Peak Civilization Tastes Like This

We live in an age of deliberate, gleeful excess. The same people who talk about wellness and clean eating on Monday are biting into triple-decker burgers from fast food chains named after birds on Friday night, eating cheap ten-cheese pizza outside clubs, grilling meat from animals they’ve never heard of and won’t hear of again. The healthy lifestyle isn’t being quietly ignored—it’s being actively sabotaged, with enthusiasm, as a kind of ideological statement.

Into this beautiful era steps someone who goes by The Vulgar Chef, and who has replaced the bun in a hot dog with another sausage. Not a metaphor. An actual sausage, split and hollowed, cradling the hot dog inside it like a meaty cocoon. It’s the kind of thing that makes you laugh first and then immediately want one. My cholesterol is already a distant memory.