It can't hurt you if it's fresh!

As a kid, I remember each November. Thanksgiving. Turkey. Leftover turkey. And more. Hot turkey sandwiches with gravy. Cold turkey sandwiches for lunch. A chunky gravy served as turkey on toast. We had to eat it or lose it.

Other times there would be occasions when mom would fix suppers that looked more like breakfasts. Sometimes rich in eggs. Like omelets. It seemed strange having breakfast at night but there was a reason. The eggs in the fridge were approaching their expiration date and to avoid letting them go to waste, she would scramble to save 'em.

Mom was good about trying to stay ahead of expiration dates. My older brother wasn't. In adulthood, he chose to ignore such warnings.

"Don't eat any eggs at my brother's," I'd advise my wife before visiting there. That's because my brother knew eggs lasted forever. The egg carton in the fridge sporting a date from several months earlier bore testament to this.

I don't remember so many expiration dates on products as a kid. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention. But it seems anything perishable these days has a "Better before" such and such a date, "Best if used on or before" this time, etc. No more opening a jar and peering into moldy mayonnaise, or sitting down to a snack of rancid Ritz crackers. Expiration dates save us the trouble of having to smell, visually inspect, or worse - taste old stuff.

Most recently we've seen "Born on" dating used by some beer manufacturers. Rather than scare one off with an expiration date, they let the consumer decide whether it's old or not by the beer's birthdate instead. (I'm wondering how many beer drinkers would look at a bottle of beer and say, "Whoa! Can't drink this shit. It's too old!"?)

But in a way, I now appreciate my brother's wanton neglect of freshness warnings on eggs when I think of weapons arsenals.

And I guess that's the point I'm really getting to here--the real reason the United States is such a warring renegade among civilized nations. It has nothing to do with diplomacy or saving us from aggressors who threaten our very existence.

So just why do we have the largest arsenal of destruction on Earth, to include all kinds of flesh frying jellies, innerds incinerating powders when inhaled and multiple uses for weapons in the form of nuclear bombs, and nuclear tipped rockets and missiles? We have the biggest stockpile on the planet and yet we continue to make more. More, at the expense of better schools, healthcare for our kids and aging parents, the poor, and an infrastructure of the richest nation on Earth that's crumbling.

Why do we need more and more bombs? Easy. Expiration dates.

I'd like to suggest the reason we are a nation perenially at war is because of our aging military ordnance. Take all of our nuclear tipped, armor penetrating projectiles of depleted uranium (DU). After the first Gulf War, we were left with a weapons stockpile that continued to grow despite our enforcement of subsequent "No-Fly" zones there, or our African and Eastern European adventures. These just didn't use our war shit faster than we were replacing it.

In the case of DU weapons, the depleted uranium used in them has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. It's easy to see how the military could get nervous about them losing their effectiveness after ten or twelve years. They needed to be used. Afghanistan and Iraq were just the ticket!

The advantages of using up all these old armaments is we get to make new ones. This helps justify our huge "defense" budget. And our rockets and bombs will be the freshest, safest weapons on the market. No need to worry about them going bad or not functioning correctly when needed. They're also of the latest technology available.

We're not like the Russians or Chinese who, save for occasional incursions into Chechyna or Tibet, are at peace with larders full of aging, expiring, undependable weapons.

If it ever comes down to all out war with Russia or China, they may regret they weren't more militarily aggressive globally like their American adversary. We don't let things get old on us. We don't let stuff go bad.

Better to use 'em then let arsenals grow old. Freshness is important. Remember, it won't harm you if you use it "on or before" its expiration date.