It was something that caught my eye while composing yesterday’s post. I was including a comment from an e-mail I’d received from my friend Jerome and figured I’d link to his website. It was there something he had written in his most recent post caught my eye (my boldings):

The last 12 days or so have been VERY difficult. All this business with my car, project breakdowns at work, dealing with the attention spans of kids on the football field, trying to coordinate schedules with all of humanity and the multiple crises in the house have made me want to stay in my basement, order a crapload of hot wings and turn on the NFL Network.

Reading Jerome’s words, well, it was like reading a mirror image of my last two months! Because on Friday nights, totally fried, zonked, ridden hard, and put away wet from work, I’d stagger out of my bedroom office, take a shower, and then head down to the local pizza joint where I’d sit at the bar and reconnect with humanity by shooting the breeze with a couple of the regulars there and engage in some harmless flirting with the cute waitresses decades younger than I. But, more to the point, I’d have my glass of wine and order me up a take-out order of a couple dozen hot wings (with a salmon special for Tracey) and then head home where I’d veg out in front of the TV and munch contentedly on my hot wings while watching The Golf Channel.

Which got me thinking: is that what life has become in this modern workaday world? To work one’s self sleepless and senseless until your brain is capable only of reverting to some prehistoric instinct to gnaw on chicken wings until the pile of bones resembles some ancient offering to the gods and your mouth is aflame, all the while numbing one’s brain with mindless sports entertainment?

Is that what it’s all come down to?

If you’re, say, some tribesman in Outer Mongolia who’s had a tough week on the range keeping those herds together, do you crave the same thing? Or (so as not to be seen as sexist) do women have the same pent-up desires after a hard week at the office or keeping the kids in line? Do they too find themselves craving a platter of wings to devour over, say, some pretty-colored cocktail and watch a Keanu Reeves movie?

Is it the work? A primal need for hot wings? And, what is it about that combination of fowl and hot sauce that drives mortal human beings to this sorry state of affairs?

Why not be thinking, ‘if I can just get through this week I can relax with some goose liver pate and veg out to my Wang Chung collection’?

I only ask because I’m human. Or male. Or insane. Or all three.