Meat!

Cerulean days still, though shorter. Not too hot, cool at night. Peewee football has replaced baseball as the informal sport of choice in the park we can see from our deck, a sure sign of fall ahead.

Strawberry ice cream after dinner this evening. As usual when something like that is being served up, Ann’s face twists into an expression of near panic if the process is delayed even a moment, as if she’s in danger of missing the last train out of Paris ahead of the German army. She’s probably a lot cuter than someone in that situation would be, though.

That thought made me wonder, again, why the Paris train station in the Casablanca flashback was so orderly. It was busy, certainly, but there wasn’t much sense that an invading army was right outside the city, and this was the last train before they showed up.

As I was out on a major road hereabouts, I saw a large white truck with “MEAT SOLUTIONS – Cargill” painted on the side. That phrase made even an unapologetic carnivore such as me a little queasy. Meat solutions? Pig knuckles in brine perhaps?

Of course I know what the food behemoth Cargill, or rather its ad agency, thought they were trying to say. “Solutions” is an annoying example of a solid word used in a hollow way. I see it all the time in real estate and financial services PR. So-and-so company offers “real estate solutions” or “financial solutions” to its clients. Meaning… well, usually it involves selling some sort of service to them. So Cargill can meet your meat needs. All the pig knuckles in brine you could ever want.