to thwart the newfangled stuff. Gets ‘em every time.

But maybe it is not a spy balloon…. Maybe it is aliens or they had a payload of anthrax or nuclear warheads or they’re just practising getting us used to shooting things down and running military operations in our up-until-now-with-the-great-reset peaceful countries…. Or maybe it is just a distraction.

Whatever it is, it is important to be afraid and off kilter. This is the whole point of it all. We know that now. We just dutifully forget all that happened last week and worry about what is happening today. That’s our role. To be first class idiots. We’re good at it.

We’ve already forgotten about Hunter Biden, Russiagate, Epstein’s list, Pfizer revelations, the Oklahoma train derailment (and Texas and South Carolina), loss of freedom of speech and censorship and universal ID and all sorts of government scandals and the fact that somebody important wrote an article just released that seems to confirm that the US sabotaged “The Pipeline” in Europe. You see, in the real world that is considered an act of war I’m afraid. And that would bring us the Third World War and of course make everybody hate the Americans because that is on the agenda apparently to bring down the western world and stuff. It is what the Banksters have decreed I suppose given the mess they’ve put us in.

We’ve forgotten everything mostly already. Haven’t we? Look at those balloons!

Thank heavens for short attention spans. There’d be too much to worry about otherwise. I’m just worried a little bit about the so-called conspiracy theorists. So much of what they’ve said has become reality that when the government tries to make us all believe overtly or covertly the aliens have arrived the conspiracy theorists will disagree because they pretty much know a distraction when they see one.

If you think about it… when did the conspiracy theorists become the normal ones and the normal ones become the conspiracy theorists? Regular people will be screaming “it’s the aliens” and wearing biohazard suits and tinfoil hats and masks and needles in their arms and slaughtering chickens and disinfecting their eyeballs and the conspiracy theorists will be sitting with their arms crossed saying, “Nope. Don’t believe it.” Funny how it is now.

Oh well… ours is not to question why, ours is but to do and die and eat mealworms and be afraid and forget history and stuff. Until they finish this thing and we can clap and/or boo and go home for a nice cup of tea.

Also, we must save the mealworms. What did they ever do to deserve such a fate? (I mean besides the rat thing.) P.S. If WW3 breaks out by the time this is published I’ll be annoyed and might have written about something other than insects. Until such time it will be insects. Next week we may discuss the sadly romantic plight of the luna moth during its larval development.

*

Favourite quote from the commentary section of my last piece supplied by the insightful thoughtful niko—about the Canadian trucker convoy:

“Somebody, after all, had to make a start, as Sophie Scholl said, if only because what may be believed by many remains unknown and powerless until expressed by some. We are social beings who learn by example, and in these Orwellian times of universal deceit, bearing witness to truth is a revolutionary act, capable of inspiring others to emerge from fear, repression, lockdown and other prison conditions of police states.”

And here’s your most obvious earworm for the day:

Syl Shawcross lives in Quebec, Canada. Apparently.