Tacos are your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. Until and unless you discover that tacos are the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When the taco ceased to be the tool by which men deal with hunger, then men become beasts. Blood, whips and guns–or tacos. Takeyour choice–there is no other–and your time is running out.

Recently it has come to my attention that there are those who wish to elevate the study of tacos into its own academic discipline. While I sympathize with this sentiment, I can’t help but think that these enthusiastic scholars are missing the mark. To this budding movement I offer a reminder of the natural laws and principles that make the taco essential to human experience.

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Have you ever asked what is at the root of a taco? A taco is a tool of sustenance, which can’t exist unless there are the ingredients and men able to produce them. Tacos are the material shape of the principle that man must eat. Tacos are not the tool of the moochers, who claim your pollo asado by tears, or of the looters, who take your pico de gallo by force.

When you exchange your labor for a taco, you do so only on the conviction that you will experience six to eight hours of satisfaction. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to tacos. Not an ocean of tears, not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of grilled meat in your tortilla into bread or any other food. Those pieces of meat are a token of honor–your claim upon the energy of the defeated beasts. Your tortilla is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of the taco.

But you say that a taco is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. A taco is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then a taco is made by the cook at the expense of those who did not cook it? Are tacos made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? A taco is made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced (a fact the burritoists refuse to admit).

To consume tacos is the code of the men of good will. Tacos rest on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Tacos demand of you the recognition that men must work for the satisfaction of their own hunger, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss–the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to become the inner contents of tacos–that you seek carnitas, not deli meats–that the ideal lunch of man is not a submarine sandwich, but two tacos and tortilla chips. Tacos demands that you taste, not pepperoncinis, but cilantro; it demands that you put into your body, not roast beef, but instead green chile verde. And when men eat tacos, not sandwiches, as their preferred lunch fare–they do so for the best taste and value. This is the code of an existence whose tool and symbol is the taco.

But a taco is only a tool. It will feed you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the eater. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your hunger, but it will not provide you with that hunger. Tacos will not create happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: tacos will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what meal to seek. Tacos will not create intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent–but they will provide satisfaction of hunger.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that tacos are evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of a philosophy of destruction. So long as men live together on earth–their only substitute, if they abandon tacos, is the muzzle of a gun.

Tacos are your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. Until and unless you discover that tacos are the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When the taco ceased to be the tool by which men deal with hunger, then men become beasts. Blood, whips and guns–or tacos. Take your choice–there is no other–and your time is running out.

[Thanks to Francisco d'Anconia for providing me much of my inspiration on this subject]

I just updated my blog to my own clean install of WordPress.   No more buggy exporting from blogger!  Also no more having to make sure everything I say is appropriate for my research lab blog (The Expressive Intelligence Studio blog)!  Now I’ll probably post more often and about things like: non-game art, philosophy, economics, funny stuff but mostly I’ll still mostly post about art games.  I’ll also continue to use this space to keep track of my creative output.

My old band 8-4's ad for musicians

Speaking of that, I created a page for my music.  Music is really important to me.  Playing and listening.  It informs the way I think about art and is probably the medium I have spent the most time exploring.  I have made a lot of recordings in the past years and these represent a few of my favorites.  I am missing several that I would like to include, and have a couple on there that perhaps don’t belong on the list of my favorites, but as time goes on I’ll refine it (mostly for me!).  Check it out here.