While making scant reference to any specific products or prices, a bizarre new McDonalds advertisement that began airing nationwide this week posits to viewers that beef is perhaps a symbolic expression of lust in its most wanton and depraved form. Would you yourself deny beef? Would beef deny itself of you? The flesh calls for you; it implores you to fill your mouth with beef, the commercials narrator asks over grainy, rapidly shifting images of raw ground beef, masticated hamburger, livestock, a fornicating couple, and static. When we call for beef, what are we really asking for? Is it the caress of a gentle lover? Or the blade of an executioner; the rage of steel on bone? Representatives for McDonalds say they have bought extensive primetime space for the ad on all major television networks and will continue to air it through 2014. 