Beef I told you about the downsizing. I call it out sizing. I should have seen it coming. The not enough days off, or too many days off. Or because I know for real, that my job may be on the line what with the Pisces FR-9000 high speed fish filleter, that can measure the length of a fish, adjust for the value of the fish, cut and figure out the ratio of bone size to fish size. Who can keep up? Or the TRIO Top Skinner that whips through three hundred fillets per minute guaranteed against split tails and ragged edges. They call it a smart machine. This makes me feel crazy. I wonder what they call me? So, I end up in jail for meat. Not fish. Hamburger. I don't even eat meat unless I'm someplace where there isn't fish. Like the movies. Or the race track. Not that I don't like meat; it's just that you can't trust anything anymore. Like a machine that can skin fish. How can you beat that? Which I tried to explain to the cop, but she wouldn't listen. I used to say, "Hamburger." That meant hamburger, which was ground beef. Up the ladder was, "Chuck." Hi Chuck. Or Sirloin. SIR Loiiiiiin! Not like Salmon or CATFISH! Then they changed the way they grade beef. They took Prime and made it Choice and took Choice and made it Selected Beef, so now, the Prime is really the cut below the Prime which you can't get anymore. I keep wondering if the Prime Cows got taken away by space aliens. I mean where did they go? I even called this Chicago outfit and asked them where the Prime Cows went. They didn't know. Day rate it was. Cost me a fortune, it did. All that. I'm here to tell you, that computer fish filleter makes me crazy which is why I end up in the can. It was just another day. Here I am walking down the block when I see the sign in the supermarket window. Get this. It says: ` GROUND BEEF 3 Pounds for $1.79 per Pound Formerly, GROUND CHUCK This worries me immensely. I can see this cow whip into the Bureau of Statistics, or wherever cows go to change their name. "Good Morning. My name's Ground CHUCK and I'd like to change my name to GROUND BEEF." So I ask myself, what can I do? I'm a fish guy. I eat fish because I work with fish. It's better except for haddock which is running low, because of the pollution and the over fishing. The same goes for clams, scrod and lobsters. I can't believe the farmers up in Maine used to haul lobsters off the shore with pitchforks and use them for fertilizer. So maybe the cow sees what's coming and wants to change his name to GROUND before CHUCK is gone. He's going to end up as FORMERLY anyway. I'm going to end up not knowing what kind of cow I'm eating, what to call it, or where to get a job what with the Pisces FK-9000, which is how I end up in the can? During my lunch break I take a squid salad in my car to the supermarket so I won't have the growls all afternoon, because once you get cutting fish on Friday you don't get a break. I leave the empty pint container on the seat, take the magic marker from work, whip into the supermarket which for some reason is not too crowded and I waddle on up to the meat department. There they are. Piles of 3 pounds of FORMERLY GROUND CHUCK at $1.39 per pound. I mean what do they do, add more fat to CHUCK and make him BEEF? It's all very confusing. I'm here to tell you that I'm about to make it unconfusing when I outs with my magic marker and start writing on the labels. I write like mad. I keep looking over my shoulder. A little old lady with a pink hat with a red feather that sticks out into nowhere, I don't know what kind of feather, shoves me aside and snatches a three pound package that I have yet to re-label. She bangs my ankles with her cart and I nearly faint. She snorts off down the aisle. I write faster. I've got to get all the three pound plus FORMERLY GROUND CHUCK packages. There must be sixty-two packages at least and I'm running out of lunch break, when out of nowhere I see these clerks with red and green aprons coming at me, and in the far corner of my eye I see the brown uniform. I stuff my magic marker in my pocket, but it's no use. They handcuff me. The manager picks up a 3.4 pound FORMERLY GROUND CHUCK package and shoves it in my face. What's' this?" He looks like he's had a hangover for nineteen days, his face is so red. He points to the label where I have written, ALIAS in front of the GROUND BEEF. "What do you mean, ALIAS?" he says and now the cop is leading me away. "ALIAS, what?” he yells at me. "FORMERLY GROUND CHUCK! ALIAS GROUND BEEF," I yell over my shoulder and I see the guy is going crazy seeing what I did, which is to tell the truth. It's really CHUCK, not BEEF. I wrote at least a hundred ALIAS' on the Ground Beef three pounds and up, but it doesn't seem to matter, because they run a check on me and find out I'm the guy that got busted in Disneyworld for wearing Goofy's head, which was just lying around the men's room doing nothing. They see I've been to Misdemeanor School, because I've got the card in my wallet right next to my driver's license which has my name and a picture to prove it. The cop, who's six inches shorter than me because she's a she, hauls me outside and sticks me in the back seat of the cruiser. She gives me the look. I say," How come they don't have a cow's picture on the CHUCK which is now BEEF, but really CHUCK?" I sit with my wrists burning. I worry about the squid container on the front seat of my car, which will probably get hot and smell, or maybe not, because there's vinegar in it, if I don't get out of jail. Plus, I won't get back to work. I hope they understand. I wonder if the lady with the pink hat and the red feather snitched on me. Her package didn't even have the ALIAS. It goes to show you, nobody's perfect, CHUCK, GROUND or otherwise.