All Those Who Reject Popeyes Are Damned

Popeyes is the Lord our God, and He loves you very much. Though you deserve only Subway or Arbys, he graced your unworthy maw with Spicy Tenders so you might experience taste sensations above and beyond this bland corporeal plane. The rich, spicy flavors hold the universe together in perfect harmony, coating every subatomic particle in succulent fried batter. You DO NOT question His divinity, you DO NOT curse His name, and you certainly DO NOT mock Him.

For your body was designed purely as a mechanism for consuming and enjoying Popeyes. Haven’t you ever wondered why you have teeth, a mouth, and a stomach; why fried chicken tastes so delicious, why you crave it all the time, even as you’re eating it, even after you’ve just eaten 20 strips, even as your bloated belly threatens to burst and every additional bite causes stabbing gastric pain, and your girlfriend begs you to stop? This is by design. The underlying nature of the universe is: Popeyes Chicken and organic receptacles for Popeyes Chicken (i.e., humanity). To question the Lord our God is to question your own fundamental purpose in life, your very nature.

Which is why it saddened me when, after sharing the Good News, my dear uncle sent my mom this email.

To: Gay Pike
Subject: Brad’s disrespect for God

Gay, you and I are going to disagree big time on this subject. I want to say first off I’m not mad at you in anyway but I have to get this off my chest.

The idea that Brad was just joking is the elephant in the room. The scripture is very plain about the  name of God being used in vain. Here  defined by Wikipedia: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain (KJV, also “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God” (NRSV) and variants) is one of the Ten Commandments. It is a prohibition of blasphemy, specifically, the misuse or “taking in vain” of the name of the God of Israel. 

Exodus 20:7 reads: “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” (KJV)

I believe Brad does not have spiritual understanding or very little. In my opinion this infraction of God’s law should NOT go unchallenged. To me it is one of the Taboos…

I’m through enough said.

I’m looking forward to Christmas at your new home…

Self-loathing oozes from every line. Sure, on the surface, it reads as concern for a nephew’s immortal soul, but in truth, he’s projecting his own guilt onto me. Between heart surgery and diabetes, my uncle decided to forsake our Lord and indulge in sick dietary perversion: vegetables. For his “health”, he sacrificed deliciousness, flavor, all the culinary manifestations of God’s Love. Instead of clogging his every orifice with Spicy Tenders, he suckles at the bitter teat of a carrot, genuflecting to “nutritional content”, and all for a few extra years to share with friends and family. Just terrible.

Not long ago, he even presented our family with the vegetarian propaganda film, Forks Over Knives, which theorized that meat—particularly red meat—is carcinogenic, and only a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can prevent a premature health decline. I humored him at the time, thinking this was just a rebellious phase. Sooner or later, I thought, his strong Popeyes upbringing would bring him back to the light, and he’d gorge alongside us once more. I mean, we’ve all been there, lost our minds one night and eaten a Caesar salad or looked at a stalk of celery and thought, “What if I put that in my mouth?” Just thoughts, though. I’d never actually do it. No, that would be sick.

Still, I kept noticing Facebook statuses like this one: “Meat, sugar, dairy 3 biggest killers out there. Glue your lips to every green vegetable you can eat.” Or this one: “Green power all the way. If it’s white it ain’t right. White sugar, white flour, white salt, white pasta white people ok! Forks over knives rocks…”

It disappoints me to see him failing to live a life for Popeyes. While it’s perfectly normal to find vegetables enticing, it’s a crime against Popeyes to actually ingest them, to bypass every natural impulse and take a Brussels sprout inside of oneself (one shudders at the thought). They’re simply not on the Popeyes menu, and no amount of creative interpretation will change that.

If I had to guess, I would say my uncle’s been indoctrinated by secular media like Dr. Oz or Ellie Krieger, shows that foist a vegetarian agenda onto vulnerable minds. After all, no one’s born vegetarian, and you can’t turn on a TV anymore without some celebrity telling you how fun it is to be a vegetarian, how we should all be vegetarians together. “Carrie Underwood’s a vegetarian! Be like Carrie Underwood!” says the media. Well, you know who else were vegetarians? Hitler, Pol Pot, Charles Manson, and the list goes on. Am I saying my uncle’s a mass murderer? No, of course not—he would never hurt anyone. But then again, I didn’t think he was capable of eating vegetables either.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t mean to cast judgment. We’re all sinners. For example, one time, I tried to go through the Popeyes drive thru without a car and was rightly chastised by the manager. Another time, I tried to order two wraps on one combo instead of two separate combos (even though it makes sense you should be able to simply add another wrap to the combo). I just don’t want to see him ostracized from society for his alimentary deviance. I want my uncle to live a happy life, even if he spends it eating gross food that came from dirt. Dirt, you know, where worms live.