The Price of Tea in China: Corn farmers, Corn Nuts seeking world domination

As a journalist I have a responsibility to you, the public. That is to bring you the facts. So instead of welcoming you all back and beating around the journalistic bush, I will give you the facts.

I will bombard you with the facts. I will painstakingly prepare each one of you a very large fact sandwich, and you will not get up from the dinner table of knowledge until you have eaten it all.

The fact of the hour is particularly ground-breaking. This is because it has to do with the immorality and corruption that goes on every day within the secret folds of the agriculture industry.

Much of what you are about to read may stun you. It may even shock you. So, to protect my anonymous source from the mutiny that will inevitably arise from this revelation, I will refer to him as "Anonymous Schmononymous."

Mr. A. Schmononymous spent the summer pollinating corn in Windfall, IN, which is, for those who are not familiar with the Windfall area, about an hour north of Nowheresville, IN.

In the demanding career path of corn pollination, the pollinator puts plastic bags over the female ear and the male pollen-producing parts of a stalk of corn. Then the pollinator proceeds to take photographs of the latter two parties in risque positions, which he or she will eventually sell to agriculture pornography Web sites.

No, really, the pollinator simply puts the pollen from the male party on the ear of the female party, and - Voila! - the world is as it should be.

But sometimes there are loopholes in the system, and the pollinator will notice that certain pollen will make the corn resistant to disease. So he or she pollinates all the ears with the same pollen, which is obviously not what the Good Lord intended.

At first, it seems innocent. Corn adultery doesn't seem worthy of global panic and catastrophe. But then, as if by coincidence, I was flipping through Spin magazine and came across an ad for Corn Nuts.

If you are a proper consumer of the media, you know exactly which ads I am talking about. They feature ears of corn with menacing eyes and hands and bushy eyebrows, and they are doing things like riding motorcycles and serving time in jail and sitting on the devil's throne. The slogan is "Corn Gone Wrong." I only wish I were joking.

At any rate, that's when it hit me. The agriculture industry and Corn Nuts are conspiring to create a race of mutant super-corn that will soon take over the planet.

You think I'm pulling one over on you? Sadly, I only bring you the facts. What kind of journalist would I be if I spent hour after hour contemplating dirty, vicious lies to print so that I would never have to say anything of actual value?

Alright, you got me. I would be a humor writer. But don't completely dismiss the possibility of one day waking up to being thrown into a vat of boiling water by the Corn Gone Wrong who will later cover you with salt and butter and serve you as a side dish at restaurants. Anything can happen.

And with that, I leave you with your thoughts, possibly a stupefied expression, and a partially digested fact sandwich.

I don't suppose you'd like corn on the side.