Ode to Tasty Tacos

Has any establishment ever had a more appropriate name?

Allow me to say, first off, that I hope we never get into a shooting war with Minnesota. Sure, we get our jabs in here and there, but I hope we're able to keep the rivalry isolated to an annual football match between the Hawkeyes and the Gophers.

But I have a recurring nightmare that some day, a Canadian prime minister, flush with oil wealth and high on Tim Horton's, will go positively insane and annex the land of 10,000 lakes. Smelling the sweet corn and coveting our butter cow, it would only be a matter of weeks before the shock troops from Manitoba would be preparing to use I-35 as a wedge and drive straight for our dear city. I fear we have been complacent too long along the northern border of this state, and I just don't have the confidence in Mason City's defenses that I require.

Thus, as a first step towards fortifying the Des Moines metro area, I demand that our city elders fortify every Tasty Tacos outlet in the region. They can have Saylorville, Sec Taylor Stadium, and the Wells Fargo Arena, but for the love of God, don't let them take our Tasty Tacos.

There are things that earthly reason can understand, like particle physics, the Laffer curve, and even sometimes US tax code. But how a modest restaurant chain from Des Moines can convert flour, water, lettuce, meat, beans, and cheese into a culinary indulgence with an addictive power rivaling crack -- with no methadone-like substitute in sight -- is completely beyond the realm of human understanding. Would that a man like Norman Borlaug could find the secret ingredient inside those blessed tacos, we could put all of our state's resources into synthesizing and duplicating it. Forget ethanol and biodiesel: If only we could make Tasty Tacos our state's #1 export, we could rule the world!