Overheard Starbuck

"Now that you're here, I love you and all your many mouths to feed. To do otherwise would be ungrateful and miserly. My world is big enough for everybody. I'm grateful for how easy it is for us to keep healthy and consuming the few mouths that sleep and shelter with us in this apartment. It's amazing how little we worry about food--except for eating too much-- compared to people in the other parts of the world. If the media's to be believed..
On a night like this it usually takes me more then a few bottles of imported beer-- while everyone's asleep and nothing's on tv and I can just barely see to write-- to realize how special I am and everybody I know is. It's difficult to feel special when so much looks alike, when so many talk and think alike.
Tonight with my stretching belly making contented noises I wonder if America's unique place on earth through secret reciprocal laws of economic alchemy requires that millions of other humans are doomed to live their short lives without ever feasting on the volumes and varieties of food-like products most Americans now work to avoid? ... What is the relationship if any between collateral damage in Afghanistan and Iraq and the lowfat yogurt in the fridge and the low calorie bread in our cupboards? Is it essential that we war on hungry people all over the world so that we maintain a comfortable margin of too much food, energy..of too much of everything? ---Because now anything less than too much would look like not enough? Like an end to growth--like god-forbid--starvation rations? Or like the others are not as envious of our plenty as we imagine?"
---"You're weird. The market decides when enough is enough. Who eats what and who gets eaten."
"Don't you mean who eats and what gets eaten?"
---"That too."