-1 Buddha’s Belly,

There’s no denying that the belly makes it demands. Grieves at the

stuffy logic of the mind. “Wait, make something out of the veggies
in the fridge,” it says. “Something healthy,”belly scoffs, knowing
that it will always win. Cause stuff makes the mind go weak. The
lust for it gets you on a cellular level. Belly always has one over. I
rub my belly, happily aware of it’s unfashionably hairy statement. I
think of Buddha, and how he might have agreed upon that point;
that the belly will always win. Particularly since he gave up
starving himself for enlightenment. He gave up and said possibly
the earliest version of what Madonna later inflicted upon the pop
culture vernacular as, “we are living in a material world, and I am
a material girl.”

Buddha. Well, he just made himself all skinny and miserable. His
mind grew agitated and weak. It needed tactile digestive input
upon which to fuel his brain’s elucidations upon the path to
Nirvana. Cause lets face it, the body is a tactile thing. Requires the
reference point of other physical forms to confirm its existence, at
any given time, thank you mister Einstein. At least in this
dimension anyway. Your body thrives on a flawless logic of
sensorial input. “Simple,” it says. “Feed me, or I will kill you.”

The body itself, is the stuff of substance. It recreates itself bit by

bit, on the ingestion of solid matter. The flawless logic of
consumption helps determine the biological aspects of our
temporal, interactions with solid matter. Such logic however,
becomes secondary to the way we shape the sense of purpose and
psycho-spiritual meaning, that we jockey along with this temporal
physical reflection, of the more infinite self. Whether we like it or
not, construction of the self - as a functioning and socially
integrated, physical manifestation - requires the relativistic action
of consumption and therefore, the usage and the accumulation of
things to quantify the actuality of our experience. Having said this,
I have now outlined the first of my justifications for going snack
shopping.

Stuff fills my belly. “So fill me now,” goes the indefatigable logic.
I Consume. Therefore I am. NOW. NOW. Calories are fast-sugary-
cheesy-meaty-thingos, all lusciously packaged like culinary sleaze,
for horny taste buds. Friends used to warn me about shopping
when I was stoned. We used to have a saying. A saying that would
have made a great bumper sticker. It was, “Good Friends, Don’t
Let Friends Go Shopping When They Are Stoned. You’ll come
back with a ton of things you don’t need,” they said. Things. A ton
of them. All hollow and cardboard; covered in cheese-dust. The
kind that melts. Glistens, all chemically-ominous, like some
cheesy, orange narcotic. But oh, that tactile input; makes me feel
so damn good. Denial is useless. Renunciation is to reject the tools
with which we shape our identity, in this demented, bio-political
cakewalk we call existence. Your hooked folks. And I know where
you can score, my friends: at the supermarket.

My mission this week, was to explore psycho-spiritual interactions

with a food commodity. Or, to put it another way: my examination
of the truths to be found in the slogan of health Nazis the world
over. “You Are What You Eat.”

It’s evident, that there are certain psycho-spiritual exchanges

deriving from our consumptive relationships with food
commodities. Take for example, the physical and emotional torture
of those dieting themselves into a corporeal-minimalist-heroin-chic
fashion statement. Or, at the other extreme, we may consider the
conspicuous blubber-fest synonymous with the rampant over-
consumption of foodstuffs in “Capitalist Democracies,” the world
over. That unrelenting homogenous quest, “For Life, Liberty and
the Pursuit of Fattiness.”

We are what we consume. Particularly if you consider more recent

developments in theoretical physics. Accordingly, we become
aware that there is supposedly no separation between us and what
we consume. Literally. Atomically. Whether you are chowing on a
heart-attack-in-a-bun-burger, or buying novelty sex toys, at the
local Shagland Superstore. Or, even if you are one of the many,
caving in to the concept that, unless you buy the latest V8 maxi-
grunt, two ton utility with free air; fairly soon, you will have all the
social potential of a freeze-dried genital wart.

Furthermore, if its true that the universe exists by our perception of

it, then the identity that we derive from our temporal consumptive
experiences, are solely unique to us. For example, no else can
quantify, within the same time-space, the vast array of psycho-
spiritual meanings to be gained from fondling a packet of Papa
Mafiarelli’s Homestyle Crispy Crud Stix, with twenty percent less
fat. No One. No one can experience the same sense of manifest
destiny, fulfilled by that particular packet, at that particular
moment. Observe.

“Mmmmmmmmmm - Crispy Crud Stix. Oh, the funky spelling.

Stix. Man that’s so hip. But wait. There’s also that irresistible
sense of old world, Italian homestyle charm. Oh, how can I resist.
So spicy, tomatoey and crunchy. Just-a-like-a-papa-used-ta-ma…
NO! I must resist. No, I cannot. I’ll be a traitor to everything I
believe in.

I remember what that article in “Groan Left Weakly”, said.

Something about Papa Mafiarelli PTY LTD, once providing king-
size catering party favor packs for some ex-Regan administration
henchman, who once farted in the general direction of a sub-sub-
subsidiary of a corporation, which once sold weapons, to a retired
dictators, camel trainer’s, long lost brother’s, uncle’s, sisters, dog,
who was once reported to have licked the imperialistic boot-heels
of some out of work, fascist, general warmonger, who once
vacationed within two countries of a suspected, counter, counter,
counter-insurgency to overthrow some burgeoning socialist state
with free healthcare and mmmmm…garlic and basil seasoning!

I did buy those Papa Mafiarellis Crud Stix in the end. Something to
do with the premise of having an anecdote, with which to illustrate
the weakness of the human condition in the face of those evil
“Cappo marketeers.” Damn them. They got me again. Those evil
chip-mongers. The end is nigh. It’s a crispy, potato-based
conspiracy, insidiously forcing us to gorge ourselves until we
explode.

But wait. Let’s think this through. Relatively speaking, we have

owed a lot to the forces of “Neo-liberal Economic Globalization.” I
mean, think of the grand feeling of motivation and identity that
suddenly develops in the face of poverty stricken alienation and
disaffection, on the bottom rungs of all “Neo-Liberalized”
societies. Consider the deep and unfulfilled hunger for social
progress that can come only from being reminded on a daily basis
that the “Trickle Down Effect”, of neo-classical economics, has
more to do with being urinated upon upon from a great height, than
even getting the merge scraps dropped begrudgingly from the
political and industrial aristocracy’s table.

What about the sense of justification, that we can only feel from
having the police beat us unconscious, for exercising our
fundamental democratic rights to stand around in a public space
and chant mind-numbingly repetitive sixties counter-culture
clichés about everything else that’s getting on our wick. We
certainly wouldn’t have any of those hip, Che Guevara t-shirts to
wear. And where would we be, if the government didn’t gobble
our pensions and spend them on a spot of war and re-colonization,
or trample upon the cost of essential medicines and wages in the
name of free-trade. Bored shitless, is what. It never felt more
exciting and justifiable to be poor and angry, than when one of
those conspicuously consumptive types, nearly runs your bike off
the road, in their handmade sports car.

Where would our awareness of human rights, ethics and the

sustainable management of material resources be, without the
manifest consequences of unsustainable modes of production and
consumption. You know the ones. The kinds supported by the
buyers of said handmade sport-cars, with their Fossil Muncher
Deluxe, V24 engines and old-growth forest timber interiors, flown
- piece by piece - in an otherwise empty cargo plane, as it lifts-off
from a runway felled in amongst virgin rainforest controlled by
genocide sponsoring Amazonian logging interests.

Funny really, the different kinds of meanings that people invest in

stuff. My friend Steve-o once bought a packet of the very same
Papa Mafiarellis Crud Stix. He’d gotten stoned. Developed a
raging case of the pot-munchies, and scoffed the whole lot, in the
space of a few minutes. All he considered was the shits and giggles
he got from watching those kooky, tap-dancing mobsters from the
Papa Mafiarelli’s TV commercial and a rotten stomach ache.