Nina In New York: This Gives "Government Cheese" A Whole New Meaning

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

There is a vast conspiracy happening not just here in our good old United States, but across the entire globe. Things are far from gouda. I mean, good. Seriously, chevre's about to hit the fan. It is an international scandal of epic proportions. I'm talking big. It is a veritable Titanic headed towards a jagged jarlsberg in the dark. I mean, iceberg. Sorry, edam know what's wrong with me today. Anyway, all the cheddar in the world may not get us out of this one. Yeah, I meant cheddar.

Ba dum dum. Okay, fine. I'm all done now. But seriously, we need to talk cheese.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed that America finds itself in the midst of a massive cheese surplus. It's complicated, and only the sort of thing us cheese experts could ever hope to understand. But to put it briefly, for the lay person, it's got to do with a number of circumstances involving milk production and consumer demand and the Gross National Dairy Product and the fromage-industrial complex. And, of course, government conspiracy.

According to this Smithsonian Magazine article, we've yet to discover what the country has in store for its 1.19 BILLION pounds of formaggio. But get this: just a couple of days ago over in England, a warehouse worker was rescued after spending eight hours underneath many tons of cheese. The shelves they were housed on tipped over and buried him, but failed to kill or even badly harm the poor guy. It was a freak accident with a lucky outcome, they say. Or was it? Are there any coincidences in this life, really? For all we know, this was some sort of test run to see how we can weaponize our newfound windfall.

For all we know, the CIA and MI6 already have agents out in the field, armed with enough Muenster to take down a small, lactose-intolerant army. Back in the lab, they're working on experiments to see how sharp a cheddar can really get. Also, at what stink level does an innocent Blue become an agent of chemical warfare? How many consecutive meals of nothing but Cheesecake Factory cheesecakes would it take to get a foreign spy to give up his or her secrets? If the French ever turned their backs on us, we could catapult a couple hundred million pounds of ultra-pasteurized Brie that would make them retreat in horror all the way back to Germany. It's an unlikely scenario, sure, but it never hurts to be prepared.

Or what if the USDA is in cahoots with the cheese industry, and they're working together to liquefy and subtly incorporate the essence of their product into our drinking water. Cheese is an addictive substance, right? No better way to boost the economy and unload a billion or so tons of cheese than to get the whole country hooked on the stuff. Plus, remember all those recent studies declaring that saturated fat is actually not the murderess we once thought it was? And how some experts feel it's actually beneficial to our diets? So the architects of this plan would also be addressing our nationwide nutrition crisis. Win-win-win. Just saying.

How long can 1.19 billion pounds of queso last, anyway? And where is it being kept? It just isn't realistic to think that the country is simply jamming silos and underground warehouses full of American cheese and waiting to see how and if they can unload it. This whole thing simply reeks. Something is afoot, and it isn't just the Stilton. Laugh if you will, but these are questions that need asking. These are the puns that need punning. I, for one, plan to do my civic duty by increasing my cheese consumption by at least 60—nay, 85 percent! It's the least I can do to help my country.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!