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Writer's pictureGary Miller

Friedrich Nietzsche Eats a Hot Dog

To eat a hot dog is to confront the abyss of existence itself. For what is a hot dog but a symbol of the human condition, a manifestation of our deepest desires and fears?

Consider the hot dog: a cylindrical mass of processed meat, encased in a tube of bread, slathered with condiments of varying degrees of piquancy. It is a paradoxical creation, both homogenous and heterogeneous, both simple and complex. It is a product of mass production, a symbol of the industrial age, yet it also speaks to something primal and elemental within us.


Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche, a 19th-century German philosopher, with a thick mustache and a pensive expression on his face. He is wearing a suit and a bowtie, and his hair is combed back. He is sitting in front of a plain backdrop, and his hands are folded in his lap. The image is black and white.

To eat a hot dog is to acknowledge our own mortality, our own vulnerability. For the hot dog is a food of the moment, a food to be consumed quickly and without reflection. It is a food of the masses, a food for the proletariat. And yet, in its very simplicity, it speaks to something fundamental within us, something that transcends our mundane concerns and connects us to the vast, unknowable forces of the universe.

The act of eating a hot dog is an act of rebellion, a rejection of the status quo, a refusal to be constrained by the arbitrary rules and regulations of society. It is a reminder that we are free, that we are autonomous beings capable of making our own choices and charting our own destinies.

And yet, even as we revel in our freedom, we are also reminded of our limitations, of the fragility of our bodies and the transience of our lives. For the hot dog is a food of excess, a food of indulgence, a food that speaks to our most primal appetites. To eat a hot dog is to confront the reality of our own mortality, to acknowledge that we are but fleeting sparks in the great cosmic dance of existence.

But perhaps, my friends, this is why we eat hot dogs. Perhaps we eat them not in spite of their paradoxical nature, but because of it. For in the hot dog we find a symbol of our own contradictions, a reminder that we are both glorious and insignificant, powerful and impotent, divine and mortal.

So let us not shy away from the hot dog, my friends. Let us embrace it, devour it, and revel in its paradoxical nature. For in doing so, we confront the abyss, we confront the infinite, and we confront ourselves.


-Friedrich Nietzsche, taking in a baseball game circa.1889

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