"Eat up."

Well, some time last year, Chinese Secretary of Fun, Lo Mein, announced plans to lift the age-old ban of forks in his country’s eateries. Citing the irony of China’s robust supply of dinnerware imported by the western world, Lo Mein gave a fiery speech in front of one of China’s most popular and revered restaurants, Golden Chopsticks.

Choking on the fumes of Beijing’s unbelievable pollution and shitty water, a group of confused American translators witnessed the monumental event and managed to roughly translate some of the Secretary’s rhetoric.

“Today I stand before crowded people of China and announce lifting of ban of fork. Chopstick will be thing of past while fork finds way into tired, blistered hand of Chinese worker. Too long have people of China been hungry slave of ancient utensil. We now encourage use of both fork and hand in scooping food into mouth. The chopstick shall forever be banned in business and home. It is only with heavy hand that we tear hearts out of those who still choose to use chopstick.”

American “Chinese” restaurants have felt the heat from Lo Mein’s speech and subsequently pulled the complimentary chopsticks that ritualistically go with every take-out order.

Just like the incessant guilt festering in a country concert attendee, the chopstick has always been a guarantee within each and every bag of MSG goodness.

Riding the coattails of opportunity, the implications of Lo Mein’s speech have many American consumers begging for the ban of “Duck Sauce” and “Chinese Mustard”.

Forever a staple of “Chinese” restaurants, “Chinese Mustard” has never found itself out of the bottom of the bag since the story of the Donner Party first made headlines in the U.S. As legend has it, the doomed party completely ignored a crate of the foul “Chinese Mustard” sauce they were transporting towards the west and chose to eat each other instead.

To this day it’s still unwise for a famished person to utter the words “I’m so hungry I could eat the ass out of a horse.” Any smart ass within a hundred yards will inevitably hand the “starving” imbecile a handful of “Chinese” condiments from the silverware drawer.

Although the tiny plastic packets of puke could survive a global thermonuclear war, their nutritional value could never outweigh the permanent damage on one’s own digestive system.

One can only hope that Lo Mein’s words extend beyond their current page and bring sanity to Chinese-American cuisine.

The fate of the world rests between the old, tattered chopsticks of two governments wrought with Parkinson’s. God help us all.