How bad can it be?

I like beef jerky.

I come from a long line of jerky eaters.

Honestly, the prospect of a food that requires zero preparation on my part that most quickly satisfys my hunger and lets me get on with the business of living my life appeals to me. I can get to the bathroom, refill my Diet Coke and snag a chunk of jerky in a two minute commercial break and be back to watching television without missing a single whine, dramatic eyebrow or, "we need to ask Grissom", but I digress.

Yep, jerky appeals to my lazy side.

I have a friend that makes jerky, and it's pretty damn good, he puts a lot of work into it. Which is why the sorry bastard doesn't get his ass around to doing it but once in a blue moon, so I have to make due with the commercially available jerky at the juggernaut of the retail world, Wal-Mart.

So, I'm going down the aisle last weekend, doing my best to avoid the snivelling toddlers with dirty faces and sticky substances in their hands and the little old ladies with their blue hair and shopping carts filled to overflowing with Christmas crap and I spot a bag of what purports to be "buffalo jerky".

Ok, I'll bite, I'm curious, after all, how bad can it be?

So I get home and settle down to watch a videotaped episode of Jerry Springer, (yes, I'm borderline white trash, no I don't live in a trailer, well, actually, I don't live in a trailer anymore, but that's besides the point, anyway) I've got my glass of Diet Coke and my bag of newly found dried meat goodness at my side and as yet another toothless wonder starts tossing her overly processed, black roots at least a foot long hair around calling her mother (sister, cousin, doesn't really matter) a fucking whore I absentmindedly tear open my jerky snack and pop a piece in my mouth.

Hey, it's jerky. I've been eating jerky since I had teeth, I love the stuff.

But, something seems altogether wrong about buffalo jerky.

It's got a taste that Diet Coke won't kill.

It's got a taste that peanut butter filled pretzels won't kill. (Yes I eat all kinds of white trash food when I'm watching Springer.)

I'm starting to think that running outside and eating grass like a dog to get the taste out of my mouth as a viable option, but I made it to the bathroom and a bottle of generic Listerine type mouthwash first.

I'm reading the pack of the package thinking that surely something as truly majestic as a buffalo, an animal that supported an entire culture of indiginous people on our continent before white settlement, couldn't taste that FON-KEE.

Ingredients: Buffalo meat soaked in a beef puree solution.

My neighbor has a dalmation named Sparky that he lets run loose.

Sparky really enjoyed that package of buffalo jerky.

Good doggy.