STU demands renewed appreciation for good old-fashioned cheese

I was attending the last FCA meeting, calmly removing the lint from my belly-button and toenails, when I realized that I couldn't go on living a lie. I had to cleanse my blackened soul! I had to lift the terrible Chihuahua off my back! So I stood up from my chair and proclaimed, "My name is DISCO STU, and I'm a CHEESE-AHOLIC!!" The crowd was oddly silent. A nice young man sitting next to me, wearing yellow bicycle shorts and a tank top reading, "Promise Guarders: We Put the 'Fun' back in Fundamentalist Misogyny," was kind enough to clear up my misunderstanding.

It turns out that the FCA meeting I wanted, namely the Foundation for Cheese Addicts, was being held in "Sosh Sigh" and I was in "Sosh Sike." Since I'm neither Christian nor particularly athletic-is binge drinking a sport?-I decided that my time could be better spent elsewhere-the cheese aisle at Wellspring Grocery, for example, drooling openly over a stinky hunk o' Gouda.

If you like cheese as much as I do, so much that you once wrote an impassioned letter to the Kellogg's people insisting that they produce a new cereal-Crunchy Frosted Cheese Puff Squares with Real Cheese Filling, "They're Cheeeeeeserriffic!"-then you might sympathize with my recent experience at our local Socialist green grocer, Wellspring. There was a naive time in my life when I thought that all food was "organic." Ya know, it either grew somewhere or has "organs?" But how very flawed was my reasoning. "Organic" means that a food product is all-natural: no preservatives, no chemicals, no additives, no sugar, no fat, no taste, texture nor material substance! (I'm sorry, I get passionate about food.) Experts say that not all organic foods have to taste like a number-two pencil or involve soy in some way, but from my experience, it doesn't hurt.

Since my main concern here is cheese, let's start by examining exactly what has happened to our nation's favorite congealed dairy substance. First of all, in our modern, topsy-turvy world, some basic assumptions about cheese must be demolished. Most people assume that cheese, the cornerstone of the dairy group (please consult your first-grade food pyramid) necessarily contains milk, from a cow. No way, silly! Our world's science and technology leaders, in association with the National Center for Making Any Food Which is Mildly Enjoyable Taste Like Crap on a Stick (NCMAFWMETLCS) have run themselves ragged finding creative new ways to form so-called "cheese" from soy, bean curd and other fictional foodstuffs. Food for thought: Have you ever actually seen a soy bean? Do you know anyone who has?

So, from the makers of tofu burgers and "Not Dogs" we now have fat-free, cholesterol free, sodium free, soy-based cheese food. Cheese food? Is that something you feed the cheese or something you actually expect me to put in my mouth and swallow voluntarily. I once tried to make a sandwich with some of this crap, and when I attempted to melt the "cheese" it disintegrated into atomic particles and emitted an odor akin to a llama fart.

I consider myself a relatively P.C. guy. Ya know, I leave my glass Snapple container on the garbage can so someone else can recycle it. I hardly ever shoot California condors, unless it's in self-defense. But when you start messin' with a man's cheese, it becomes personal. As a liberal and an ardent Francist (one who hates the French), I find myself in an ethical "figure four." My love of cheese makes me philosophically aligned with the likes of conservative clown Rush Limbaugh (Author of "Cheesy Does It! One Man's Fight for Fat") and every French citizen who has ever left his fromage out on the counter for a decade or more just so the mold can "breathe."

I just don't want to see my child grow up in some twisted Jenny Craigian world, where fat is as hard to find as quality programming on UPN. Are we going to get as crazy about food as we have about cigarettes? In California, police are ordered to shoot public smokers on sight, and you have to be old enough to collect social security to purchase a lighter. I want my grandchildren to know what it's like to be lactose intolerant. I want them to experience the savage decadence of a three-cheese pita wrap washed down with a chocolate milkshake followed by an afternoon in the bathroom. Cheese makes it better, people! God Bless America!

DISCO STU has written a letter to Nan calling for the observance of National Cheese Week, during which all professors will be replaced by 200-pound wheels of cheddar.