All hail humanity’s greatest creation

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/05/2018 (2967 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Get ready to dance in the streets, because today — not counting Christmas and the kickoff of the football season — is the single greatest day in the history of mankind.

Seriously, wake up the kids and alert the neighbours, because today — Monday, May 28 — is officially International Hamburger Day, the single day set aside to celebrate the greatest invention of western civilization: the meaty, juicy hamburger.

And you thought I was just kidding.

It is almost impossible, using mere words, to describe how much I love hamburgers, how passionate I am about a grilled meat patty topped with fresh veggies, condiments and tucked in between two pillowy-soft buns, but I will give it the old college try: I really, really love hamburgers.

To be blunt, I personally believe that hamburgers offer mankind its greatest hope for achieving peace and tranquility in a world perched at the edge of oblivion, so to speak.

Look, I realize that in Saturday’s column I stated that the latest wellness fad — cuddling cows — was humanity’s best hope for finding a path to spiritual enlightenment, but just think how much better you’d feel about the troubled world around you if you turned that cow into ground beef, slapped it on a grill, then shovelled it into your stomach.

Ha ha ha! OK, I’m not kidding. As I write these words, I can already hear howls of protest as vegetarians in the nearest three time zones fire up their torches and sharpen their pitchforks. Please, before you send me angry handwritten letters on your “I (heart) plants” stationery, hear me out.

The hard reality is that even vegetarians love hamburgers. As DaysoftheYear.com put it in the website’s blurb on International Hamburger Day: “Let’s face it, there isn’t anything in the world quite so delightful as your first bite of a rich, juicy hamburger. Don’t believe us? One of the first popular vegan-faux-meats? The Veggie Burger. Even vegetarians couldn’t resist the taste of a tasty burger; they had to create an alternative just so they wouldn’t have to leave all that was good and right about the world in the past. Hamburger Day celebrates the history of this most irresistible of sandwiches.”

Speaking of history, the humble burger obviously takes its name from the German city of Hamburg, but no one is entirely sure who first got the idea to cradle a beefy manhole cover between fresh-baked buns.

Notes HolidaysCalendar.com: “It’s believed that the modern hamburger can be traced all the way back to ancient civilizations such as Egypt. The Egyptians would prepare a ground meat that was formed into patties and spiced with various spices.

“Genghis Khan’s Mongol army also ate patties of ground meat. However, their patties were placed under the saddles of their horses so when they rode the friction between the horse and the saddle would tenderize the meat. They then consumed the end product raw.”

So we can see that the earliest hamburgers were pretty disgusting, but that is not the point.

The point is that humans have loved burgers for longer than anyone can remember.

In fact, the following poem was recently unearthed near an Egyptian pyramid: “Roses are red / Violets are blue / The Pharaoh loves hamburgers / And cheeseburgers, too!”

This seems like the perfect time to turn to the immortal words of one of the greatest thinkers of modern times. I am, of course, referring here to the Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, who will forever be remembered for the following sage words: “Man who invented the hamburger was smart; man who invented the cheeseburger was a genius.”

I have tried to live by those words, and I think the world would be a kinder, gentler place if more burgers were on the menu.

Sure, everyone is a bit nervous now that U.S. President Donald Trump has cancelled his historic summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, but I suspect burgers could get everyone back to the table, as we see from the following conversation I just made up:

Kim Jong Un: “OK, Donald, maybe we could talk about dismantling our nuclear arsenal.”

Donald Trump: “That sounds nice, Rocket Man, but, you know, um, I’m really not sure…”

Kim Jong Un: “What if I said we’ll be serving bacon double cheeseburgers.”

Donald Trump: “I’m in!”

I was going to ramble on here about how there is no one in the world who loves burgers as much as I do on this special day.

But that was before I read several hard-hitting news reports about Don Gorske, a retired prison guard in Fond du Lac, Wis., who earlier this month drew a huge crowd at his local McDonald’s when he shattered his own world record by polishing off his 30,000th Big Mac.

Known as “The Big Mac Daddy,” Gorske, 64, has been eating almost two Big Macs every single (bad word) day for the past 46 years — and now that he’s retired his only goal is to keep on eating this legendary combo of two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun.

Over the last five decades, there have been only two occasions when Gorske did NOT eat a Big Mac: once when a brutal snowstorm shut down his local McDonald’s and once in 1988 when his mother died and she had requested he skip his daily Mac in honour of her passing.

Why does he do it? “I love the patties, I love the sauce, I can’t get enough of it,” he told the media after polishing off No. 30,000.

“I’m trying to get to 40,000, and that’ll take me another 14 years. I’m healthy as a horse. I weigh 190 pounds, and my cholesterol is 165. I’m better than normal.”

We are almost out of space, so I’d like to take a moment to wish everyone within the sound of my voice a happy International Hamburger Day.

In a way, I think burgers are our best friends, because they will never reveal your secrets, even if someone grills them.

Don’t stop me now, because just like the burger of your dreams, I’m on a roll.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca