Chew my meat

The company slogan on the backs of packages of Oh Boy Oberto© beef jerky reads, "We hope you have as much fun eating our jerky as we had making it." Wow. That's either powerfully inane or blatantly, brutally sarcastic. Can you really have a happy, fulfilling existence while manufacturing beef jerky, working a job I can only imagine is menial labor at its most depressing?

"Hi, I'm Hank. My job is to dehydrate and salt slabs of low-quality beef. My hobbies include counting to three and capturing ticks for my kids to play with. I couldn't be happier..."

That's where the Oh Boy Oberto company cuts off the employee monologue, but with the help of an industry insider I've captured the juicy meat of his statement:

"...that I'm dying from cancer, as agonizingly drawn-out and merciless as it is. I do own a gun but don't make enough money to afford bullets. If you don't fucking choke on this dry jerky, I hope mad cow disease rots your motherfucking brain, or a mad cow stomps your skull into little Skittle-y bits. There, I hope you're as fucking happy as I am."

Making beef jerky could only be fun if you were slipping occasional razor blades, glass shards, or infected needles into extra thick slabs of jerky. And, based on Frank’s comments and my common sense, I can only assume most tortured jerky technicians share my philosophy: hoping others suffer, just like you have -- but, to preserve the conscience, not actually acting on that hate and pain -- is the most relieving way to deal with personal problems. So chew sans trepidation.

But, back to my main point, contrary to what the Oberto Company would have you believe, the experience of eating jerky, albeit satisfying, is not a process I'd ever characterize as 'fun.' Maybe labor intensive, dry and tough, and ultimately rewarding – “I finally chewed that strange mass into an swallowable mush!” – but definitely not fun. "Gettin' my jerk on” or “Gettin' Jerkified," both accepted slang phrases for daunting, methodical jerky chewing, rank near clipping my toenails on the “I can’t goddamn fucking wait” fun meter.

Honestly, it’s a very rare morning I awake thinking, "I can't wait to see my friends, get hammered at that party, stick my dick into a variety of orifices, and – wait - HOLY MEATFUCKER, I get to eat BEEF JERKY today! Fuck all that other shit, just jam a fatass beef stick in my mouth and I’ll be cool." If you substitute beating my meat for eating jerked meat, however, and subtract the end bit about shoving said meat into my mouth, replacing it with ‘just let me thrust my Mr. Meatstick into a jelly-filled donut,’ then you’ve learned my daily approach to pleasure by pastry, whatever that says about me.