Hog Duty in Iowa

Generally speaking, ideal conditions of living must be achieved as a function of both time and place. For example, you may be extremely fortunate to have been born in Beverly Hills, CA, but maybe not if you were born there in 1769 as the bastard son of a Franciscan monk. That would be an example of being lucky in place but not in time. Alternatively, you could have been born during the Florentine Renaissance –- but in an Ottoman slave camp. Time: yay. Place: boo.

There are, of course, varying degrees of luck with respect to both variables. If pig odor is a problem where you live, then it’s pretty fair to say it doesn’t matter what the time is. The Age of Reason or 4 PM last Sunday would both smell like shit. Read Candide all you like, and you’ll still have trouble being optimistic. In fact, spoil your senses watching TV, smoking crack, and eating chocolate cake while dancing to Hannah Montana songs, and still, the swirling stench of pig poop will be ruling your life like an abusive foster parent.

So, in order to help out some people who’ve been screwed by the Fates of Place but not so much of Time, it makes perfect sense that the budget bill passed by Congress last week sets aside $1.8 million for ‘swine odor and manure management.’ Sure, make fun of Congress all you want for writing poop into law, but if you lived in olfactory hell, downwind from a pack of squealing shit machines, you’d almost certainly find no humor in any of this -- and neither do we.

Jay Harmon, Professor of Agriculture at Iowa State University (with a Ph.D. in some kind of shit), is a man who takes his duty very seriously. He has perfected the methods of ‘management’ in the Poo Sciences and really thinks the whole problem can be flushed down the toilet if we throw the right crap at it. He suggests things like not living near a pig farm (which we’ve already discussed), planting shrubs, installing ventilators, something called ‘broadcasting manure’ (which I’m pretty sure Cable News has already taken care of), building walls, chimneys, storage covers, etc, etc, etc... Well, we don’t have to get into all that poop jargon to know that this guy knows what time it is when it comes to chocolate hog patties, and we can feel safe that our tax dollars are well spent.

So put down Candide and the crack pipe, and for god's sake stop bouncing to that teeny bopper crap -- your Luck of Place is about to get better. But seriously, only a little bit. You still live in Iowa, near a pig farm.