From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!saf
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Title: Say Cheese ...
Article-I.D.: floyd.344
Posted: Thu Jul  1 10:23:54 1982
Received: Fri Jul  2 01:56:56 1982

The following appears as printed filler material on the
"You are what you is" album by Frank Zappa.  It is properly
satire but since there is no net.jokes.s I put it here.  (No - 
I am not proposing a net.jokes.s - this will do just fine....)
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                                  - 1 -



       Say Cheese ...

            It has been suggested that the Gross National Product
       is perhaps not the best indicator of how well we are doing
       as a society since it tells us nothing about the Quality of
       our Lives ...  but, is this something worth dwelling upon as
       we grovel our way along in the general direction of the 21st
       Century?  When future historians write about us, if they
       base their conclusions on whatever material goods survive
       from Present-Day America, we will undoubtedly stand alone
       among nations and be known forevermore as "THOSE WHO CHOSE
       CHEESE."

            As you will recall, folks, nobody ever had as much
       going for them in the beginning as we did.  Let's face it
       ... we were fantastic.  Today, unfortunately, we are merely
       WEIRD.  This is a shocking thing to say, since no Red-
       Blooded American likes to think of his or herself as being
       WEIRD, but when there are other options and a whole nation
       CHOOSES CHEESE, that is WEIRD.

            Our mental health has been in a semi-wretched condition
       for quite some time now.  One of the reasons for this
       distress, aside from CHOOSING CHEESE as a way of life, is
       the fact that we have (against some incredibly stiff
       competition) emerged victorious as the biggest bunch of
       liars on the face of the planet.  No society has managed to
       invest more time and energy in the perpetuation of the
       fiction that it is moral, sane and wholesome than our
       current crop of Modern Americans.

            This same delusion is the Mysterious Force behind our
       national desire to avoid behaving in any way that might be
       construed as INTELLIGENT.  Modern Americans behave as if
       intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.  To
       cosmeticize it, many otherwise normal citizens attempt a
       peculiar type of self-inflicted homemade mental nose-job
       (designed to lower the recipient's socio-intellectual
       profile to the point where the ability to communicate on the
       most mongolian level provides the necessary certification to
       become ONE OF THE GUYS).  Let's face it ... nobody wants to
       hang out with somebody who is smarter than they are.  This
       is not FUN.

            Americans have always valued the idea of FUN.  We have
       a National Craving for FUN.  We don't get very much of it
       anymore, so we do two things: first, we rummage around for
       anything that might be FUN, then (since it really wasn't FUN
       stuff in the first place) we pretend to enjoy it (whatever
       it was).  The net result: STRESSED CHEESE.












                                  - 2 -



            But where does all this CHEESE really come from?  It
       wouldn't be fair to blame it all on TV, although some credit
       must be given to whoever it is at each of the networks that
       GIVES US WHAT WE WANT.  (You don't ask - you don't get.)
       Folks, we now have GOT IT ... lots of it ... and, in our
       Infinite American Wisdom, we have constructed elaborate
       systems to insure that future generations will have an even
       more abundant supply of that fragrant substance upon which
       we presently thrive.

            If we can't blame it on the TV, then where does it come
       from?  Obviously, we are weird if we have to ask such a
       question.  Surely we must realize by now (except for the
       fact that we lie to ourselves so much that we get confused
       sometimes) that as Contemporary Americans we have an almost
       magical ability to turn anything we touch into a festering
       mound of self-destructing poot.

            How can we do this with such incredible precision?
       Well, one good way is to form a Committee.  Committees
       composed of all kinds of desperate American Types have been
       known to convert the combined unfulfilled emotional needs
       and repressed biological urges of their memberships into
       complex masses of cheese-like organisms at the rap of a
       gavel.  Committee Cheese is usually sliced very thin, then
       bound into volumes for eventual dispersal in courts of law,
       legislative chambers, and public facilities where you are
       invited to eat all you want.

            If that doesn't fill you up, there's the exciting Union
       Cheese ... the most readily available cheese-type offered.
       The thing that's so exciting about Union Cheese, from a
       gourmet's point of view, is the classic simplicity of the
       mathematical formula from which it is derived.  In fact, it
       is difficult to avoid a state of Total Ecstasy if one
       contemplates the proposition that no import quota yet
       devised has proven equal to the task of neutralizing the
       lethal emissions generated by the ripening process of this
       piquant native confection.  Should we not be overtaken by
       some unspeakable emotion when we consider the fact that the
       smaller the amount of care taken in the preparation of each
       Union Cheese Artifact, the more triumphant the blast as the
       vapors stream forth from every nook and cranny of whatever
       it was that the stalwart craftsperson got paid $19.00 per
       hour to slap together?

            Still hungry?  Union Cheese might be the most readily
       available, but no type of cheese in America today has
       achieved the popular acceptance of Accountant Cheese.  If it
       is true that YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT, then surely our national
       willingness to eat this stuff tells us more about ourselves











                                  - 3 -



       than we probably wish to know.  Obviously we have found The
       Cheese To Believe In.  Why not?  It is manufactured by
       people who count money, endorsed as nutritionally sound by
       Civic Leaders, and delivered by The Media door to door.

            The Quality Of Our Lives (if we think of this matter in
       terms of "How much of what we individually consider to be
       Beautiful are we able to experience every day?" seems an
       irrelevant matter, now that all decisions regarding the
       creation and distribution of Works of Art must first pass
       under the limbo bar (a/k/a "The Bottom Line"), along with
       things like Taste and The Public Interest, all tied like a
       tin can to the wagging tail of the sacred Prime Rate Poodle.
       The aforementioned festering poot is coming your way at a
       theatre or drive-in near you.  It wakes you up every morning
       as it droozles out of your digital clock radio.  An ARTS
       COUNCIL somewhere is getting a special batch ready with
       little tuxedos on it so you can think it's precious.

            Yes Virginia ... there is a FREE LUNCH.  We are eating
       it now.  Can I get you a napkin?

       Frank Zappa  April 1, 1981