The song of the Sausage Peoples

You hear it at night, carried on the heavy sirocco wind, a faint Unz Unz Unz Unz; the pounding beat of the Sausage Peoples.

From village cores to coastlines, from rooftops and poolsides, seasides and roadsides, the smell of easy-light charcoal and barbecuing meats grease the island air – Unz Unz Unz Unz.

A sickly yellow haze lights up the night sky. The red twinkling lights atop tower-cranes replace the night’s stars. Drunken cars zoom up and down in stoodstill traffic. Coloured shots of gunpowder erupt in ear-busting bangs; animals howl, babies scream, alarm bells ring. The song of the Sausage Peoples incessantly pounding, day and night – Unz Unz Unz Unz.

Who are these Sausage Peoples? We are, or rather, it is what we’ve become.

Before you turn all neo-patriotic on me, this is not exclusive to the Maltese. It is a global occurrence, mainly found in developed countries, in and around wealth.  

But since this is Malta, land of Dewfresh and money, let us talk about our own variant of the Homo-Sausage.

Pink, tasty, addictive, we all know it; we all have our cooked preference. Undercooked, overcooked, hot, cold – there are takers all-round. The Dewfresh sausage, it may as well be our national dish. If we are what we eat then it is only fitting that our national physique takes on the attributes of our dinner.

But there is more to the Sausage Peoples than the consumption of radioactive pink sausages and lurid physical traits. It is something far more sinister and deeply rooted in our island psyche.

Experts all over the world refer to it as the Sausage Gene. Believed to be an evolutionary (mis)step in host species that express individualistic and nationalistic traits.

Centuries of sponging off and manipulating the environment, especially over the last three decades, has resulted in the rapid change from Homo-Sapiens to Homo-Sausages; the grotesque glut of consumption manifested in a greasy, pulped physical form.

Most humans, largely of the Caucasian variety and those who interact with them, carry the ‘Sausage Gene’, activated in hosts that somehow seem immune to fact and reason. Children, adults, working class, middle-class, the rich: all are carriers.    

On an isolated island of Mediterranean mediocrity, this evolutionary step is proving to be catastrophic. The constant construction of towers and flats, a chock-full transport infrastructure, a poisonous broadcasting service, a glossy tourism brand, a treacherous education system, a cancerous diet (not to mention a perfidious political class) – it would seem that this island is not long for this world.

In the not so distant future scientists will cite Malta as

“The Sausage Archipelago that Consumed Itself: an anthropomorphic study on how stupidity killed a nation barely a century old.”

Take a prototypical Maltese Homo Zalzett as a case study: Gland Boddingfield, former labour party reporter; former labour party MEP; former labour party OPM advisor; newly elected labour party MP; and blogger. Heavy-browed, creased eyes, no neck, greasy pink skin, spherical in stature and lacking in any nutritional value.

His affiliation to the labour party in no way influences his ‘sausageness.’ There are sausages found on both sides of the political spectrum, this is after all a nation run by sausages who are in turn voted in by an electorate of sausages. The mince is rotten from the casing to the core.

Sausages everywhere, from the OPM to MIDI, Bormla to Balluta, you can hear their song grow ever louder, stronger: The Song of the Sausage Peoples – Unz, unz, unz, unz (repeat).

In the end, I too love a good old Dewfresh. Now where’s the sense in that?