Picture this: years from now, when we’re older, we’ll look back and say to our grandkids, “I remember the Spinach Scare of Ought-6″(that’s right, we’ll say ‘ought’ because that’s how we’ll look back at it. If you say it now, you’ll get slapped upside the head, “It’s ‘Oh’ you pompous asshole. Get it right.”) Our grandkids will look at us with contempt, ask what spinach is, and hand us our dinner pills and a glass of prune juice to knock it back with. That’s right, prune juice. Because no matter what kind of advances in food technologies occur, old people will always, and forevermore, have to drink prune juice.

Now back to the present, where we just got hit in the head with a 2×4 of irony. Spinach is making people sick. But the only people who eat spinach are usually the most health conscious people out there. Fat people, 1; health freaks, 0. A naturally occurring bacterium has stricken every corner of the media and they are ready with guns cocked and torches barreling. Let’s smoke ’em out. We’ll teach dem bacteria, you don’t mess with the CDC. We’re gonna plaster yo face all over every news program, news magazine, and newspaper. Dateline is going to set up sting operations. “Mr. Spinach, did you think you were coming here to meet a barely legal lower intestine?” We are gonna start a nationwide panic among people who never even gave a second glance to spinach as it sat conspicuously among the other green leafies in the produce aisle. How dare you disrupt our lives, taking our attention away from Iraq, Darfur, and Terror (that’s right, I capitalized it). The PhD-holding news freaks already have a think-tank about what to do about this scare. Into the darkness of the night, voices can be heard over and over again, shouting, “What do we call this terrible tragedy?! Spinach is Finished? Spin-ich Alley? Spinichgate? Spin-ich a Web of Shame? Oh nothing fits. The English language has failed us of our puns. If only Spinach was having an illicit affair with another member of the produce aisle. CarSpin or Spinlet or heaven forbid, Sproccoli!”

But now, as mounds and mounds of spinach are being thrown away to the joy of children around the nation, a steroid using, inked sailor is quietly sobbing in the corner, his corncob pipe askew. What will come of him? No elixir to make him stronger, only a could-be disease lurking in that can. Throw it out, Popeye, and while you’re at it, you better throw out anything that may have touched it, or was bought at the same store, or even begins with the same letter. We won’t let the spinach win. You must continue your daily life. Everyone, to your nearest McDonalds, where spinach would never dare to lurk in the shadows, waiting to pounce on your intestines and make you whither inside. Why oh why did I decide to eat healthy today? It was a mistake. Now I know, God truly wants me to put as much crap in my body as possible. Fast food, 1; produce aisle, 0.

Coming next week…Tuna fishermen around the world rejoice: you silly Americans, you finally forgot about mercury. [EVIL LAUGH TRACK] (I often picture fishermen in lairs similar to Dr. Claw).