The fleshy part

(The 10th, and possibly the most harrowing google image result for "fleshy part.")

I am currently regretting the fact that I went with the 14" cheese-steak for the price of a 7" cheese-steak at a sports-bar called Bert's at lunch. It raises at least one interesting question -- what, legally, is the definition of "steak"? If you wanted to, say, level a lawsuit at a restaurant -- how far would their "steak" have to be from that normative legal standard "steak"? Because the first thing that pops up in my dictionary is, "A slice of meat cut from the fleshy part of an animal or large fish." Which doesn't carry with it any of the quality control that is, to my mind, implicit in and conveyed by the word. Can you imagine if they'd just decided not to invent the word steak and just gone with fleshy part? Going to a the local fleshy part house for a sirloin fleshy part? Firing up the grill and throwing down some t-bone fleshy parts? Groaning about having to watch those awful, awful hot men hock for Taco Bell's Triple Fleshy Part Burrito during every commercial break? Having the classic Simpsons' line instead be "Money's too tight for fleshy parts"? I can tell you one thing, and I will tell you that one thing -- if the special had been a 14" fleshy part sandwich for the price of just 7" of fleshy part, I'm pretty sure that's a sandwich I wouldn't be regretting.

Also -- Last week, I sat in on a lecture, and the lecturer said that "mutton" was a kind of cow meat. I wasn't so sure, so I went to the lecturer afterward and I said, "are you sure mutton is a kind of cow meat?" She was absolutely sure. Now, having thoroughly searched the surprisingly extensive wikipedia page for "mutton" for such phrases as "cow," "beef," "steak," "fleshy part," and "any other animal that's not a sheep or goat or lamb or something like that," it is becoming more and more clear that mutton can, under no circumstances, be a cow. Not even in Britain, where, it was intimated by the lecturer, it was more likely to be a cow. I know that because there's a "Britain" section to the wikipedia entry for mutton, no shit.

So now, I'm trying to find a way to reveal that I'm right about mutton, without it coming off as gloating. I'm thinking about wearing a t-shirt that says, "Mutton Can Under No Circumstances Be Cow," and explaining to everyone that it's the hot new fashion the kids are wearing, like No Fear and Shemalé in their day. I'm thinking I could organize a campus even called Mutton Week under the auspices of some shadow corporation called NoCow or Cows AREN'T Us (a limited liability corporation), with a mission of getting out the facts about mutton and ending all the pernicious misconceptions. I could get a bunch of freshman to stand on the quad and hand out literature and do something theme-appropriate like, I dunno, wail on some cowbells or something. I could dress up like the gypsy from Jane Eyre and go into her office hours eating some mutton, and then deliver a seemingly mad, yet curiously precise disquisition on the nature and history of mutton, and then jump out the window to evade campus security. I could revive the old theanonymouspervert@gmail.com gmail account and send her an anonmyous tip from the anonymous pervert, on the preconception that, as long as my name isn't attached, she won't know it's from me -- the only problem would be finding a way to say something perverted about mutton that's still actually about mutton, sort of like how I imagine it was sometimes difficult for Bill Nye the Science Guy or Beakman (either of the Beakmans) from Beakman's world to simultaneously follow every standard of scientific rigor and falsifiability and remain accessible, you know, for the kids. But I'll probably have to just go on letting her believe that mutton is cow, and infecting whole new generations of readers with this damned lie. The needle and the damage done. I just hope she doesn't get to you, or anyone you know.