¡Bacon!

Dating sucks, and I'm taking the rest of the year off, but that's OK because I have bacon.

A few days ago I bit into a BLT and was immediately reminded of the rapturous way poets describe the sweet arrow piercing of falling in love, because this is how I felt about my sandwich. People in their prose, and poets in their way, have chronicled their ardor in different ways, but the basics remain the same: the senses swim around in dopamine juice as the heart swells, straining against its encasement of ribs and sternum.

And so it is with bacon. With each bite the heart beats itself a bit bigger (I suppose this is literally true if one were to eat bacon at every meal). With each bite a haze of happiness appears. With each bite a symphony completes a movement. Each bite introduces maybe the only true contentment in an aggravating day, or punctuates a particularly blissful one. It is the sole reason why I will never commit to becoming a vegetarian, despite the many and compelling reasons for why it would be advisable.

Dates and romantic attachments may come and go, but bacon will have your back as long as you fry/bake/microwave it properly (respect the bacon, and it will respect you). Of course I won't go into bacon's pesky details, like the USDA's silent treatment on recalls, the debate on sodium nitrite, colorectal cancer, or slaughterhouses. I will, however, allow Sarah Hepola of Salon.com to have the final say:

"Loving bacon is like shoving a middle finger in the face of all that is healthy and holy while an unfiltered cigarette smolders between your lips."

Yum.

P.S. How to say, "May I have some bacon" in a few other languages:
German: Darf ich bitte Speck
Chinese: 我请你们熏肉
RussianL Позвольте мне, пожалуйста, свиной
Greek: Επιτρέψτε μου να έχει κάποια μπέικον
Spanish: ¿Por favor me puedes dar tocino?