A Future Pharmaceutical Meeting

Gentlemen, I begin our meeting with a haiku of my own invention: “Pills roll down the hill into eagerly awaiting hands of our populace.”

As is today common knowledge, only a decade ago the worldwide food shortage reached levels of danger that finally moved our President to order our pharmaceutical industry to increase its output of CFF, Concentrated Food Factors. This revolutionary technology has thus far saved untold billions of lives, and I am proud of our accomplishment here in America. [Applause.]

You will recall that all of our tests showed beyond any doubt that CFF provides all the nutrition of a full meal, unlike the antiquated vitamin pills of old. All that was still lacking was a reliable means whereby to create a sensation of substance or bulk in this new diet, and even a traditional feeling of taste with any verisimilitude.

We are today at a point, I am happy to remind you, of being able to go to a vending machine of your choice, insert the appropriate coinage, and having a small packet labeled, say, “Kosher Veal Parmesan Dinner,” drop into our outstretched palm. That amounts to three pellets whose taste seems reasonably accurate, especially now that we have had little basis for comparison over this past decade.

And yet our inborn need to masticate, to feel our saliva pour forth, and to swallow something that feels truly substantial, and yes, our need to deposit a hefty and solid fecal load, if I may put it that way, none of this has yet been perfected to my own satisfaction at least. There still remains some serious work for us to do.

The liquid situation is somewhat better, it is true, what with the ease of synthesizing water to start with. Those who prefer to dissolve their pills in this water in Sweden appear to be on the right track after all. Perhaps the taste really is enhanced thereby and is in any event more interesting than that of pure synthesized water.

We have tried all manner of thickening agents in the resultant mix, to be sure. Our seas provided some natural ingredients towards this end, but our toxins of manufacture soon overcame this venue, and today we find ourselves constrained to synthesize a product to make normal digestion possible for everyone. We continue in our belief that Science will come to our rescue, as it always has done in the past.

Until that day of final victory comes, my favorite poem, of unknown origins, to be sure, remains:

Little bird, little bird,
Help me shit a solid turd.

Thank you, gentlemen. [Applause.]