with flesh and without

If you have never been to one, I highly suggest you treat yourself to a churrascaria visit in the near future.  A churrascaria is a Brazilian steakhouse; this means their main fare is a variety of delicious meats served all-you-can-eat.  If you haven't been to one, here's how it works:  there's an expansive and fancy salad bar that you are supposed to ignore.  You have a plate.  You have a cardboard disc that has a GO on one side and STOP on the other.  The waiter walks up to ask you a question.  You wave him away brusquely.  You flip the disc from STOP to GO.  Immediately, men in gaucho outfits carrying huge skewers of meat swarm your table, offering you succulent morsel after succulent morsel.  They slice off chunks of whatever you want, throwing it on your plate in a deliciously bloody spray.  What might they give you?  Here is a small sample:

I am a big fan of tasty meats like that above (picanha, a cut of beef we don't have in the U.S.), but my carnivore status is nothing compared to the wife's.  She is a meat eating machine; she is a preternaturally ravenous beast, she is single-handedly responsible for the death of thousands of cows per year.  I'd say that there's no other factor that has drawn me to her more than her insatiable desire to consume the cooked flesh of animals.  When you see her in her element, elbow-deep in cow parts and just eating her way to freedom, you'll understand.

Anyway, when faced with a bottomless supply of amazingly tasty meat, you tend to eat yourself silly.  That's what I did tonight, and I'm not only stuffed to bursting; I'm entering the early stages of a full-on food coma.  This might be a bad one, folks.  I might have to have somebody ghost-write my posts for tomorrow.  Oh!  GHOSTWRITER!